Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Ben Witherington

  • Lazarus: The Beloved Disciple

    This is finally a continuation of my series blogging through Ben Witherington’s book What Have They Done with Jesus? (Previous post here.) Part of the problem is that I have been very busy, and this book tends to fall through the crack. It’s not the sort of thing I read for my own devotions, yet it’s not my light bed time reading.

    But I’m also rather disappointed in it, because I don’t feel that it really is contributing that much to understanding of historical Jesus studies. It’s written at a popular level, so I don’t expect it to advance scholarship that much, but I frankly find the approach a bit bizarre.

    In chapters seven and eight, Witherington continues, this time dealing with the beloved disciple and thus possibly the author of John. He maintains that this is Lazarus. I’m not going to go into the details of his argument. You’ll have to buy his book for that. The historical data that he surveys is coming to this point is rather interesting. He surveys authorship issues in the book of Revelation, concluding that John of Patmos is neither John the apostle, nor to be equated with the author of the gospel or epistles. He believes that the same person wrote the epistles and the gospel, and of course that person was not John the apostle. The authorship issue is dealt with effectively.

    If he stopped at that point I would find it interesting. What’s disappointing is that he continues the process of trying to establish who Jesus is based on his restoration of these eyewitnesses. I find many conclusions in historical Jesus research are based on very limited evidence. In this case we have Lazarus based on very skimpy evidence, and then we see him used as a witness.

    To quote:

    Finally, let’s summarize what the material bequeathed to us by the Beloved Disciple tells us about Jesus. The first and perhaps most important conclusion we learn from examining this material closely is that there is no major gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ of later Christian faith . . . (p. 165)

    Say what? That may be true, though it would be another debate. But based on the information contained in this chapter? Hardly.

  • Search for the Historical Simon Peter II

    This post continues from this one and is part of my series blogging through Ben Witherington’s book What Have They Done with Jesus?

    This chapter continues the theme of the previous chapter. Witherington is creating profiles of the various claimed eyewitnesses in the New Testament and then using them to tell us about Jesus. With certain assumptions, this isn’t a bad plan. It makes for engaging reading. The problem for me is that I don’t accept all of the assumptions he uses, and without those, the procedure can look fairly silly.

    If I’m not convinced on the face of it that the book of Matthew, for example, is a totally reliable witness to the life of Jesus, then how will I be convinced that I know Peter based on that book, and that I can rely on the testimony of this “Peter reconstruction” to establish facts about Jesus.

    I should make one proviso here. Witherington has a number of chapters, most of the book, to go, and may do a better job of establishing the historical basis for accepting the source documents as reliable. I simply don’t see that he has done so yet.

    To illustrate my point, let me refer to pages 82-87 which discusses the incident with Cornelius. Early in this process Witherington makes this statement:

    … We can pretty much rule out the possibility that he made it up: it is hard to imagine Luke, who idolized and was a one-time companion of Paul, making up a story about Peter being the first missionary to the gentiles. … (p. 83)

    Now I see several problems here. Witherington makes the assumption that Luke-Acts was written by the companion of Paul, which implies a certain interpretation of the “we” passages in Acts. That’s a good possibility, and I’m inclined toward it myself, but it is not a consensus position. But then he makes the assumption that Luke would want to make Paul the initial apostle to the gentiles. I think even if the first assumption is good, Luke (whoever he was) shows that he wants to connect Paul more closely with the Jerusalem church than Paul does himself. What better way to legitimize Paul’s mission than to claim that Peter actually opened the door?

    I see a much more favorable view of Jerusalem in Acts than there is in Paul’s epistles, and this would suggest that whether or not Luke idolized Paul (an uncertain statement), he apparently also wanted to present Paul as being on good terms with the Jerusalem church.

    There is a subtheme of these chapters that I do appreciate a great deal, and that is the place of women in the early church. Luke-Acts is a good place to find this theme presented. One shouldn’t be surprised that we occasionally have to read between the lines. For those who pay attention it is clear that Luke is giving a greater place to women and to non-Jews. Witherington tracks this theme very carefully.

    My negative comments should not be taken as meaning I’m not enjoying the book. Witherington writes quite well and it’s very interesting following his logic. As a presentation of one way of providing a profile of Jesus, it’s quite good and thorough. Thus far it has been instructive and interesting.

  • The Search for the Historical Simon Peter

    I’m continuing reading and blogging through Ben Witherington’s book What Have They Done with Jesus?, and have just finished chapter 3. This chapter discusses the person of Jesus. I would like to remind readers again that I’m blogging the experience of reading the book and not reviewing it. Thus my impressions result from where I am in reading at the moment. (The previous post in this series is here.)

