Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:56 am
I cannot critique a book I have not read. I can critique only those which I have.
I would be interested in a your critical review of this book.
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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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GakuseiDon wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 6:00 am ... What is meant by 'oral tradition'? Does it mean traditions passed along orally about some [alleged] original historical event[s]? Or traditions passed along orally, perhaps made up from an earlier source that passed the ideas along to Mark? ...
As far as Jesus of Nazareth is concerned I've always taken it to mean accounts about Jesus [the Nazarene] passed from alleged eyewitnesses of Him and of [aspects of] His life [and events therein] to others before they were written down (as the gospels and other accounts). Hence, the assertion that ''Mark was the hearer of Peter'' ie. to reify the concept as having happened soon after Jesus' [alleged] life (one wonders why Paul did not record such accounts from Peter and James, and other 'pillars').

The OP refers to comments that Thomas Brodie wrote about oral tradition in his 2012 'Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus', eg. -

.
The dependence of the gospels on the Old Testament and on other extant texts is incomparably clearer and more verifiable than [their] dependence on any oral tradition ..
.

Brodie provided elaborate commentary about why he has that view in his 2004 The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings, the first key nine chapters of which can be viewed on google books


eta: the 1st four pages of the 'General Summary of the Volume' is above that 'land page', eg. --

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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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I think this is a better representation of Brodie's General Summary -

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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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Giuseppe wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 11:26 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:56 am
I cannot critique a book I have not read. I can critique only those which I have.
I would be interested in a your critical review of this book.
I may be able to lay hands on it sometime soon. In the meantime, may I point out that the summary of it at that link you offered indulges in a variant of the logical fallacy of which I wrote?

I show with multiple examples, that the scenes in the Gospel of Mark are based on literary allusions and that the character and teachings of Jesus are based on the letters of Paul. This shows that the writer of the Gospel of Mark developed the entire narrative of his story on his own and that the Markan narrative is not based on any oral traditions or prior narratives about Jesus.

Perhaps the book itself avoids this pitfall. That would be refreshing. It is certainly not fair to judge a book by its advertising summary.

But the statement above does not logically hold. That is, the premise (that the scenes in the gospel of Mark are based on literary allusions and the teachings of Paul) does not in any way necessarily entail the conclusion (that the author of Mark developed his narrative "on his own" without the help either of "oral traditions" or of "prior narratives about Jesus").
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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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MrMacSon wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 12:31 pm Thomas L Brodie’s 2012 'Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus' has an Epilogue about Bart Ehrman’s 2012 'Did Jesus Exist?' in which Brodie says the key role that Ehrman attributes to oral tradition in the development of the narratives about Jesus does not correspond to any known model of oral tradition, and he notes that Ehrman makes no reference to recent concerns about ‘oral tradition’ (which Brodie addresses elsewhere in his book; chapter 12).

Brodie noted that since 1970 it has been recognised that NT texts are based on other literature, often older scripture, such as the OT, and perhaps other concurrent texts.
Does Brodie give examples of where Ehrman's model of oral tradition in "Did Jesus Exist?" is wrong? Ehrman doesn't really go into it that much from what I can see. One of his examples is the use of Aramic words in the Gospels.

I googled Ehrman on oral tradition, and this is what I found, on his blog:
https://ehrmanblog.org/form-critics-and ... or-members

Once it came to be realized that Mark’s Gospel – the earliest of our surviving accounts of Jesus – was driven not purely by historical interests in order to record biographical information with historical accuracy, but was (like the other Gospels) written in order to convey theological ideas in literary guise, the movement to use Mark to write a “Life of Jesus” more or less collapsed on itself, for a time and among most New Testament scholars. What arose from the ashes of this “Quest of the Historical Jesus” could not have been foreseen by its devotees – as often happens in times of disciplinary progress and change.

The big breakthrough came with the work of Karl Ludwig Schmidt (whose most important book was never translated into English, to my knowledge). Schmidt realized that the theologically loaded parts of Mark’s Gospel were not found in the core stories found throughout its account, but in the “framework” for these stories, that is, in the narrative transitions that the author himself provided for moving from one story to the next.



