New Testament scholar and Christian atheist Bart Ehrman amusingly boils down authentic Christianity to selling everything and giving it to the poor

This isn't amusing because it's wrong. 

The evidence for it is all over the place in the New Testament and early Christianity, and we talk a lot about the primacy of that evidence in this blog.

Some notable texts include Luke 14:33, Luke 12:33, and the narratives about the rich man inquiring how to have eternal life in Luke 18:18ff, Matthew 19:16ff., and Mark 10:17ff., over which so many interpreters in rich, Western civilization stumble generation after generation. 

It is amusing because Ehrman imagines that a good follower of Jesus today would sell everything and give it to the poor. He thinks of this as an ethical ideal when it was the primary example of Jesus' negation of ethics. Jesus' eschatological imperative to repent to escape imminent judgment meant abandoning all social conventions, at the heart of which is economic life.

The implications of Jesus' message for the economy of Judea were devastating, and his opponents grasped them better than any of his followers since. He was crucified because if everyone followed him tribute to Caesar would dry up (Luke 23:2) and the Jewish elites would lose their place of preferment (John 11:48). His death was beneficial for the maintenance of the status quo. Whether it was really necessary is another question, given the difficulty of following Jesus quite apart from what might have happened when his predictions failed to materialize. Hope in what he predicted ironically was kept alive by his speedy demise. 

Schweitzer long ago taught us that Jesus' eschatology theologically meant the negation of ethics. In keeping with this Jesus' imperatives take a negative form involving renunciation of the world and all its ways. The world is passing away, and threatens to take you with it.

Therefore Jesus' imperatives are not a description of the way to lead a Christian life, because there is no such thing as a Christian life. The end of the world is coming so quickly that there won't be time to lead such a life, not even time enough, for example, properly to bury one's dead, or properly bid farewell to one's family. Jesus' "ethics" are if anything negative ethics. They are instruction in how to lose one's life, the life of this world, not save it.

The imminent eschaton makes the very idea of the Christian life beside the point, same as it does the resurrection. We must remember, as Ehrman helpfully does in the podcast, that Acts 1 tells us that the resurrected Jesus hangs around with the now-styled apostles for forty days but all they can seem to think about is not the astounding wonder of this resurrected man in their midst, but whether he will "at this time restore the kingdom to Israel". The coming of the kingdom is what the historical Jesus had drilled into their heads, not the Pharisees' (and Paul's) doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.

The eschatological theology of Jesus was proven wrong by history twice, once by Jesus' death and the failure of the kingdom to come, and a second time by the Jerusalem community when it mistakenly adopted the eschatological imperatives as a way of life, in particular when they had all things in common (Acts 2:44; 4:32).

Not long after the death of Jesus the Jerusalem community was plunged into such abject hunger and poverty by the famine of 44-48 AD that it had to compromise with Paul and accept his law free gospel to the Gentiles and ask him to remember their poor on his travels among them (Galatians 2:10), which inspired Paul's collection for the saints in Jerusalem (Romans 15:25f., 31). Much of earliest Christianity revolves around this collection as a remedy to the failure of so-called eschatological ethics.

You could say that the eschatology certainly failed also a third time in early Christianity, when its reinterpretation as the apocalyptic theology of the Parousia, the second coming, in Matthew 24 and in Paul, went unrealized before the death of the last of The Twelve (Mark 9:1). The kingdom did not come before they all died either, with power or otherwise, nor after the death of Paul.

All that eschatological energy then petered-out, so to speak, as the decades rolled on and Christianity reinvented itself on The Rock in compromise with the world, in compromise not so much because the Church wanted that but because reality is intractable.

 Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? A Debate. A ‘Christian Atheist’ joins Ross Douthat.

The podcast runs 1:24:23.

Those, His brethren, all died, the coup de grâce for the parousia

 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

-- Mark 9:1 

The climate apocalypse predicted by high school dropout Greta Thunberg has failed, just like the religious apocalypse predicted by the Gospels

She has deleted this

 

 For his part Jesus at least stuck to his guns to the bitter end, though even he kept adjusting the timeline incrementally forward. It was his followers who did most of the covering up for him. In deleting her tweet prediction back in March of this year, Greta resembles them.

The deletion of the prediction, and of ~54 other such predictions, is the subject of some well-deserved derision here and here.

