General Introduction
This will be the first in my series of ‘reaction articles’ to the recent lectures given on 27-28 May 2023, by Dr Bart Ehrman, on the topic of ‘Jesus & Paul: The Great Divide’. In those lectures, my overall view is that he successfully managed to contrast Jesus’s teachings and beliefs with those of Paul of Tarsus.
The first couple of lectures were difficult though, because they involved Dr Ehrman’s speculation on who Jesus was and his mission, and a mostly biased understanding of Torah and the ethos of the Jewish religion. However, the other lectures were easier to agree with, since they focussed on Jesus’s ethics and Paul’s ethics, based solely on what is recorded of them having said. For Yeshua, this meant looking only at the 3 synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew & Luke), and for Paul, only at his 7 authentic letters (Galatians, Romans, 1Corinthians, 2Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and 1Thessalonians).
Although I will quote stuff that Dr Ehrman said, this is not going to be a mere repetition of the entire series of 8 lectures. I’m going to reiterate some core Talmidi beliefs and values, and only contrast these with Dr Ehrman’s exact words, when relevant to do so.
For the record, I do respect Dr Ehrman, and I empathise with the theological journey he took to leave Christianity. I accept much of what he says about the historical Jesus and the historical Paul. His views are thought-provoking, challenging, insightful, and ultimately very helpful in our own journey towards a reasoning faith, based on ideals which are as close to historical reality as possible. If an unbiased historian were to examine modern Talmidaism and mainstream Christianity side by side, I am confident that our reasoned, academic and historical approach will be conducive to finding that we accord better with the teachings and historical faith of the Prophet Yeshua, and of his very earliest Jewish followers.
This first article is a reaction mostly to the first and second lectures (which covered Dr Ehrman’s understanding of who Jesus was, and of his mission). Since I disagreed with Dr Ehrman’s fundamental assessments, this article is therefore mostly a critique of the 2 lectures. My future articles on subsequent lectures (#3 – #8), however, will be more positive, since they focussed more on matters that most Talmidis can find agreement with.
Dr Ehrman’s underlying assumptions
The unspoken, personal assumption that Dr Ehrman starts from (gleaned from other talks he has given), is that God doesn’t exist. With that foundation, his logical conclusions are naturally quite different from those which people like us – Yahwists who start with the assumption that God does exist – would arrive at.
In other talks of his I have listened to, he holds the view that because God isn’t real, prophecy cannot be real. Therefore, any apparent foreknowledge on the part of Jesus cannot possibly have been voiced by him – such words must have all been added after the fact, long after Jesus died. Anything that is deduced to have genuinely been said by Jesus, must logically have only come from his own human mind (i.e. and not from God; so if it sounds like it comes from God, then that must have been added by a later gospel writer).
In addition, since Dr Ehrman personally thinks that Jesus was completely uneducated and couldn’t read at all, Jesus’s ideas can only have come from the contemporary influence of the people around him (i.e. not from contemplating the writings and ideas of previous prophets).
Dr Ehrman’s personal views about Jesus’s mission
Here is a quick summary of Dr Ehrman’s personal opinions about Jesus, aside from his summaries about what historians generally agree about Jesus:
1. Jesus personally believed he was an apocalyptic prophet, who taught that the world was soon coming to an end (this is Dr Ehrman’s conclusion, simply because that was the prevailing belief at the time; his logic seems to be that, if it was the prevailing view, then that must therefore have been the view held by Jesus himself).