There is only a little more, with the rest behind a paywall. But in the comments section, Ehrman answers a question thusly:

madmargie May 23, 2014
I’ve had several Christian friends who insist that cultures with an oral tradition were faithful in recalling details perfectly. What do you think about that?

Bart Ehrman May 24, 2014
Anthropologists who have actually studied oral cultures have shown that that is absolutely and precisely wrong! The only people who say this are the ones who have not become familiar with what scholars have been saying about it for over 50 years. (There’s not a dispute about this among experts)

McMahon, if it is easy enough to reproduce, can you give some examples of where Brodie is critical of Ehrman with regards to oral tradition?
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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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GakuseiDon wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:26 pmMcMahon, if it is easy enough to reproduce, can you give some examples of where Brodie is critical of Ehrman with regards to oral tradition?
This may help:

Thomas L. Brodie, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, pages 226-231:

Bart Ehrman's 2012 book, Did Jesus Exist?, responds to a diverse group who recently have produced extensive literature questioning Jesus' existence. The book has three parts: (1) evidence for Jesus' existence; (2) counter claims; (3) who was Jesus? This epilogue first summarizes the essence of Bart Ehrman's study, especially the evidence in Part I , and then responds to it.

Summary, Part 1: The Evidence for Jesus ' Historical Existence

The Gospels (canonical and non-canonical) all tell of a historical Jesus, and despite some borrowing from one another (for example, from Mark), they are so varied, and each has so much distinct material that each is an independent witness to Jesus. Examination of the gospels indicates that they used many diverse written sources, sources now lost but sometimes seen as recoverable, and named in their absence as Q, M, L, a Signs Source, a Discourse Source, a core version of Thomas, and so on. These many texts too, the gospels' written sources, all speak of Jesus as historical; and their independence is so strong that 'we cannot think of the early Christian Gospels as going back to a solitary source . . . The view that Jesus existed is found in multiple independent sources that must have been circulating throughout various regions of the Roman Empire in the decades before the gospels that survive were produced' (82). And the gospels' written sources were quite old: 'A good number of scholars dated Q to the 50s' (8 1 ). And while we do not have absolute certainty that non-canonical gospels such as Peter and Thomas go back to written sources ' in both of these cases some scholars have mounted strenuous arguments that they do . . . [and a recent study, 2006) makes a strong . . . literary . . .argument that the core of. . .Thomas goes back to a Gospel in circulation prior to 50 CE' (82).

Underlying these many diverse written witnesses were oral traditions: 'Oral traditions . . .a bout Jesus circulated widely throughout the major urban areas of the Mediterranean from a very early time' (86). Evidence for oral traditions includes:
  • Revised form criticism. While virtually 'no [scholars now] agree with the precise formulation of the form critics, Schmidt, Dibelius and Bultmann . . . the most basic idea behind their approach is still widely shared, namely that before the Gospels . . . and their sources [were written], oral traditions about Jesus circulated. [Apparently] . . . all our [written] sources for the historical Jesus . . . were entirely or partly . . .based on oral traditions' (85).
  • Without oral traditions ' it is impossible to explain all the written sources that emerged in the middle and end of the first century' (86).
  • Traces of Aramaic, especially in some gospels, must reflect a background i n some oral traditions that began in Aramaic (87-92).
These oral traditions were old:

If scholars are right that Q and the core of the Gospel of Thomas, to pick just two examples, do date from the 50s, and that they were based on oral traditions that had already been i n circulation for a long time, how far back do these traditions go? [For] anyone who thinks that Jesus existed . . . they ultimately go back to Jesus . . . say, around the year 29 or 30. But even anyone who just wonders if Jesus existed has to assume that there were stories being told about him in the 30s and 40s. For one thing, as we will see (later] . . . how else would someone like Paul have known to persecute the Christians, if Christians didn't exist? And how could they exist if they did not know anything about Jesus? (85).

The role of oral tradition as a basis for all our written sources about Jesus is not something minor; it ' has significant implications for our q uest to determine if Jesus actually lived' (85).