The merriment aside, it is safe to say that faith in the ever-coming, ever-delayed climate apocalypse will continue despite all being lost, now that we have reached the five-year-point of no return.

More and more the climate hysterics look like the already/not yet Kingdom of God enthusiasts among the world's Christians. The latter have their cake and eat it too as their answer to the problem of Jesus' expected in-breaking of the kingdom before the end of the mission of The Twelve in Matthew 10. As no Christian will concede that Jesus was mistaken about this, no climate fanatic will concede that their predictions have been false.

Like Christians in every age since, climate ideologues in academe, in organizations, and in the press routinely conflate instances of extreme weather with climate as signs of the predicted imminent catastrophe. The steady drumbeat of boy crying wolf is meant to whip up expectation and devotion, and above all money, which give the movement coherence and hope as the coming end is delayed again and again and again. You might even say that the Christian apocalyptic delusion, embedded into the very thinking of the West over the long centuries, prepared the way for the victory of the Climate delusion.

It is a useful meditation in how the original "apocalyptic" message of Jesus really wasn't apocalyptic at all, predicting signs and wonders in the heavens above and in the earth below. It only became so in the hands of the Gospel authors after its failure. As Vincent Taylor matter-of-factly pointed out decades ago, the Gospels were primarily composed in response to the delay of the parousia. The Gospels make Jesus predict a second coming, but its delay too was no less of problem than the failure of the first coming.

Jesus' original message was truly, dare we say merely, thorough-goingly eschatological, as Albert Schweitzer had said over 100 years ago. It was not apocalyptic.

Jesus said there would be no sign of the coming of the Son of Man (Mark 8:12). He would come quickly, like a thief in the night, leading the reaper angels who would pluck out from the world everything which offendeth. Two would be in a field, one would be taken and the other left. Two in a bed, one taken, one left. The taken would be bundled up together and burned. The kingdom of God would descend from heaven above. Its heavenly temple would descend and crush its earthly counterpart. The Twelve would rule over the Twelve Tribes of Israel as God made his will done on earth as it is in heaven. Everything in Jesus' generation would continue briefly just as it is, as in the days of Noah, people buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, and then . . . Bam!

All would be calm and normal before the great and terrible day of the Lord.

This message is still embedded in the Gospel data, but its timeline and details were all recast in specifically apocalyptic terms of a second coming, the delay of which the Gospels are meant to address as a cope. Apocalyptic and eschatology have been hopelessly conflated ever since, with Christians forever preoccupied with the signs of the times.

People who marvel at how Christianity ever achieved its status as a universal religion which has endured through the ages and commanded the assent of billions over two millennia despite the on-going delay of the parousia rarely reflect on the power fanaticism has to delude thoroughly, and on a grand scale.

They have the climate hysteria now before their very eyes. They are actually living it. And yet they cannot see it.

The climate delusion has reached astounding proportions since its laughable prophet Al Gore, divinity school dropout (what a coincidence, right?), first began his climate ministry in 1993. The whole world is feeling its grip, banking on so-called green electricity when its capacity to generate enough of it to replace fossil fuel and nuclear sources is nothing but a pipe-dream.

And to think America almost made him president.

Nothing good has come out of Carthage, Tennessee.

The Jesus who instructs at minimum to invest with usury obviously isn't the same Jesus who instructs to lend expecting nothing in return

The idea that Jesus would countenance usury at all is preposterous, whether as a law-loving Jew or as an eschatological prophet of impending final judgment.

The sayings of Matthew 25 and Luke 19, the Parable of the Ten Talents, blessing usury clearly stem from the period of later church reflection on the delay of the parousia. They stress being adequately prepared for the future coming, which has been unaccountably delayed. Time is dragging on interminably. The sayings fail miserably even to imagine how such preparation is in conflict with the law. They give no thought to it. They cannot be "historical".

The same is true of Matthew 5 and Luke 6, though to a lesser extent. The sayings of the Sermon on the Mount have been colored by the delay, too, but are closer in spirit to the thought of the historical Jesus, for whom giving instruction about lending at all would have made no sense but who might have countenanced such a discussion because it was a burning topic in the law and the prophets. Lending at interest of any kind to a "brother" was simply forbidden, though obviously much abused.

