Paul’s Invention of the Eucharist

In 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, we have Paul’s account of the institution of the Eucharist, or what he calls the “Lord’s Supper”:

Ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου, ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν, ὅτι ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ᾗ παρεδίδετο ἔλαβεν ἄρτον καὶ εὐχαριστήσας ἔκλασεν καὶ εἶπεν, τοῦτό μού ἐστιν τὸ σῶμα τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν• τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν. ὡσαύτως καὶ τὸ ποτήριον μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι, λέγων, τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι• τοῦτο ποιεῖτε, ὁσάκις ἐὰν πίνητε, εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν. ὁσάκις γὰρ ἐὰν ἐσθίητε τὸν ἄρτον τοῦτον καὶ τὸ ποτήριον πίνητε, τὸν θάνατον τοῦ κυρίου καταγγέλλετε ἄχρις οὗ ἔλθῃ.

“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was delivered up, took bread and, having given thanks, broke it and said: ‘this is my body for your sake; do this in remembrance of me.’ Similarly, with the cup after supper, saying, ‘this cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this as often as you drink it, for my remembrance.’ For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:23–26).

The Eucharist described by Paul, in this cultic form, places the emphasis on Jesus’s body and blood as bread and wine consumed by Christians, and this is made explicit in 1 Corinthians 10:16–17:

τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας ὃ εὐλογοῦμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία ἐστὶν τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ; τὸν ἄρτον ὃν κλῶμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστιν; ὅτι εἷς ἄρτος, ἓν σῶμα οἱ πολλοί ἐσμεν, οἱ γὰρ πάντες ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἄρτου μετέχομεν.

“the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we the many are in the body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Corinthians 10:16–17)

There are a number of scholars who think that Paul is the author of the Eucharist (Lietzmann 1979: 208; Loisy 1948: 230–235), and that, in this form in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, it does not go back to the historical Jesus.

Most notably, Hyam Maccoby revived this thesis in his work on the apostle Paul (Maccoby 1991a and 1991b).

There are a number of reasons why it is convincing, as follows:

(1) the verb παρέλαβον means “received” and, despite arguments to the contrary, can refer either to

(1) receiving something by revelation or vision, or
(2) from human beings by instruction.

To see that even Paul uses παρέλαβον in the sense of “receiving” something by revelation, we need only look at Galatians 1:11–12:

Γνωρίζω δὲ ὑμῖν, ἀδελφοί, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν ὑπ᾽ ἐμοῦ ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον• οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό, οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην, ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

For I make known to you, brothers, that the gospel preached by me is not according to man, nor did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but [sc. I received it] through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11–12)

In the last part of the passage, we have three clauses:

(1) οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό,
(2) οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην,
(3) ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [sc. παρέλαβον αὐτό].

(1) nor did I receive it from man,
(2) nor was I taught it
(3) but [sc. I received it] through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

The main verb in the first clause is παρέλαβον, the same verb used in 1 Corinthians 11:23.

Paul says “nor did I receive it [sc. my gospel] from man,” and it is obvious that, although he does not repeat the verb in the final clause, it is omitted (that is, this last part of Galatians 1:12 has no verb and is elliptical), and is to be understood as the verb of the last sentence by ellipsis: “but [sc. I received it] through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (see Boer 2011: 82).

Therefore Paul is perfectly capable of using παρέλαβον in the sense of revelation directly from the risen Jesus. The verb παρέλαβον seems to have been used in the Mystery religions for receiving mysteries and revelations as well (Maccoby 1991: 248; Schweitzer 1967: 266).

(2) Apologists argue that the Greek preposition apo (“from”) in the phrase “For I received from (apo) the Lord” indicates an indirect or remote source of information, while para indicates a direct and immediate source.

But the fact is that neither usage is some absolute rule never broken: the author of Colossians 1:17 uses apo in his statement “as you learned from Epaphras,” and Matthew 11:29 uses apo in “learn from me” (Maccoby 1991: 247).

The meaning of the passage should be quite clear: Paul is saying he received in a vision or revelation from Jesus what follows concerning the Eucharist.

(3) When Jesus says, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood,” this must be understood as requiring Paul’s gospel of salvation by faith and the abolition of the Torah (the Mosaic law). The Greek word diatheke (διαθήκη) or “covenant” is the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) translation of the Hebrew word berith (“covenant”). Paul refers to the Mosaic law as the “old covenant” at 2 Corinthians 12:14, and he says it has been done away with in Christ (that is, in Paul’s new gospel). At 2 Corinthians 3:6 we read that Christians are

διακόνους καινῆς διαθήκης, οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος• τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ.

“servants of a new covenant, not of one written in letters, but in the spirit: for the written [sc. covenant] kills, but the spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

This is a juxtaposition of the written Mosaic law/Torah (which the Jerusalem church still followed and thought was indispensable to make the Jewish Christians just) with the new covenant of freedom from the Torah in Paul’s gospel of justification by faith and abolition of the Mosaic law by Christ’s death on the cross.

