Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet  

The Quest for the Historical Jesus is the single most important issue in Academic New Testament Studies in modern times. This scholarly endeavor is heavily laden with significant theological ramifications. Ehrman's position especially has serious implications for Christianity's central teaching of Jesus as the true Messiah of the Jews, a Messiah who was also God incarnate and therefore infallible. If Jesus was indeed an Apocalyptic Prophet, he was a failed Apocalyptic Prophet, because his prophecies about the end of the world did not come true (cf. Synoptic Apocalypse; Mark 9:1; 13:30; 14:62; John 21:20-24). But this presents us with a paradox: Why would the Christian ecclesiastical authorities, who created the Canon, leave in the pages of the New Testament a series of failed prophecies by the man they were hailing as the divine second person of the Holy Trinity, who is "true God who came out of true God" and is made of the "same substance" as his Father God? Could it be perhaps because they were aware of the very low (15%), and declining, literacy level of the population, the sparseness of personal copies of the New Testament, and their own established stranglehold on access to the Gospels themselves. The overwhelming majority of Christians in the medieval Christian world had access to the Gospels only through the lectionary passages from the Gospels that were read to them in church services by the priests. And the priests chose their passages well. But they could not have anticipated that hundreds of years in the future their work would be exposed by critical scholarship.

Or does the real solution to this problem lie with Mark himself, who lived about the time of the catastrophic Jewish War against the Romans. Could Mark in Rome have been hearing the war reports from Judea that no doubt told of the successes of the Roman legions against the Jews . . . that the legions had encircled Jerusalem and were about to break through the walls bringing destruction to its inhabitants? Could this have seemed like the end of the world to him and caused him to put the words of these failed prophecies into Jesus' mouth? After all, except for the entirely apocalyptic chapter 13, Jesus has very little to say in Mark, which is known as the Gospel of the Messianic Secret. Why is the secretive Markan Jesus suddenly waxing verbose just when he is talking about the end of the world? In short, is the Synoptic Apocalypse in Mark 13 not the words of Jesus, but the words of Mark?

We have seen that in the last chapter Ehrman set the foundation for his interpretation of the Historical Jesus with his study of the phenomenon of Apocalypticism in ancient Judea. In this chapter he presents his case for his position on Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet. Pay close attention to this discussion of Ehrman's arguments. His case for the Apocalyptic Jesus is based on his interpretation of Jesus' Apocalyptic Deeds, Teachings, and Death. The scholarly task is to analyze critically each of Ehrman's arguments and ask questions like those above.

The Beginning and End
as the Keys to the Middle pp. 257-259

• Ehrman's position along general lines:

If John the Baptist was Apocalyptic, and Paul was Apocalyptic,
then Jesus, as the link between them, must also have been Apocalyptic.

• What was the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist?

  The tremendous disagreement among the Gospels on Jesus' baptism;
  hardly supports a strong connection between Jesus and John the Baptist
   

  • Mark gives no indication that there was any association
    between Jesus and John the Baptist before Jesus' actual Baptism

  • Matthew presents us with a serious contradiction:
     

    • Did John hesitate to baptize Jesus because he knew who Jesus was,
      that Jesus did not need repentance and forgiveness of sins as in Matt 3?
      
      Or . . .
    • Did John not know who Jesus was and had to send his own disciples
      to ask "the Messiah" if he was the one to come
      or if John needed to wait for another as in Matt 11?

  • Luke presents us with a similar contradiction:
     

    • Did John know Jesus before either of them were even born as in Luke 2?
       
      • Did the six-month old fetus John in his mother Elizabeth's womb
        recognize the newly conceived fetus Jesus in his mother Mary's womb?
      • Were John and Jesus cousins as Luke indicates,
        and probably interacted while growing up within an extended family?
        
        Or . . .
    • Did John have to send his disciples to ask Jesus
      if he was the "one to come" as in Luke 7/Matt 11?

    Note that both Matthew and Luke derived their story,
    of John not knowing Jesus, from the Q source;
    they were also essentially in agreement with each other,
    individually and in different degrees,
    that John did know Jesus before the baptism.

  • The Gospel of John clearly states twice
    that John the Baptist had no previous knowledge of Jesus

The Question before us:

• Can we discern with any confidence from these contradictory sources, what the actual relationship was between Jesus and John the Baptist?
• Can this confusing evidence support a hypothetical apocalyptic connection?

• What was the relationship between Jesus and Paul?