Like the Sermon generally, instruction about lending is instruction about and for an interim which Jesus never imagined would come. What we observe here is community reflection, by a community which has already stopped liquidating all possessions in obedience to the call to discipleship and which still has worldly goods to lend. The community is reflecting on what Jesus might have said on the subject, given his high view of the law. Clearly the solution given in Matthew 5 and especially in Luke 6 to lend expecting no return, not even of the principal, is in conflict with the Parable of the Ten Talents (again, Luke has the keener take on Jesus' eschatology and its implications). But the solution does reflect the spirit of the call to discipleship, if not the practice: Sell that thou hast, give to the poor, come follow me. To this extent it is closer to the historical Jesus.

It is remarkable how incoherent is the tradition and its redaction on this point.

 

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury ... from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

-- Matthew 25:27,29

Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? ... from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.  

-- Luke 19:23,26

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 

-- Matthew 5:42

Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. ... But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

-- Luke 6:30,35

If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.

-- Exodus 22:25

And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. 

-- Leviticus 25:35ff. 

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

-- Deuteronomy 23:19f.

LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? ... He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.

-- Psalm 15:1, 5

He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man, Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord GOD.

-- Ezekiel 18:8f.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

-- Luke 14:33

Paul's ideas of imitation, from which we get Imitatio Christi, are quite contrary to the teaching and intent of Jesus

Paul's idea of imitation is a repudiation of Jesus' radical ideas of eschatological repentance, which involved flight from traditional social conventions in order to escape the imminently coming judgment. In point of fact Jesus' idea left nothing positive to imitate. This is why Schweitzer could speak of Jesus' ethic as a negation of ethics.

Paul's "way" on the other hand was a rationalization of those conventions after the failure of the eschaton and the impending failure of the parousia. Instead of rejecting traditional social roles he simply accepted them and invested them with new meaning.

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. Therefore I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

-- I Corinthians 4:15ff. (RSV)

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit;

-- I Thessalonians 1:6 (RSV)

As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children,

-- I Thessalonians 2:11

Paul is, in fact, all over the map on this, spilling a lot of ink on the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as fathers even though he knows we have but one father, God. He seems completely ignorant of the teaching of Jesus, which rejected all human fathers in favor of the fatherhood of God. Paul notably also does not use the language of "following" as found in the gospels ("come after me", "follow me"). Instead he speaks of mimesis, which in its turn is foreign to the gospels.

Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, 

-- Romans 4:16

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 

-- Romans 9:10

As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.

-- Romans 11:28

... all our fathers were under the cloud ...

-- I Corinthians 10:1

But ye know the proof of him [Timothy], that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel.

-- Philippians 2:22

The whole thing degenerates into the familial as the pressure of the delay of the parousia re-invigorates traditional human social roles:

Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

-- I Timothy 1:2

Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;

-- I Timothy 5:1

To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

-- II Timothy 1:2

To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

-- Titus 1:4

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And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

-- Matthew 23:9

Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees is pro-Pauline propaganda, not history

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

-- Matthew 22:32

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.

-- Mark 12:27

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

-- Luke 20:38

The idea that Jesus got into a dust-up with the Sadducees over the intermediate state and resurrection and basically ended up taking the position of the Pharisees for himself is absurd. This is evidence of the later Pauline consensus contaminating the tradition, at the expense of the eschatology of the historical Jesus.

Talk of an intermediate state, for example, between death and final judgment where the dead go to be with the Lord interjects a fatal pause to the present time, which for Jesus is pregnant with eschatological expectation. That pause necessarily would have undercut the present sense of urgency which informed the call to repent and escape what is surely coming.

With an intermediate state awaiting at death instead of judgment imminently confronting, one rationalizes away the extraordinary current moment in favor of the continuation of human history as it has always continued.

 

The need to leave all and follow Jesus evaporates (Matthew 4; Mark 10; Luke 5; Luke 18), replaced by less consequential belief.

 

The establishment of a settled life and therefore a church is made possible, which accomodates itself to time instead of revolting against it.

 

A Gentile mission, specifically ruled out by Jesus (Matthew 10), becomes possible in Athens where "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) has more currency than "the kingdom of God is at hand" in Jerusalem (Mark 1:15). The kingdom focused on Jerusalem recedes from view, as does the God who is coming there soon to judge this generation's guilt for the blood of all the prophets!

