Stories about Jesus Before the Gospels: Oral Traditions in the Early Church
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
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The New Testament writings were produced decades after Jesus' death, but long before that people were passing along stories about Jesus and devising poems and creeds about their new-found faith. What do scholars know about these Christian traditions that were being passed along and preserved by word of mouth in the years before we had written texts. Scholars call them "oral traditions." How do we know such things existed, and can we be certain that they were passed along reliably before there were Christian writings?
Megan asks Bart:
-What, exactly, is an oral tradition, and what are NT scholars referring to when they talk about an oral tradition in the NT?
-When you’re working with a text corpus, how do you go about identifying components that might have originated in an oral, spoken tradition?
-Are there specific book in the NT that show features of an oral tradition particularly strongly, or books that seem to rely more on an oral tradition than others?
-What about non-canonical works?
-Do academics think that the writers of the NT are reproducing this oral tradition verbatim, or writing based on the stories they’d heard?
-Is there any way to estimate how much of the NT is based on oral traditions?
-Do the oral elements present in the NT hint at an older tradition than the sections that were always written texts?
-Do you think it’s possible to get back to what the earliest Christians believed based on these oral traditions, or have their stories been retold and changed so much that it’s not possible?
-Do you think we can get back to any kind of reliable, historical narrative of Jesus’ life?
From my own life: For decades I told the story of how, when I was a child, my father and I went over to my grandmother's place in the middle of the night because the doctor had called to say she was dying. I described how she was sitting in her chair, hand pressing on her heart, repeating "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph" over and over. The doctor gave her a shot in her left arm, she quieted down, and softly slipped into death.
Years later I happened to mention the event to my aged mother, and she said, "But that's not true at all! You weren't there! Yes, she died in the middle of the night, and yes your father and the doctor were there. But you were asleep! Why would we have woken you up to go with Dad? You were 6 years old! It would have made no sense at all!
We talked about it: My father had come home, had recounted the events to my mother, and she had later told me whatever she thought was appropriate for a child to hear. My imagination was sparked by this huge event in the adult world, I put myself into it as an eyewitness, elaborating on the sparse details I had heard and coming up with an interesting story that evolved with every telling - because a story has to be vivid and intriguing if you want people to listen! 🗣👂🏼😮✍🏼📜
To my great regret, I can no longer tell the story - except here as an example of the creative aspect of human memory and of my very own oral tradition.
Wow! I love that story.
It's truly very telling about how much you loved your Grandmother and how you earnestly wanted to be a part of her passing.
Thank you for sharing that. 😊
P.S. I'd continue to tell it just like you do and then when finished, look up at the person(s) you're telling it to and then with a big smile and wink, say _"Alas, my mom informed me years later that I actually wasn't there but those are the facts nonetheless."_
You either were there. Or you were not there
If you are not sure which one it is can you trust your memory for anything that ever happened or any time in your life? Even now.?
@@robertunderwood1011 On the whole, Robert, my answer would be no. My own experience is that much of my memory of the past is based on real events whose details - and sometimes entire meaning - have "changed" over time, so that my "life story" is more like a loose translation of my "real life" and often more a work of fiction than a historically accurate biography.
I think it would take a perfect observer, flawless interpreter, ever-present recorder to detail my life accurately, a God rather than me, and we know He doesn't exist. So I'm the only full-time eyewitness of my own life, and research has shown that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable!
Yes, so many of my memories have been proven wrong, that I no longer trust any of my memories to be "true". They are simply my perceptions. Only God, if there is one, knows the truth of anything. And I thank Him for the knowledge that I do not know anything for sure. So, the question then becomes: Do I want to be right or happy.
@@brookvalley907 But you can be both! Happy that you've discovered the slipperiness of human memory, delighted by the inventiveness of your imagination, proud of creating your very own semi-fictional autobiography, dazzled by your ownership of your very own truth. 🤔🤩🥳
As a former fundamentalist who tried to take the words of Jesus literally, it is important to know that the gospels were expressly not eyewitness accounts. So the words we have are at best a generalization of concepts being related by Greek believers at least 40 years after the death of Jesus. That's a far cry from the idea that Jesus literally spoke these words and did these actions.
Interesting. May I ask why you believe that? I’m a Jew who was caught into Christianity until I started really studying. I not follow Torah but really would like to know who Jesus/Yeshua was/is? God bless.
@@scars73your a Jew and you know nothing about your own religion? Weird… if someone or people was to use my religion and twisted it and act like they know more than me…. I’ll be piss…
Surely they had video recorders!? Don't we have verbatim transcriptions from the video recorders?
That's actually not true, You think that someone 40 years later just started writing stories about what Jesus said or did based on "What they heard? As far as the canonical gospels it's silly to think there weren't other materials floating around that did not survive. This 40 year hiatus is not realistic.
@@mooshei8165You have stumbled on the difference between academia and religion. In academia, you are on a search for truth. Reasonable criticism is a wanted. In religion, you decide your beliefs and criticism is not allowed.
Bart, I can confirm the problems and truths in oral tradition. I am Romani, and we have oral traditions about our origins. One of them is that we came from Saint Sarah Kali, who was the servant of Saint Mary. This tradition is entwined with the catholic tradition that Mary brought Christianity to France.
We know our Gypsy tradition cannot be true because it talks of an event from a thousand years before our actual origin in the Thar Desert in India. So the story of the servant Sarah Kali is a fiction, BUT, notice the name. Sarah Kali. Kali is our word for black, and it is also the Sanskrit word for black. It is also part of the tribal name for our people in the Thar Desert - the Kalbelia, which means the men who love black. So the story is fiction, yet contains a word memory from the Thar Desert.
I have been with the Kalbelia in the desert. They have their oral memory of us leaving for Afghanistan a thousand years ago. It is such a beautiful experience to reconnect with my people there. They welcomed me like a long lost brother. There is a deep family connection.
