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New post on "genre" in the gospels

Recently New Testament scholar Michael Licona has been doing a written debate with Bart Ehrman. Links to their entire back-and-forth can be found here.

In the course of that discussion, Ehrman argues that the infancy accounts in Matthew and Luke are radically at odds with each other, though oddly enough he brings up only one actual apparent discrepancy between the accounts. (Namely, that Luke seems to have thought that the Holy Family went back directly from Jerusalem to Nazareth, whereas Matthew would put the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into Egypt and residence in Egypt at this point in the story.) The rest of Ehrman's discussion consists of mocking the census account in Luke and working the chestnut that it never happened, etc.

Licona, however, writes as though there is some major conundrum concerning the infancy accounts and the differences between them. And he grabs the word "midrash" to cover the idea that Luke and Matthew might have made up their accounts of Jesus' infancy beyond the supposed "core" that a virgin named Mary, espoused to Joseph, gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. They might have done this "to create a more interesting narrative of Jesus' birth."

However — even though, as I say, I don’t know what’s going on here to cause the differences — let’s just speculate for a moment and consider the following scenario. Matthew and Luke both agree that a Jewish virgin named Mary who was engaged to a Jewish man named Joseph gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. The early Christians all knew this much. However, little else was remembered about this event. So, Matthew and Luke added details to their account to create a more interesting narrative of Jesus’s birth, a type of midrash.

Licona is very tentative in his suggestion of this possibility, but he does imply that this invocation of "midrash" would somehow solve a problem:

I don’t know what’s going on with the infancy narratives. However, if this occurred, we would have to take the matter of genre — midrash — into consideration and recognize that the historicity of the details outside of the story’s core would be questionable, while the core itself could stand.

I want to say forcefully here that this is really poor scholarship. I give quotations (in the companion piece that I just put up) from N.T. Wright, who is certainly no fundamentalist, about this sort of promiscuous invocation of the concept of "midrash" to mean making stuff up. That just isn't what Jewish rabbinic midrash commentary was.

Not only is this invocation of "midrash" unsupported by any genre considerations, it also doesn't stand up as a good explanation of what we find in the documents. As I have pointed out before concerning such invention theories, it is an extremely complex hypothesis where a much simpler one would do--the simpler hypothesis being that Luke simply hadn't heard about the slaughter of the innocents and flight to Egypt.

What is most striking here is the sheer lack of care in invoking even made-up "genre" and "literary convention" claims. Can't figure out what's going on in a passage? Name some "literary convention" which you claim is found in a "genre" that would explain it away. In the case of the infancy narratives Licona admits openly that he couldn't even find anything to say that would seem to flow from his studies of Greco-Roman literature:

In my research pertaining to the most basic compositional devices in ancient historical/biographical literature, I did not observe any devices that readily shed light on the differences between the infancy narratives.

So what then? Well, go and pick something else to which you think you can give a genre name (in this case "midrash"), even if no evidence supports the idea that this is what that genre was actually like, slap that name onto the claim that the gospel authors made up things--in this case, apparently, all of the other details surrounding Jesus' birth--and then say that their reliability is not impugned because "we have to take genre into account."

Let's set aside piety. This is just bad argument. There is no evidence whatsoever that Luke and Matthew didn't believe their infancy stories were true. Moreover, if you thought they did that, if you thought that Luke made up the census, made up the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, made up the angels and the shepherds, that Matthew made up the wise men, the slaughter of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt, then what in the world would it mean to call them historically reliable anymore? That they agree that Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem? That makes them historically reliable? There is no way that one should call any author "historically reliable" in any meaningful sense if he's just making up whole incidents like this and writing them as if they really happened "to create a more interesting narrative." We've gone way beyond minor details at this point. If this were all true, then Matthew and Luke wouldn't be historically reliable, and we should just come out and say that and live with it.

And how does genre really help? Notice that, given the way that Licona is using the term "midrash," it would be precisely a non-reliable genre, a genre that consists in making up incidents out of whole cloth. You can't get reliability out of unreliability. If one said that the genre were "fairy tale," one couldn't then claim that this doesn't undermine reliability because "we have to take genre into consideration." And the argument that there is some "historical core" is based on a circular definition of what constitutes this alleged core: The supposed core has been identified in the first place by means of noting that it is found explicitly in both Matthew and Luke. Then everything else is (so Licona tentatively conjectures) attributed to "midrash," i.e. fiction. In that case, if they're making up the rest of the stories, the mere fact that the two gospels agree explicitly upon something or other hardly gives us good reason to think that that something or other is historically true.