The problem for historians is that there was never a sound proponent of Jesus' eschatology who followed him who could match the thoroughgoing Pauline theology. And why should have such a person arisen if his followers "after the flesh" had truly understood Jesus as they must have? Their expectation also would have continued to be for an imminent end, even despite the death and resurrection of their master: "Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). There was no impetus to document anything for posterity, since posterity would never come to exist. This means that the gospels must be viewed with great suspicion everywhere, for they are the products of the subsequent, already compromised, period. They are not of the Urzeit. Only out of respect for Jesus do they preserve any of the conflicting evidence from his teaching.

Consider that if an intermediate state is put forward in the mouth of Jesus, all sense of urgency about the imminent coming judgment he predicted would necessarily melt away with authority. Belief in the restyled message of atonement could more easily become the message, relieving everyone of the onerous original obligations of discipleship. The obvious failure of the kingdom's coming meant Paul's rationalizations were ready made for the occasion, and came as a relief. In he stepped and supplied the solution to the ongoing disappointment caused by the delay of the parousia, and the death of the disciples' generation simply made all this a fait accompli.

Jesus did not view himself as Paul viewed him. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians 5:16). Jesus viewed himself as the people viewed him, as a prophet. Thinking himself destined for death as so many of the prophets before him were, Jesus is unique because he thought of himself as the final prophet. Even as he's about to die he can say that history as we know it is about to end, too:

"[Y]e shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

-- Mark 14:62

"From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation."

-- Luke 11:51

This is where Muhammad got his idea to style himself as the final prophet, but armed with a sword, centuries later! More than most New Testament critics of modern times, Muhammad long before sensed the inadequacy of the gospels' handling of Jesus' eschatological message. And if Paul of Tarsus could receive direct revelations from God and refound a movement, so much more the better. So could he!

There is no dying and rising as a sacrifice for sins in Jesus' mind, only prophets perishing unjustly in Jerusalem. The rising is added under the influence of hysterical women, and an unstable Pharisee, Paul.

The fanatical Benjaminite had recourse to the resurrected Jesus to make sense of his own personal conversion experience, which was really a mental breakdown if one is to be perfectly frank about it. After all, after a surprising, brief period of activity as a Jesus advocate instead of as the well known and feared Jesus persecutor he had recently been, Paul disappears for a period of ten years, if the chronology and the account are to be believed. This is hardly the behavior of a settled individual convinced by his experiences one way or another, but of a still-troubled person. It was during this time that Paul must have developed his ideas of Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection under the influence of the direct, supernatural visions and revelations he claimed were the sole basis of his gospel: "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). What these really were is anyone's guess, but in his own time people already were calling him crazy. To be sure they are at the same time productive of ingenious solutions, as his letters testify. These solutions eventually supplied Paul with a ready escape from the offense of his own Jewish particularity, which he experienced as a Roman citizen in his Asian backwater, and at the same time validated the Pharisaic impulse, which he imbibed as a youth and to which he remained committed, to democratize Temple holiness by making proselytes and founding synagogues. His possession of the Roman franchise reinforced his ideas of human equality under God and their legitimacy.

The body of Jesus temporarily and hastily buried was missing on Easter morn because it was moved. The disciples to a man did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, only the women in their hysteria at discovering this did. (If one is looking for the incipient enthusiasm later displayed by early Christianity described in Acts, it is here). The gospels' portrayal of the general dim pall of ignorance of a predicted rising on the third day which hung over the movement despite all the supposed evidence to the contrary makes no sense if Jesus were in fact a resurrection preacher and intermediate state believer first and foremost. That "evidence" became part of the narrative ex post facto. The idea otherwise should not have been rejected so out of hand by his very own disciples as it was. The plainest explanation for their unbelief on the third day is that they had no prior knowledge of the idea of resurrection on the third day, and that because Jesus had never preached it.

Paul the Apostle is the true founder of Christianity. He co-opted the sectarian Jewish eschatological religion preached by Jesus. An enthusiast for Pharisaism to the end, Paul's personal ambition was to make Judaism safe as a universal religion, relegating present Jerusalem to the discarded past: "She is in slavery with her children" (Galatians 4:25). By turning Jesus into a Pharisee, he succeeded.

Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

-- Luke 13:33f.