  The evidence also raises doubts about contacts between Jesus and Paul
   

  • On the contrary, Paul enters the historical scene
    as the archenemy of the true disciples of Jesus.
    When Paul joins the Jesus movement after his alleged conversion,
    he again assumes a position of opposition to Jesus' genuine apostles.
    
    

  • Paul was divisive in whatever context we find him;
    he was always opposed to Jesus' true apostles,
    whether as an agent of the Temple priests sent to arrest them,
    or as a self-proclaimed rival apostle who opposed them,
    claiming that his "gospel" and his "Jesus" were superior to theirs.
    
    

  • Did whatever Jesus say or do in his lifetime have anything to do with Paul?
    Since he never knew Jesus, should Paul even be considered as a factor
    in determining whether or not Jesus was an Apocalyptic Prophet?
    Just because Paul believed that the end was at hand,
    can this reasonably be cited as evidence of a similar perception in Jesus?

Read and Consider:

• What to Expect, p. 261

The Apocalyptic Deeds of Jesus, pp. 261-270

• The Crucifixion of Jesus:
   

  • Was Jesus a threat to the political and social order
    of Roman-occupied, priest-dominated Judea,
    and therefore a radical apocalypticist?

  • It would be helpful to consider who was responsible for Jesus' death?
     

    1. the Jewish religious authorities?
       
       Or did the Gospel writers portray the Jews as being responsible,
       to distinguish themselves from the Jews in the eyes of the Romans,
       especially since the Romans had just destroyed Judea in a catastrophic war?
       Matthew, John, and the Gospel of Peter are all patently anti-Jewish

    2. the Romans?
       
       Or did the Gospel writers exonerate the Romans of responsibility,
       to present Christianity to the Roman world in a positive light;
       Pilate is presented as a benign figure attempting to free Jesus,
       yet "Pilate is known to history as a ruthless administrator,
       insensitive to the needs and concerns of the people he governed,
       willing to exercise brutal force whenever it served Rome's interests"

    3. Both?
• The Temple Incident: Jesus causes a riot in the Temple
   

  • Did the Romans see Jesus' deliberate provocative act as a threat?
    Did they see Jesus as the leader of a rogue Judean religious movement,
    a rabble rouser who must be neutralized along with his followers?

  • Did the Jewish religious authorities perceive Jesus as a threat
    to their position of power and preeminence in society?
    Matthew's Jewish Jesus was not a problem in this respect,
    but the Jesus of Matthew 6 and Q/Thomas definitely was;
    promoting a direct relationship with God without priestly mediation.
    This teaching would have diminished Temple revenues and Tithes,
    and certainly would have raised the ire of the Priests against Jesus

  • Recent research shows that the Temple of Jerusalem,
    as was characteristic of many ancient near eastern temples,
    served as the central Bank of Jerusalem (the priests were the cashiers)
    performing most of the functions that modern banks do.
    Was Jesus a conscientious reformer of a corrupt religious system?
    Was he a social reformer trying to promote more equality in Judea?

• Jesus' Associations: Did they brand him
  as an anti-establishment apocalypticist?
   

  • Did Jesus choose 12 disciples (and even this is suspect)
    to indicate his movement as a new apocalyptic, Israel?
     

    • Where does the "beloved disciple" from John fit in,
      and Jesus' inner circle of 3 whom Paul calls the "Pillars of the Church"?
    • And what about Jesus' brother James, who was not one of the 12,
      but was the actual leader of the Jesus movement after Jesus' death.
      Paul knew James and said Jesus appeared to James as he did to the 12.
      Why wouldn't one of the 12 be leader, such as Peter or John?

  • Why did Jesus associate with inappropriate elements of Jewish society,
    prostitutes, sinners, tax collectors, non-Torah observant Jews?
    Jesus himself was from the lower stratum of society,
    son of a single mother, a seamstress, with at least six siblings.
    Who else would he associate with in this socially stratified society?

  • Why didn't Jesus associate with the "paragons" of Jewish society,
    the religious elite, priests, Pharisees, scribes?
    Instead he avoided them and set himself at odds with them.
    If Jesus was from the lower classes,
    from neither royal nor priestly lineage,
    how could he be accepted into the ranks of the elite?
    Could he have simply been a man of the people,
    painfully aware of their wretched situation
    from his own personal life experience?

• Jesus as Exorcist and Healer:
  Were his Miracles Signs of the End of the World?
   

  • If Jesus did more and greater miracles than the OT prophets,
    is this necessarily an indication that his miracles were signs of the end times?
    Can we make such an assumption simply from the fact of the degree
    or number of miracles done by Jesus?