Paul’s use of he kaine diatheke (“the new covenant”) is a clear reference to the new covenant Paul thinks God has made through Jesus’s death and resurrection, and proclaimed in Paul’s own original gospel of freedom from the Mosaic law, part of which he laid before the “Pillars” (the Jewish disciples of Jesus) in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:1–2). This passage, then, and the Eucharistic words of Jesus presuppose the radical Pauline gospel which the Pillars had not even heard when Paul presented it to them as described in Galatians 2:1–2. The Pillars had known of no such gospel from the historical Jesus, and they remained observant Jews as the Acts of the Apostles makes clear.

It is highly unlikely that the historical Jesus ever said any of the words Paul attributes to him, especially with their cannibalistic overtones, which would have been anathema to Torah observant Jews.

This strongly supports the view that Paul was the inventor of the Eucharist. Paul did not simply “invent” the Eucharist by borrowing the rite from the pagan mystery religions, however. He created it from some imagined, deluded “vision” from what he thought was the heavenly Jesus (whether this “vision” was a mere dream or oral and visual hallucination we cannot say).

If there was any influence from paganism, this must have been an “unconscious” influence on Paul, and I mean “unconscious” without any questionable and ridiculous Freudian concepts here. Paul lived and breathed in the ancient pagan cities of the eastern Mediterranean with their mystery religion rites, where pagans had their own “Lord’s suppers.” In Paul’s own home city of Tarsus, there was a cult centre of Mithras worship, in which initiates would be bathed in the blood of the bull as a rite (Wilson 1998: 25–26; cf. Coutsoumpos 2005: 19–20). Who knows how exposure to this world could have affected Paul’s mind when he dreamed or hallucinated?


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boer, Martinus C. de. 2011. Galatians: A Commentary, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Ky.

Casey, M. 1993, “No Cannibals at Passover,” Theology 96: 199–205.

Coutsoumpos, Panayotis. 2005. Paul and the Lord's Supper: A Socio-Historical Investigation, Peter Lang, New York and Oxford.

Goulder, M. D. 1995, St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY.

Hoffman, D. L. 1998, “Ignatius and Early Anti-Docetic Realism in the Eucharist,” Fides et Historia 30: 74–88.

Lietzmann, Hans. 1979. Mass and Lord’s Supper: A Study in the History of the Liturgy (trans. D. H. G. Reeve), Brill, Leiden.

Loisy, A. F. 1948. The Birth of the Christian Religion (trans. L. P. Jacks), G. Allen & Unwin, London.

Maccoby, H. 1986. The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1st edn.), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.

Maccoby, H., 1991a. “Paul and the Eucharist,” New Testament Studies 37: 247–269.

Maccoby, H. 1991b. Paul and Hellenism, SCM Press, London.

Schweitzer, Albert. 1967. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (trans. W. Montgomery; 2nd edn.), Black, London.

Wilson, A. N. 1998. Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London.

Bibliography of Lexicons and Grammars for Classical Latin

There are good surveys in David M. Schaps, Handbook for Classical Research, (Routledge, London and New York, 2011); and Fred W. Jenkins, Classical Studies: A Guide to the Reference Literature (2nd edn.; Libraries Unlimited, Westport, Conn. and London, 2006).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Latin Lexicons and DictionariesI.1 Etymological Dictionaries

Ernout, Alfred and Alfred Meillet. 2001. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine: histoire des mots (repr. of 4th edn. with additions and corrections), Klincksieck, Paris.

Vaan, Michiel Arnoud Cor de. 2008. Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, Brill, Leiden and Boston.
This is now the standard work on Latin etymology.

Walde, Alois. 1938–1956. Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (3 vols.; 3rd edn. by J. B. Hofmann), Winter, Heidelberg.

I.2 Classical and Late Latin Lexicons and Dictionaries

Axelson, Bertil. 1945. Unpoetische Wörter: ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der lateinischen Dichtersprache, H.Ohlssons boktryckeri, Lund.

Estienne, Robert, 1543. Dictionarium: seu Latinae Linguae Thesaurus (2nd. edn.), ex officina Roberti Stephani, Paris.
An old work by Robert Estienne, which is available online at Gallica.

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, 1900– , B. G. Teubner, Leipzig
v.1. A–Amyzon; vol. 2. an–Byzeres; vol. 3. C–comus; vol. 4. con–cyulus; vol. 5. D–E; vol. 6. F–H; vol. 7. I-L; vol. 8. M; vol. 9.2. O; vol. 10. P–Praemonenda.
The TLL most detailed, authoritative work for Latin. It was begun 100 years ago and is up to the letter “p,” with etymologies, definitions, all attested spellings, what authors use the word, and specialised definitions. It is written in Latin.

Glare, P. G. W. (ed.). 1996. Oxford Latin Dictionary (repr. with corrections), Clarendon, Oxford.

Glare, P. G. W. (ed.). 2012. Oxford Latin Dictionary (2nd edn.), Oxford University Press, Oxford.
The most recent edition.

Glossa, A Latin Dictionary (based on Lewis and Short)
http://athirdway.com/glossa/
An online version of Lewis and Short’s A Latin Dictionary

Lewis, Charlton T. 1999. An Elementary Latin Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. 1998. A Latin Dictionary (based Andrews’ edition of Freund’s Latin dictionary), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Simpson, D. P. 1977. Cassell’s Latin Dictionary: Latin–English, English–Latin, Macmillan, New York.

Smith, William and Theophilus D. Hall. 2000. Smith’s English-Latin Dictionary, Bolchazy-Carducci, Wauconda, Illinois.

