Legends, Fictions, and Manuscripts that Illustrate Christ's Story

so on behalf of the museum I would like to welcome you to the Getty and this evenings lecture by Professor Bart Ehrman who is speaking in conjunction with the exhibition in the beginning was the word medieval gospel illumination Bart Ehrman is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he began his education at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and went on to complete his undergraduate work at Wheaton College in Illinois he received his master's in divinity and a PhD in New Testament studies from the Princeton Theological Seminary his research is in the fields of New Testament and early Christianity he has published widely on the historical Jesus early Christian Apocrypha and the manuscript tradition of the New Testament professor Airman's work is well known beyond the scholarly community of the 24 books that he has written or edited for been on the New York Times bestsellers bestseller list many of you are no doubt familiar with the books Jesus interrupted God's problem misquoting Jesus and forged he is also published on the recently discovered Gospel of Judas his current book projects include forgery and counter for jury in the early Christian tradition and how Jesus became God from Jewish preacher to the Lord of all professor Erman has received numerous awards and grants including the 2009 JW Pope spirit of inquiry teaching award the 1993 UNC undergraduate student teaching award and the 1994 Philip and Ruth Edelman prize for artistic and scholarly achievement professor Urban's work on the contradictions presented by the Bible and the tendency of the reader to compress the four Gospels into a single cohesive narrative had particular resonance for the current exhibition on medieval gospel illumination we are delighted that he has agreed to apply his knowledge of New Testament scholarship to the visual arts in his talk this evening please join me in welcoming professor Bart Ehrman whose lecture tonight is titled legends fictions and the manuscripts that illustrate Christ's story well thank you very much for that generous introduction I'd like to stress before I start that even though I'll be talking about illuminated manuscripts it's obvious from what Kristen said that I'm not an art historian I'm a scholar the New Testament and early Christianity the other thing to say is that I teach in two different part of the universe from the one we are in now my world is the heart of the Bible Belt my students at the University of North Carolina tend to be conservative evangelicals who as a rule think that if you if you don't believe in the Bible you can't be a Christian and if you're not a Christian you will roast in hell which means the Bible is very important for these people the thing about my students is that most of them believe in the Bible more than they know about it in fact they know very little about the Bible as it turns out this comes as a constant surprise to me every year but it is nonetheless true and becomes clear to me when I teach my introduction to the New Testament class every spring this class is a large class sometimes it's 300 students sometimes 360 students and I begin the class by giving them on the first day of class before I've taught them a single thing I give them a pop quiz I give them this pop quiz because I'm interested in knowing what do they know about the New Testament and I'm interested in them knowing what do they know about the New Testament it's not a hard quiz there are 11 questions on it and I tell my students that if anyone in the class gets eight of these right I'll buy you dinner at the armadillo grill last year I bought one dinner they're not hard questions so I start off the firt the first question is how many books are in the New Testament well now you'd think kids who had grown up in church their entire life been sunday-school the hood they would know how many books there are but they don't it's actually an easy answer by the way the answer is 27 the reason that's an easy answer is because when you think of the New Testament you think of God and you think of the Christian God which means you think of the Trinity and what is 27 27 is 3 to the 3rd power 3 times 3 times 3 it's a miracle I then asked them in what language were these books written and this is an interesting question to ask because as it turns out a lot of my students think that the answer is Hebrew and I've never quite figured it out but I think it's because when they watch these shows on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel about Jesus they're always flashing up Hebrew manuscripts behind them so they associate Hebrew with Jesus so but it turns out Hebrew is not the right answer usually I have maybe just five or six students who think that the answer is English the right answer is is Greek as the language of the New Testament as is the language of many of the manuscripts that are in this this collection I I mean I do have to admit I do throw in a few curveballs because I don't want to buy any dinners and so so one of my curveballs is what what was the Apostle Paul's last name and invariably I'll have some students say of Tarsus which is true enough but the reason I have but part of what I do with this quiz is I try to try to teach them something in the midst of giving them this quiz and one of the things I'm trying I try to teach I want them to know is that in the ancient world most people did not have last names and so unless you were one of the upper crust aristocrats in Rome you just didn't have a last name you just had one name that's why in the New Testament all these people have the same name and you have to identify them some way so you have all these Mary's in the New Testament so is it Mary of Bethany is it Mary the mother of Jesus is it Mary Magdalene it's etc and the reason I have to teach this to my students is because they naturally assume that Jesus Christ correct Christ is his last dance I you know I have to tell them you know it's not not Jesus Christ born to Joseph and Mary Christ well one of the things that my students generally don't know is that the literal interpretation of the Bible which they think is the only interpretation of the Bible but in fact the literal interpretation of the Bible has not always been a central part of the Christian religion in many times in places over the centuries it has not been the literal words of the Bible but the stories behind them that mattered moreover throughout history many people have not insisted that historical reality matters for spiritual truth this can be clearly seen in the history of Christian art a very small snippet of which we'll be seeing tonight since I'm not an art historian I will not be commenting on the details or the artistic features of the various pieces of art that I'll be showing my purpose in this talk is quite different what is the relationship of the artwork found in medieval and early modern illuminated manuscripts and the legendary accounts of the life of Christ what's the relationship between those two things as we will see the character of the stories that lie behind much of this art is not simply based on the legendary tendencies of later Christian times although some of it is some of it goes all the way back to the legendary impulses of the earliest attested Christian tradition from the New Testament itself artists throughout the Middle Ages in any event we're not concerned with our modern interest in separating what we might call history from what we might call legend the stories that they knew stories about Jesus told important truths and the historicity of these stories in our modern sense was not an issue for many people most people through the Middle Ages I'm going to start with some art that illustrates stories that everyone today thinks were legendary and then I'll move into artistic representations of New Testament accounts in part to see how these stories about Jesus came into existence in an effort to fill in what was not known about the life of Jesus from the New Testament and to illustrate what was believed to be known even though this knowledge was legendary that'll make sense by the time I'm done so I'm going to begin with an artistic representation of what is known as the harrowing of hell the harrowing of hell this is a this is a portrayal of the harrowing of hell in a twelfth century life of Christ from England which is in the holdings of the Getty Museum but