The tragedy of our times is that we are incapable of being disciples

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seen here, where asceticism is kept as the way of the true Christian life, followed by the very few, whereas the imminently coming judgment, for which Jesus' asceticism was originally prescribed to permit the disciple successfully to navigate it, goes wholly unmentioned:

You know, I recall the words of St. Gregory the Dialogist. He asked which is more correct: to zealously keep the fasts and be ascetic but proud, or to be humble and keep almost nothing? ... Gregory the Dialogist says, no. Let there be pride, but the person should labor ascetically; and the Lord Himself will find a way to humble him. However, there are few of us who zealously observe everything. ... [T]he tragedy of our times is that we are incapable of being disciples. ... Specifically the will for asceticism is paralyzed. Everyone knows and understands all this very well but they can hardly do anything about it. It is because this web has ensnared all of us, and only the Lord can somehow interfere and change it all. Thus have we gotten stuck in these nets—and this includes you and me. ... God looks at the man, at how he forces himself. ... We all have different passions, different inclinations. If we force ourselves, the Lord will reward us.

The tragedy of our times is the same tragedy which has afflicted Christianity since its inception: the failure of the kingdom to come, and the failure of the parousia.

William Lane Craig Doubts The Accuracy Of Matthew's Presentation Of Jesus' Apocalyptic Sayings

When the evidence is uncomfortable, if you can't trim it, cast doubt on it.

Here (italics mine):

Matthew blends in with Jesus’ mission charge to the twelve disciples certain prophecies about the end times, about the coming of the Son of Man. So you get a verse like Matthew 10:23, “When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes.” Originally this was probably a saying about the end of the world, the coming of the Son of Man; but here Matthew has woven it into this mission discourse to the Twelve. ... [B]y putting this saying in this context, Matthew makes it sound as if Jesus is saying to the twelve disciples, “Before you have gone through all the towns of the Israel, the coming of the Son of Man will occur.”

This is a perfect illustration of my contention. If Matthew 10:23 did not mean that the Son of Man was going to come again before the mission of the Twelve was over, there is no reason to think that Matthew 24:34 means that the Son of Man is going to come again within the first generation. We can’t be sure how this saying was originally given or what its context was. ...

But now look at how Matthew handles this verse in Matthew 16:28. Here Matthew, telling of this same event, rewords it. Remember, they didn’t have quotation marks. This is paraphrased. Here is Matthew’s way of putting it: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Now that does [italics original] sound as if they are going to see the return of the Son of Man in their own lifetime! But we know that Matthew is paraphrasing this passage in Mark 9:1, which doesn’t really say that. Matthew is passing it on in a somewhat different way. This case again illustrates my point. These sayings may have a very different meaning in their original context. Someone who only knew Matthew 16:28 might well think that Jesus is saying, “There are people here who will not die before they see my parousia,” but when you read Mark 9:1, that is not at all obvious.

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At least with Albert Schweitzer's interpretation, Matthew and Mark are allowed to stand as reliable presentations of (failed) apocalyptic.

So who's the "conservative", William Lane Craig, or Albert Schweitzer?

Is Missionary Self-Defense Taught By Jesus?

Is missionary self-defense taught by Jesus? The short answer is, No.

But Robert Gundry seems to think so, here, in criticism of the Zealot hypothesis revived by Reza Aslan:

Though Jesus wasn't "a violent revolutionary bent on armed rebellion," he "instructs his disciples immediately after the Passover meal" to go sell their cloaks and each buy a sword, as for a violent revolution. So says Aslan, but he fails to mention the context of an evangelistic mission requiring not only a sword for self-protection but also a purse, bag, and sandals for travel, just as he fails to mention that Jesus' bringing a sword has to do, figuratively and contextually, with division in families over whether to follow Jesus, not with revolution against Rome (compare Jesus' saying in the different context of violence that "all who take the sword will perish by the sword"). Undoubtedly Jesus was crucified as "The King of the Jews"—i.e., as a messianic rebel—but Aslan has to doubt or deny that the Sanhedrin shifted from the religious charge of blasphemy, under which they condemned Jesus, to a false political charge of sedition when arraigning him before Pilate [emphasis added].

The key evidence is in Luke 22.33-38:

And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

The first thing to be said about this is that if Reza Aslan has to doubt or deny a shift in charges by the Sanhedrin, Gundry has to believe and assert a shift in context to the evangelistic in this passage which is plainly absent.