2. Jesus believed his ministry was a battle with demons and evil spirits, who were preventing the establishment of God’s kingdom
3. Jesus taught a post-apocalyptic but still earthly, messianic kingdom, and that after the apocalypse, the world would be supernaturally perfect, ruled from Jerusalem
4. Jesus believed he was the traditional Jewish messiah, who would defeat the forces of Satan’s evil, sweep away God’s earthly enemies (e.g. the Romans), and establish Israel as an independent, sovereign kingdom – over which he personally would rule as king
5. Jesus was crucified because he was a criminal; he must have done something to anger the Romans and violate Roman law, for him to warrant being crucified (although not explicitly stated in the lectures, he implies that Jesus led some kind of revolt against the Romans)
6. Jesus was a failed prophet, because the world didn’t end in apocalypse (Dr Ehrman’s logic is that, since God isn’t real, prophecy isn’t real and so prophets aren’t real, therefore any supposedly prophetic predictions that did come true, must have been added later, and could not possibly have been said by Jesus)
7. Jesus was a failed messianic leader, because he didn’t succeed in overthrowing the Romans, or in establishing a messianic kingdom
My initial criticisms of Dr Ehrman’s views
My personal view is that, if your primary assumptions are wrong about Yeshua (e.g. that prophets aren’t real, and that Jesus was actually campaigning to set up a messianic kingdom), then your conclusions will be wrong about Yeshua as well. When one is delving into what motivated and drove Yeshua himself, what Dr Ehrman believes about God and prophecy is ultimately irrelevant, because Yeshua believed that God was real, and that prophecy was real, and these were the things that informed and motivated Yeshua’s actions and personal beliefs. Moreover, the reason why he failed to set up a messianic kingdom, was because he was never even trying to set one up to begin with.
Below are Dr Ehrman’s conclusions, appended with why I, as a Talmidi, disagree with them:
1. That Apocalypse was the only possible theological solution to why Jews were still suffering:
I always find it perplexing how most ordinary Christians, and many ex-Christian atheists, completely ignore the social and political troubles that were going on in the 1st century CE, even in Yeshua’s own lifetime. It was a really terrible time to be alive, but you never get to hear about that (and you’d never know from just reading the New Testament). There is never any mention of the awful things that led up to the Roman/Jewish war, or the terrifying misery and suffering that immediately preceded the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, or the horrific violence that led to the exile of Jews from Judea. Maybe if more Christians were taught about these things, more might realise that the tribulation about which Yeshua spoke, already happened in 70 CE.
With regards to a world-ending apocalypse being the only thing Jesus could possibly have focussed on as the impetus for his mission, Dr Ehrman’s logic is that, previous to the Babylonian Exile, Jews believed that their suffering was a punishment from God, because “they were disobeying God’s Law“ (Dr Ehrman’s own words). But then after the Babylonian Exile, the Jewish people were keeping the Law, but they were still suffering, so the only possible conclusion that Jews could come to, was that there must be a battle going on in heaven between the forces of good and evil.
Dr Ehrman seems to think that, because apocalyptic theology was the prevailing view of suffering held at that time by most Jews, therefore that this must have been the view held by Jesus. However, there is another view of suffering in Second Temple Judaism, contemporaneous with apocalypticism, and that is contained in the Book of Job. The final edit of Job was after the Babylonian Exile, and circulated around the same time as the rise of apocalypticism (early to middle Second Temple Period). Again, it seems to me that, because Dr Ehrman is of the opinion that Jesus couldn’t read and was uneducated, he probably thinks that writings such as the Book of Job could not possibly have had any influence on Jesus.
While apocalypticism holds that good people only suffer, because there is an invisible battle between the heavenly forces of good and the demonic forces of evil, the lesson in Job is that sometimes there is no reason behind misfortune, and that it is fruitless to try to find one. Suffering is not always a punishment from God – that even if you are a good person and blameless, good people still suffer misfortune.
The anachronous motif of Satan in Job is a 5th century BCE addition, and was not part of the original book (the original source-material for the book was probably composed in the early monarchic period, and is even written in a very archaic form of Hebrew). There is no implication in the original parts of Job that misfortune happens as a result of demonic forces; misfortune – especially in the case of good people – often just happens, and God is instead the Source of strength that we should turn to, in order to be able to endure whatever misfortune or suffering we have no control over.
So basically what I’m saying under this bullet-point, is that apocalypse and battles between angels and demons would not have been the only possible answer to the question of suffering within the Jewish community of that time; the Book of Job presents an alternative view that Jews could have had access to, when dealing with the question of, ‘Why are we Jews still suffering, even though we are keeping Torah?’