Souter, Alexander. 1957. A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A. D. (corr. edn.), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Souter, Alexander. 1996. A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A. D. (special edition), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Quicherat, Louis and Émile Chatelain. 1967 [1922]. Thesaurus Poeticus Linguae Latinae, Georg Olms, Hildesheim.

I.3 Medieval Latin Lexicons and Dictionaries

Blatt, Franz. 1957– . Novum Glossarium mediae Latinitatis: ab anno DCCC usque MCC Munksgaard, Hafniae.
One of the two best, most recent works for medieval Latin, but not yet complete. See also Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert.

du Cange, Charles du Fresne. 1883–1887. Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis (10 vols; exp. edn), Niort.
An older work for medieval Latin.

Forcellini, Egidio et al. 1771. Totius Latinitatis Lexicon, Typis Seminarii, Padua

Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert, 1959– . Beck, Munich.
One of the two best, most recent works for medieval Latin, but not yet complete. See also Blatt (1957– ).

Niermeyer, J. F. and C. van de Kieft. 2002. Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon minus (2 vols.; 2nd rev. edn by J. W. J. Burgers), Brill, Leiden.

Scheller, I. J. G. 1835. Lexicon Totius Latinitatis: A Dictionary of the Latin Language (based on orig. German edn. by I. J. G. Scheller; rev. and trans. into English by J. E. Riddle), University Press, Oxford 1835.

II. Latin Grammar and SyntaxII.1 Latin Grammars

Allen, J. H. and J. B. Greenough. 2006. Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar, Dover Publications, Mineola, N.Y. 2006.

Bennett, Charles E. 1918. New Latin Grammar, Allyn and Bacon, Boston.

Latin Word Study Tool
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?lang=la
An online resource to parse Latin words.

William Whitaker’s Words
http://archives.nd.edu/words.html
A parsing website with basic dictionary.

Devine, A. M. and Laurence D. Stephens. 2006. Latin Word Order: Structured Meaning and Information, Oxford University Press, New York.

Gildersleeve, Basil L. and Gonzalez Lodge. 1997. Latin Grammar (3rd rev. edn. rev.), Bristol Classical Press, London.

Goldman, Norma W. 2004. English Grammar for Students of Latin: The Study Guide for Those Learning Latin (3rd edn.), Olivia and Hill Press, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Hale, William Gardner and Carl Darling Buck. 1966. A Latin Grammar, U.P., Alabama.

Hale, William Gardner and Carl Darling Buck. 2010. A Latin Grammar, Nabu Press.
A recent reprinting.

Krebs, Johann Philipp. 1962. Antibarbarus der lateinischen Sprache (2 vols.), B. Schwabe, Basel.
A book on the nuances of Latin words.

Kühner, Raphael and Carl Stegmann. 1912. Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache (2nd edn.), Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover.
This is considered by many to be the best, most detailed Latin grammar.

Leumann, M., Hofmann, J. B. and A. Szantyr. 1977. Lateinische Grammatik (2 vols.), Beck, Munich.

Menge, Hermann. 2007. Lehrbuch der lateinischen Syntax und Semantik (3rd edn.), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt.

Moreland, Floyd L. and Rita M. Fleischer. 1990. Latin: An Intensive Course (9th pr. with corrections), University of California Press, Berkeley and London.

Schad, Samantha. 2007. A Lexicon of Latin Grammatical Terminology, Fabrizio Serra, Pisa.

Stearn, W. T. 2004. Botanical Latin: History, Grammar, Syntax, Terminology, and Vocabulary (4th edn), Newton Abbot : Portland, Ore.

Woodcock, E. C. 1985. A New Latin Syntax, Bristol Classical Press, Bristol.

II.2 Comparative Grammars

Buck, Carl. 1962. Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, University Press, Chicago.
Now out of date.

Sihler, Andrew L. 2008. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
The best modern treatment.

III. Latin PronunciationAllen, W. S. 2004. Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (2nd edn), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Barsby, J. A. 1983. “The Pronunciation of Latin,” Classicum 9.1, 14–16.

Brittain, F. 1955. Latin in Church: The History of its Pronunciation (rev. edn.), Mowbray for the Alcuin Club, London.

Copeman, H. 1996. Singing in Latin, or, Pronunciation Explor’d (rev. edn), H. Copeman, Oxford.

Sargeaunt, J., and Bradley, H. 1920. The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin, Oxford.

Walker, John. 1798. A Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names, London.

Walker, J. 1831. A Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names (rev. edn. by W. Trollope), London.

Westaway, F. W. 1930. Quantity and Accent in Latin: An Introduction to the Reading of Latin Aloud (2nd edn.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

IV. WebsitesTextkit
www.textkit.com

How Did Jesus Become “Son of God”?

In the Bible and ancient Jewish writings, the title “son of god” has a number of senses (see Fossum 1995), as follows:

(1) angels are sometimes called “sons of god” (Job 38.7);

(2) the people of Israel are sometimes metaphorically called son of god (Hos. 11:1), and

(3) the Israelite king is spoken of as god’s son (2 Sam. 7:14; see Cooke 1961 and Mettinger 1976: 259-275). Psalm 2 was an important example of this, in which the king of Israel is son of god at his enthronement:

“I will tell of the decree of the Lord: he said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you”. (Psalm 2.7).