If you read the exchange, you will see that, as one would expect, Ehrman makes this type of point repeatedly concerning Licona's earlier invocation of "literary conventions." Ehrman positively hammers on it. Ehrman is a highly deceptive author, as I have argued elsewhere, but here he's been handed a gift, and it is no wonder that he makes the most of it.

Much as it pains me to point this out, the fact is that Licona is just not being careful in making this type of conjecture. And I don't mean by that, "He's not being careful not to tread on pious toes." I mean he's not being rigorous. The "midrash" conjecture, using that name, shouldn't even be on the table. The use of the term is a transparent attempt to put a nominal fig leaf on the conjecture that Matthew and Luke made up nearly the entirety of their birth narratives.

What about the conjecture, sans invocation of the term "midrash," that Matthew and Luke made up this additional material to make their narratives more interesting? Well, of course, one can always conjecture that the gospel authors made stuff up. But why take it that they did in this case? Perhaps a bias against miracles, but to Licona's credit, that isn't where he's coming from, since he treats the virgin birth as part of the "core" he wants to retain. Because of the one apparent discrepancy concerning the return to Nazareth? But that is far more simply accounted for by saying that Luke (who isn't claimed to have witnessed any of this himself) simply hadn't heard that part of the story. In fact, the character of Herod (as Wright points out in Who Was Jesus, p. 87) tends to confirm the slaughter of the innocents. Because of the census problem? Well, volumes have been written on that subject. One of the many possible solutions is that Luke's statement should be read as "this census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Wright, p. 89). Beyond the question of what Luke is saying about Quirinius and whether he's right about it, Ehrman's and others' attacks on the census in Luke consist of weak arguments from silence and "I wouldn't have done it that way" to make a problem. Luke's care as an historian is so well-confirmed otherwise that there's every reason to give him some credit at this point and treat him as an original source to a census we just don't happen to know about otherwise. (Nor, contra Ehrman and, I'm sorry to say, the translators of the NIV, did the census actually have to have covered the entire Roman Empire.) Even the hypothesis that Luke made some minor mistake about the census--e.g., that he thought it occurred under Quirinius when it didn't--would be far simpler than the hypothesis that he made up the story out of whole cloth.

Licona doesn't say exactly what he is conjecturing Luke and Matthew might have invented. But his conjecture is that "little else was remembered" about Jesus' birth at the time when Luke and Matthew were writing beyond the minimal claim that Mary was a virgin espoused to Joseph and gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. This would seem to mean that Luke and Matthew made up pretty much everything else!

Further evidence against any such hypothesis is the highly Hebraic language and preoccupations of Luke 1-2, including for example the earthly-sounding Messianic expectations. As I have discussed in this post, this points to a very old origin of these chapters. The differences in language may even mean that Luke had some written document as a source for these chapters (an hypothesis I am generally hesitant to invoke) in Aramaic or Hebrew. It could have come from Mary's family, for example.

Licona is far, far too ready to say or conjecture that the gospel writers made things up. Not because he should be more pious but because he should be more historically careful. He conjectures it and sometimes positively states it (in the other claims of "literary conventions") on the basis of flimsy argument. This latest conjecture, concerning the birth narratives as "midrash," is so sweeping, ill-conceived, and poorly supported that it surprised even me, despite my earlier criticisms of Licona's approach. If one prizes rigor one should be bothered by this, and one should hesitate to treat Dr. Licona as an authority when he makes such claims and conjectures.

Comments (24)

I fully agree with you on this one. Waving around 'midrash' like a magic word is atrociously bad, and the initial concession that the differences in the birth-narratives are deeply problematic need not and should not have been made. What seems to be bothering him is not so much direct contradiction as the overall lack of overlap between the stories. But that argues for independence of source more than ahistoricity.

It not at all surprising that there's no overlap, because the two stories are about completely different time periods. Luke doesn't really narrate Jesus' birth; he just puts it into a subordinate clause framing the event of the visit of the Magi which (as is clear from 2:16) occurred more than a year later.

Licona's piece would have been infinitely better if he had just left that paragraph out.

Ehrman is a bruising, grueling opponent to respond to. There is good material in the exchange (such as what Licona wrote about names in the gospels), and *of course* Ehrman blows it off with a shallow pseudo-argument about telling a story with a couple of French names in it!