Additionally, if you only understand Torah as purely a system of ritual laws, so making Judaism into a religion of pointless and outdated rules, then you would think that in the late Second Temple period, people were keeping Torah (or, “keeping the Law“, as Dr Ehrman would phrase it). However, if we are willing to make the effort to understand Yeshua’s ethical teachings in their proper prophetic context, then we would realise that Yeshua was emphasising the ethical values and principles of Torah, just like the biblical prophets before him did – social justice, love your neighbour as yourself, help the poor and the disadvantaged, speak up for those without a voice in society, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, forgive debt, give tsedaqah, have the wealthy pay their fair share of it, and that leaders should serve their communities. Once we are willing to see things like these as the most important parts of God’s Torah, then it dawns on you that a lot of people in Yeshua’s day were not actually keeping Torah – especially the wealthy.
To those who have a disdainful and contemptuous view of Torah, Torah is all about oppressive, ritual laws; to those who value Torah – like the Prophet Yeshua undeniably did – Torah‘s main emphases were its ethical values and ideals, its portrait of what an ideal, functioning and just Yahwist society should be like. This is the Torah that, as a prophet, Yeshua was called by God to exhort his fellow Jews to return to.
2. That all the biblical prophets taught an apocalyptic end of the world
Dr Ehrman seems to be of the opinion that all the biblical Hebrew prophets taught that the world was soon coming to a definitive end, as punishment for disobeying God’s Law – i.e. that all the prophets of the Hebrew Bible were apocalyptic teachers, who taught that the end of the world was coming. This furthers Dr Ehrman’s belief that prophecy is not real, because there was self-evidently no apocalypse. However, this is not the Jewish understanding of the missions of the biblical prophets.
The traditional Jewish view, is that the biblical prophets warned of tribulation and upheaval as part of what the prophets called, ‘the Day of YHVH’. At worst, such tribulation would end in Exile for the Jewish people (Dt 4:27, 28:63-64). Then, if we repented in the lands of our exile (Dt 4:29-31), the Jewish people would be returned by God to the Land (Dt 30:2-3). The premise underlying this sequence of events, is not that the world is coming to an end – and that’s in Torah.
In this regard, because Dr Ehrman does not believe God exists, his assumption is therefore there is no such thing as prophecy. The biblical prophets cannot possibly have known of any future events, or be predicting downfall and exile, because God isn’t real, and therefore prophecy isn’t real.
He also seems to be ignoring the fact that Torah does not foresee apocalypse or the end of the world, but rather, that first come tribulation and exile, then return (which is the precise pattern described in Deuteronomy). Even if one only reads Torah, apocalypse is not the raison d’être for the ministries of Hebrew prophets.
3. That Jesus proclaimed the apocalypse and the end of the world, because that was the prevailing belief
To preface this section, I need to point out that, even if Yeshua had been a tribulationist prophet, nevertheless if the writers of the gospels had been apocalypticists themselves, then that is how they would have re-interpreted Yeshua’s sayings, and that is how they would have recorded them. Consequently, any of Yeshua’s sayings relating to a coming tribulation would not have been recorded as Yeshua spoke them; they would have been amended and re-moulded into an apocalyptic framework, and Yeshua’s original tribulationist message would be concealed behind the gospel writers’ changes, and so become more difficult to discern.
Dr Ehrman holds the opinion that Jesus was 100% a product of his time – and only a product of his time (since Jesus was uneducated and illiterate, he cannot possibly have been influenced by the ideas of earlier religious texts). Therefore, that Jesus must have believed 100% in the prevailing, contemporary apocalyptic beliefs, and that Jesus must have believed that the end of the world was coming soon. In what Dr Ehrman personally thinks, there is no consideration of the possibility that Yeshua, or indeed any of his followers might, I don’t know, just possibly have come across the books of the pre-Exile biblical prophets and Torah itself, and just maybe have taken on board their non-apocalyptic view of trials and tribulations instead.