but it is the one piece that I'm showing that is not actually in the exhibit that we will be seeing tonight now in the exhibit that that's on display so here's this is Jesus as you can tell Jesus has been crucified already he's got the wounds he is he is putting the devil under his feet and this here is representing the the mouth of Sheol or the mouth of Hades in which the dead had been residing the dead had been residing in the bosom of Hades and so these are the dead people who had died before Jesus who are now being saved by Jesus after the after the after the death of Jesus he is able to extend his salvation not only to people who were living at the time that he was and not only do people lived afterwards his salvation reaches even to those who are already resident in hell and he is bringing them out of Sheol to give them salvation in heaven so that's it that's what the the picture is about let me say a few words about the stories the legends behind it the harrowing of hell the word harrowing it refers to this act of Jesus bringing people out of Hell and emptying hell of its inhabitants because now salvation is impossible in the New Testament Gospels we have of course for accounts Matthew Mark Luke and John that describe the death and the resurrection of Jesus Jesus in the four counts is executed by crucifixion on a Friday and on Sunday on the third day he then is he then is raised from the dead you find this in Matthew Mark Luke and John his death on Friday resurrection on Sunday what the Gospels give no indication of is what the Spirit of Christ was doing during those three days Jesus body was in the tomb but where was his spirit and what was he doing the other thing that the Gospels do not answer directly was a question that many people had through the ages especially in the Middle Ages which had to do with how far does Jesus salvation reach what about people who died before Jesus crucifixion if Jesus death is what brings salvation what about people who died before his death is salvation available only to people who believed in Jesus which would be people who lived after him what about the unfortunate souls who lived before him is the salvation that he brings not FAK is for those people and so there are two issues that were in people's minds where was he during this time and what about the people who died before the resulting legends had to do with what Christ did in the interim period between his death and his resurrection and it came to be thought that what happened was that Jesus in fact descended to hell in order to preach the good news of his salvation there so that his salvation was efficacious not only for those who would live afterwards but also for those who live before Jesus would bring out the Saints from the realm of the Dead and take them to heaven or in some traditions he brought everybody out from the realms of Sheol into a heavenly existence the first time that we have an account of this is in a gospel that was very popular through the Middle Ages even though it was not in the New Testament it's a gospel called the gospel of nicodemus because it was allegedly written by this rabbi who is named in the Gospel John Nicodemus it wasn't really written by Nicodemus it was written hundreds of years after Nicodemus had been dead but it was a book that was forged in the name of Nicodemus in the gospel of nicodemus we have our first account of Jesus descending to Hades to save the people who were there it's a very interesting account what happens is Jesus dies he's raised from the dead the leaders in Jerusalem don't believe he's been raised from the dead even though people are saying that Jesus was raised from the dead well they bring in some people who who tell them yes Jesus has been raised they still don't believe them and these people tell them look you remember Simeon the person who recognized Jesus when he was a baby boy Simeon had two sons who who died and when Jesus was raised from the dead other people were raised with him including simians two sons and they're the thing up north go get them and they'll tell you all about it and so they go and get simians two sons they bring him to Drew some brain in front of the jewish council and they ask him is it true you were dead yes we were dead well what are you doing here well we were raised from the dead well tell us about it and so they tell the story they were in Hades and they heard a loud voice proclaiming that the king had arrived that the gates were to open up because the king of the Jews was now ready to enter into the realm of Sheol and the prophets from the Old Testament got up and proclaimed that this is the one that they had anticipated as coming to save them Adam as in Adam and Eve got up and gives a little speech about how this is the one that he anticipated John the Baptist gets up and gives a little speech and then Jesus arrives and he takes everybody out of Hades and he takes them to the heavenly realm this is all found in the gospel of nicodemus an account that dates from the fifth Christian century medieval artists were quite taken with this idea of Jesus going to the realm of the Damned and bringing there his salvation to them it didn't matter to them that this wasn't in the New Testament and it probably would not have made sense to them if you had told them that well it really didn't happen this is a story that conveyed theological truths to them conveyed theological truths to them and it in much matter whether made it into the New Testament or not and so we have a number of artistic representations that of this harrowing of hell Jesus bringing salvation to those who are already in prison and Sheol my second piece of art has to do with another legendary account that every that just about everybody today agrees is legendary having to do with the birth of Jesus mother Mary this piece of art is found in an illuminated manuscript that is a collection of masses Catholic masses for high feasts it's a 15th century manuscript and it is in the exhibit here here in the Getty this is the birth not the birth of Jesus it's the birth of his mother his mother Mary in the scene this is Anna who is the saintly mother of Mary according to legend you can see she's saintly because she has a halo this this is one of those scenes where you get several scenes going on at different times down here is Anna again this time carrying the baby Mary in her arms with with a halo also here and this is an angel who's preparing the bath for for for Mary to take and so this is an account of Anna giving birth with her two attendants here giving birth to to Mary what can we say about the birth of Mary according to early Christian legend the New Testament is virtually silent about the mother of Jesus the New Testament tells us almost nothing about Jesus parents or his families parents of course are named Mary and Joseph they're betrothed to be married but they're they're not married when Mary becomes pregnant and she of course has not made pregnant by her betrothed to Joseph but has made become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and so the child that is born of Mary is born of a woman who is a virgin but were not told anything about Mary and people wondered about it who exactly was Mary that she was the one who was given the right to bear the Son of God I mean what was so special about her well this is a very pressing question for people who were interested in the lineage of of Jesus and in particular there were some theological reasons that people were interested in this question there were debates about whether Jesus really was a human like the rest of us now the rest of us you may have noted commit sins if Jesus was really a humor being did he commit sins no he didn't commit sin well how can you be human if he didn't commit sin so he didn't commit sins because he didn't really have a sin nature like the rest of us yeah but the rest of us are born with a sin nature yes but Jesus was born of a virgin and so he didn't have the sin nature yeah but didn't his mother have a sin nature so why didn't she pass on the sin nature to her son well these are the kinds of theological questions people were asking and unfortunately the New Testament did not provide answers for these theological questions and as a result a number of legends sprang up the earliest account we have of these legends about Mary is in a book that did not make it into the New Testament but was exceedingly popular through the Middle Ages at least