Other New Testament sources (non-Pauline letters and Paul) do not rely on the Gospels or on one another, but they too speak of a historical Jesus, and so they must have received it independently from the on-going oral tradition. Paul frequently spoke of Jesus as historical, and his meetings with two of Jesus' earliest and closest disciples, Peter and Jesus' brother James in Jerusalem and Antioch (Gal. 1 . 1 8-20; 2. 1 1 - 1 4), ensured that he too had firsthand knowledge of the oldest oral traditions, and so he would have known for sure whether Jesus really existed. Early Church sources (Papias, Ignatius, I Clement) all speak of a historical Jesus, but they cannot be shown to depend on the gospels, so they must have drawn ultimately on the old oral tradition. Ignatius, for instance, as bishop of Antioch (around 1 1 0 CE), would have heard of the dramatic Antioch meeting involving Peter and Paul and so would have had an independent l ine to the oldest traditions. Besides-a key point-the message of a crucified messiah is so countercultural for a Jew that it can only be explained by a historical event, in this case the crucifixion of someone the disciples had thought was the messiah.

Overall then, the evidence shows a long tine of sources, all independent, all with independent access to the oldest traditions-and all agreeing in diverse ways, that Jesus was historical. Such evidence is decisive.

Summary, Part 2: Contrary Claims

Writers who say Jesus was a myth exaggerate the similarity of myths with Jesus. Robert Price and Thomas Thompson say the gospels are essentially a paraphrase of the Old Testament, but such claims are to be classified under ' Weak and Irrelevant'. Using an Old Testament framework does not mean the event being described never happened. To say it does is like looking at a historical novel set in the French Revolution and saying, because of its novel framework, that the French Revolution never happened.

Summary, Part 3: Jesus ' Life

Jesus, a Jewish tekton ('carpenter'), became an apocalyptic prophet; he was not an Essene, yet somewhat like one, and he announced the imminent revelation/apocalypse of God's new kind of kingdom. But apparently he was misunderstood as claiming to be a self-appointed king, something Rome could not tolerate.

Response

At first this thesis seems plausible. The idea of Jesus as historical corresponds to age-old perception, and the three-phase picture of gospel developmentoral tradition, adaptations, and gospel writing--corresponds largely with the picture developed early in the last century, first in form criticism, and, by the 1 960s, in some church documents.

But the thesis has internal weaknesses. The key role attributed to oral tradition corresponds to no known model of oral tradition, and makes no reference to recent concerns about invoking oral tradition (see Chapter 1 2). Relying on Q and the core of Thomas, two hypothetical documents, to provide a bridge through the 50s is skating on thin ice. Ehrman's work refers to a recently published 'strong argument' for dating the core of Thomas to a date prior to 50 CE, but it does not attempt to summarize the logic of that argument. And the reader who tries to track down that logic by going back to the cited author will discover that the argument, which remains elusive, presupposes having read the author's yet earlier work.

But the bridge of thin ice is not necessary. Nor is oral tradition necessary to explain the New Testament books and their history-like picture of Jesus. Since around 1 970 an alternative explanation of the New Testament and related texts has been emerging. Researchers are recognizing precise ways in which New Testament texts are explained as depending not on oral tradition but on older literature, especially older scripture. The New Testament books are Scripture reshaping Scripture to speak to a changed situation, and they may also reshape one another. Yet, whatever its source, each text is worked into something distinctive, and in that sense is independent. The dependence of the gospels on the Old Testament and on other extant texts is incomparably clearer and more verifiable than its dependence on any oral tradition- as seen, for instance, in the thorough dependence of Jesus' call to disciples (Lk. 9.57-62) on Elijah's call ( 1 Kgs 1 9). The sources supply not only a framework but a critical mass which pervades the later text. The Old Testament, especially the Greek Septuagint, is being reborn in new books. God's down-to-earth word is finding new expression. N.T. Wright (2005: 7) speaks of recent Pauline research as taking place ' in a world with its eyes newly opened by contemporary literary study . . .and now all kinds of aspects of Paul are being tested for implicit and explicit [Old Testament] storylines'. Aspects of Paul, and equally aspects of the gospels.

But Ehrman's study does not take account of this new research. It does not concentrate on discerning the literary nature of the various documents and so breaks Rule One of historical investigation. It summarizes the criteria developed in the 1950s for tracing the historical Jesus, but makes no mention of the criteria developed since the 1980s for detecting literary dependence. So it cannot deal adequately with Price and Thompson, and shows little awareness that-whatever some of their opinions-their work has a place in a central new field of biblical research.