Romani are a clan based culture. I am Romanisael, the Gypsies of Norway. In the early 19th century the Norwegians were trying to exterminate us, along with the Jews. As a result an ethnologist, Eilert Sundt, collected our oral histories and correlated them with court records and census data, and eventually wrote five books about us. The funny thing is he believed all of our oral history except for our origins. Our tradition was that we descended from the Romanichal of Scotland. Despite the similarity of our clan name, Sundt followed the scholarly trend of the time, that we are Sinti or Roma, who had migrated through Finland, Sweden, and finally Norway. It took until the era of DNA analysis to show that Sundt was wrong, and our oral tradition was correct. We arrived in Norway from Scotland. Probably due to expulsion following the Egyptians Act of 1544 in which all Gyspies were given 30 days to leave the British Isles or be hung. Before that we were in Northern Spain, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, and India a thousand years ago.
So oral tradition will keep some things alive for more time than seems possible, but it also incorporates pure fictions. Telling which is which can be difficult.
How very interesting!
Thank you for that bit of information.
Resurrection return and virgin is a false doctrine!
Fascinating. The Aboriginal people of Australia preserve the history of their land (the geography) in their paintings, and they still have representations of features (such as lakes) that haven't existed for hundreds of years. This is what is important to them.
I like the Hindu Goddess, Kali!
As I sometimes note to my friends, my memory is crystal clear. It is often wrong, but at least it is clear.
I'm afraid that whoever assembled this video outsmarted Bart by inserting the "Outsmart Bart" title instead of the appropriate "Bart's Soapbox" title before his remarks about things that annoy him.
enjoyed this. Oral traditions in First Nations (as we Canadians call Native/Indigenous) peoples are intended to convey concepts not facts. Religions like literalisms as a means of promoting their followers’ “only” truth - often at the expense of those who already live the same concepts in their own manner (either through another religion or their own choices)
I often wonder whether those concepts survive the oral transmission process much better than do the literalisms. Similar claims are made about the 'Dreamtime' stories of the Australian indigenous peoples (now also called 'First Nation's peoples'), but I cannot see how these ideas are testable. Best wishes to you.
Joseph Campbell re-defined 'myth' as truths that can only be conveyed by storytelling,not 'falsehoods', In many faiths, looking for 'literalism' is completely missing the point.
Stories get changed within ridiculously short periods of time.
People who talk about my girlfriend’s dessert shop spread stories about how she started the shop, none of which are true, and some even said they heard that *I* was the owner, even though I just clean in the morning and she has the chef’s jacket… all stories formed before she’d been open for 2 years! It’s been 5 years now, and instead of getting closer to the truth, the stories have only gained more details based on the original rumors, and the people spreading them are increasingly confident in their “knowledge” of our respective backgrounds. It’s really funny to hear it all relayed by people who actually know us, and we’ve all long since given up on trying to correct anyone who seems sure of their facts.
Many years ago, to belatedly fulfill a seminary assignment, I took the gospels apart story by story, saying by saying, event by event, and then reworked and recombined the material to fashion a personal version of the Jesus story. What surprised me was the integrity and consistency of a solid almost interlocking core of what I took to be the oral tradition underlying the gospel accounts. What emerged from this exercise was more than a common message. What emerged was unmistakably, at least to me, a man.
Interesting.
People started to do harmonies in the 2nd century CE. They, like you, wanted so much for something to be true that evidence to the contrary is just dismissed.
...many years ago, out of curiosity..I flirted with "The Jesus Seminar" and its various big name scholar's (Funk, Crossan, Borg..etc)and their various historical Jesus theories...a youthful Bart Ehrman was even then, a prominent new light amongst them...
However upon examination, I found all their skeptical, and "pet" postmoderne' Jesus theories many times more inconsistent, arbitrary, and contradictory than the common consistency of canonical Gospels Authors themselves..
Wasn't a harmony. My NT classes in a liberal seminary back in the 70s taught essentially the same lessons that Dr. Ehrman now teaches, as he has often indicated.
So you put it all together and you created a man. Perhaps you were divine and don’t know it.
Bart, your a man after Gods own heart, in that you take every thought and philosophy into account and want the greater good to be present, not in the traditional way of superior men that skewed such texts to fit their own narrative agenda, but rather as a witness, loved your soap box!!
The Game of Telephone is not a great analogy: the starting line is deliberately made weird, e.g. "The queen sat on her throne and ate thorny kumquats." On the other hand, the specific goal in Telephone is to retell something accurately. The specific goal of people/apostles telling people about Jesus is to show how amazing he is. Those kinds of stories tend to get more amazing with time. This may impact stories of his miracles more than his sermons and parables because few people would consciously want to change his teachings. And of course times and places get mixed up: someone may have a vision of a risen Jesus while out on the Sea of Galilee; that can easily turn into a story how Jesus physically walked on water.
I thought that was one of Ehrman's stronger and fuller verbal
presentations on textual variability and oral tradition claims.
I wonder what my recall of it will be next week?
message for Bart---when I was at Chapel Hill (in the 60's) they had classes that started at 7:30am. This was in the summer, before air conditioning.
Ewwwwwwww.... that sounds horrible!!
But a great idea without air conditioning, much rather learn before the room you’re in is 85 degrees
An old friend told a story about my ex husband at our wedding that I'd heard many times before. It was fascinating to see how that story changed and was embellished over the years, sometimes depending on the audience too.
Why is it the early church made 2 of their only cannonized gospels Luke and Mark?? They weren't even Jesus's disciples.. weren't they associated with Paul?? The Jewish guy who worked for the roman government?? You know, the guy who probably was appointed by the roman empire to Create a universal religion?
Thank you
Sorry Bart, she won at spectacles.