But I think the pattern here, of which this is a part, is becoming a sort of unfortunate lather, rinse, repeat thing in Licona's approach: Name a genre. Say that the gospel author invented or changed something in a partially fictionalized way. Say that's okay for some reason because of the genre. Emphasize strongly a supposed core or gist, where the core or gist just is *defined* as whatever the gospel authors all explicitly state. State that we can know that that core or gist is historically true since it is stated in both/all gospels. Move on to the next alleged difficulty.

In the case of the infancy narratives, the core has suddenly gotten much smaller and the alleged material "added by genre" that is non-historical much larger. I'm afraid what this illustrates is how _broadly_ Dr. Licona believes this sort of approach can be applied and how _unaware_ he is of the problems this raises for reliability when it is so casually and broadly applied. It's almost as though he doesn't see any limitation to the method or any point at which it actually would undermine meaningful reliability. But I think he does it because he increasingly believes that claims of differences, discrepancies, or difficulties *should be* answered in this way and virtually always *are* answerable by some such method. Ehrman was trying to make a lot of hay out of the differences in the infancy narratives, so Licona didn't feel he could just leave that unanswered. And this general type of answer is now his wheelhouse, so he's going to continue going back to it.

There is no way that one should call any author "historically reliable" in any meaningful sense if he's just making up whole incidents like this and writing them as if they really happened "to create a more interesting narrative." We've gone way beyond minor details at this point. If this were all true, then Matthew and Luke wouldn't be historically reliable, and we should just come out and say that and live with it.

I agree and further say: if the gospels are composed of made-up incidents and fabricated accounts, then our faith is severely weakened, possibly to the point of being unjustifiable.

Given the strong evidential position that evangelicals have against the liberal-critical positions, why is it the case that some evangelicals or scholars who might be sympathetic to our position want to give away the store?

Personal rant: This causes me no annoyance when studying the authorship questions of the NT. For example, there is a lot of good strong evidence that St John the Apostle authored or was the main source behind the fourth gospel. Bishop Lightfoot's and Bishop Westcott's arguments for authorship have not, based on my studies of things, ever really been refuted, nor have they even substantially grappled with by the critical scholars. Leon Morris, if I recall correctly, states in his Studies in the Fourth Gospel that if anything, the massive Westcott argument and collection of evidence are stronger now than they were in the late-nineteenth century. Yet, we act like we have the weak case and need the approval of the critical scholars, when in fact our position is stronger.

Lydia, if you have presented Licona's position accurately, it's really disturbing to see him approach things this way. Just as internet atheists wave around the word "science" as some sort of incantational magical word, and just as leftists wave around ill-defined words like "diversity" and "inclusion" as all-purpose substitutes for arguments, so too the invocation of the word "midrash" leaves me feeling similarly empty.

I don't see the big fuss about Ehrman, by the way. He's a sharp guy, but in my listening to him, he doesn't say much (that I've heard) that is any different than typical skeptical/freethinker boilerplate. And he strikes me as more than slippery at various points.

Ehrman's very slippery, but very plausible-sounding. He's also either been trained in debate techniquest or just has a strong natural ability. He excels at making the worse cause appear the better. I actually think though that the format of a _written_ debate is one where it should be possible to take Ehrman on more blow for blow, because his verbal ability to jump on people or to use rhetorical tricks or sound incredulous and the like don't feature as much in that format.

As far as what Licona's position is on the infancy narratives, as far as I know he wouldn't call the "midrash" idea a position but more like a theory. He's much less definite about it than about his other "literary convention" ideas. But he seems very _prepared_ to suggest and accept it and seems to think that it would not undermine historical reliability if it were true. I think it's also fair to say that he thinks there is some real _problem_ to be resolved about the infancy narratives, which I simply do not see in the first place. Here is the link to that entire portion of the debate. (Also given in the main post.) You can see what he says in context. I give a much longer quotation from what Licona writes in the post about this at my personal blog. I encourage people to read or (in connection with my earlier posts) listen to anything he has said or written and draw their own conclusions.

http://www.thebestschools.org/special/ehrman-licona-dialogue-reliability-new-testament/licona-detailed-response/

In fairness to Licona, the cavalier nature with which he assigns the infancy narratives to the genre of midrash has precedent among NT scholars. For some people there is a temptation to think that if a senior evangelical NT scholar like Gundry can make this sort of argument in his commentary on Matthew, then it can't be all that bad. Maybe it's because the world of biblical studies is more tribal than most, but I don't think being rigorous is valued nearly as much as it should be. Ehrman is another person who seems to evaluate arguments/positions in terms of their rhetorical effect, and doesn't seem to care all that much whether his judgments cohere or not so long as they seem reasonable to his scholarly tribe.