    One might get the idea that Dr. Witherington is simply telling the story of Jesus and his companions as it can be extracted from the canonical materials. A large portion of both chapters 2 and 3 simply catalog what we have and add some speculation–educated speculation, but nonetheless still speculation.

    What seems to be missing here is the reasoning behind historical conclusions about these individuals. Toward the end of each chapter, however, we begin to get the point. Witherington is developing a profile of the people who are recorded as eyewitnesses to the life and most importantly (I believe) the resurrection of Jesus.

    Witherington is not a fundamentalist, and deals with the text that would not be possible under most common definitions of inerrancy. On page 59, for example, he says:

    . . . In this narrative [the call of Simon] the first words Jesus is said to have spoken to Simon are “You are Simonson of John; you shall be called Cephas.” It is likely that the Fourth Evangelist, in order to introduce his dramatis personae up front, has moved this tradition to this spot, for Simon received this nickname much later in the ministry, according to the synoptics. . . . (What Have They Done With Jesus?, p. 59)

    I would note two things. From the point of view of more liberal scholarship, this places a greater historical weight on the fourth gospel than many would place on it. From the point of most who accept inerrancy, it would have John either in error or lying, because Simon receives the name “Peter” at a different point in history. (Some could quite comfortably accommodate this issue by appealing to the literary genre and noting that readers probably did not expect chronological accuracy in such a document.

    Thus Witherington is by no means in the hard-line conservative camp that essentially constructs a history of Jesus based on harmonization of every detail of the gospel accounts.

    He carries on with a considerable discussion. Many readers will be interested in his discussion of “upon this rock” from Matthew 16, which Witherington does believe apply to Peter, but in particular to Peter who is confessing. He suggests that while in that text it particular it may have meant Peter himself, it can be extended to all those who make a similar confession.

    So why are we going into all this detail with regard to Peter? It is because of this question that I’ve titled my blog post as I have. Witherington moves from the discussion of who Peter is historically to making the assertion that Peter was in a position to know what Jesus confessed about himself in his lifetime. Thus he says:

    . . . These stories about interconnections within the inner circle must make some sense, and they bear a telling witness to the fact that Jesus was seen and confessed as a messianic figure both before and after his death on a cross. No one knew this better than Peter, and no one would have been more vehement in rebuttal of the suggestion that Jesus had not presented himself in an exalted and messianic ight during his ministry. He became a shepherd of Jesus’s flock for a good reason: he knew the Story, he belieed in the Christ, and he accepted his commission. In the next chapter we will see what the post-Easter Peter has to say to us about these things. (ibid. 76)

    Update: It looks like my conclusion is missing. Thus far I see substantial profiles of claimed eyewitnesses presented without sufficient basis for the claim that the canonical gospels themselves are historically reliable at this level of detail. I’m hoping this will be covered further down the line.

  • What Have They Done with Jesus? – III

    I continue blogging through What Have They Done with Jesus by Ben Witherington with chapter 2. In the first chapter we were introduced to two women, Joanna, whom Witherington connects with Junia (Acts 16:7) and Mary Magdalene. This second chapter focuses on Mary Magdalene and what we can know about her, not to mention things we can know are not so.

    This is a long chapter, beginning on page 27 and ending on page 51. The reason for this is that Witherington has to provide the background of the documents that are used in fashioning various stories of Mary Magdalene. Few characters in literature have received the type of attention that she has. She is seen as everything from a prostitute to the wife of Jesus.

    It’s interesting that I just read Bart Ehrman’s book on Judas, and he also says that pretty much everything said about Mary Magdalene in literature is false. Note that on other points Ehrman and Witherington would disagree substantially.

    So what is Witherington’s approach? First he goes over the background of the gnostic documents and makes his case that they are largely later than the canonical materials. He also contends that they are much too different from the canonical gospels to come generally from the same source. I think he is on fairly solid ground in maintaining that the gnostic materials are late and have little claim to be good sources for the historical Jesus. The one exception here is the Gospel of Thomas, which I think has some value.

    Second, Witherington presents a highly negative view of gnosticism in general and asks why so many modern scholars, and particularly feminists tend to like it. I honestly find many negative things about gnosticism, but there are two potential problems here. First, we can just as easily judge gnosticism unfairly by modern standards. Second, most readers today will have a perspective that is more sympathetic to the orthodox viewpoint as it has been passed down. If we got the orthodox viewpoint in a more raw form, we might be less sympathetic. Asceticism and patriarchy were characteristics of both.