Dr Ehrman holds the view that all prophets were apocalyptic – that they all believed that the world was coming to an end. This may be a leftover from his days as a Christian, because this is not what Jewish people understand about the teachings of the biblical prophets. I also wonder if most ordinary Christians read the prophecies in the Bible without being aware of the Assyrian and Babylonian Exiles, and that these two Exiles are in fact what the prophetic warnings were leading up to.
In the writings of the pre-Exile prophets, there is a belief in something called, ‘the Day of YHVH’ (Isa 13:6, 13:9, Jer 46:10, Ezek 30:3, Joel 1:15, Amos 5:18, Zeph 1:14, Mal 4:5; cf also Acts 2:20, 2Peter 3:10). This was not literally a single day, but any period of time, any period of tribulation, that would eventually come to an end – not in the destruction of the world, but in a new era. It would still be a mortal world, and a new age would begin once such a tribulation had ended.
The difference between apocalyptic theology and ‘Day of YHVH’ theology, is that Israel (and indeed, humanity) would survive this time of tribulation (cf Mal 4:2 – “But for you who revere My Name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”)
As I’ve mentioned above, from other talks he has given, I’ve learned that Dr Ehrman is convinced that Jesus and his apostles were completely uneducated – an idea based solely on the fact that there is no archaeological evidence of any school building in Nazareth. This fuzzy logic assumes that Yeshua was a prisoner of Nazareth, and could never have left there to go to any form of school anywhere else, and so couldn’t possibly have ever learned to read. There is also no accounting of the known practice of village classes being held outside, with the pupils sitting under no more than a roof of palm fronds held up by 4 poles (i.e. that there was probably an open-air school in Nazareth itself, which would not leave any archaeological traces).
My contention is that Jesus could read, and that he had certainly read the Torah and the books of the prophets, and more importantly, that he had come to a different view than other people were holding – not in apocalypse, but in a period of trial and tribulation, which the penitent and the good would get through and survive. Even if you don’t believe in God, nevertheless by reading Torah & the Prophets, a conclusion other than apocalypse is possible by any discerning Jew. It might have ended up being a minority view at the time, but one could never accuse Yeshua of having only ever followed the views of the majority!
Even if you insist that Jesus himself couldn’t read, other Jews could definitely read, and one has to concede that Yeshua could have learned alternative ideas from Jews who could read (therefore, there is a flaw in the logic of him not knowing things because ‘Jesus was illiterate’ here).
Even if one doesn’t believe that God is real, predictions of the dangerous direction in which society is heading are still possible, if you are a keen observer of what’s going on around you (in modern times, non-religious political observers make predictions all the time). Even Yeshua touched on this when he talked about recognising the signs of the times (Mt 16:2-3).
3. That the term ‘Kingdom of God’ can only have one possible meaning – an earthly messianic kingdom
Dr Ehrman seems to hold the view that the term, ‘Kingdom of God’ can only ever have one exclusive meaning whenever it was used by Jesus – that it always meant an earthly, messianic kingdom. This view is ignoring the fact that ancient Hebrew and Aramaic had a limited vocabulary, and individual words often had to serve several purposes, the specific meaning intended being discernible from context.
The Hebrew and Aramaic malkhūt could mean kingship, reign, royal authority, as well as kingdom. In my article on the Kingdom of God, I explained how Yeshua used the term in four different, distinct ways. Each one of Yeshua’s sayings and parables on the Kingdom of God can neatly fit into one of these four categories. Only by understanding their category, can a discerning interpreter fully understand the nuances of what Yeshua meant in each instance. For reference purposes, the term ‘Kingdom of God’ in Standard Jewish Aramaic is malkhūteyh delahā.
In those parables and sayings which refer to an imminent coming of the Kingdom, the word malkhūt should be translated as ‘kingship’. Whenever Yeshua said that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’ (eg Mt 4:17), it should be translated as, ‘the Kingship of God is approaching / drawing near’. ‘Kingship’ would therefore refer to God’s coming intervention as King and Judge of the earth. The sayings and parables where God’s Kingdom has this particular meaning, all contain implications of judgment for the wicked, and a vindication of the righteous. This is often likened to a time of harvest, when the good grain will be gathered safely into barns, but the stubble will be burnt off.