Oh, I totally agree concerning Ehrman.

As for Gundry, I really do wish people would stop thinking of him as if any sort of touchstone of evangelical scholarship. It should be pretty well-recognized by now that his commentary on Matthew was regarded (rightly) as going off-track, even at the time, though I suppose that could have been more because of a concern for inerrancy per se than because the arguments were unconvincing.

Lydia McGrew,

I've got to say, I really like your husband's solution to the "discrepancy" in the Luke census account, and it's quite convinced me. (Tim argues, as you know, that the registration for the census was started before Herod's death and the actual census was carried out ten years later under Quirinius). He makes some great attacks on the concept of 'arguments from silence' as well.

Licona likes his hammer so much everything looks like a nail to him.

But another thing to say in fairness to him: I don't Licona is claiming that the infancy narratives would be historically reliable on the "midrash" hypothesis. He thinks the core data that both Gospels agree on is historically correct, and he thinks it wrong to criticize the gospel writers for falsehood, since they weren't attempting to be historically accurate, and their audience (supposedly) wouldn't have expected that. But I don't think he would say these narratives ARE historically reliable, given the hypothesis. Only that the gospels as a whole would be reliable, even though thess particular narratives wouldn't be. Cf. his next paragraph.

he thinks there is some real _problem_ to be resolved about the infancy narratives
Well, there is a problem: a mild, easily dealt with problem. Which is often blown out of all proportion by skeptical scholars, and apparently Licona has been bedazzled by their arguments. Probably because it's a problem that's so obviously not a nail, and he's all flustered over the fact that his hammer won't work on it. So he tries to FORCE it to work anyway, and fails utterly.

Yes, the argument from silence is an absolute staple of the skeptics, and we should be very ready to respond to it.

Tim's favored solution on the census is plausible. I kind of liked Wright's suggested translation as well, but I haven't asked Tim his opinion of it.

What amazes me (though it shouldn't) is the way that people act like the question about the census is some _huge_ challenge to Luke's quality as an historian. To me that's losing the forest for the trees. We have _overwhelming_ evidence that Luke is a good historian.

The main thought that came to mind in reading this was, "With friends like these, who needs enemies." If supposedly orthodox Christians think they can maintain their credentials as "bible believers" by giving lip-service to inerrancy while attributing numerous falsehoods to the bible in the name of defending it, I feel safer with the likes of Ehrman.

Well, you certainly shouldn't feel safe with Ehrman. :-) But I think you mean that you know better where he is coming from and can be on the alert for it. I would say, though, that Ehrman is extremely slippery and many times outright misleading. Pretty much anything he says should be double-checked. See my posts linked in the main posts for some examples.

Dr. Licona, in contrast, is both a sincere Christian and entirely honest. He is saying what he believes is required by his own scholarly integrity. I just think he's honestly mistaken.

Well, Ehrman is no great shakes in ANY case, because he is completely ready to use trash arguments that he knows don't stand up to any thought, he just relies on the rhetoric. Better, far, to get an HONEST person who disputes the validity of the Gospels, at least, if you had to get critiques. But in reality there are Christians who try to honestly look at the problems in the Gospels, so there isn't really any need to "go to" people who think the Bible is bunk.

Well, Ehrman is no great shakes in ANY case, because he is completely ready to use trash arguments that he knows don't stand up to any thought, he just relies on the rhetoric.

In watching Dr Ehrman debate Dr White, Dr Ehrman's approach seemed to be that if we can't be absolutely certain about most everything, then we need to be very skeptical of everything. Perhaps I am dense and the sort of person Dr Ehrman would consider a benighted fundamentalist, but I see very little force to most of his points, even if his points are true. My faith is not shaken by his pointing out a few well-known textual issues (long or short ending of St Mark), or by his claiming that things were not written down until many decades after the supposed life and death of Jesus. On the one hand, Ehrman seems to be a serious textual scholar, but Ehrman-as-skeptic doesn't really get to me.

It is interesting to see the Ehrman fanboys proclaim in true cult-of-personality style how their Great Leader emerged unscathed and victorious. Yet I didn't hear one thing that Ehrman said that isn't (or shouldn't) already be known to a somewhat-informed evangelical student of Christianity such as myself. My inner imp wants to snark away at Ehrman's points with a "Yes, and?" sort of reply to each point.


It's clear that the earliest reports of the Risen Jesus speak only of "visions" and "revelations" where Paul asserts the others had visions like he did in 1 Cor 15:5-8. The later gospels depict the Risen Christ as a fully resurrected corpse that walks on earth and was touched. It's clear that these reports are not actual history but are legends that grew in the telling.