This was part of Israelite royal ideology: the king became god’s son at his coronation (Goulder 1995: 147). It is also possible that the fragmentary Qumran document 4Q246 is a Messianic text calling the Messiah (which means “anointed/chosen one”) the “son of god,” in the Israelite royal sense, an expected future king of Israel who will be son of god in this way (Collins 1993; cf. Fitzmyer 1993).

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, there appears to be a pre-Pauline Christology where this idea is also attested:

εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ, ὃ προεπηγγείλατο διὰ τῶν προφητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν γραφαῖς ἁγίαις, περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα, τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν …

“[the] gospel of god, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy writings, concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, born/come from the seed of David according to the flesh, and designated son of god in power according to the spirit of holiness, by resurrection from the dead …” (Romans 1.1–4).

Paul probably inherited the Christology of Romans 1.1–4 from earlier Jewish Christians, and we can deduce that their Christology was like this:

(1) Jesus was the Messiah, the long awaited king, and at some point the earliest Christians came to believe that Jesus must have been a descendent of king David, because the Messiah was thought to be of his dynasty (Goulder 1995: 99-100). This the Messiah could be called “son of David” in a figurative sense as his descendant (as in Mark 10:47). But at this stage the early Christians had probably not invented a Davidic genealogy for Jesus, as in the gospel of Matthew 1:6–16.

(2) in believing that Jesus was the Messiah, or king of Israel, the earliest Jewish Christians took over the Israelite royal ideology that held that the king, at his coronation, was “god’s son”: what is fascinating is that in this pre-Pauline Christology Jesus appears to have been made god’s son at his resurrection, which suggests that Jesus’s messiahship formally began at his resurrection as well. In fact, this is not that strange, as many scholars have concluded that the proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah by his disciples happened after his death: this was the theory of William Wrede in his ground-breaking study The Messianic Secret (Wrede 1971; see also Wells 1996: 122; Tuckett 1983 and Räisänen 1990). This idea is also attested in Luke 24:44–45, Acts 13:33, Acts 2:32 and 2:36.

Thus there is considerable doubt whether the historical Jesus ever claimed to be the Messiah during his lifetime. One might speculate that, at the end of his ministry, during the Passover events in Jerusalem many of Jesus’s followers and ordinary people in Jerusalem might have started to think he was Messiah, but whether Jesus explicitly denied this or, alternatively, “tacitly” accepted it is not known.

(3) The phrase used by Paul τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα (“come/born from the seed of David according to the flesh”) strongly suggests that at this stage the Jewish Christians thought Jesus was a real descendant of David in the natural human sense of descent through his father. The word γενομένου (which should be understood in the sense of born/conceived) implies Jesus was fathered by a normal human father, because by the contemporary Jewish conception of birth it was the father who created the child through his seed/sperm, not the mother (Goulder 1995: 102). The ancients were ignorant of DNA and genetics: they did not understand women contributed genetic material to the child. In their view, it was the father who made his child, who grew out of the male seed. Therefore the earliest Jewish Christian belief (deduced from the proclamation of Jesus as risen Messiah) was that he really had been born from his father naturally as a descendant of king David, and this is still reflected in 2 Tim. 2.8 and Ignatius, Ephes. 18. At this stage, the virgin birth story had yet to be invented.

The title “son of god,” then, was held to be a title of Jesus by his Jewish disciples only after his death and imagined resurrection, and it reflects Israelite royal ideology, not the belief that he was divine.

After Paul took over this earlier, primitive Jewish Christology, he appears to have developed it further, by inventing the notion of the pre-existence of Jesus, which is attested in Philippians (written in the mid-50s or early 60s AD):

… Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων
οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ,
ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών,
ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος•
καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος
ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου,
θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ.

“…. Christ Jesus
who, being in the form of God,
did not deem the being equal with God a prize,
but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave
born/becoming in the form of men,
and having appeared (or having been found) in shape as a man
he humbled himself, becoming obedient until death,
and death on a cross.” (Phil. 2.6–8).

Of course, there is already a huge literature on the interpretation of Philippians 2:5–11 (see Marshall 1968. Martin and Dodd 1998; Wright 1986; Burk 2004). Many think that this “Christ hymn” was a pre-Pauline creed, but the arguments adduced are not very convincing: there is no reason why Paul could not have composed this in a language and style different from the prosaic style of his letters (for a review of arguments see Martin 2005). I would contend that this is Paul’s own composition, reflecting his Christological innovations.

According to Paul, after his resurrection God bestowed on Jesus the name that is above every other name: the title “Lord,” or kurios in Greek (Phil. 2.8–11), which is the regular title of god in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

For Paul, Jesus has now become an eternal, first-born semi-divine being, even though Paul may possibly shrink from saying that Jesus wanted to be an absolute equal of god (see Philippians 2:6: “[sc. Jesus] did not deem the being equal with God a prize,” which of course does presuppose some kind of equality). At this point, the title “son of god” has become a semi-divine title for Paul and Pauline Christians referring to Jesus as the first born “son of god” before creation (Goulder 1995: 102) and a type of cosmic king, not simply a reflection of Israelite/Messianic royal ideology. Already the Pauline gospel of Mark written c. 70 AD uses the “son of god” as a semi-divine title, reflecting Paul’s Christology: Mark has already transcended the primitive use of “son of god” in the royal ideological sense.