Other times, the Kingdom of God is something that exists within us (eg Lk 17:21). By pure, simple logic, this would imply a different linguistic usage of the term to the first one above. In these cases, it is referring to God’s Reign, which is a mindset and a way of life that is lived by those who accept God as King – one accepts the ways, principles, values and teachings of one’s King.
The rich often have difficulty entering this way of life. This is the third meaning – a variation on the previous meaning – as a state of being which is exhibited by those who live God’s Kingdom; it permeates what society becomes, once God’s ways are fully implemented. It is assumed here that a proper Jewish society will be restored once God’s Torah is properly implemented (the poor will be looked after and not exploited, no one will starve, the rich will fully play their part in Jewish society, instead of avoiding their responsibilities, and so on).
Fourthly, there is also the idea of the Kingdom of God gradually growing, to eventually come to its full fruition at some point in the distant future (i.e. not necessarily imminent). This is self-evidently entirely separate from the very first category (imminent tribulation). It was not a future-time that would come about through war or conflict, but slowly, like yeast leavening a huge batch of flour (Mt 13.33), or a tiny mustard seed that slowly grows into a large bush (Mk 4:30-32). In such instances, Yeshua was speaking of the gradual fulfilment of the Kingdom of God – what it had the potential to become in the far future, once God’s full Sovereignty was established over both heaven and earth.
This Kingdom in the far future would be a time without sin or evil, without pain or misery, without war, suffering or disease. It would be a time when God’s enemies would be no more, and peace would reign among all peoples and nations. This was also the view of the biblical prophets, who foresaw a time in the far future, when swords would be beaten into ploughshares, and no one would learn or train for war any more.
4. That Jesus viewed himself as the messiah, who would sweep away God’s enemies
In his lecture, Dr Ehrman defined the messiah as, ‘a figure of grandeur and power, who would destroy the enemies of God, and rule over the people of God in a sovereign Jewish state’. However, Yeshua did not engage in any action which would imply that these were his goals, nor did Yeshua show any evidence of aspiring to do any of these things. Yeshua never gathered any armed forces, he never planned any conspiracies, he never confronted the Romans – in fact, he actively avoided facing the Romans. In Yeshua’s actions, there is nothing that Yeshua did that could be interpreted as Yeshua believing he was the traditional view of a Jewish messiah.
5. That the Romans crucified Jesus as a criminal, therefore he must have done something criminal to actively provoke the Romans into arresting and crucifying him
Yeshua’s death is a big problem for those who believe he was the Jewish messiah. Basically, the Jewish messiah is supposed to triumph over Israel’s enemies – he wasn’t supposed to get killed. Because of this, Paullist theology has had to completely redefine what a messiah is, and provide a theological reason for his death, claiming that it was a necessity for salvation.
The second side of this issue for historians, is that if Yeshua was crucified, then he must have done something criminally wrong – that this is the only logical conclusion to the generally accepted fact of Jesus’s crucifixion. Dr Ehrman is in this camp. If Jesus was crucified for being the messiah, then it must have been because he himself claimed to be the messiah. After all, the Romans were never unjust, and they never wrongfully convicted anyone, did they? (that was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, just in case anyone didn’t get the sarcasm).
I have to assert my conviction that Yeshua just didn’t behave like a Jewish messiah. He did everything to avoid confronting the Romans – he didn’t even go to any major city during his ministry, with the obvious exception of Jerusalem. He didn’t do anything that a Jewish messiah would do. However, through his ethics, parables and warnings, he does behave like a prophet.
Put it this way: If you were to blank out all mentions and implications in the Synoptic gospels of ’messiah’, and concentrate purely on Yeshua’s actions and deeds, ethics and values, then do they suggest that he was speaking and acting like a messiah? Or does it sound like he was speaking and acting like a traditional Hebrew Prophet?