No, that is not "clear." It may be that the epistle of I Corinthians was *written down* earlier than any of the gospels were *written down*. (Though even that is open to debate. Matthew or Mark may be very early indeed.) But even if we grant that, that does not make what is written in I Corinthians the "earliest report." Indeed, it _can't_ be. The Christian organization of which Paul is a part was already in existence before Paul ever converted. He says this himself in his own letters. Obviously, as a sheerly historical matter, there were reports _much_ earlier than his own letter to the Corinthians.

Paul says that the others _saw_ Jesus, that Jesus "was seen." This does _not_ mean that the others reported vision-like experiences. Moreover, Paul's assertion that Jesus rose again, made from within a Jewish context, would have meant (to himself and his audience) a physical resurrection. It is, of course, no surprise that one can see a man who is physically present!

Finally, the assertion that the gospels represent "legends that grew in the telling" is completely unsupported by evidence. It is a mere anti-supernatural supposition. On the contrary, the gospels and Acts all show strong evidence of having been written by those very close to the facts--either putative eyewitnesses or their associates. If they were "legends that grew in the telling" they would not have the properties of factuality that they do have, concerning both supernatural and non-supernatural accounts.

"No, that is not "clear." It may be that the epistle of I Corinthians was *written down* earlier than any of the gospels were *written down*. (Though even that is open to debate. Matthew or Mark may be very early indeed.) But even if we grant that, that does not make what is written in I Corinthians the "earliest report." Indeed, it _can't_ be. The Christian organization of which Paul is a part was already in existence before Paul ever converted. He says this himself in his own letters. Obviously, as a sheerly historical matter, there were reports _much_ earlier than his own letter to the Corinthians."

1 Cor 15 is unanimously regarded as the earliest reference to the resurrection of Jesus.

"Paul says that the others _saw_ Jesus, that Jesus "was seen." This does _not_ mean that the others reported vision-like experiences."

I'll try to make this as simple as possible:

1. Paul had a vision of some sort.

2. Paul places his vision in the same list as the other appearances without distinction in the nature of said appearances.

3. Paul uses the same verb ὤφθη "appeared" for each appearance. He says "Jesus ὤφθη appeared to them and he ὤφθη appeared to me, also." He does not say "Jesus appeared to me in a vision only whereas the appearances to the others involved touching his resurrected corpse that walked around on earth then later flew to heaven." That distinction is never made. The word ὤφθη was almost exclusively used to denote supernatural/spiritual apparitions.

4. Paul nowhere indicates that the Risen Jesus is experienced in a "physical" way other than visions and revelations - Gal. 1:12-16, 2 Cor 12:1. He doesn't even indicate the Risen Jesus was on earth. Paul's view of resurrection seems to involve Christ's immediate exaltation to heaven. Quite strange if he knew about the amazing physical accounts that appear in Luke and John. Did Peter and James forget to tell Paul about that stuff during his 15 day Jerusalem visit - Gal. 1? So, in the end, there is no evidence of any "physical" appearances anywhere in Paul's letters.

5. The words "ophthe" - appeared, "optasia" - vision, and "revelation" in no way support an empty tomb or a physically resurrected body.

6. Therefore, you can't claim that the "appearances" in 1 Cor 15 were understood to be more "physical" than visions. 

"Moreover, Paul's assertion that Jesus rose again, made from within a Jewish context, would have meant (to himself and his audience) a physical resurrection."

This is false. The Jewish texts we know that speak of resurrection and the afterlife are quite diverse in what they depict. Being "raised from the dead" had no necessary connection to a person's tomb being empty. Paul was a Pharisee and according to Josephus the Pharisees believed that their souls would be "removed into other bodies" in heaven - Jewish War 2.162-164, 3.374. The word "other" implies it is not the same one.

"Finally, the assertion that the gospels represent "legends that grew in the telling" is completely unsupported by evidence. It is a mere anti-supernatural supposition. On the contrary, the gospels and Acts all show strong evidence of having been written by those very close to the facts--either putative eyewitnesses or their associates. If they were "legends that grew in the telling" they would not have the properties of factuality that they do have, concerning both supernatural and non-supernatural accounts."