It is such studies that help to give an alternative explanation to many of the features in the New Testament. For instance: ( 1 ) occasional use of Aramaic fits the literary technique of archaism and the biblical literary tradition of inserting Aramaic into Hebrew (see Ezra-Nehemiah, later imitated in Daniel; Wesselius 200 1 : esp. 299-303); (2) the references to processes of going back to older material and handing it on (e.g. Lk. 1 . 1 -4; I Cor. 1 1 .2, 23; 1 5. 1 -5) are being recognized as referring to handing on a literary tradition ( cf. J.N. Collins 201 0), as being literally 'according to the scriptures' ; (3) New Testament texts are independent in the sense that each one has a unique mix of sources and artistic shaping; (4) the Elijah-Elisha narrative provided a foundational Iiterary model for the Gospels (Brown 1971 ; Winn 2010) and its contents were reshaped and interwoven with other texts; (5) the material attributed to the hypothetical gospel sources-Q, M, L, the Signs Source, etc-is being recognized slowly as a reshaping of extant texts; (6) as seen earlier (Chapters 1 5 and 1 6) Pauline letters construct features such as readers and opponents, and Paul's autobiographical texts (e.g. Gal. 1 -2) are likewise a construct, not reliable history, so regardless of Paul's apparent assertiveness and intensity, the picture of Paul meeting Peter in Jerusalem and Antioch cannot be invoked as history, nor can it be used to explain the origin of Ignatius' s information about Jesus; (7) if lgnatius did not get his information about Jesus from reports about Paul' s visit, his dependence on the gospels becomes more likely. In any case, to claim in effect that neither Clement (c. 90), nor Ignatius (c. 1 1 0), nor Papias (c. 1 25) had ever learned directly or indirectly from any of the canonical gospels is high-risk history.

The image of a crucified messiah is indeed countercultural, yet, given how biblical writers had long set narratives in opposition to one another and had refashioned older scriptures, it makes sense as part of a fresh synthesis of several Old Testament/Septuagintal texts (e.g. Isa. 52. 1 3-53. 1 2 ; cf. Acts 8.30-35; Lk. 24.25-27) that deal with the tension between suffering and God's hope. What is especially new about the crucified messiah is not just the seemingly radical contradiction of combining goodness and suffering, hope and despair, messiah and crucifixion, but also the stark image through which that contradiction is portrayed-Roman crucifixion. Yet such a process of adaptation is not new. When Luke was using the account of the death of Naboth to depict the death of Stephen, he replaced the picture of the old institutions, the monarchy and assembly, with Jewish institutions of the first century-the synagogue and Sanhedrin. And when he was using the account of the exemplary foreign commander, Naaman, he changed the nationality from Syrian to Roman, Roman centurion. So when there was a need to express the ancient contradiction or paradox between God-based hope and life's inevitable sufferings it was appropriate to express those sufferings in a clear contemporary image-Roman crucifixion. It was doubly appropriate in the context of a rhetorical world that sought dramatic effect and enargeia (graphic presentation) (Walsh 1 96 1 : 1 88). Further issues of historical background belong to another discussion.

Conclusion

Ehrman's book could seem to set up a false dilemma: stay with a claim to a historical Jesus, or lose Jesus and, with him, lose God. But there is a further option. Rediscover Jesus as a fresh scripture-based expression of suffering humanity's deepest strengths and hopes, and thereby rediscover a new sense of the reality we often refer to glibly as God.

Ehrman's book is to be welcomed. Despite its ill-founded version of history it helps bring the issue of Jesus' historical existence and other important issues about the nature of belief and religion to the centre of discussion.

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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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Thanks Ben, that was very useful.
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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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GakuseiDon wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:26 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 12:31 pm Thomas L Brodie’s 2012 'Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus' has an Epilogue about Bart Ehrman’s 2012 'Did Jesus Exist?' in which Brodie says the key role that Ehrman attributes to oral tradition in the development of the narratives about Jesus does not correspond to any known model of oral tradition, and he notes that Ehrman makes no reference to recent concerns about ‘oral tradition’ (which Brodie addresses elsewhere in his book; chapter 12)

Brodie noted that since 1970 it has been recognised that NT texts are based on other literature, often older scripture, such as the OT, and perhaps other concurrent texts.
.
Does Brodie give examples of where Ehrman's model of oral tradition in "Did Jesus Exist?" is wrong? Ehrman doesn't really go into it that much from what I can see. One of his examples is the use of Aramic words in the Gospels.