She’s got the Harry Potter specs today
Her name is Meghan
@@zapkvrUh. Okay? 🤷♂️
@@utubepunklmao her name was on the screen and he still misspelled it.
She always wins that game.
A good analogy for perspective: writing the earliest of the gospels, Mark, would be like someone today writing about Haight-Ashbury in the early 60's based only on personally-written accounts (no video/audio/media-at-scale) and stories they heard from people they know.
I think Christianity could have avoided so many problems if religious leaders had not pushed it as "The Word of God".
Once you mention "God", then it is expected for such "word" to be perfect (no contradictions, etc.).
Milman Parry and Albert Lord were musicologists that traveled to Yugoslavia in the 1930s to study the performances of bards there who were able recite songs/poetry that lasted for hours. These bards did this from memory. They were wanting to compare the Homer stories of the Iliad/Odyssey that were originally shared orally from memory. It's my speculation that many of the oral traditions of the Holy Bible were likely performed and shared by memory in the same ways and possibly in a musical way in order to reproduce these stories more effectively. Even though they are not New Testament, the Psalms were originally "songs," so there was already a precedent.
Ancient/Classical Europe and Religious history(Abraham focus) is what I studied at Uni and everything Dr. Ehrman is saying is absolutely true about how we view sources. We will consider oral histories but it suffers from all the same concerns that written records do plus many more. When I read primary sources(self written) I am looking for the following: How well does it line up with other sources, is it logically consistent with what we know about the culture in question. There is a lot more to consider than that but these can be applied to oral sources. The following are no less important but can only be considered with written sources: who wrote it and when did they live, where are they from, what is their perspective who are they loyal to or against, what religion are they are they devout or just cultural adherents, what other kinds of things have they written, how far removed in time from the events they are speaking of, what do other writers say about them, who translated it and what is the consensus opinion on the translator within their own field, are the original language consistent with the time frame it claims to be written in? The more of these things that can be corroborated the better the source can be counted on for accurate info. It is not reasonable to think oral histories can be better than written ones, even if the writer is intending to deceive the reader because other evidence will make you aware of that.
Well, God told those people what to write. I've heard that time and time again when I've tried to explain to people why I don't accept the Bible literally.
@@jamesbinns8528it yea its special pleading to imagine the same being that can create the universe and intelligent life, very much wanted to speak to people but instead of just projecting the thoughts into our minds or just create an immutable text, he decided that the best way to communicate this important information was to filter it through dozens of writers over a hundreds of years in multiple languages which would then have to be translated into something readable to a single person.
It would be great to hear their take on Dennis McDonald’s trope and mimesis work on the gospels using Homer and Vergil.
Our classes started at 7:00 a.m., and in the dead of winter, with two feet of snow on the ground & fierce winds outside, the air conditioning would be on so cold (to keep us awake) that only a zipped up winter coat, hat, scarf, and gloves kept us from freezing to death. Did I mention it was a ‘Christian’ college? Of course, it was. Oh, if I had only know 40 years ago what I know now.🙃😳
as for the accuracy of oral traditions, it's complicated. As was mention with Homer, many oral traditions have repeated phrases and various patterns such as rhytmn, syllable count etc In some ways it is likely to be very accurate and other ways not so much.
But we must be careful not to commit to the fallacy of equivocation by comparing direct semantic accuracy with accuracy of meaning
There's also a huge differences between oral cultures which have developed ways to at least minimize those changes over time and just normal word of mouth. There's no reason to think the early Christians had or were using any such techniques to preserve the stories. They were engaging in evangelism, not in history. Changing the story to appeal to more to potential converts would be more effective and spread faster.
Even calling this oral tradition is overstating it.
I'm in a choir where we learn the lyrics by heart, as well as the notes we sing - it makes for a better sound when you're not reading and singing at the same time.
I've noticed that often I can remember maybe 90% of the words, but 10% of them sort of aren't there - I took them for granted - and I have to look them up (or if we're singing, mumble a bit and hope the other singers will get it right).
It's typically the less interesting words that don't stick in my mind, and have to be drilled in later.
I also spent years singing in the chorus in high school and at my church, and I don't think your experience would resonate with many of my peers, lol. I still remember all of the words to many a song I learned for school chorus over twenty years ago and haven't sung since.
@@Zachary_Setzer Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't talking about REMEMBERING words I had learnt. I was talking about LEARNING those words in the first place. While learning, I find some words are more memorable than others; the less memorable words are sort of more ordinary and could be replaced by others without changing the meaning. For instance, in Alice in Wonderland the Duchess says "Speak roughly to your little boy / and beat him when he sneezes"... or is it "speak harshly to your little boy" ?
@gerardvila4685 I can see that in memorizing other genres, not so much with learning the words to a song. This especially when the setting is that you're learning a song where you have the conscious object to learn the words for a performance where you'll have to perform from memory.
Not doubting your experience, but I don't think that sounds typical.
@@Zachary_Setzer Yeah, I've been thinking about that... maybe the fact that I'm over 70, and you're about half that, has something to do with it ☹️.
Well may you lol.
Mustn't grumble, old age is better than the alternative.
I've probably commented this on a hundred videos, but it's especially apt here. The story "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" by Ted Chiang is a frankly amazing (and heart breaking) story that is precisely about the differences between oral and written tradition. Well, at least one half of the story is, but I don't want to spoil anything.
Truly, it is one of my favorite short stories ever, and it deals quite directly with this topic in a wonderful, mysterious, beautiful, and devastatingly sad way.