No, each account gets more legendary as time goes on. Consensus dating places the documents as follows:

1. Paul c. 50 CE- visions only, no empty tomb, resurrection/exaltation straight to heaven, the interpretation of 1 Cor 15:35-54 is disputed but a plausible case can be made that Paul was arguing against the physical resurrection of the corpse.
2. Mark c. 70 - introduces the empty tomb but has no appearances in the earliest manuscripts. He predicts that Jesus will appear in Galilee.
3. Matthew c. 80 CE - has appearances in Galilee which "some doubt" - Mt. 28:17. The exact nature of Jesus' resurrection body is not made clear.
4. Luke/Acts 85-95 CE - appearances are in Jerusalem, not Galilee. First explicit mention of a "flesh and bone" Jesus that eats fish, is touched and physically ascends to heaven while the disciples watch. Acts says that Jesus was on earth for 40 days providing "many proofs." (How did these amazing events go unnoticed/unmentioned by the earlier sources if they're actual history?)
5. John 90-110 CE - has the Doubting Thomas story and puts forth the view that Jesus is basically God - a view nowhere found in the synoptics.

This should make the development of the story apparent. It's consistent with legendary growth.

So, your claim is that Paul clearly indicates that the appearance to him was the same kind as those others. Your proofs are:
1) the meaning of ὤφθη. But look at Acts 7:26ff. for an example where ὤφθη refers to an unquestionably physical appearance in v. 26, then a visionary one in v. 30, with no distinction made. So, ὤφθη does not require the kind of over-explaining you posit in order to refer to two different kinds of appearance in the same context.
2) Paul doesn't add any additional explanation to ὤφθη. But he does, by adding a specific phrase "as to a mis-born child."

So, both these arguments fail:
-the first is wrong: ὤφθη doesn't prove a non-physical vision
-the second is false: Paul does give a qualifier

As for your appeal to Josephus, NT Wright addresses the nature of Josephus' intentional assimilation of Jewish ideas to more recognizable Greek philosophical views in The New Testament and the People of God, pp. 324-327. For your purposes, it is noteworthy that Paul uses ἐγείρω in this passage, which Josephus does not, in either of the passages you cite, or in any of his passages on the afterlife. You have also misunderstood or misrepresented Josephus in adding "in heaven" after the quote about other bodies, as 3.374 makes clear:

"their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolutions of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies"

So, the "other bodies" are not ones in heaven, but rather ones on earth, after a sojourn in heaven. As Wright says, this is life after life after death.

You've also never made a case for "resurrection to heaven," merely asserted it.

And, conveniently, your development schema prevents us a priori from determining Paul's meaning for the resurrection by comparison to the rest of the NT, which is suspect ("oh, well, none of that stuff you want to count as evidence is actually evidence, because legendary development")

I'm a little puzzled how an extended set of physical examples of bodies--seeds, plants, humans, animals, planets--makes the case for a non- physical resurrection.

Thanks, Joshua, you're doing a good job. However, Bob is clearly a time-waster, energizer-bunny, infidel-o-sphere type who will go on and on and on making unsupported baloney statements. I'm not inclined to let him waste all our time answering him point by point. The bare assertions he makes have all been answered times without number by many Christian authors writing elsewhere. I have never been one to go out debating Internet infidels, who are widely acknowledged to be impervious to reason.

I will just say that that "development" scheme is one of the stupider of the dumb development schemes I've seen. (People are always trying to do these phony "development" schemes in the New Testament.) As, for example, that the ending of Mark is almost certainly lost, so the idea that Mark is complete and arguments from silence based on what isn't in Mark are really bad arguments, that there is nothing more "developed" about the city of Jerusalem than about the location of Galilee--they're just, y'know, different places. That the datings on the gospels given are by no means beyond question. (Even placing Luke later than Matthew is open to question *among scholars*. I myself *do* tend to think that Luke wrote after Matthew, but I also think both are much earlier than the tendentious datings given in Bob's comment. I was recently corrected, though, by an extremely notable NT scholar when I had thought that it was widely agreed that Luke is later than Matthew.) The "development" omits the fact that the women in Matthew not only recognize Jesus but are able to hold Jesus by the feet. (Because this would be inconvenient for the theory that Jesus is somehow more ethereal in Matthew than in Luke.) And the attempt to make Luke look more "developed" than Matthew omits the fact that Matthew contains the bribing of the guard incident, *not* found in Luke, which critical NT scholars *also* try to say is a "development." Cherry picking as per usual to make a phony "development" sequence.

But how about if Bob stops threadjacking now from the main post--y'know, genre, Dr. Licona, infancy narratives.

To Joshua,

//"So, your claim is that Paul clearly indicates that the appearance to him was the same kind as those others."//

He certainly makes no distinction in the nature of the "appearances" so why are you assuming they are different? Are you just reading in later secondary (or worse) reports into Paul's firsthand testimony?