As you know Ben has reproduced that chapter (which seems likely to have been a hasty addition as both books came out in the same year, 2012).


GakuseiDon wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:26 pm
I googled Ehrman on oral tradition, and this is what I found, on his blog: https://ehrmanblog.org/form-critics-and ... or-members

Once it came to be realized that Mark’s Gospel – the earliest of our surviving accounts of Jesus – was driven not purely by historical interests in order to record biographical information with historical accuracy, but was (like the other Gospels) written in order to convey theological ideas in literary guise, the movement to use Mark to write a “Life of Jesus” more or less collapsed on itself, for a time and among most New Testament scholars. What arose from the ashes of this “Quest of the Historical Jesus” could not have been foreseen by its devotees – as often happens in times of disciplinary progress and change.

The big breakthrough came with the work of Karl Ludwig Schmidt (whose most important book was never translated into English, to my knowledge). Schmidt realized that the theologically loaded parts of Mark’s Gospel were not found in the core stories found throughout its account, but in the “framework” for these stories, that is, in the narrative transitions that the author himself provided for moving from one story to the next.

There is only a little more, with the rest behind a paywall. But in the comments section, Ehrman answers a question thusly:

madmargie May 23, 2014
I’ve had several Christian friends who insist that cultures with an oral tradition were faithful in recalling details perfectly. What do you think about that?

Bart Ehrman May 24, 2014
Anthropologists who have actually studied oral cultures have shown that that is absolutely and precisely wrong! The only people who say this are the ones who have not become familiar with what scholars have been saying about it for over 50 years. (There’s not a dispute about this among experts)

That's interesting, as, in that mid 2014 blog-post, he seems to downplay the veracity of oral tradition. I think he has talked about researching oral history and tradition since 2012-14, but I'm not sure what he has come up with.

The thing that impresses me is the way scholars such as Brodie have tied various scriptures together^, and even Vinzent has done that with the 2nd century patristic texts in his 2014 Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels.

^ Brodie has written several significant publications on the significance of the Elijah-Elisha narrative*, and R.G. Price has found that it has many parallels to Mark.
  • The Crucial Bridge: The Elijah-Elisha Narrative as an Interpretive Synthesis of Genesis-Kings & a Literary Model for the Gospels, Liturgical Press (2000) - https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8i ... &q&f=false
  • Genesis As Dialogue: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary Oxford University Press, USA (2001)
Aspects of Russell Gmirkin’s “Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible” and “From Plato to Moses: Genesis-Kings as a Platonic Epic” have come up on Neil Godfrey's blog recently (which pertain to the OT, of course)
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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:51 pm This may help:
Terrific. Thanks, Ben.
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Re: Thomas L Brodie on Ehrman's 'Did Jesus Exist?'and oral traditions

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In that section Brodie asserts that the "occasional use of Aramaic" in the gospels "fits the literary technique of archaism and the biblical literary tradition of inserting Aramaic into Hebrew." Okay, so there may be something to the archaism; I would not rule it out, at least. But he gives Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel as examples of inserting Aramaic into Hebrew, and that seems to me to be a different phenomenon (or perhaps even different phenomena, plural). Ezra 7.12-26 is in Aramaic, but it is a letter quoted in its entirety. Daniel 2.4-7.28 is in Aramaic, the reason for the bounds of which section are, to my knowledge, still something of a mystery; yet, still, it is an entire section of the book. What we find in the gospels is individual Aramaic and Hebrew words and phrases being rendered in Greek letters; sometimes these words or phrases are the sum total of a character's (very brief) speech (ephphatha, talitha koum), while at other times they are not (corban). Sometimes they are translated into Greek, while at other times they left standing as they are (rabboni, hosanna). I am not sure these Semitisms are following in the deliberate footsteps of a tradition exemplified by Ezra and Daniel.
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