as popular as many of the books of the New Testament it's a book that scholars call the pro Tevan galium jacobi scholars call it this because when you're a scholar you much prefer a Latin phrase when you have an English phrase that works perfectly well this shows that you're an educated person and so you call it the pro team on gilliam You Koby instead of what it means which is the proto gospel of James this is called a proto gospel this this book because it deals with the events that transpired by and large before the Gospels the Gospels begin with Joseph and Mary these Matthew and Luke do begin with Joseph and Mary well what happened before these episodes that's what the proto Gospel of James talks about it's a very interesting book it probably probably first came into existence sometime in the second Christian century maybe a hundred years after Matthew Mark Luke and John it is an account of what happened when Mary was born and subsequent events up through thee up through the birth of Jesus and a few episodes when he was a young young boy so what happened with Mary was this there was a very wealthy Jewish man named yoke who was married to a woman named Anna they were very righteous very pious before God they were also extremely wealthy and well-connected and a high social class but unfortunately they were not able to have to have children and they were quite upset about this and so yo Keem decided that he was going to rebel a bit he left home went off into the mountains by himself and for 40 days and 40 nights he fasted saying he would not eat or drink anything until God appeared to him to answer his prayer meanwhile Anna back home is very upset that she cannot conceive a child and she prays a bitter prayer of lament to God why can't she bear a child God hears her prayer and sends an angelic messenger to let her know that she has in fact conceived a child and this child is miraculously born now it's not that the child is born of a virgin anna was not a virgin here she and her husband had been trying to have babies for a very long time but it was a miracle like other miracles in the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament where a barren woman is allowed to conceive by an act of God Anna vows that when this child is born she will dedicate this child to God and so it happens the child is born and it's a girl they named her Mary Mary is not allowed to play with the other children Mary is kept in a sanctuary built in her bedroom so that she has no evil influences upon her when she's three years old she's taken to the temple of God in Jerusalem and she grows up in the temple of God in Jerusalem fed every night by an angel who comes down and gives her her food Mary is a very special person who's had no outside influences upon her when she turns 12 years old the priests in the temple are nervous because she's about ready to start having her period and that would pollute the temple and so they have to figure out some way to take care of her without allowing her to stay in the temple and they end up deciding that she's going to marry this elderly man Joseph and so that is how Joseph and Mary come together Joseph there it's not quite clear why he's an elderly man in this story except for probably because since she's holy she's never going to have sex and since he's an old man he won't want to so so they so anyway but he's an elderly man that's why in all the artistic representations in the Middle Ages when you see the birth of Jesus Joseph is always an old man that's based on this story that he was an old man one of the results of him being an old man is that he had sons from a previous marriage and so in the New Testament Jesus is said to have brothers well for the proto gospel James these brothers of Jesus are not children of Joseph and Mary since they never had sex no these are the sons of Joseph from a previous marriage and so they're there Jesus sort of adopted stepbrothers in any event Joseph and Mary then are come together and Joseph protects her and she gives birth it's it's a terrific story and actually one of the one of the most terrific scenes in the in the protocol of James is one that's not found in in this particular piece of art I'm showing you it's what happens is Mary gives birth and Joseph has gone off to try and find a midwife to help out during the birth process because they're too late they were he and the Midwife arrive to the cave where Mary is there's a bright light there and there's a child who's actually walking around and it's Jesus who's just been born and and Joseph tells the Midwife you know I it's not my child it's not and and she doesn't believe him she goes off she finds another Midwife named salomi she says slow me you won't believe this a a burden is just given birth and slow me says no I don't believe you she says unless I test her virginity I won't believe it so she goes back to the cave and in one of the strangest incidents in all of the Gospels of any kind whatsoever salomi gives Mary a postpartum examination and she she finds that her hymen is still intact and so she realizes she really is a virgin and for her troubles her hand starts burning off because God's upset with him her putting him to the test and she has to go to the baby child Jesus lifts him up in her hand is healed and that's the end of that story well very strange indeed we don't seem to have an artistic representation of that particular entity this then is the birth of Mary - Anna featured in this 15th century manuscript that you can see in the collection I'm going to move on now to artistic representations of things that are in the New Testament and my thesis is that these two involve legendary accounts I'm going to begin by looking at an artistic representation of the seven last words of the dying Jesus this is a portrayal obviously of the crucifixion in which you've got Jesus on the cross he has been crucified he is bleeding from all of the wounds with saints and later folk at the foot of the cross and in kind of like cartoons where you get balloons with people saying things that's what you've got here you've got seven balloons in which Jesus is saying things these are the the so-called seven last words of the dying Jesus and so let me talk about what what what that means the seven last words the historical reality is that we don't know what Jesus said when he was being crucified there was nobody there taking notes the disciples had almost certainly fled the seen we have no idea what the historical Jesus said but people were obviously interested in knowing what Jesus said in his last hours and minutes and so in the Gospels we have words put on Jesus lips by by later storytellers who are telling the stories about what Jesus said on the cross the individual Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John I'm just these seven words come from Matthew Mark Luke and John these these individual Gospels record different sayings of Jesus on the cross so you don't get the seven last words in any one gospel you get him saying different things in different Gospels and in none of them does he say seven things the seven sayings are a combination of everything that he says in all four of the Gospels it just happens to be seven which of course in in the Bible is the perfect number and so people latched on the idea that there happened to be seven things that Jesus says on the cross and these are the seven things the this is in the sequence that is commonly thought that he would have said them when he's being nailed to the cross in the Gospel of Luke he says Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing in Luke's Gospel he tells the robber being crucified next to him today you will be with me in paradise in the Gospel of John at the foot of the cross is the Beloved Disciple John and Jesus mother Mary and Jesus from the cross says to John behold unto his mother behold your son and he says to John behold Your Mother in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew Jesus cries out on the cross my God my God why have you forsaken me in John's Gospel he indicates I first after that in John's Gospel he proclaims it is finished and in the Gospel of Luke right before he dies he says father into your hands I commit my spirit these are the seven last words of the dying Jesus when you combine the four Gospels into one long account I want to I want to explain why professional interpreters of the Bible have found it problematic this combining of the different