  • What about the early "Signs Source" of the Gospel of John?
    These miracles were intended as signs of Jesus' divine power;
    Ehrman himself characterizes John as a "de-apocalypticized" gospel.

The Apocalyptic Teachings of Jesus, pp. 270-275

• Is this solid ground on which to base a theory.
  Can we even know what Jesus said or did,
  given all the manipulations of his words and deeds
  that we have seen by the Gospel writers themselves?
  Also consider the earliest level of transmission of Jesus' message
  from oral tradition to the first recording of memories of his sayings;
  anything could have happened in those dark and clouded decades.

• Did Jesus think he was the Son of Man?
  The Criterion of Dissimilarity comes into play in this issue:
  If Jesus being the apocalyptic Son of Man
  was a central teaching of the early church,
  why are so many of Jesus' statements on the Son of Man
  so ambiguous as to whether he was referring to himself?
  Whether or not he thought he was the Son of Man,
  did Jesus think that the Son of Man was coming soon,
  which would make him apocalyptic?
  Consider the ambiguous Messianic concepts in early Judaism:
  Davidic King, Priest, cosmic Son of Man? (see Box 17.7)

• Do Jesus' statements about a reversal of the social order
  necessarily indicate a cosmic apocalypse?
  Could they be taken as the words of a social revolutionary,
  especially if what he was striving to reform was the religious establishment?
  Whose version of the Q Beatitudes is more correct? Luke's or Matthew's?
  Luke's Beatitudes are more socially oriented than Matthew's spiritual version;

• Box 17.8, was Jesus a proponent of "family values"?
  And if not, as a number of his sayings seem to indicate,
  would this make him more apocalyptic?
  Could Jesus have just been a radical social revolutionary,
  especially if he viewed the oppressive Judean religious establishment
  as the principle contributor to the inequitable social order in Judea?
   

The Apocalyptic Death of Jesus,

• Was Jesus aware of his impending death as apocalyptic?
  Or did he deliberately act in such a way (temple incident)
  that he would actually bring it about?
  Ehrman acknowledges that it is impossible to know for certain.
  Jesus did seem to go out of his way
  to aggravate the Jewish religious authorities;
  he consistently violated the sabbath laws,
  and his earliest sayings in Q/Thomas
  prompted his listeners to ignore the Torah.
  There is no better way to get oneself killed
  in a theocratic, priest-ruled society like ancient Judea!
  But can this behavior be explained just as well
  as socially and politically motivated,
  rather than apocalyptically driven?

• Box 17.9. What was the nature of Judas' betrayal of Jesus?
  Judas has been reevaluated in recent times
  in the scholarly world, but also in the world of film.
  Was Judas a disgruntled apocalypticist himself
  who was disappointed in the pacifist Jesus?
  Was Judas really convinced that Jesus was the Messiah
  and tried to prompt him to bring about Armageddon
  by orchestrating a confrontation with the Temple authorities
  who came to arrest him in the Gethsemane?
  Or was Judas' betrayal an actual plan devised by him and Jesus
  to force the arrest of Jesus and his subsequent apocalyptic death?
  Why did the Gospel of John seemingly go out of its way to present Judas
  as a thief who was interested only in the 30 pieces of silver?

• Consider the interesting parallels with modern fundamentalist Christians,
  who attempt to influence political and military events in the Middle East
  in order to prompt the heavenly Jesus to return sooner,
  so that they can claim their place in the coming Kingdom of Heaven.
  Could Judas have shared their hope to usher in the end sooner
  so they could quickly take their places with Jesus' elect in his kingdom?
  See Christian Megachurch Pastor John Hagee and 700 Club Comments,
  especially Pat Robertson's comments about 10 minutes into this clip.
  Wasilla, Alaska, Master's Commission trailer (a deeper look)

Boxes 17.1-3

• 17.1 - Q1, Q2, Q3 - Kloppenborg and Stratification of Q;
  Q1, the original Q is not apocalyptic in nature
  but was "apocalypticized" in later updated versions of Q: Q2, Q3

• 17.2 - Major scholars, Crossan, Koester, Robinson,
  cite early sources that do not have an apocalyptic Jesus, the Egerton Gospel;
  other scholars date Thomas earlier than Ehrman

• 17.3 - Burton Mack and the Cynic Philosopher Jesus;
  was Jesus' life modeled after Socrates?

Learn the Key Terms on p. 260 with special reference to their original context in the chapter