In other Jewish Christian communities, a different doctrine was developed: the virgin birth, which is never stated by Paul and was probably unknown to him.

The author of the gospel of Matthew was from a liberal Jewish Christian community, possibly in Antioch in Syria, which believed that Jesus was Messiah and “son of god” in the royal sense at his resurrection. Matthew wrote his gospel after 70 AD (possibly in the late 70s AD), and certainly after the gospel of Mark (which he uses as a source). In time, these communities were unsatisfied with the idea that Jesus was Messiah only after his death and the messiahship was retrojected back onto Jesus’s life and ministry. The term “son of god” was also given a new interpretation. Many Christians poured over the Old Testament looking for passages that they imagined prophesied Jesus. When they read such passages many will have believed that the holy spirit entered into them, and that they read these passages with divine inspiration, so that prophecies about Jesus were revealed to them by revelation. Once they had found some text they thought was a prophesy, it was a natural step to write some story about Jesus they thought must have happened to fulfil the prophecy (because their thinking will have been something like this: “if the holy spirit has revealed some passage with a prophecy about Jesus, surely it must have happened”). Thus many stories about Jesus in the gospels have been created in this way (perhaps not as conscious fraud, but as the deluded midrash of early Christians), and it follows, of course, that many such stories never really happened. The virgin birth is one of these.

It is likely that some Jewish Christian (possibly the author of Matthew himself) read Isaiah 7:14 in the Greek Septuagint (or LXX = Septuaginta) in this way and imagined he had found a prophecy of Jesus’s birth:

διὰ τοῦτο δώσει κύριος αὐτὸς ὑμῖν σημεῖον• ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Εμμανουηλ …

“Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign:
behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb, and will bring forth a son,
and you will call his name Emmanuel ...” (Isaiah 7:14; the Greek text follows Rahlfs 1971 [1935]).

This passage in the Masoretic text (the Hebrew text of the Old Testament) was originally meant to be nothing more than a prophecy of the Israelite king Hezekiah, son of Ahaz. Even a Catholic scholar like Raymond Brown admits that Isaiah 7:14 originally referred to a sign that was just a normal birth: “The sign offered by the prophet was the imminent birth of a child, probably Davidic, but naturally conceived, who would illustrate God’s providential care for his people” (Brown 1999: 148).

The idea of a “virgin” giving birth is not really even in the original Hebrew text. In the Hebrew, the crucial word is almah, meaning either (1) a young unmarried woman (possibly a virgin) or (2) a recently married young woman (but not a virgin):

לכן יתן אדני הוא לכם אות הנה העלמה הרה וילדת בן וקראת שמו עמנו אל
[note this is the Hebrew text without diacriticals].

לָכֵן יִתֵּן אֲדֹנָי הוּא לָכֶם אוֹת: הִנֵּה הָעַלְמָה הָרָה וְיֹלֶדֶת בֵּן וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ עִמָּנוּ אֵל
[note this is the Hebrew text with diacriticals; to read Hebrew one starts at the end of the first line and reads backwards, then goes to the end of the second line and reads backwards].

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.
See! the young woman [almah in Hebrew] is with child
and the one bearing a son
will call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

The Greek Septuagint translated almah (העלמה) with the word parthenos (παρθένος), which is easier to understand in the sense of “virgin.” The Greek word parthenos could mean:

(1) a maiden or girl, often with the sense of virgin, e.g., ἡ Παρθένος (“the Virgin”) was the title of the goddess Athena at Athens; the sacred παρθένοι was used to describe the Vestal virgins at Rome.

(2) unmarried women who are not virgins.
(Liddell and Scott 1996, s.v. parthenos, p. 1339).

The Jewish Christian (as I noted, possibly the author of Matthew himself) read this text in the Greek and understood parthenos as “virgin” and thought it was a prophecy of Jesus’s birth (Goulder 1995: 103; for more on this, see the discussion here by Richard Carrier). How, then, was Jesus conceived? As the passage was turned over in his mind, he thought that Jesus must have been “conceived” in a miracle by god: hence the origin of the virgin birth story in Matthew and the idea of Jesus being “god’s son” in a more literal sense than merely the metaphorical sense of “son of god” as king of Israel at his resurrection, which had been the earlier view (Goulder 1995: 149).


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Raymond Edward. 1999. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (updated edn.), Doubleday, New York, N.Y.

Burk, D. “On the Articular Infinitive in Philippians 2:6: A Grammatical Note with Christological Implications,” Tyndale Bulletin 55.2: 253-274.

Carrier, Richard. 2003. “The Problem of the Virgin Birth Prophecy,” The Secular Web
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/virginprophecy.html

Collins, J. J. 1993. “The Son of God Text from Qumran,” in M. C. De Boer (ed.), From Jesus to John: Essays on Jesus and New Testament Christology in Honour of Marinus de Jonge, JSOT Press, Sheffield. 65–82.

Cooke, Gerald A. 1961. “The Israelite King as Son of God,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 73: 202-225.

Fitzmyer, J. 1993. “4Q246. The ‘Son of God’ Document from Qumran,” Biblica 74: 153–174.

Fossum. Jarl. 1995. “Son of God,” in Karel van der Toom, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, EJ Brill, Leiden. 1485–1497.

Goulder, M. D. 1995. St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY.

Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon (9th edn.; rev. and augm. by Henry Stuart Jones with Roderick McKenzie, with rev. supplement), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Marshall, I. Howard. 1968. “The Christ-Hymn in Philippians,” Tyndale Bulletin 19: 104–127.

Martin, James D. 2005. Carmen Christi: Philippians ii. 5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Martin, Ralph P. and Brian J. Dodd (eds). 1998. Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2, Westminster John Knox, Louisville, KY.

Mettinger, Tryggve N. D. 1976. King and Messiah: The Civil and Sacral Legitimation of the Israelite Kings, LiberLaromedel/Gleerup, Lund.

Rahlfs, A. (ed.). 1971 [1935]. Septuaginta: Id est Vetus Testamentum Graece iuxta LXX interpretes (9th edn.), Württembergische Bibelanstalt Stuttgart, Stuttgart.

Räisänen, Heikki. 1990. The “Messianic Secret” in Mark (trans. Christopher Tuckett), T & T Clark, Edinburgh.

Tuckett, Christopher (ed.). 1983. The Messianic Secret, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, Pa. and London.

Wells, G. A. 1996. The Jesus Legend, Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, Ill.

Wrede, William. 1971. The Messianic Secret (trans. J. C. G. Greig), Attic Press, Greenwood, S.C.

Wright, N. T. 1986. “άρπαγμός and the Meaning of Philippians 2:5–11,” Journal of Theological Studies 37 n.s.: 321–352.

How Did Early Christianity Develop?

Here is my theory, for what it is worth. I will sketch it here, and it is based on the work of reputable New Testament scholars and historians of Christianity.

The full divinity of Jesus (the Trinity) does not come until much later on.

In my opinion, what the earliest Jewish Christians believed (and I could cite the specialist literature here) is the following:

(1) during most of his lifetime Jesus was a human prophet, born of ordinary parents (no virgin birth, no incarnation, and no divinity) prophesying the imminent arrival of the “kingdom of god”: the end times where Israel would get its Messiah and be freed from the bloody and cruel tyranny of Rome. Jesus was thought to be a miracle working prophet, just like Old Testament prophetic figures who possessed the holy spirit (see M. D. Goulder, “A Poor Man’s Christology,” New Testament Studies 45 [1999]: 332-348).

(2) by the time of the Jerusalem passover events, possibly Jesus either (a) now thought of himself as the Messiah or (b) many of his followers and ordinary people in Jerusalem thought he was Messiah (whether Jesus explicitly denied this or “tacitly” accepted it and allowed it, who knows?); he was killed by the Romans as a Messianic pretender, for disturbing the peace and for treason (what the Romans called the crime of maiestas).

(3) the movement collapsed after Jesus’s death and the disciples fled back to Galilee (this appears to be the earliest tradition implied in Mark and Matthew). There they had visions of Jesus and think he has been resurrected. Later they appear in Jerusalem proclaiming this.

(4) Jesus is now proclaimed Messiah - Israel’s king - and resurrected “son of god” (that is, as the Israelite kings were “sons of god” - but not in a divine sense). Jesus is now like the exalted prophet Elijah (the OT imagines Elijah being exalted to heaven to become a heavenly being), except he died and was raised to heaven.

(5) Jesus is now a heavenly king and Messiah, who will return soon, an exalted figure and god’s chief agent.

The early Christians do call Jesus “lord” and no doubt this title began as a merely earthly title for teacher or “rabbi.” But now when used of the exalted Jesus it starts to have a quasi-blasphemous ring to it to non-Christian Jewish contemporaries, for “Lord” is also the proper title for god.

Nevertheless, Jesus is not, strictly speaking, divine for early Jewish Christians: there is only one god, and Jesus is not in the same category.

(6) I suspect that the apostle Paul creates the notion of Jesus’s pre-existence: certainly he teaches this (he needs it for his new gospel of freedom from the Mosaic law), and probably Paul assimilated Jesus to personified attributes of god like “wisdom” or the “logos” or a first-born, angelic chief agent, ideas actually common in 1st century Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism.

See the excellent book of Larry Hurtado, One God, One Lord, which shows how second temple Judaism had exalted heavenly figures like personified divine attributes (wisdom, the logos), exalted patriarchs, and chief agents/angels.

Paul invents the notion of the incarnation (though not the virgin birth) but makes it clear that Jesus, as a pre-existent heavenly being, does not want equality with god (full divinity) in Philippians 2.6–8:

… Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ, ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος• καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ.

“…. Christ Jesus
who, being in the form of God did not deem it a prize to be equal with God,
but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave
born/becoming in the form of men,
and having appeared (or having been found) in shape as a man
he humbled himself, becoming obedient until death
and death on a cross.” (Phil 2.6–8).

Nevertheless, by this stage Paul’s Jesus is looking quasi-divine.

(7) by the time of the gospel of Matthew (c. 80 AD), a liberal Jewish Christian invents the virgin birth from a garbled reading of Isaiah.

(8) By the time of the gospel of John c. 90-100 AD, you have Jesus as a pre-existent, first-born god: “in the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with god, and the Word was god” (John 1:1). This is a development of Philippians 2.6–8 making explicit what Paul seems to deny (“Christ Jesus ... did not deem it a prize to be equal with God”).