things that Jesus says in the different Gospels into one long narrative of the seven sayings of the dying Jesus what many what most what probably all serious critical scholars of the Bible think is that when you read one of the Gospels you need to let that gospel say what it has to say and not pretend that it's saying something that another one of the Gospels is saying each of these authors of the Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John had their their own points that they wanted to emphasize and if you pretend that Matthew is saying the same thing that John is saying you're importing John into a gospel that wasn't John you're making now Mathew sound like John when Matthew isn't John Matthew is Matthew it's like today if I write a book and somebody else writes a book and somebody says I'm saying the same thing this other person's saying I might be saying something completely different I don't want anybody to interpret my book in light of what somebody else says so when you read my book misquoting Jesus and then you read you know Rush Limbaugh you know you know don't confuse me with him well it's the same thing with any author at any time you should let each author say what they have to say it's true Matthew Mark Luke and John this matters with the last sayings of Jesus and let me try and illustrate why it matters by looking into the Gospels it matters at least two professional interpreters of these books in Mark's Gospel which is our first gospel Jesus in fact says very little when he is being crucified Jesus is condemned to death by Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of of Judea and he's taken off to be crucified and Jesus doesn't say anything on the way to be crucified they nail him to the cross in Mark's Gospel and he doesn't say anything he silent the whole time it's almost as if he's in shock he's hanging on the cross and while he's hanging on the cross everybody mocks him the Roman soldiers mock him the people passing by mock him and both robbers mock him and Jesus doesn't say anything until the very end in Mark's Gospel Jesus says the only thing that he says in the crucifixion scene in Mark's Gospel at the very end Jesus cries out in Aramaic Eloise Eloise loved us out of fani my God my God why have you forsaken me and he dies this is a very powerful portrayal of Jesus going to his death his disciples have have fled one of his disciples has betrayed him another one has denied him three times nobody is with him at the end everybody who sees and makes fun of him and mocks him and at the end he feels forsaken of God himself my God my God why have you forsaken me and he dies I think it's a genuine question in mark Jesus really wants to know why even God has forsaken him you contrast this portrayal with what happens in the Gospel of Luke now in Luke's Gospel Jesus is also condemned by Pontius Pilate and has taken off to be crucified but on the way to be crucified in Luke's Gospel Jesus is not silent he sees some women by the side of the road who were weeping for him and he turns to them and he says daughters of Jerusalem don't weep for me weep for yourselves and for your children for the fate that's to befall you he's more concerned about these women than he is about his own fate when he's being nailed to the god to the cross in Luke's Gospel he's not silent instead he prays Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing this does not seem to be somebody who's in shock who doesn't know what's happening to him while he's hanging on the gospel on the cross in Luke's Gospel Jesus is not silent Jesus actually has an intelligent conversation with one of the people being crucified with him one of the two people not both of them as in Mark one of the two people being crucified with them starts mocking Jesus and the other one tells him to be quiet and he says because Jesus has done nothing to deserve this then he turns his head to Jesus and he says Lord remember me when you come into your kingdom and Jesus says to him truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise Jesus in Luke's Gospel knows exactly what's happening to him he knows why it's happening to him and he knows what's going to happen to him after it happens to him he's going to wake up in paradise and this guy is going to be with him this is not a Jesus who feels forsaken of God at the very end most telling of all instead of crying out my God my God why have you forsaken me Jesus says father into your hands I commit my spirit and he dies he knows that he's on the side of the Father and that the father is on his side and he's doing the will of the Father and he's going to wake up and paradise when this is all over this is a very different portrayal of Jesus going to his death from what you get in mark what people do of course is they read mark and they read Luke and they smash them together into one big gospel and then you throw in Matthew and then you throw in John and that's how you get to seven last words of the dying Jesus so I've got two points I want to make one is that that today critical scholars of the New Testament think that you really should let each gospel speak for itself and not pretend they're all saying the same thing but my second point is that in the Middle Ages that was not the scholarly common sense in the Middle Ages it was just the opposite common sense which is that these are all important stories and they can implement one another they don't stand it odds with one another they compliment one another so you put them all together and you get the big story that's the common sense in the Middle Ages and it's often the common sense that people have today of course when they read all the Gospels as if they're all saying the same thing and so that is what I would call the medieval and the modern legendary perspective on the seven last words of the dying Jesus and so there we are again with it the next account I want to look at is the genealogy of Jesus which involves once more what I would call a set of not just medieval but modern legends this is a very interesting piece from the exhibit it's from the glads or Gospels which is a Armenian gospel attack so the writing that you see here is Armenian it's from the 14th century this is an account of Jesus of the genealogy of Jesus so who begat whom to gat whom to get whom my my students think the genealogies are the most boring part of the Bible and but you know when they're taking the New Testament class I have no sympathy for them at all you know I I tell them look gee matthew's genealogy is 16 verses long and it's just 16 verses long if you want a genealogy go to 1st chronicles 9 chapters of who begat home so this and the genealogies in the New Testament Matthew and Luke Matthew and Luke are the two Gospels in the New Testament that give genealogies and they're very interesting genealogies because they actually say you actually can get a lot of very interesting information well this is the genealogy where you have not just the who the ancestors of Jesus were but also you have artistic representations of these of these people and in another page of the same manuscript it's on the exhibit it goes down there showing the page that goes down to the goes down to Mary and so there's a presentation of Jesus immediate lineage on one of the the other pages let me say a few things about the genealogy of Jesus as another kind of another kind of legend disc on time a legend that is in the New Testament the Gospel accounts the Gospel of Mark does not have a genealogy probably because it does not have an account of Jesus Earth Mark's Gospel begins with Jesus as an adult the same is true with the Gospel of John it begins with Jesus as an adult Matthew and Luke however are the two Gospels in the New Testament that tells stories about Jesus being born and so in both Matthew and Luke in addition to birth narratives you also are given genealogies in which you have the family line of Jesus traced back to back to his remote ancestors just like I don't want to get the historical reality the interesting thing about the genealogies of Matt's and Luke there are several interesting things the the most interesting thing to many modern readers is that the two genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are different genealogies they're different they're different in a lot of ways some of the ways don't matter and some do matter one way that may not matter is that matthew's genealogy is set up to show Jesus descended from