There are instances where his criticism of his fellow Jews may not have been criticism of the Pharisees (as the gospels consistently say), but rather of the Zealots. Zealots are barely mentioned in the New Testament at all, and most disputations are assigned indiscriminately to Pharisees, even when the matter being discussed was not an actual issue for real Pharisees. It may be that the gospel writers were wary of portraying a tense political environment in Judea – one that might have suggested that there were people opposed to the Roman occupation there. But the Zealots were there in the time of Yeshua, so where are they in the gospels?
I think they are hiding in plain sight. For example, the question about paying taxes to Caesar, in the gospels is portrayed as a contentious question coming from the Pharisees. In reality, the Pharisees would not have had a problem with paying taxes to Rome. However, the Zealots would have had this problem, as a political issue. I think that those who “conspired by stealth to have Jesus arrested and kill him” were actually Zealots, not Pharisees. If historians say that it is unlikely that the Pharisees conspired to have Jesus arrested, then if Yeshua, in reality, was opposed to the violence of the Zealots, is it not then more likely that the Zealots would have had ample motive to want to get rid of Yeshua – to conspire to have the Romans arrest Yeshua and kill him? Is it so far-fetched? Is it so beyond the realms of possibility?
Judas, a probable Zealot, was bribed by the Sadducean chief priests to spy on Yeshua. Now, the Zealots hated the Sadducees, since they collaborated with the Roman authorities. However, if they hated Yeshua more – because of his opposition to their violent philosophy – they could just have gritted their teeth and colluded with the Sadducees to have Yeshua arrested, with the expectation that he would then be executed by the Romans. The Zealots might then have been doing the Sadducees‘ dirty work for them, because it suited their needs.
I think that Yeshua was opposed to the Zealots – I think that they were ‘the Dead’ alluded to by Yeshua in his saying of, ‘Let the Dead bury their own dead’ (Lk 9:59–60). I sense that they were the ones who were constantly trying to catch him out with their questioning, in order to discredit him in the eyes of the people. It would have been in their interests to kill him, but they couldn’t do it themselves, since the ordinary people respected Yeshua; killing him themselves would have resulted in turning the people away from supporting the Zealots. So what better way than to spread the rumour that Yeshua was claiming to be the messiah – a dangerous rebel with pretensions against Rome? Surely, if they could get the Romans to believe that Yeshua had messianic aspirations, and was therefore a menace to them, then surely the Romans would crucify him.
This outcome would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. It would remove Yeshua, and it would bolster popular support for the Zealots against the Romans (“Look at what the Romans have done – killed one of our beloved Jewish teachers!”). I also think that the Zealots grit their teeth and collaborated heavily with the Sadducean priests, who also despised Yeshua.
I think Judas Iscariot was an infiltrator used by both the Zealots and the Sadducees to spy on Yeshua. There is otherwise no logical explanation of why Judas, a messianic Zealot, would ever want to turn Yeshua, a fellow Jew, over to the Romans of all people (even if it was apparently done through the Sadducees – again, a group whom the Zealots hated and were opposed to).
I also think that the two people who were crucified with Yeshua were actually Zealots. I think they had been involved in a violent disturbance, specifically to set-up and frame Yeshua, in order to get the Romans to think Yeshua was a dangerous messianic leader. They might even have instigated the very incident that made the Romans think that Yeshua was their leader, and so ended up crucifying Yeshua along with these two Zealots (the gospel of Mark mentions that Barabbas had been arrested in ‘the insurrection’, Mk 15:7, without explaining what or when this insurrection was).
6. That Jesus was a failed prophet
If you think that the mission of Jesus was to proclaim the apocalypse and the end of the world, then because neither happened, Jesus was therefore a failed prophet. This is the view that Dr Ehrman holds to.
However, if you believe that Yeshua was instead a tribulationist prophet, warning of a coming time of tribulation and conflict (the biblical ‘Day of YHVH’ – that there would be war and upheaval, that Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed, and the Jewish people would be exiled), then he was a successful prophet, because all of that happened.