Seconded! Chiang is a genius.
the world of Faith is replete w/ assumptions, axioms, a prioris & the like. no one seems to enumerate, examine & test their own, even as they proffer a comprehensive narrative &/or theology based upon those unexamined underlying "truths'.
one of the underlying insights gained from chaos theory is that initial conditions have a profound influence upon ultimate outcomes. it's a simple statement that's logical and provable via evidence.
if one proceeds to endorse & promulgate a religious belief system w/o deep examination of its foundational assumptions, one might as well be engaged in speculative philosophy or pure fiction. internal consistency is not enough to qualify as proof of a faith's reality... that's just a feature of logic - which is a process, not itself factual truth.
further, the failure to identify, articulate & provide examples that support the assumptions upon which a faith is built is an implicit admission of incompleteness, uncertainty, of possible error. to fully represent one's faith as real & true, one must also attack it beyond the critique of any & all outsiders. only through internal critique can a faith be offered as a valid truth for others. this critique is also the means by which a faith (& all its a priori assumptions, etc) can be perfected, or at least improved - made believable. it is the critical path to an honest faith held by honest believers.
frankly, I'm not holding my breath. appeal to subjective revelation is far easier. & no one wants to subject their fondest foundational beliefs to that sort of fundamental critique. that's what one does to others, not themselves. humans... so emotional... so insecure... so certain.
Would be interesting to have a NT in chronological order (e.g. undisputed letters of Paul first, then Mark, Matthew, Luke, acts, John, then the rest as appropriate). And then marked up to show the various oral traditions, and then which of these events and sayings are likely to be something that actually happened - perhaps with an indicator of probability.
Do the whole Bible that way. Though the OT is more complicated, since a lot of it is layers of editing, rather than newly writing texts.
It is interesting to read it that way and try to forget what you know and consider what you might have made of the religion with just those texts to go one.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Useful Charts has done some good stuff breaking down scholarship on at least a basic level (dealing with JEDP, for example).
That's a great idea.
"undisputed" ...my patootie-d💋
There is a 2021 académic (non-religious) translation of the New Testament where the books are organized like that, but it's in Spanish. The name is Los Libros del Nuevo Testamento. The main author is Dr Antonio Piñero from the Universidad Complutense in Spain (one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1293)
I tend to think that oral tradition is just the "Telephone Game" - people passing on information they heard from someone who heard it from someone, etc. and by the time someone writes it down it's completely different than how it started. 28:00 perhaps she was Schrodinger's almost maybe dead or not dead or dead girl at the same time. Always look forward to these episodes. Thanks Bart and Megan.
I caught a fish and it was thiiiiiiiiiiiiis big! Also agendas or audience may color the story...the conf. In Nov. sounds great...I learned in churches all over the country in diff. denominations...and just had so many questions but was ignored so often when I did any analysis as was just to take for granted it was all divinely inspired so not to be questioned. I thoroughly enjoy the catch and pitch between Megan and Bart tho I am hugely conservative I appreciate their presence.
I dropped the idea of having to be either one or the other (conservatism/liberal/progressive/...) since I gave up faith in religion as a whole and more specifically, my christian faith. To put yourself into a box like that is to - in a sense - limit one's understanding and not being honest with their self, imho. (this does not only apply to religion, but also politics, economics or culture even)
It certainly was not easy to let it all go, since I build my life around it, I was very conservative in my faith.
One can be a mixture of a lot of things and I think this is how we all should approach life. Certain thing ought to be preserved, either temporary or for a (much) longer period of time. Others require adaptation and new lights/ideas. I think that is what life is all about and we ought to flow with it if we want to grow.
@@Rain-Dirt thank you. Though I continue to be conservative in everything hence not popular, and there are basic truths that are not to be changed or "let go" as society is unraveling due to that...I do appreciate your comment. I agree often with Dennis Prager, as more about society must have guidelines/instruction though individuals will deviate/ ignore. I still agree in the OC as this is a great week/ 40 days of repentance and opportunities for improvement to gain in recognizing what oppression was/is as we are on the cusp.
Jairus' daughter is both alive and dead like Schrödinger's cat at the time when Jarius asks for help.
...with all his foibles and faults...This interview is Bart Ehrman about at his Best...
signed, a "¿loyal?", a FriEnemy
not very god like to transmit your message in such a flip flop manner, esp when so many people now have electronic devices and a quick update could be made to all if god can't speak because he is a plasma beam..or spirit or some other description of nonsense...amen
It is possible that the oral traditions were passed on by rhythm or song which would help retain the memory.
Today’s Soapbox needs to be a short that goes viral.
Skeptic discussion is necessary and should be helpful for everyone when done right, but it has to be done rationally and respectfully or its value falls apart and becomes counterproductive.
Two thirds of Mathew and Luke were copied verbatim from Mark.
My mother's dad, one of my grandfathers, was a fabulous story teller and he could make up a fascinating fictional tale on the spot with details you couldn't imagine. He made up human characters and used animals as characters too and spun the best tales that could go on for hours and hours telling without missing a beat. Humans have made up stories since they realized they could imagine things and put them in a tall tale. Probably started with telling a tale to get out of being caught doing something naughty. LOL I remember when I was 4 making up a story on the spot when I got caught using a shoe polish dobber to make spots all over my aunt's bathroom. I knew the adults knew I did it but I invented a tale of a tiger who had sneaked in and done it and I had seen that tiger do it. The adults were so impressed with my story, I didn't even get punished.
It is human nature to improve a story, and to entertain one's audience!
Regarding "Jesus Not being buried on the same day he was crucified": My opinion is that "Yes, He was". Though Romans, indeed, used to leave crucified criminals and rebels hanging on the cross for days (so they decomposed and scared people of suffering the same fate), I would argue that Pilate, in fact, may have conceded the body of Jesus because:
1-It was a special Sacred Feast (The Jubilee of Jubilees), and he didn't want the people's discontent.
2-Pilate didn't think that Jesus really was a criminal, and feeling pity about his "unnecessary" fate, he agreed to "lessen" the punishment.