To be sure, Luke here makes Jesus allude to Luke 9.3:

And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece.

But now Luke makes Jesus reverse this command in the new context, and what's new about it is that Jesus plainly anticipates there will be a threat to the safety of the disciples, who like Peter will deny him and run away. Jesus isn't anticipating some new missionary activity for the disciples. He's imagining their scattering, and so their vulnerability, sheep without their shepherd.

If I were going to be mean, I'd call Jesus a situation ethicist on Gundry's reading. But Gundry's idea of new missionary activity is clearly by analogy from the previous instruction, not in evidence in the new instruction itself. At least on Luke's presentation of Jesus' words, the new situation might logically require carrying weapons, but to imagine a missionary reference at this point in the narrative looks strained, to say the least. And why weren't weapons needed before? Won't God continue to protect his own now without them? Faith as the grain of a mustard seed.

The problem is that Luke's overall presentation of the arrest of Jesus looks fanciful and muddled, quite apart from this reversal in the mouth of Jesus. It's almost as if Luke is trying to harmonize the unharmonizable. And this passage about swords seems to be representative of that.

For example, in 22:24 the whole question of who would be the greatest among the disciples intrudes unnaturally in the narrative, after Jesus' prediction of his betrayal by one of his very followers at the Passover meal, as if to suggest the disciples are a bunch of narcissists at the hour of Jesus' greatest need. And hadn't Luke brought up this argument going on amongst the disciples way back in chapter 9 already? Why bring it up again? Matthew by contrast knows nothing of this controversy popping up at the Lord's Supper.

Then in 22:43 an angel appears to Jesus to strengthen him at the Mount of Olives, but since the disciples are all asleep as this occurs, who is there to observe this, that Luke might know of it, hm?  Did a little birdie tell him? Matthew does not know of it, even though he claims to know about many appearances of angels otherwise, including to Jesus' father, Joseph.

Additionally, what sense does it make that one of the disciples took off an opponent's ear with a sword and didn't get arrested for it on the spot with Jesus, if Jesus is perceived by his opponents to be an insurrectionist King of the Jews on the Zealot hypothesis? Arrest the ring leader, along with his armed followers, right? In Matthew at least, where there is no new talk of acquiring weapons for such a situation, Jesus rebukes the resort to weapons forthrightly, and the offending disciples escape, as they do also in John but not without a second divine sign in addition to the healing the ear that was cut off.

And, of course, in the past missionary activity the disciples have had to eschew self-defense instruments such as staves according to Luke's own account, but now suddenly they already are seen to be in possession of swords! "Oh look, here's two", they say now, like Jesus didn't know they've had them all along.

Is that narrative to be believed while at the same time Jesus expresses indignation at his opponents for coming for him by night with weapons? Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black on Luke's reading? Neither Matthew, Mark nor John (!) make Jesus look quite so foolish, allowing weapons for us, but not for you.

There's something funny going on in the tradition about all of this, which may be illuminated by examining all the passages in the gospels mentioning swords and staves, where you will find not the slightest hint of approval for carrying weapons of any kind, except perhaps in two places.

In Matthew 10:34 we have this:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Yet the explanation following this makes it clear, as Gundry points out, that this is a metaphorical sword, one meant to explain repentance in the most radical terms as that which divides the follower of Jesus even from normal human relationships, as the case may require, just as a real sword would:

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

That leaves us with Mark 6:8 only, which isn't even about a sword, but only about a staff, truly more of a defensive weapon than is a sword, which is an offensive one:

And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse.

Mark, unfortunately, is not supported in this reading by Matthew nor by Luke, who both correct Mark and say Jesus commanded them to take not even that. Interestingly, when Luke's Jesus refers to this in chapter 22 (cited above), however, he merely summarizes what he had made explicit in chapter 9, glossing over the staves entirely, which he had earlier specifically prohibited. Luke is making Jesus look rather fast and loose with the facts here.

Was that intentional on Luke's part? I think so. Luke is writing from a later period, coping with the new reality of the kingdom's coming having been already long delayed. He is at pains to rationalize the Christian's continued existence in an increasingly dangerous world, and finds the earliest tradition about the imminently coming kingdom and its ethic of no possessions, not even weapons, difficult to reconcile with reality. The remarkable thing about that is how he knows that tradition and records it in the starkest possible terms (14:33), which no one else does (So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple). It's almost like it bothers him. And, of course, Mark's unique saying about keeping a defensive weapon would be in keeping with Luke's point of view because, like Luke, Mark is associated with the later, Pauline perspective, which has already rationalized to some extent the failure of the parousia.