King David and he descended from Abraham and so the genealogy begins this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David the son of Abraham well who's that okay so David is the greatest king in Jewish history and it was understood that his descendant would be the future Messiah and so by saying that Jesus is the son of David Matthew is indicating he's the Messiah but he's also called the son of Abraham why Abraham because Abraham is the father of the Jews the Jews trace their lineage to Abraham and so Jesus genealogy is traced back to Abraham as many of you know Matthew's Gospel is often thought to be the most Jewish of the Gospels and so it traces Jesus Jewish lineage Luke's genealogy in some ways is even more interesting because it does trace Jesus back to David and back to Abraham but that's not the emphasis Jesus genealogy in Matthew in Luke's Gospel is traced back to Adam as in Adam and Eve that's a great genealogy I I have an aunt who's a genealogist who is very proud about the fact that she's traced my family line back to the Mayflower the Mayflower to Adam and Eve serious genealogy the logic of adam's genealogy of luke's genealogy is that unlike Matthew wants to show that Jesus is the savior to the Jews the Jewish Messiah Luke wants to emphasize that Jesus is the savior of all people Jews and Gentiles and so his line is traced back to the first human to Adam Adam himself so that's a difference but it's not discrepancy or contradiction it's just a difference the discrepancy is that the family line of Jesus is traced back through Joseph to David in different lines now let me make a couple points about that first the genealogies are both genealogies of Joseph that should strike you as very strange because both Matthew and Luke insists that Jesus was born of a virgin Joseph was not his father but the genealogy is the genealogy of Joseph but Jesus doesn't belong to that family line well the Gospels don't give us an answer to that one I think you have to assume that that he was adopted by Joseph and so he's sort of adopted into the line but he's not part of the bloodline which is the point of a genealogy neither neither the Gospels traced the line of Mary they're both tracing Joseph but what is even more interesting is that they're different genealogies of Joseph if you look carefully you have to look too carefully just read what it says ask yourself who is Joseph's father it depends whether you're reading Matthew or Liu who's his grandfather different names great grandfather different name different names all the way from Joseph back to King David in matthew's genealogy Joseph descends from David's son Solomon in Luke's genealogy he descends from from David's son Nathan different well how can that be well they can't be literally what's going on here is that both of these authors want to trace the genealogy of Jesus and the reality they don't know I'm how would they know people have this mistaken notion that in the ancient world everybody kept detailed records of these things people did not keep detailed records of these things and so Matthew and Luke have had to do the best they could to come up with genealogies of Jesus for purposes of their own the historical reality is we don't we don't know Joseph's father or grandfather a great-grandfather was it's it is a it's something we simply can't know I should add one of the interesting thing about Matthews genealogy is that is clearly a constructed genealogy Matthew goes through the genealogy from Abraham to David and then he goes from David to the biggest disaster in the history of ancient Israel when they were destroyed by the Babylonians for the Babylonian exile that happened in the 6th century and then he goes from the Babylonian exile down down to Jesus he divides it into thirds and what he tells you and it's when you add it up he points out that there were 14 generations between Abraham and David 14 generations between David and the Babylonian exile and fourteen generations between the Babylonian exile and the Messiah Jesus 14 14 14 it's almost as if something miraculous is happening every fourteen generations in the history of Israel so that this birth of Jesus in fact is almost like it's fulfilling a prophecy or something it's part of the Divine Plan the problem with that is that well there's several problems one problem is that when you actually add up the numbers the third set of 14 is actually only 13 he counted wrong so that's a problem the other problem is that you can compare the genealogy that Matthew gives you with the genealogy that he got it from from the Old Testament and he left out a few names in a few places why because he wanted the number 14 so it would be 14 14 14 so it would look like a miracle it not look like a miracle it's there there are several theories about this 14 thing you know ancient peoples really liked numbers well what is what is 14 well it's twice 7/7 is the perfect number this is a doubly perfect genealogy the other interesting thing is that when when you spell okay this is a little complicated so in ancient languages they didn't use a different alphabetic system from their numerical system the way we do right we use Roman we use Roman letters but we use Arabic numerals in ancient languages they use the letters of the alphabet for their numbers and so for example in Hebrew all F the first letter is worth one Beit is worth two gimel is worth three and so on and so every letter has a numerical value if you spell the name David and Hebrew and Abba added up remember the Messiah's to be the son of David spelled David in Hebrew and add the letters up 14 as it turns out and so the 14 14 14 thing in Matthew maybe a way of saying this really is the son of David my point though is that it's a constructed genealogy in other words it's not something that you can go to the bank on it's being historically accurate it's not historically accurate people wanted to say that Jesus had certain kinds of lineages certain genealogical lineage and they had to make up genealogies in order to pull it off including the genealogies that ended up making it into the New Testament of Matthew and Luke so another picture of Jesus relatives his ancestors finally this will be my last point about legends involving the New Testament the authors of the New Testament Gospels themselves there are several very nice portrayals of the Gospel writers in the in the exhibit this is Matthew you can see he is busy writing his gospel since this this comes from a 17th century Bible so it's an early modern Bible with its portrayal of Matthew who is seated on us on a kind of a throne like thing but he's he's riding since this thing was done in 17th century he's not riding in scroll the way ancient people tended to ride he's riding in a book this is Mark who has a little desk on which he can write his ride his gospel so far he's written one word the word ark a the beginning he's got a ways to go yet and this is Luke who is again has it has a kind of little writing table that he is using with the stylus and is in his hand and so this is both the marker was from a 13th century Gospel manuscript this portrayal of Luke is from a 12th century Gospel manuscript traditionally of course Matthew Mark and Luke were thought to be the authors of the first three Gospels John fought to be the author of the fourth gospel these are traditional descriptions Matthew Mark Luke and John the Bible's that you read today have the names Matthew Mark Luke and John in the titles the Gospel according to Matthew Gospel according to Mark etc you will notice however that when you actually read the Gospels the authors don't identify themselves the Gospels of the New Testament in fact are all anonymous the authors don't identify themselves whoever put the titles in the gospel over the Gospels were later editors they were not in the original writings of Matthew Mark Luke and John they were added by editors who wanted you to know who it was who actually wrote these says the traditional descriptions indicate that two of the writers of the Gospels were actually disciples of Jesus Matthew the tax collector mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 9 and John the Beloved Disciple of the Gospel of John and so those two were disciples mark was thought to be the secretary for the Apostle Peter so mark was the secretary for Peter who wrote down what Peter said and then organized it into a gospel Luke I'm not saying how it really was what the tradition