This is pure speculation, free of evidence.
Hey Bart, I would be very interested in a segment about the textual support for predestination and so-called "double predestination."
Bart has mentioned many times that Mark (and others) are based on oral traditions, but is it not plausible that there were other, diverse and shorter, written accounts that had been created prior to Mark's account? It seems that in a 40-year timespan after Jesus' death, some effort to "write things down" would have been undertaken.
On a connected idea, _whoever_ wrote things down the "first" time clearly did a tremendous amount of creative embellishment since the chance of anything being what Jesus _actually_ said, other than a general concept, is near-zero. Themes and core concepts could survive oral transmission, but verbatim quotes would be a virtual impossibility.
I just have to say that it is always a treat to see Megan”s fashion choices from week to week. I especially love your glasses in this episode.
Thanks, Bart. I really appreciate your commitment to accurate language and careful thinking. The point of which you complain is common just in life. People are often too quick and eager to jump to conclusions. I think part of it stems from a desire to know. People tend to be uncomfortable with ambiguity. Just as it is said that nature abhors a vacuum, so it is with people and knowledge. They want closure and will accept an explanation whether it is correct or not. This is why we need to teach and cultivate critical thinking. Thank you for your own contribution to that, you are truly an educator.
True…people long for certainty but in many areas, we can never be truly certain. Or course some bypass this dilemma by simply assuming certainty and then surrounding themselves with others who share their belief. Back in my days as a chemist we followed the standard rules for reporting results: Results could never be stated with more certainty than the sum of the uncertainty of the data used. I think that concept is a good one to use when looking at history as well.
@@stevearmstrong6758ko ki
I don’t really agree with Bart’s Soapbox point. Yes, technically, one cannot PROVE Jesus was not resurrected by proving the stories in the Bible are inaccurate and make false claims. But, if we start from the basic principle that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim, not on the sceptic, the we do not have to PROVE that Jesus was not resurrected. Those making the claim have to prove he was. And their evidence is purely based on the so-called testimony in the Bible. So when you prove that evidence to be incorrect, you remove all proof that Jesus rose from the dead, so we are back to the status quo position that he did not rise from the dead. So in effect, by proving the so-called witness accounts fake, one can conclude the allegedly witnessed miracle never happened.
Bart’s whole argument is based on the misguided idea that the sceptic has to prove a negative, which goes against basic logic.
It’s almost as if the gospels are worthless as far as history is concerned
It's a shame that some people still want to live in the bronze age. Worse still is their demand that others, who do not have an invisible best friend, join them.
After the body was buried at a common grave outside of town the rumors and stories of visitations from Jesus in visions, dreams and memories began to circulate among his followers and grow into the stories we read in the New Testament.
And, there was no need for the body. Visions suffice for the whole thing.
Bart, as a historian, you should appreciate the necessity of facts, which in most cases are written accounts, preferably with multiple independent attestation. The burial and resurrection of Jesus is attested by Paul and the Gospels. It's as solid an evidence as you can hope for given the period. Now in my opinion, unless this is a later interpolation, Paul heard that oral.history, then mark copied Paul, Mat and Luke copied Mark and John the rest of them so there aren't multiple attestation of anything in the bible, but you don't believe that.
So, if you say you believe Jesus wasn't buried, you can't make up that he possibly resurrected at another time or somewhere else. There is no attestation to that. It's imagination not history. If you discount the proof of burial, even if said proof is just written unlikely claims,, there is absolutely no reason to believe Jesus resurrected.
He said he doesn't believe Jesus was buried the day he died not that he wasn't buried at all.
This show needs an Awesomness License. Your vids are far too awesome for a mere RUclips vid.
In a different context, we frequently are told about traditional stories passed on orally, in some cases over tens of thousands of years, amongst non-Westerners, e.g the indigenous peoples of Australia (40,000 years plus). For some reason, the accuracy of these traditions seems to be rarely publicly questioned; they have become 'gospel'.
No, it's quite widely accepted that these traditions change over time like a game of telephone.
Even in written manuscripts that are copied we see changes made
The birth stories of Jesus that are told in Matthew and Luke are totally different and irreconcilable since they can't be happening at the same time period.
Is Fahrenheit 451 possible : people memorizes one of few books word for word and become these living books for others.
Really enjoyed stumbling across this, and will look up other videos.
I was curious: has anyone ever done any comparative research into western English, mythological oral traditions that were later written down, elaborated on and changed/embellished over time? I’m thinking King Arthur, Robin Hood etc.
Obviously I think, even as an atheist, that on balance it’s far more likely the gospels are based on a real person than the King Arthur / Robin Hood legends. But I’m curious that there must be similar processes taking place…
Oral story telling tradition - and then written down and formalized much later.
Maybe you both already said this, but it would be interesting to know how you two got to know each other and how you decided to start doing this series.
Snore.
Ah, but who’s to say they remember it accurately or the same way?
Megan and her glasses always outshine her husband’s bow ties! 😂
How about Megan doing a course about cuneiform, Akkadians, Mesopotamia or something in her field?
That would be fascinating to find out about. It's far more neglected as a field compared to biblical studies.
She and her husband have their own channel, Digital Hammurabi. (sp?)
@@OldMotherLogo would be interesting to see Bart interview Megan about it
Whenever I played telephone I always tried to tell the same story in such a way that it would be heard and interpreted differently from what was told to me. I thought that was the point. If there were a reward for accuracy that might be quite different since, as it is, the reward is for inaccuracy.