    There are a few pages in which it almost seems that Witherington is trying to give us a negative view of the value of the gnostic literature by means of giving us a negative view of gnosticism itself. That is not, in fact, his argument, but you have to read through the section to get to the point, which is that these folks were not primarily concerned with historical events.

    The one gnostic document that requires more discussion is the gospel of Thomas. I could wish Witherington had spent more time establishing the priority of ‘Q’ over the gospel of Thomas. As it is, the case is reasonable, even though Q is hypothetical. If Q did exist (something of which I’m not 100% convinced), then it would necessarily be quite early, and there is little likelihood that Thomas would be older.

    At the same time it is worth considering that if there were sayings collections, Thomas could also go back to an older source. That would be hypothetical, but certainly not out of the question. I personally would treat Thomas as largely independent source for sayings, though I wouldn’t accept it as sole evidence, and it certainly appears to be a 2nd century compilation.

    It’s a bit odd to discover at the end of this chapter that all this discussion results in the simple conclusion that we know remarkably little about Mary Magdalene. Witherington then makes a number of strong statements about the historicity of the canonical statements about her, and based on those statements about the historicity of the resurrection itself. On this point I think he is on less solid ground. He is right to apply a full measure of skepticism to the gnostic gospels.

    I find it remarkable that so many scholars regard them as highly as they do with reference to the historical Jesus. Yet a historian must use similar skepticism on the canonical gospels. Witherington himself says much the same thing. Yet I don’t see it in practice up to this point. (Please remember that I’m blogging through and not reviewing. I am reporting my state of mind at this point, not my final conclusions.) I will be watching for a similar level of analysis of the canonical sources as I continue to read.

  • What Have They Done with Jesus? – II

    It has been some time since I wrote my first post on this book. I have been distracted by other matters.

    The first chapter really builds very little on the principles I described in my first post. Rather this deals with the historical clues we have in the gospels about two women: Joanna and Miriam of Migdal, more commonly known as Mary Magdalene.

    Working from a few historical clues, Witherington proposes to identify Joanna with Junia of Romans 16:7, who was prominent among the apostles. Having seen how annoyed some complementarians get at the suggestion that this Junia is a real apostle, I have to wonder what their reaction will be to Witherington’s proposal that she is actually the Joanna who traveled with Jesus, witnessed the crucifixion, and then, he says, was likely present at Pentecost. For the arguments in favor of this, you’ll have to get the book and read the chapter. I will just say that I have always been convinced Junia was an apostle in the fullest sense of the word, and Witherington has added to that conviction. The connection with Joanna of the Gospel of Luke is more tenuous, but not implausible.

    As for Miriam of Migdal, Witherington says several things which I had just read in Ehrman’s The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Basically both point out that most of the things we believe about her are simply not present in the text. There is nothing to suggest she was a prostitute, nor that she was Jesus’ wife. Other than the statement that seven demons had been cast out of her, none of these details are even suggested. Witherington focuses on the story of John 20 which makes her a witness to the resurrection.

    I would agree here that the story of the women as the initial witnesses to the resurrection has the ring of truth to it, if on no other basis than the criterion of embarrassment. Had the disciples not run away, it is doubtful they would have invented such a story, and had they not first heard the story of the resurrection from women, it is doubtful they would have created that story either.

    So much for chapter 1. I’ll keep blogging chapter by chapter.

  • Witherington: What Have They Done with Jesus?

    I have two books on my “to be read” shelf that I also intend to blog through. Since I just completed Random Designer, by Dr. Richard Colling, and I have Francis Collins, The Language of God which also deals with evolution, I decided to take Ben Witherington III, What Have They Done with Jesus? next. I’ll get to Collins’ book next.

    In addition to giving me a change of subject, its topic is also closer to areas in which I have some expertise. The word “some” should be noted here–I’m not a New Testament scholar. I’m largely a popularizer, and my academic training emphasized Hebrew scriptures. But working in a church, rather than an academic environment, I have been forced to spend a great deal of time on the New Testament just because that’s what most church members want to study.

    My procedure for blogging through a book is to read a chapter or block of chapters and then write my reaction on the blog immediately, rather than read the whole book and then write a more comprehensive review. This can result in some need to correct my impressions later, and in the case of Random Designer, that did happen. It is perhaps a slightly post-modern way to read a book, but I don’t think I’m very post-modern, so maybe I do it just for fun.

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