says Luke was thought to have been the travelling companion of the Apostle Paul a Luke Luke wasn't one of the disciples and Paul actually wasn't one of the disciples either but Luke did his homework and he was an associate of the Apostle Paul and so he also wrote a gospel and so that's how you get Matthew Mark Luke and John two disciples and two companions of the Apostles what we actually know about these authors so it seems unlikely to many critical scholars of the Bible today that these books were actually written by disciples of Jesus that the two disciples were the writers and that mark was a writer of in fact it's unlikely that Matthew Mark Luke and John were actually written by people named Matthew Mark Luke and John it is pretty clear that the Gospels of the New Testament are not eyewitness reports of what happened in the life of Jesus these Gospels were not written by the immediate followers of Jesus one reason for thinking that is because it is almost certain that the immediate followers of Jesus could not write today we're used to everybody basically everybody 99% of this country is at some level literate not everybody literacy is still it's a big problem it's illiteracy it's still a big problem but just about 99% of people can read something and can sign their names in the ancient world it wasn't like that massive literature literate literacy didn't come about until the Industrial Revolution in ancient cultures in fact most people could not read or write and far more people could read than could write there have been estimates about literacy in the ancient world the most famous of which was made by a scholar Columbia University named William Harris who wrote a book called ancient literacy Harris estimates that in the ancient world at the best of times maybe 10% of the population could read and write and by right he means be able to copy out somebody else's writing far fewer than that 10% could compose a sentence fewer than that could compose a narrative far far fewer people could compose an entire book who were the people who could compose books the people who were highly literate were the people who were very wealthy they came from very wealthy families they were almost always in urban settings who had the leisure and the and the finances to get a high-level education that's who could write in the ancient world there have been studies of literacy in ancient Palestine where Jesus ministered these estimates indicate that because Palestine was far more rural than many other places in the Roman Empire there were lower literacy rates contrary to what many people think which is many people think that every Jewish boy went to synagogue school and learned how to read and write that appears to be a modern myth in fact ancient literacy in Palestine was very low the best estimates indicate that probably at the time of Jesus maybe 3% of the population was roughly literate far fewer than that could write especially write books the other thing to point out is that Jesus native language and the native language of his followers was Aramaic they spoke Aramaic the reason that matters is because of what I said at the very beginning the New Testament Gospels were written and greed they not only survive in Greek they were originally written in Greek and not just kind of low-level Greek they're actually pretty good Greek whoever wrote Matthew Mark Luke and John were highly educated Greek speaking Christians these books are normally dated 30 40 or 50 years after Jesus death probably some years after the death of his apostles I think that Matthew Mark Luke and John were not written by followers of Jesus or kin anyons of his apostles they were probably written by unknown persons who decided to write anonymously and since they wrote anonymously we don't know their names but the traditional ascriptions are probably not right probably they were not written by Matthew Mark Luke and John that's that's a that's a legend it's a legend that in some sense is rooted in the Bible itself because of course in our Bibles today we read the Gospel according to Matthew but we don't know actually who the author was other than he was a later Christian who was highly educated and was not an Aramaic speaker but a Greek speaker still the tradition goes back to the second century within a hundred years of the production of these books after they had been circulating anonymously for about a hundred years there our church fathers who say that their names were Matthew Mark Luke and John and they give some of the some of the indication some of the true some of the traditional legends about them already in the second Christian century by the way one other piece of evidence that for example Matthew did not write Matthew apart from the fact that Matthew was an Aramaic speaking lower class person from from Palestine who probably was illiterate when you read the Gospel of Matthew there's the calling of Matthew in Matthew chapter 9 where Matthew is called to be a disciple and it's not narrated in the first person in other words Jesus if the author doesn't say one day Jesus came up to my tax collecting booth and they said to me you know he doesn't errand he narrates it in the third person why is he narrated in the third person because he's talking about somebody else it's only later people who said oh yeah the person who wrote this thing is Matthew let me wrap this up with just a few conclusions and then I will be happy to entertain any questions this artwork is is compelling on its own terms the this exhibit here in the Getty is is provide superb examples of medieval illuminated manuscripts that is interesting in artistic terms it is also interesting because of what it tells us about what people were thinking through the Middle Ages at least the artists who were producing this work who I think in many ways we're thinking about the stories of Jesus the way other medieval people were thinking who were not artistically gifted the stories of Jesus were important because they told spiritual truths it did not matter to these people that this actually happened where this actually didn't happen they didn't think in those historiographical being told about Jesus that were valuable as stories because the stories themselves conveyed spiritual truths it did not matter to these people whether these stories were really in the Bible or not they didn't have a clear sense of which books are in and which are out you know the educated people could have told you but uneducated people in other words the vast majority of people in the medieval period and the early modern period probably could not tell you which books are really in the New Testament they had heard stories about Jesus and the stories they heard were valuable in and of themselves whether they were in the Bible or not the stories were not necessarily to be taken literally and to be taken apart word for word in a kind of careful exegesis of the passages the stories conveyed spiritual truth that you could talk about you could talk about these stories and learn from them the art helped people think about these stories they helped them reflect on these stories and they helped them see the spiritual truths that they found in these stories thank you very much I think there are two microphones that are available so if you have a question raise your hand and we will try to get a microphone to you hi I'm Mike McNamara is the nuit testament clear on whether or not God and Mary were the parents of Jesus or is sometimes Jesus thought of as the new Adam and he's placed I guess in Mary's womb and then Adam comes out but Mary didn't really have anything to do with it other than carrying the child distant clear on that or is it contradictory on that are you asking whether the New Testament intimates that God performs a kind of sexual act with Mary no but is is Mary - sheep furnished some of the what we call jeans of Jesus yeah right or ORS or is Jesus really at a new a new man a new Adam yes right yeah so the New Testament is not clear on this and unfortunately again there's not the artwork to help us out on it but what the New Testament that there there are only two passages that really talk about Mary giving birth there's the passage in Matthew in the passage in Luke Matthew says nothing all it says is the birth of Jesus was like this and then you know Jesus gets born so there's nothing in Luke however there's the account of the Annunciation there's a very nice picture a nice artistic