//"Your proofs are:
1) the meaning of ὤφθη. But look at Acts 7:26ff. for an example where ὤφθη refers to an unquestionably physical appearance in v. 26, then a visionary one in v. 30, with no distinction made. So, ὤφθη does not require the kind of over-explaining you posit in order to refer to two different kinds of appearance in the same context."//

The word ὤφθη is used in the NT a total of 19 times. 18 occurrences are in reference to supernatural/spiritual apparitions or visions. It's convenient that you chose the ONE instance where it's used to describe Moses appearing to the Israelites. The word ὤφθη is never used of Jesus in a clear "physical" within the entire NT.

We know the context of how Paul is using the word ὤφθη because he places his own vision in the same list as the other appearances without distinction. He never says that Jesus was experienced in a more "physical" way so you have no right or reason to claim that the other "appearances" in 1 Cor 15:5-8 were more "physical" than some sort of spiritual visionary encounter.

//"2) Paul doesn't add any additional explanation to ὤφθη. But he does, by adding a specific phrase "as to a mis-born child."//

No, the phrases "untimely/abnormally born" and "last of all" are only indicators of "when" the appearance occurred. It presupposes his "vocational birth" since Jesus "appeared" to him at a time when he was still persecuting the church. This does not in any way indicate the nature of the appearance was different. It was Paul who was different because he was not even a disciple yet.

//"So, both these arguments fail:
-the first is wrong: ὤφθη doesn't prove a non-physical vision
-the second is false: Paul does give a qualifier"//

Au contraire, the arguments still stand unblemished!

//"As for your appeal to Josephus, NT Wright addresses the nature of Josephus' intentional assimilation of Jewish ideas to more recognizable Greek philosophical views in The New Testament and the People of God, pp. 324-327."//

Then what's keeping us from concluding that Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John did something similar for the audiences they wrote for?

//"For your purposes, it is noteworthy that Paul uses ἐγείρω in this passage, which Josephus does not, in either of the passages you cite, or in any of his passages on the afterlife. You have also misunderstood or misrepresented Josephus in adding "in heaven" after the quote about other bodies, as 3.374 makes clear:"//

There was no fixed terminology for resurrection and no "one view" of it in Second Temple Judaism. See Outi Lehtipuu's Debates Over the Resurrection of the Dead: Constructing Early Christian Identity pgs. 31-40 and Mark Finney's Resurrection, Hell and the Afterlife: Body and Soul in Antiquity, Judaism chapters 2 and 3. Josephus says he's speaking about the Pharisees (Paul was a Pharisee).

//"their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolutions of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies"
"So, the "other bodies" are not ones in heaven, but rather ones on earth, after a sojourn in heaven. As Wright says, this is life after life after death."//

Ok, where exactly does Josephus say the "bodies" will be on earth and will be physically resurrected corpses? And doesn't the word "other" seem to imply that it's not the same one? Moreover, where does Paul even say the Risen Jesus was on earth?

//"You've also never made a case for "resurrection to heaven," merely asserted it."//

Oh, please forgive me. I thought you were familiar with the Bible. Rom. 8.34; 10.5-8; Eph. 1.19-23; 2.6-7; 4.7-10 Col. 3.1-4;
Phil. 2.8-9; 1 Tim. 3.16.

Where does Paul say the Risen Jesus was on earth and experienced in a way that was not a "vision" or a "revelation"?

//"And, conveniently, your development schema prevents us a priori from determining Paul's meaning for the resurrection by comparison to the rest of the NT, which is suspect ("oh, well, none of that stuff you want to count as evidence is actually evidence, because legendary development")"//

When the earliest reports only speak of "visions" and "revelations" while the later reports get wildly inconsistent and increasingly fantastical in the details they report (such as physically touching a resurrected corpse that they later watched float to heaven), then it's pretty obvious that the story has changed a bit.

//"I'm a little puzzled how an extended set of physical examples of bodies--seeds, plants, humans, animals, planets--makes the case for a non- physical resurrection."//

It's pretty simple. Paul distinguishes between different types of bodies in 1 Cor 15:40-44. The "natural" body is the earthly corpse (seed) that is terrestrial and stays or rots in the ground while the "spiritual" body is celestial, a (plant) that no longer resembles the seed it sprouts from. See Adela Yarbro Collins The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context pgs. 124-127 here http://imgur.com/a/8gyHO

The "spiritual body" is still made of "stuff" but it's a heavenly body/entity, not a physically resurrected corpse.