(9) A few centuries later we have the Trinity, and so on. Christianity has become a religion for Greeks and Romans: Jesus is just another saviour god like Mithras, except his incarnation and death occurred in the recent past.

Jewish Christianity survives and seems to be reject Paul’s quasi-divine view of Jesus: Origen (Contra Celsum 5.65.5) tells us that “there are some sects who do not accept the epistles of the apostle Paul, such as the two kinds of Ebionites [= Jewish Christians].” And Eusebius tells us that both sects of Ebionites rejected Jesus’s pre-existence.

We also have to remember that Messianic movements could develop in extraordinary ways, even in modern times: we need only think of Sabbatai Zevi in the 1600s.

There is evidence that he actually signed letters with what was to many members of the Jewish community the most blasphemous phrase:

“the Lord, your God, Sabbatai Zevi” (Heinrich Graetz and Bella Lowy, History of the Jews, Vol. V, p. 143).

Yet Sabbatai Zevi still attracted a vast Jewish following during his lifetime.

And this was not after he died and his disciples claimed he had been resurrected, but when he lived!

Bibliography of Lexicons and Grammars for Classical and New Testament Greek

In any type of textual and historical work on earliest Christianity, it is necessary to be able to translate the original texts, which are written in New Testament (or koine) Greek. This was a demotic type of Greek that developed from classical Attic, and was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean after the time of Alexander the Great. Hence I post this bibliography below of works on all aspects of both Classical and koine Greek.

There are good surveys in David M. Schaps, Handbook for Classical Research, (Routledge, London and New York, 2011); and Fred W. Jenkins, Classical Studies: A Guide to the Reference Literature (2nd edn.; Libraries Unlimited, Westport, Conn. and London, 2006) for starting reference works.

A brief overview of the ancient Greek language can be found in S. Hawkins, 2010. “The Greek Language,” in M. Gagarin and E. Fantham (eds.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Volume 1. Academy-Bible. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford. pp. 356–360.

In short, these are very important works:

Danker, Frederick W. 2000. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd edn.; rev. and ed. by F. W. Danker), University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
This is the standard New Testament lexicon for many English speaking scholars.

Blass, F. and A. Debrunner. 1961. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (trans. and rev. of 9th-10th German edn. with notes of A. Debrunner by R. W. Funk), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Probably the standard New Testament grammar for many English speaking scholars.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Lexicons and Dictionaries

I.1 Etymological Dictionaries
Beekes, R. S. P. 2010. Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, Leiden.

Chantraine, Pierre. 1999. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots (with a supplement), Klincksieck, Paris.

Frisk, Hjalmar, 1954–1972. Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (3 vols.), C. Winter, Heidelberg.

I.2 General and Classical Greek Lexicons
Adrados, Francisco R., Gangutia, Elvira et al. 1980– . Diccionario griego-español (6 vols.), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid.
This is still incomplete, but some information is online.

Bodoh, John J. 1984. An Index of Greek Verb Forms, Olms, Hildesheim.

Denniston, J. D. 1954. The Greek Particles, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Estienne, Henri. 1572. Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (5 vols.), Paris.
The original edition of the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae was written by Henri Estienne (Henricus Stephanus, 1531–1598). All cognate words are arranged under the single root word. This can now be accessed online.

Estienne, Henri. 1831–1865. Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (8 vols.; ed. Karl Wilhelm Dindorf [Guilelmus Dindorfius] and Ludwig August Dindorf [Ludovicus Dindorfius]), Ambroise Firmin Didot, Paris.
This should not be confused with the original edition by Henri Estienne. This edition was updated by scholars led by the brothers Dindorf. Entries are in alphabetical order.

Estienne, Henri. 1816–1828. Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (14 vols.; ed. A. J. Valpy), Aedibus Valpianis, London.
This updated version of Henri Estienne’s original work was done by British scholars under E. H. Barker.

Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon (9th edn.; rev. and augm. by Henry Stuart Jones with Roderick McKenzie, with rev. supplement), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott. 2010. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (7th edn. of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon), Benediction Classics, Oxford.

Marinone, Nino. 1985. All the Greek Verbs, Duckworth, London.

Rijksbaron, Albert. 1997. New Approaches to Greek Particles, J.C. Gieben, Amsterdam.

Woodhouse, S. C. 1964. English-Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Greek Lexicon Project
http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/faculty/research_groups_and_societies/greek_lexicon/
Classicists at Cambridge are currently creating a new intermediate Ancient Greek-English lexicon. It will be available through the Perseus Project at Tufts University as well.

I.3 New Testament Greek Lexicons
Bauer, Walter. 1979. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (2nd edn.; rev. and aug. by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker from Walter Bauer’s 5th edn.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
This is superceded by Danker 2000.

Danker, Frederick W. 2000. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd edn.; rev. and ed. by F. W. Danker), University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
This is the standard New Testament lexicon for many English speaking scholars.

Lampe, G. W. H. 1961. A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Moulton, James Hope and George Milligan. 1952. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources, Hodder and Stoughton, London.

II. Grammars
II.1 General and Attic/Classical Greek
Betts, Gavin and Alan Henry. 1993. Ancient Greek: A Complete Course, NTC Pub. Group, Lincolnwood, Ill.
[the earlier edn. of Gavin and Henry 2003]

Betts, Gavin and Alan Henry. 2003. Ancient Greek (new edn.), Hodder Headline, London.