representation of the Annunciation in the exhibit here where the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her that she's going to conceive and she becomes a little bit confused because she's never had sex and so how is she going to conceive and and Gabriel tells her how and he this is Luke chapter 1 verse 35 the angel Gabriel tells her the Holy Spirit shall come on you the power of the Most High shall overshadow you so that the one born of you shall be called holy the Son of God now it looks like what he's saying is that the Spirit is going to make her pregnant and it's using fairly graphic physical language and so it's a little bit hard to know if that's what what it means but in it that may be that may be what it means how much of Mary sort of was conveyed into Jesus was he what there were later heresies in the second century that said that Mary gave nothing to Jesus that she came he came through her like water through a tube where the water doesn't pick up anything from the tube it's just the conduit so Mary was just the conduit but that view was later declared heresy because Mary did pass on a human nature to Jesus even though she did not pass along his sinful nature to Jesus but that's a later thing then the New Testament so I what I could have done in answering your question is you asked as the New Testament say anything about it my answer could have been no you're welcome hi this is a maybe a little bit off-topic but I've seen portrayals of Jesus as Sol Invictus in Roman mosaics are you aware of any portrayal of Jesus in the dust ascetic tradition any portrayals of Jesus so you're not asking out Sol Invictus talking about the ascetic tradition estelle some of the heretical views yes survived in art yeah no I don't I don't know anything about that you know it right how would you portrayed ascetic Jesus I guess maybe a blank blank page right it wouldn't be there I don't know yeah yes alvin drew Dolly's last up okay yes all right sorry we're doing inside talk right so right when he's referring to ad ascetic view of Jesus in the early church there were debates about there were debates who is Jesus I mean is he a human if he's human is he also God if he's God how can he be human and and there were all sorts of variations about different people at different opinions there were some people who said Jesus is a full flesh-and-blood human being his parents were Mary and Joseph they had sex they had a baby his name was Jesus he was more righteous than anyone else and he was chosen by God to be the savior of the world so he was a human but if he's a human he's not God because there's only one God and if Jesus is God and God is God you've got to God so that you don't have to God you got one God and so and so there were people who said Jesus is human but he's not God there were other people who said Jesus is God but he's not human if he's God he can't be human I mean you know a human can't be God any more than a human can be a grape I mean they're different things and so if you're God you're not human you mean I've got well then if Jesus is God why did he seem to be human this is where the word doe said it comes in the ascetic comes from a greek word Da Capo which means to seem or to appear there were early Christians who said that Jesus was God who only seemed to be human he appeared to have flesh and blood but he didn't really it was a phantasm and so he only seemed to be human so that's a dos etic Christology so both of you that he's completely human but not God and the view that he's completely God but not human both of those lost out in the fights about what to believe and the view that ended up winning out was a compromised position which said yes he's fully human and yes he's fully God at the same time and it's not that he's half human and half God he's fully human and he's fully God and this ended up being declared a mystery it's declared a mystery because if you can understand it you misunderstand it so so it's a mystery yeah so an answered your question I don't know yeah until my friend Jeff Sacher pointed out Salvador Dali's Last Supper which is Salvador Dali's best painting by the way portrays Jesus as as something as you can see through it to the Sea of Galilee it's really it's terrific painting but I don't know anything in the history of Christianity that you could identify as a dos etic portrayal I know you said that art is not your bailiwick but in the birth of Mary hanging over the bed there looks to be a green punching bag yes any idea what that symbolizes yes that's the medieval portrayal of a green punching bag that is the that is the that is that is the curtain so she's in this bed stand with this bed frame around and that's the curtain that's pulled up yeah yeah but I had exactly that question today we went I went through with Kristin who's the art expert and I was asking questions because I knew I'd get some question I couldn't answer I said what's that green bunching bag and she said it's the curt hi I'm in the book of John you quoted it is finished yes what are your thoughts on the argument that the original Greek is actually complete and not finished and if so does it matter the Greek word it's to tell Luke I it's the Greek word the Greek verb Taleo to tell a UH teleo it's where let me see English get our teleology from that that probably doesn't help you much so the word means both to finish something and to bring it to completion and to say so it is the question is I guess the question is the theological one is is he simply saying you know it's over with now or is he saying that all all the prophecies now I've been completed have been fulfilled and I think the Greek is ambiguous and can be interpreted both ways it might mean both things I understood that Roman law prescribed crucifixion only for treason how did the two crucified thieves end up attached to Jesus when Roman law presumably didn't permit that in Roman law there for one thing there was not any kind of net it's a very good question there there was not any kind of national Roman law about crucifixion or about most things Roman law was very good when it came to civil affairs so there were laws about divorce and about inheritance and about selling your land and about civil affairs there were there were very few laws about criminal affairs criminal affairs were basically given over to whoever was ruling the province outside of Rome itself whoever was ruling the province so the governor of a province was given pretty much free rein the logic was that the Romans wanted the provinces they wanted two things from the governors the provinces they wanted the governor to keep the peace and they wanted the governor to raise taxes for Rome and whatever it took to bring about those two things pretty much they had free reign and so provincial governors could have anybody crucified they wanted to usually you really couldn't you weren't supposed to crucify a Roman citizen so that was out but if you wanted to make a display of somebody you know you wanted to shame them publicly and you wanted to set an example you could have them crucified normally you're right it was normally it was reserved for issues of treason but also it was reserved for the real lowlifes and so it was not uncommon for example for slaves to be crucified we have numerous accounts of slaves being crucified because there are slaves and so you crucified so these two being these two people being crucified with Jesus we don't know what the charges were in their case the charge of Jeep for Jesus was that he was called the King of the Jews that's a political charge of sedition against the state you're you're claiming to be a king when only the Romans can appoint the king so I mean it's a political charge we don't know if the robbers as they're called we're actually just lowlife robbers that they decided to string up or the word robber that is used in the Gospel of John is a word that is used by the Jewish historian josephus the word late States is used by the Jewish historian Josephus to refer to Jewish guerrilla fighters so people were engaged in guerrilla warfare and so John is suggesting at least that possibly that these might be people who were were opposed to the government in some way would you talk about the idea that probably the first stories told about Jesus were told in the Aramaic language so that would be the first oral tradition and then perhaps the idea that somewhere along the line somebody who spoke Arabic Aramaic and who could