NT Wright's work has amply answered all this balderdash about Paul's view of resurrection. The stuff about the "earliest reports" referring to "visions and revelations" is not only a bizarrely tendentious reading of Paul but is also based on baloney sausage about "gradual development," which I eviscerated above.

Bob, you have threadjacked long enough. I told you to stop. If you don't stop, your further comments will be deleted.

If you have something _specific_ to say about Dr. Licona's use of genre in reference to the infancy narratives, you may make that comment. This thread is not a tabula rasa for the rehashing of every bad argument from infidels.org.

I see what you mean, Lydia. There's a lot of begging the question and shifting the burden of proof going on there. I had seen similar claims about ὤφθη elsewhere, but I'd never seen anyone respond with the counter example of Acts 7:26-30, so I just wanted to get it down. I tend to have trouble letting go of an argument, but since it is off-topic, I'll do so--with the final statement that I'm not dropping the subject because I have no response to bob's points (as failure to reply is often taken in online discussion for inability to reply).

On the infancy narratives, I've never quite understood why people think they are in such conflict. Matthew clearly gives us a time frame between the birth and the visit of the Magi of up to two years, while Luke gives us only the first few weeks. In fact, there may be a candidate for an undesigned coincidence: Luke points out in 2:41 that Jesus and his family went down from Nazareth to Jerusalem every year for the Passover. Where would they have stayed? A natural likelihood is with Joseph's family in Bethlehem, a half-day's journey from Jerusalem, given how crowded the main city must have been. Thus, the visit of the Magi could very well have happened during one of those times...which might also heighten Herod's secrecy, since Jerusalem would have been fuller than ever of eyes and ears, and any investigator or soldiers would have been seen and wondered about.

Also, on the census, Stephen Carlson proposed a different way to read Luke 2:2 more than a decade ago:
http://hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2004/12/luke-22-and-the-census.html

It's worth considering, I think, thought I don't know what's become of it in the past 12 years.

That's an interesting conjecture about the visit of the Magi, though I'm inclined to *think* that they just settled in Bethlehem for a couple of years for some reason after the baby's birth and returned to Nazareth only after being in Egypt. I suppose as what we would now call a contractor, Joseph had a fairly portable profession.

I completely agree that the extreme puzzlement over the obviously complementary accounts of the infancy is completely misplaced. As I pointed out in a recent update to one of my later posts on this (on the extreme improbability of one's own biography), Jonathan Pennington, whom Dr. Licona quotes in the post I'm discussing here, actually *doesn't* think there is a problem at all. He makes a comment in his book to the effect that one "wouldn't know the infancy narratives were about the same person unless the same person were named" (words to that effect), but that is entirely a set-up of a pseudo-problem which he then dismisses without further ado in the next section as easily resolvable by "reasonable harmonization." By that Pennington just means what we are discussing here--simply regarding the accounts as telling different parts of the story. Easy peasy. I was rather consternated to realize that Licona's quotation of Pennington gives rather a different impression (I assume accidentally), since Licona himself obviously thinks there is some Question with a capital Q here.

When discussing inerrancy I will sometimes give as an example of a possible "error" the fact that it *appears* that Luke did not know about the journey into Egypt and therefore writes in good faith as if they returned immediately to Nazareth after the purification. Does this count as an error, even though Luke doesn't explicitly deny any other journey before returning to Nazareth? Even if so, it should really not be a big deal or anything to worry about. This is what real history is often like, and we do have Matthew's account to fill out more information. This is the *only* actual apparent *conflict* between the two narratives. If that's the best that they can come up with as an argument for the ahistoricity of the infancy narratives on the basis of their differences, that's ridiculously weak.

You may, of course, think of it any way you choose, but the one I've proposed seems to me a better explanation--not that it's better because it's mine, but that I'd propose it because it seems better. Notice that my reading gives a more complete picture, while yours requires them to stay in Bethlehem "for some reason," and there is no error, good faith or otherwise, in Luke that has to be explained. You stated that Matthew gives us more information, but I think it is probably the other way around: Matthew tends to summarize narratives (and possibly teachings as well) in broad sweeps in order to emphasize the OT connections (e.g., in the Triumphal Entry).

I apologize if I'm being too narrow or nit-picking, and I hope that you can understand and bear with my desire to make my case for what seems to me a better reading of the narratives. We agree on the main idea, I think: that it is neither good scholarship nor helpful to the faith to just punt to dubious claims of genre instead of careful examination of what is and is not actually in the text. Thanks for your time!

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