About the assumption that memory works the same as it did 2,000 years ago, that isn't true in the media science of the McLuhans. The hardware is the same, but the dominant medium of a period weights or biases the distribution of the exterior and interior senses. For instance, writing and especially print enhances imagination whereas orality enhances memory, and these are at the expense of one another. This is the reason rhapsodes and their audiences could remember a story they had heard once 30 years ago. Of course once writing came into being this released the portion of hardware devoted to memory which then freed it up to imagination. We ended up with a lot *more* stories, but the price was that the stories had or carried less meaning. The crux of the Jesus narrative is that it occurs at the cusp or threshold when there was a massive increase in literacy. It also coincides with the transition from the scroll to the codex, which is something that, for the most part, M. McLuhan missed. Then, about a century or so after the invention of the Gutenberg press the "novel" came into being, which was a fundamentally different kind of story telling than the romance, as René Girard observes. Part of the intention of the novel is couched to influence the perception of realism by reproducing consciously an overtly the mimesis that had been so carefully concealed in the romance. It because a game between the writer and the reader, of "now you see me, now you don't".
Very much looking forward to a future discussion regarding oral tradition. Does anyone have any book recommendations about Oral Tradition for the lay person I might delve into?
Gyrus: "Jesus, my daughter has died can you do anything?"
Jesus: "Umm, didn't I raise your daughter from the dead a week ago?"
Gyrus: 'Oh, is it only one per customer?"
So no possibilities that Christ's Disciples or other Followers, would have the education or knowledge or know somebody that had the education or knowledge, to document anything in his Lifetime. So none of them were smart enough to say "Hey, this guy is getting famous and his miracles are pretty mind blowing. Um, I think we might need this in writing." Or Christ wouldn't be like "Look guys, word of mouth is cool for now but I have Prophecies about me. So maybe 1 or some of you 12 need to eventually learn to write all this down for Historical purposes. Start chiseling this in stone, make a rough draft and send it to a scribe or something. Cause Yea, I'm kind of a big deal."
Paul doesn't mention any miracles. Those were made up later. Jesus and his apostles were a traveling road show. They felt about as much need for "writing all of this down" as the average family circus feels a need for a three part Netflix documentary about their recent performance in Hucklebee, OH. ;-)
I suppose it isn’t impossible, but that’s pure speculation.
Oh there are there are other options; As much of the gospels is draw from Hebrew Bible - often verbatim. That is a possible source. The use of narrative to explain complex theological argument is a common practice. That is not making things up; it assumes folk did not recognise the nature of the stories. This would be like assuming you believe Adam was an actual person; I assume you do not; but the story remain relevant.
Simple logic escapes a great many people.
It's said that God intervenes to make sure the stories are not corrupted. But you have to believe the stories to have the idea of a God that could or would do that. It's circular.
I’ve always found the prerecorded segment intros that your editor drops in annoying, because they are usually just repeating something Megan just said, but it was especially annoying in this case as the editor dropped in the wrong intro
If it isn’t made up on the spot, and if it isn’t taken from another written account, then it’s oral tradition. There is no sign that the fishermen in Galilee were keeping diaries of what happened. Hence the gospels are records of oral traditions. What we see in the gospels is a tendency to magnify and elaborate stories, from Mark onwards, increasing numbers of healing miracles, data about birth and family trees etc., as well as a move to greater universal relevance. Presumably if we go the other way, these can be traced back to smaller and more local original events. This is such a common pattern in religious and other traditions, that it’s no great surprise.
Wow very good, thank you Dr Bart ehrman you are genial and honest man
Some things can be relayed orally almost perfectly from memory.. it's decades since I read the story to my kids, but I can tell you really accurately what The Gruffalo looked like. 😊
Absolutely true, this is easily done. The question is though, is this what is going on in christian literature? My answer is no! Take the example of John the Baptist as related by the author of Mark. He is the very first writer, c.75CE to make an association between Jesus & the Baptist, no previous christian writer knew anything at all about any relationship between the two men. That is pretty suspicious to start with. Mark describes his appearance but not by rely on anybody's crystal clear memory of the man, how could he? He was writing in a foreign language (koine Greek) in a foreign country. Mark's source of information was the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew OT scriptures. The lines about John's appearance have been ripped straight out of scripture in a literary process called Pesher. Mark used the same source for John's dialogue & other information like his diet! There is absolutely no evidence that Mark is relying on the razor sharp memory of any eyewitness, none at all!
Megan is stunning, I am in love 😍
The question I have how did the bible writers know what happened at the trial of Jesus? who was there to witness the same with the birth of Jesus.
How did J.K. Rowling know what happened after Harry Potter's birth? :-)
The circular face-window point goes to . . . Megan
7:00 I'm only a few minutes in and maybe he'll cover this later ... as far as oral traditions or "making things up". Given how the more supernatural elements seem to increase with the later gospels, I'd gather those elements are less likely to have had their source in oral traditions and would represent a desire by the later authors to fabricate material for their own reasons.
Huh? Oral tradition is more likely to include embellishment and all that sort of stuff, there's no real stuff to compare it to or fact-check.
@@malchir4036 It's just that it's the later material, John in particular, that seems to have more of the supernatural stuff. It looks to me like the story got more and more embellished with time, i.e. that the supernatural bits were added in later.
What you said also makes sense. Maybe John was including oral traditions that coexisted alongside the writing of the earlier gospels and that's where the progressive elaboration came in. That starts to make sense, in fact. During that period (around 70-120 CE) there were many apocryphal gospels floating around as well. Mark, Matthew and Luke weren't yet considered the "canonical" gospels. They were still just 3 accounts among many. John may represent the next generation of oral embellishment.
@@fepeerreview3150 If John got it from non-surviving texts, then it wouldn't be oral tradition.
Kinda the major problem with the entire oral tradition narrative from some scholars is that it ignores how highly literary the gospels are. They're lifting straight from the septuagint, they're borrowing themes and incidents from Homer and other playwrights.
Hell Paul straight up says that he knows of Jesus from scripture and revelation. There's no reason to think there was an oral tradition and several to think that there never was one.