write might have initiated manuscripts or Scrolls that later somebody came along and translated into Greek yes yeah I think that's actually that's absolutely right the earliest stories about Jesus would have been told by his his closest followers who spoke Aramaic and eventually they got translated into in degree it creates some interesting situations in the Greek New Testament for one thing I quoted this passage from Matthew from Mark's Gospel Loa Loa lama sabachthani and then mark says which translated means my God my God why have you forsaken me when the when the when the gospel mark was translated into Aramaic later based on the Greek it's a little bit strange it cries out Loa Loa lama sabachthani which translated means Loa Loa lama sabachthani see what I mean because it's put into Aramaic the the other interesting situation is that sometimes when the translation was made from Aramaic and Greek something was lost in translation and you can restore it by translating it back into Aramaic so there are people who do this you know on Saturday night and they've got nothing else to do and as an example there's this famous line in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is being abraded for what his disciples have done breaking the Sabbath and Jesus tells his his interlocutors that Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath therefore the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath and when you read that in Greek or English it doesn't make any sense whereas I tell my students when they run across it therefore they should ask what's the there for there for so in this case sad Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath therefore the son of man is the lord of the Sabbath it doesn't make sense why would Jesus be the lord of the Sabbath just because Tabitha's made for humans not not the other way around but if you translate it back into Aramaic the the Greek word son of man and Aramaic is Barn Upshaw and so this and the the word for son of man is varnish ah and so the original saying was Sabbath was made for varnish ah not varnish off for the Sabbath therefore varnish aw is the Lord of the Sabbath now it makes sense you see humans have priority over the Sabbath because the Sabbath was made for them not the other way around so but you're absolutely right that's it's one of the problems you know when you're reading something in the English words of Jesus you're reading translations of the Greek which are translations of the Aramaic and something always is getting lost good evening thank you very much for your presentation where are you I'm right up here yes what about the in either of the store the letter O 1st or 2nd Peter it talks about Jesus preaching to those in prison and how does that relate to your Gospel Nicodemus and yeah legends of how do you deal with what happened between Friday and Sunday yes thank you it's I actually had my Bible here with me because I was going to quote that passage from first Pete its first Peter chapter 3 verse 19 it's very is this mic still working did the mic just go off is it working yeah okay maybe I just went off so it's a very strange passage in first Peter that biblical interpreters throw up their hands trying to figure what it means but what it says is Jesus was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey when God waited patiently in the days of Noah during the building of the Ark so it sounds like Jesus went in his spirit but he went to preach to the people from the days of Noah who were destroyed when the flood came so biblical scholars you know have a field day with this because if you have no clue what it means you can write a book about it and that is after all you get tenure so so right but so nobody knows what but but this idea of but you're absolutely right this this passage is is the beginning of the idea may be certain maybe Jesus went somewhere during those three days and so he went to the spirits in prison so maybe and so that started the thinking at least yeah I wonder whether for the next question from the back of the room I'm just going to give you some bad news and some good news the bad news is that the next question will be the last one the good news is Professor Minh has agreed to take a few minutes to sign books that you bought out front afterwards and we need your cooperation which is to say please after he answers the next question and we thank him one more time let him get out there and then the other piece of information is that we did tell him he gets to eat dinner tonight so we're going to have to let him leave eventually so last question please thank you actually this is a good last question given given that you are teaching in the Bible Belt yes and what you've just put on the screen in terms of legends and the historicity and all those problems how does that go down with your students right so well I'm still living so that's good all right so I know he wants this to be the last thing and wants me to hurry up but I I mean okay I want to tell a story so so here's the deal you know my students some of my students get upset some get their eyes opened up some some you know think that they are liberated now they become crazy you know atheists I don't know that means some do that but me mainly most students actually just appreciate getting greater knowledge for me actually the stranger thing is that in my 23 years at Chapel Hill teaching three hundred five hundred students a year I have never gotten a complaint from a parent and in fact in all my time in Chapel Hill I've only received one phone call from a parent I mean I've taught so if I teach five I probably have taught 400 a year for 23 years and so after you know I've taught 10,000 students I've only got one phone call so this was about 10 years ago 12 years ago I'm sitting in my office I've just posted my final grades and I get a mother calls me and I think I'll hair goes I'm going to get my first phone call complaining about a grade well it was kind of that she was complaining about a grade her daughter had taken my class and had gotten an F and had flunked out of school dr. Ehrman I just wish you could change my daughter's grade that's why you know I can't just change your daughter is great because you like me too doctor I'm just praying to Jesus that you will change that grade that's a lie you know I appreciate that but you know I really there's nothing I can do and and I said well did you know give me your daughter's name again she gave it to me I said well let me go look and I looked it up and you know I looked at the scores and and she had gotten a 56 and the passing grade was a 60 and so I said I'm really sorry but I can't I just can't add points because you know you would like me to well doctor rumor and I'm just praying that Jesus will change your mind about that so okay you know I appreciate that but I just can't hang up so I started thinking I is one of these large classes where I had several teaching assistants who had done the grading and the the guy who had been the teaching assistant for this particular woman who would fit oh I didn't tell you the important part yeah here's the important part yeah yeah so the important this woman tells me in the midst of this conversation that she works at a vegetable stand Western North Carolina on the side of a road and she's been saving her money or entire life so her daughter could go to college and since she's flunked my class she's been flunked out of college and so I'm feeling terrible I mean she you know this but you know I can't just add four points I mean so what can I do I mean so I'm feeling bad so I decide well I'm just I'm going to look you know just look at this so the thing was the teaching assistant that this particular woman had is one of these guys is really good in ancient history but was never very good in math and so I pulled out the grades and I said you know I'm going to wreak runch these numbers I reacted them he was off by four points absolutely true this is not a legend this is absolutely true it's off by four points she had she she got I called her up and said I don't know what kind of prayer life you got okay I need to stop there thank you very much you

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 251,926

Keywords: Getty Center, Medieval Gospel, Bart D. Ehrman, Illuminated manuscripts, apocryphal, Jesus Christ (Deity)

Id: HEU6xh1gERI

Length: 80min 53sec (4853 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2014