If you believe that Yeshua was called by God to proclaim the coming Kingship of God (meaning that God was soon to intervene as King and Judge – that there would be a tribulation, but through repentance and turning back to God’s ways, the Jewish people would survive), then he definitely was a successful prophet, because the Galilee – the place where most of Yeshua’s ministry took place – became the refuge of Jewish people for centuries after Jewish people were banned from Jerusalem and most of Judea.
As a Talmidi, I believe that Yeshua’s ministry was just like the ministries of the biblical prophets of the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. The biblical prophets warned Israel and Judah to repent, because if there was no return to God’s just principles and righteous values, then the Jewish people would be exiled from the Land. However, if they repented in their exile, they would be returned to the Land. If Paul had never existed, and if the Pharisees had never rejected prophets, then Yeshua would have been remembered by history as a prophet of the Roman-induced exile.
No biblical prophet ever needed to claim that they were the messiah in order to have their message heard, nor did anyone have to prove that their coming as prophets was foretold in scripture. It was enough for them to say that they were prophets called by God, sent to deliver a message to God’s people.
7. That Jesus was a failed messiah
As I said above, if you hold the view that Jesus thought he was a messiah, then because he never achieved any messianic goals, you can only conclude that he was a failed messiah. But what if he personally never thought that he was the messiah?
The gospels get round this possibility by saying that Jesus wanted to keep his messiahship a secret. In spite of this, I firmly believe Yeshua never thought of himself as a messiah.
I am firmly convinced that it would be utterly pointless for modern Talmidis to believe that Yeshua was the Jewish messiah, because we would just be going down the same, tired old road as they did in the 1st century, of then having to explain why Yeshua died, and having to justify his death in some way – we would just end up with Paul’s theology again. It’s enough for Talmidis to say that he was a human prophet, because then we wouldn’t have to explain or justify his death in any way.
Some people today still say stuff like, “You’re nothing like the ancient Ebionites, because you don’t believe that Jesus was the messiah!“ It is well-known that the later, post-Temple Ebionites resorted to claiming that Yeshua was the messiah – I don’t dispute that. There may even have been Followers of the Way before the destruction of the Temple, who resorted to claiming that Yeshua was the messiah. However, I personally believe there is a circumstantial reason which necessitated them having to do this.
I think that the reason why Yeshua’s followers, after his death, began saying that he was the messiah, was because the Pharisees and their followers would only take notice of a messiah’s words. The Pharisaic rabbis taught that there were no more prophets after Malachi, so by their logic, Yeshua couldn’t have been a prophet, therefore they had no reason to listen to him.
Confronted with this flat-out refusal to accept Yeshua’s prophetic warnings of war and tribulation, I think that, out of pure desperation, Yeshua’s Followers fatefully decided to claim that Yeshua was the messiah, simply to get their fellow Jews to heed Yeshua’s prophetic warnings.
If the Pharisees had never banned prophets, or ever said they would only listen to a messiah, then Yeshua would have been accepted by most people as a prophet – he himself thought of himself as a prophet – and there would have been no reason to turn Yeshua into ‘Jesus the Messiah’. There would also have been no reason to justify his death as an atoning sacrifice (because after all, some biblical prophets did get killed), and there would never have been any reason to try and find Yeshua’s ministry or death predicted in scripture.
The Pharisees’ rejection of all contemporary prophets, and their insistence on only listening to a messiah, was what motivated turning ‘Yeshua the prophet’ into ‘Jesus the Messiah’.
Facts that Dr Ehrman gets wrong
There are several statements he made during the lectures that are factually wrong:
– “Torah means Law” – no it doesn’t, it means ‘Instruction’ or ‘Teaching’ (from the meaning of its root verb, it implies ‘Instruction in the direction we should walk’)
– “Abba means daddy” – no it doesn’t. In Aramaic, it is the regular, normal word for ‘father’. It only means ‘daddy’ in modern Hebrew.