@@fepeerreview3150 I've always considered John to be just (proto-)Gnostic, indifferent to Q which is often considered the oral tradition source. Lots of Gnostics thought dreams were a source of knowledge, at that point all gloves are off and it's just who dreamt the better story rather than history or oral tradition.
@Bart D. Ehrman
Between @8:18 and @8:32, you said that Mark was not one of the disciples, can you tell us who are the people who were the disciples??
The bible gives the names of 12 disciples of Jesus who were regularly around him: it also said that he gave power to, and sent out, another 70 disciples: do you know the names of any of the 70??
The bible also speaks of an hundred and twenty disciples at the time of Pentecost: did these, at least 25 others, become disciples after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus or before he was crucified??
Acts 12:12
And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying.
Seeing that the house of Mary, the mother Mark, was a regular gathering place, can you say whether the gathering started before the crucifixion of Jesus or after his resurrection??
Can you say at what time did Mark become a disciple??
The bible tells us that all who believed were together, and that they had all things in common.
Acts 2:44
And all that believed were together, and had all things in common;
The bible tells us about the things which shows that a person believed.
Mark 16:17
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues
Is Mark among the gathering simply because it is his mother's house or is Mark also one who believed??
● Here is a question: was there an oral tradition about Moses which was going around before the Torah was written down??
● The only information which presents a character that represents Jesus is found in the gospels: if the gospels were not written before 70 AD, with whom were the disciples identifying when they preached what they preached??
The disciples preached of Jesus of Nazareth.
Acts 2:22
Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know.
● Can the verse above, as a preaching, be effective with people, outside of Jerusalem, who did not interact with Jesus??
Who Jesus of Nazareth is can only be confirmed through the information in the gospels.
● The people who were preached to in Acts 2:22 had other information, with which to confirm, what the disciples were preaching.
● The gospels provides evidence of a being who exists: the other books present the relations which this being has, with the world.
● An oral tradition of Jesus, before the gospels, is like the cart traveling the road before the horse.
Apparently there are still oral traditions of Jesus going around in the Middle East to this day. Odd how the early Muslims spent huge amounts chasing down all the traditions of Muhammed that they could find and analyse, whereas Christians have made no attempt to do the same.
What did the Apostles and other people who had followed around the historical Jesus SAY about his miracles and self identification? They lied about him walking on water, making bread out of air, raising the dead, healing crippled people? Ok, if not, maybe they just let people believe the rumors. But they must have known that to interest folks, Clark Kent had to become Superman.
Oral tradition reminds me of a comedian workshopping a bit with many different audiences & fine tuning it until until you have the final bit for the recorded comedy special.
So a god who decides to send himself or his son to be sacrificed for the salvation of his creation, bases the worthiness of one’s soul for Eternal life on their belief in the plan? This plan by the way being disseminated by “inspired text” without a coherent narrative or any other objectively remarkable qualities? Seems like going a long way to avoid offending “faithful colleagues”
Hello, has anyone seen Bart get in the debate ring with a Rabbi? My mind has changed quite a bit on religion. I have to claim agnostic. One of the most disturbing things to me is the lack of debate between talented thinking Rabbi‘s v Christians. I’m not saying they don’t exist just that I can’t seem to find them. I know Bart claims to be a gentle atheist. But, is there a not cringe debate between a Christian and a Rabbi?
There's no such thing as read only human memory. Every time you retrieve a memory, you modify it. Even if infinitesimally. It just happens that the way you retrieve a memory is part of the mechanism to modify it.
Normally people probably were left on the cross, but Pontius Pilate was known to take bribes so it is quite possible Jesus was buried that day.
Starts 3:33.
Telephone is not the same, in the old world people were skilled at memorizing and recitation.
My own great uncle could recite stories and poems that went on for hours and still could as a very old man.
Telephone is played by untrained kids.
I actually went to sleep , face đown on my desk, during a film in archeology class.😮
Perhaps someone can enlighten me! I have just read the 2 accounts mentioned in Luke and Mark about Jairus and his daughter. I'm in the NIV! Both stories recount that Jairus came to Jesus whilst his daughter was still alive. Both then state that he was informed that his daughter had subsequently died. One account relates that one person told him, another that more than one told him. This difference is negligible. I don't understand what Bart is stating here.
Ah, but listen again to what Bart says at 27:47. He's comparing the story in Mark 5:22 - 43 (the daughter is dying) with the story not in Luke 8:41 - 56, but in *Matthew* 9:18 - 26 (the daughter is already dead).
@dorothysatterfield3699 Thanks for that. It's pretty obvious they are all recounting the same stories . We could go deeper into this. If Matthew got his story from Mark, Why did he change it? It seems to me that all 3 stories don't show much deviation after 40 years from what probably happened. In Matthew the events are much briefer than in the other Gospels, which is odd since Mark is the shorter Gospel! Discuss!
@@johnstewart3244I guess I'm weird. I consider being very sick quite different to being dead
@hive_indicator318 As far as I understand it, she was dead in all 3 stories! And was brought to life in all 3, by the power of God in Christ@ 😁 But there are differences, I grant you. The question is that they are not big enough for us to decide that they are different stories, but the details are different. We would expect this in any eye witness testimony of a crime. Bart has previously stated on recorded that some of these stories in the Gospels were just copied from each other. However in this case the differences in my opinion rule this out!
I’m understanding he is comparing two stories related to a young girl’s death in Matthew 9:18 and what happened in Mark. Vastly different. As you say, Mark and Luke are quite similar.
Approximately 28 minutes into the podcast.
This was a problem I had with the new testament. God is supposed to be all knowing, yet the best way to record the story of Jesus was through oral tradition? Jesus had at least 30 years to get ready before his ministry and didn't even write down a single letter?