It is fashionable to ridicule Luke the historian as anything but an historian for reasons such as this. On the contrary I would say that his realism about the on-going perils of human existence in the face of a delayed parousia mark him as a reliable recorder of the transition from failed apocalyptic faith to the phoenix of catholic faith.

But it will not do for us to sweep aside the Jesus who thoroughly disavowed the role of human agency in ushering in the reign of God and who believed to the bitter end that God himself would bring it to save the faithful few who repented and were waiting for it. Nor can we sweep aside Jesus' expectation of this imminently coming kingdom for one rationalized as delayed indefinitely in order to save the many who would be able also to repent and believe.

Both views trim the sorry evidence.

Luke The Historian Preserves Jesus' Apocalyptic Expectation As Paul's Own

Eduard Meyer

 

 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

-- Acts 17:30f.

Say what you will about Luke's accuracy in other matters, or about his identity, he preserves an eschatolgical expectation which comes from the core of Jesus' teaching, transcending the decades and faithfully adhered to by Paul, however anachronistic that expectation may have become with the failure of the parousia.

Advent: The Season of Eschatological Denial

For the First Sunday of Advent, Nov. 29, the text for the sermon in the Presbyterian Church came from 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, the last verse of which speaks of "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints."

Nary a mention was made of the meaning of this text, even though the preacher carved it up into three's and expounded upon it at great length. He simply assumed that it was appropriate to the season of advent, of "coming," when we celebrate the coming of Jesus into the world. But the text, of course, does not refer to the birth of Jesus at all. It refers, instead, to the fervent expectation of the return of Jesus, that he would "be beside" us again soon, an expectation shared by Paul with most, if not all, Christians of the first century.

The underlying Greek word, parousia, in the Latin vulgate is adventu, which of course means "coming," but not the one we celebrate at Christmas. It is, rather, the final coming of the Lord to end history as we know it and commence the final judgment. It would be no babe, meek and mild, spreading peace on earth to men of good will, but a victorious king separating the wheat from the chaff, purifying the former and consuming the latter with the fire of divine justice.

The failure of Jesus to return "soon" caused a crisis for Christianity, the effects of which are detectable as much in the development of its practices and theology as they are in the development of the gospel texts themselves. It should not surprise us, however, that Christianity's devotees would fall back on more familiar conceptions and, for example, eventually co-opt the term advent for other purposes. In doing so they acquiesced to a very old idea of a seasonal round, in which the celebrating of the coming of Jesus into the world and his going out again was loosely made to coincide with the times of harvest and planting in the autumn and the spring. It was a concession to the rhythm of life going back millennia, and to the impulse of human beings to attach religious significance to these facts of existence. A paganus, a pagan, after all, was just a country boy, nothing more than a farmer who, like all his fellows, marked the times and the seasons with rites and rituals meant to enlist the blessing and deflect the displeasure of the gods on his efforts in the fields.

And so it is today. The typical Christian is a pagan with no more sense of urgency about the imminent return of Jesus than an audiophile has of the return of vinyl. Whether he celebrates a liturgical calendar or not, his life revolves around seasons just the same, more often than not "the kids are back in school," "spring break," and "summer vacation." He goes to church seeking God's blessings on his life all the same, so that he may excel at his career, place his children in good schools, take a nice trip somewhere in June, save for their college and his own retirement, and generally enjoy life, within limits if he is wise. There is no such thing today as a disciple, who leaves all and follows Jesus.

Some of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies and listened to Christian balladeers like Larry Norman or read The Late, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey acquired a veneer of the expectation only to lose it again because we finally realized that almost every century since the first has seen such expectation frustrated, or we came to grips with the fact that just because the expectation was preserved on papyri doesn't necessarily make it true, or translatable to now.

If Christianity is to remain relevant to such-minded people, it must do better than yet one more celebration of the Savior's birth. Saved from what? And for what? More of the same, day after day, year upon year, only to "fly forgotten as a dream, dies at the opening day?"