– “The term ‘Son of Man’ refers to someone who is more than a human being” – no it doesn’t. Bar nashā (‘son of man’ in Aramaic) was used in every-day speech as the normal, regular Aramaic term for ‘human being’. Because the Book of Daniel describes the heavenly figure he saw as ‘one like a son of man’ (that is, ‘one like a human being’), the author of the Book of Enoch turned that into the title of a messianic figure. ‘Son of man’ does not automatically imply a supernatural being, because ‘son of man’ is the normal way of saying ‘human being’ in Aramaic. ‘Son of man’ was also a humble way of referring to oneself – that was its other general usage in 1st century CE Jewish Aramaic (i.e. instead of saying grandiosely that, “I will do such and such”, Yeshua would say, “the son of man will do such and such”). A fourth use of the term was to mean ‘fellow‘; for example, a sentence such as, ‘You see that son of man over there?‘ would mean, ‘You see that fellow over there‘.‘ Son of Man’ therefore had three, general, everyday uses in ancient Jewish Aramaic, quite aside from its Enochian designation to refer to a messianic figure.
– “ehyeh means I AM in Hebrew” – no it doesn’t. The phrase, ehyeh asher ehyeh (Ex 3:14) literally means, ‘I will be who I will be’ – that is, ‘If you want to know what My Name is (= My reputation, a play on words in Hebrew), then I will show you what My Name will be – My reputation – by what I am going to be and do for the Israelites’.
Summary of what I believe as a Follower of the Way, in contrast to Dr Ehrman’s views
1. Yeshua was an exile-prophet of the Day of YHVH (just like the biblical prophets), and not of any apocalypse or end of the world. He was called by God to encourage people to repent and turn back to God, to return to God’s ethical values and teachings, because a time of tribulation was coming very soon. If people returned to God’s ways, then they would avoid the worst excesses of the tribulation, and the Jewish people would survive. People would show their repentance by living the Kingdom of God in their daily lives, and so do the will of their heavenly Father.
2. Yeshua was a successful prophet, because sadly, the tribulation he warned about took place – Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, the Jewish people were exiled from the Land, but the Jewish people survived (the latter point was part of the ‘good news’ that Yeshua proclaimed). I also think that the reason why the Galilee was spared the ravages of the Roman-Jewish war, was all down to Yeshua’s prophetic ministry of peace there.
3. Yeshua did not personally believe he was the messiah. He didn’t do anything that was expected of a messiah to do. He actively avoided the Romans and the big cities, with the exception of Jerusalem (e.g. during his ministry, there is never any mention of Yeshua ever setting foot in Sepphoris, the capital of the Galilee, which was only a few short miles from Nazareth). His teaching to love one’s enemies, and do good to those who hate you, doesn’t really sound like the personal philosophy of a messianic revolutionary who was trying to overthrow the Roman authorities!
4. Yeshua’s death was as a result of a subversive campaign by the Zealots, achieved by fostering the suspicion among the Roman authorities that Yeshua was a dangerous messiah, and therefore a threat to Roman authority. The Zealots did this in order to get rid of Yeshua, because Yeshua was ideologically opposed to them – Yeshua’s values were totally different from the violent ways of the Zealots. Yeshua was therefore not a criminal, but a man of God who was framed to look like a criminal in the eyes of the Romans; he was set up by the Zealots, so that the Romans would execute him (you have to remember that only the Romans had the authority to execute anyone during the period of the Roman Occupation).
My future articles in this series
I plan to do several more articles like this – hopefully one every couple of weeks – which will be reactions to what Dr Ehrman said in his other lectures in this 8-lecture series, ‘Jesus & Paul: The Great Divide’. As I mentioned before, I found these other lectures to be more agreeable, and found that I was in more accord with what Dr Ehrman said in these subsequent lectures.
You can find the second in this series of articles by clicking here, based on Dr Ehrman’s third lecture, ’Jesus the Moral Teacher’. The third article, ‘What did Paul know about Jesus?’ can be found here.
If you feel that I have misinterpreted or misrepresented anything Dr Ehrman said, or that I have got the wrong end of the stick, please let me know by emailing me at: shmuliq.parzal@googlemail.com
Please be aware that I always ignore insulting, offensive, or trolling emails – I only read constructive criticism. I also ignore missionisers and people trying to convert me.