I agree on Roman crucifixion. The ultimate shame came in being left on the cross to decompose.
....i don't feel like listening to TaterHead speculate anymore....
Bart, your grandfather was not Jesus benyosef.
What a collection of specs Megan.
One can assess that what gospels say about jesus, isn't accurate neither reliable because of it's oral origin and was "contaminated" by the beliefs of the moment they were written, correct me if I'm wrong, but Paul's letters and Mark's gospel were written about the same time??
Paul's letters are usually dated from 48AD to the early 60s, depending on the letter. Mark is usually dated around 70AD - right after the destruction of the temple or possibly during the war leading up to that.
Close from our distance, but still a noticeable gap.
Paul did not write much about what Jesus said or did, either. His focus was on the communities, faith, practice, doctrine, not the life and sayings of Jesus.
Most likely neither Paul nor Mark ever met Jesus.
@@kelvinmurphy2108as far as I know neither Paul nor Mark claimed to have known Jesus while he was alive.
Is western scholarship unaware of devices used to preserve oral teachings? Or do they not apply here?
Bart's approach to Jesus and his "agnosticism" reminds me of when WWE or Moody Bible Institute pays a guy to play heel or to offer up storylines and accusations the audience knows is said to make them boo despite not damaging the Face one bit.
..but the oral story wouldn't necessarily change from one person to the next. The original story teller would have been one of the original disciples and that disciple would repeats the same thing over and over and over for years and years and the people listening would pretty much have the original story intact....
I would love a presentation on the last supper. He really wanted us to repeatedly eat his flesh and drink his blood?
There were no oral traditions. This is made up by mid 19th German scholarship
“There were no oral traditions”? Are you listening to yourself? You think people in the 1st century when few people could write weren’t passing along stories orally?
The part Meghan brings up around 12:00 about Homer and other forms of ancient oral traditions is a good one and I think Bart kind of glosses over it. From my understanding, outside of Biblical (and maybe even just NT?) scholarship about oral tradition focuses on exactly what she's talking about: ways that cultures deliberately use memorization tactics to pass on stories through generations. This actually works fairly well and while there's undoubtedly change, it's nothing like the rapid evolution we see in the decades between Jesus's life and the Gospels.
Bart, and NT scholars more generally I think, uses "oral tradition" to cover any kind of oral transmission of the stories. Anything outside of writing them down. Which is confusing if you're used to the sense of oral tradition used to discuss pre-literate cultures.
This was just people preaching and telling the stories to convert others. More like a game of whispers than actual oral tradition.
They get into it more later but one thing he doesn't really emphasize is that Judea wasn't actually an oral culture with traditions to try to minimize changes. However bad such cultures are at preserving stories over time isn't really relevant, because the early Christians weren't even doing that. This doesn't rise to the level of oral tradition, but just hearsay and word of mouth.
Sorry. There seems to be a lot of talking but not much was actually said on the subject matter.
Probably because there's not much known about it..
See:
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
What stories did Jesus tell about himself and his origins? At what point did Joseph exit the picture and what did Mary tell young Jesus? Many of the stories we tell about ourselves are not our own memories but our memories of what our parents told us about our early selves.
We don't know if there's anything tradition at all to the birth narratives. Neither Paul nor Mark mention anything strange about his birth or parentage. That story comes in with Matthew and Luke and it comes in two different forms. It's likely that it originated late, as the idea of Jesus as the Son of God grew from an adoption understanding to a more literal one.
That said, if anyone knew, it would have been James the brother of Jesus. It might be telling that we don't see the story until texts that date to after his death.
U-KNOW... The gospels are NOT the Bible. Just saying... That will help to set up the Books that did not make the Canonical set... Where it is sad to say, the writings of Paul dominate.
"Pre-existing oral traditions" found outside the canonicals? That's a good place to start-in no particular order...
1. Source Q (Quella);
2. Joseph Atwill connection with the Roman campaign of CE 66-70;
3. The Gospel of Thomas from Nag Hammadi; and
4. A close study of Josephus.
5. Gospel of Peter... Is this an 'Acts' for Mark? Was it was overwritten by later scribes who added the supernatural stuff? Were the gospels before 70 CE intended to have a 'life of Jesus' Part I; and a post-Jesus Part II? Luke-Acts; John-Revelations; and Mark or Matthew-Peter?
"Given the fact that we have these different gospels based on oral traditions," what can we know about the historical Jesus?
The right answer: Not much. WE have to move out of the canonicals, without leaving them behind.
The bible is the bible is the bible, kid. ;-)
40 years is not so long…
What was Donald Trump like 40 years ago?
But 40 years without writing and RUclips? It's an eon.
About the accuracy of oral tradition. There is room to believe that poetry was devised in order to preserve the accuracy of oral transfer of infromation. For example, the rules of metered Welsh verse (cynghannedd) are of a complexity that is at the same time accessible to the general, naturally cultured, population while also allowing for practically no variation from one telling to the next i.e. in a given phrase only a particular set of words in a particular order would fit.
But most of the gospels are prose
I wasn't talking about the gospels. I was referring to Bart's comments about oral traditions generally and his inference that they could never be accurate. The purpose of my comment was to point out that he was making a sweeping statement, one that was not true in every case of oral tradition.
Sorry, implication not inference.
You are sort of making the same point that Bart made when he spoke about the Homeric tradition, but reaching the opposite conclusion.
Ehrman doesn't seem to consider the difficulty of his acceptance of the historicity of Jesus, Paul, Peter, James. there is a blank spot in his account that doesn't seem really honest. His claim that the New Testament is basically mythology doesn't match what he accepts as factual
As a former atheist...when you search for truth, people like Barth help to understand PHds can not help to be wiser....try again......
Misrepresenting Jesus by Edward D. Andrews (a book answering Barth book)
..have the answer to Bart's delusions.....