Buck, C. D. 1968. The Greek Dialects. Grammar, Selected Inscriptions, Glossary (new edn.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Cooper, Guy L. and K. W. Krueger. 1998-2002. Attic Greek Prose Syntax (2 vols.), University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Cooper, Guy L. and K. W. Krueger. 2002. Greek Syntax: Early Greek Poetic and Herodotean Syntax (2 vols.), University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
To be used with caution.

Dik, Helma. 1995. Word Order in Ancient Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus, Gieben, Amsterdam.

Dover, K. J. 2000. Greek Word Order, Bristol Classical Press, London.

Gignac, Francis T. 1976–1981. A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (2 vols.), Istituto editoriale cisalpino-La goliardica, Milan.

Gildersleeve, Basil Lanneau. 1900–1911. Syntax of Classical Greek from Homer to Demosthenes (2 vols.), American Book Company, New York and Chicago.

Goodwin, William Watson. 1912. Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Macmillan, London.

Goodwin, William Watson. 1965 [1889]. Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (rev. edn.), Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, London and New York.

Goodwin, William Watson. 1997. Greek Grammar (repr. of the 1894 rev. edn.), Bristol Classical Press, London.

Kühner, Raphael and Bernhard Gerth. 1955. Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache (4th edn. based on the 3rd; 2 vols.), Hahn, Hannover.

Mastronarde, Donald J. 1993. Introduction to Attic Greek, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Mayser, Edwin. 1970. Grammatik der griechischen Papyri aus der Ptolemäerzeit: mit Einschluss der gleichzeitigen Ostraka und der in Agypten verfassten inschriften (2nd edn.; 2 v. in 6), W. de Gruyter, Berlin.

Morwood, James. 2001. Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Pratt, Louise H. 2010. The Essentials of Greek Grammar: A Reference for Intermediate Readers of Attic Greek, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Rijksbaron, Albert. 2006. The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction (3rd edn.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

Schwyzer, Eduard and Albert Debrunner. 1988. Griechische Grammatik: auf der Grundlage von Karl Brugmanns Griechischer Grammatik (5th edn.), Beck, Munich.

Smyth, Herbert Weir. 1984 [1916]. Greek Grammar (rev. edn.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Thompson, G. S. 1999 [1955]. Greek Prose Usage: A Companion to Greek Prose Composition, Bristol Classical Press, Bristol.

Threatte, Leslie. 1980–1996. The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, W. de Gruyter, Berlin and New York.

II.2 Comparative Grammars
Buck, Carl. 1962. Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, University Press, Chicago.
Now out of date.

Sihler, Andrew L. 2008. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
The best modern treatment.

II.3 New Testament/Koine Greek
Blass, F. and A. Debrunner. 1961. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (trans. and rev. of 9th-10th German edn. with notes of A. Debrunner by R. W. Funk), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Probably the standard New Testament grammar for many English speaking scholars.

Blass, F. and A. Debrunner. 2001. Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (18th edn.; ed. Friedrich Rehkopf), Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen.

Brooks, James A. and Winbery, Carlton L. 1994. A Morphology of New Testament Greek: A Review and Reference Grammar, University Press of America, Lanham, Md.

Burton, Ernest de Witt, 1973. Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek (3rd edn.), Clark, Edinburgh.

Fanning, Buist M. 1990. Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Funk, Robert Walter. 1973. A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek (2nd edn.), Society of Biblical Literature, Missoula, Mont.

McKay, K. L. 1992. “Time and Aspect in New Testament Greek,” Novum Testamentum 34.3: 209-228.

McKay, K. L. 1994. A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, P. Lang, New York.

Moule, C. F. D. 1975. An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (2nd edn. 6th impression), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Moulton, James Hope. 1976 [1863–1917]. A Grammar of New Testament Greek (4 vols.), Clark, Edinburgh.
An older but respected standard New Testament grammar.

Mounce, William D. 1993. The Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, Zondervan Pub. House, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Mounce, William D. 1994. The Morphology of Biblical Greek: A Companion to Basics of Biblical Greek and the Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, Zondervan Pub. House, Grand Rapids, MI.

Porter, Stanley E. 1993. Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament: With Reference to Tense and Mood, P. Lang, New York.

Porter, Stanley E. 1994. Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd edn.), Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield.

Robertson, A. T. 1934. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (4th edn.), Broadman Press, Nashville.

Robertson, A. T. and W. Hersey Davis. 1977. A New Short Grammar of the Greek New Testament (10th edn.), Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Stagg, Frank. 1972. “The Abused Aorist,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91.2: 222-231.

Wallace, Daniel B. 1996. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mich.
An intermediate grammar for students.

III. History of the Greek Language

Bakker, Egbert J. 2010. A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester.

Christidis, A.-F. 2007. A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity, (rev. and exp. trans.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Adrados, Francisco Rodríguez. 2005. A History of the Greek Language: From its Origins to the Present (trans. Francisca Rojas del Canto), Brill, Leiden.

Palmer, Leonard R. 1995. The Greek Language, Bristol Classical Press, London.

IV. Greek Pronunciation
IV.I Classical Pronunciation
Allen, William Sidney. 1978. Vox Graeca: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Greek (2nd edn.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Now superseded by Allen 1987.

Allen, William Sidney. 1987. Vox Graeca: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Greek (3rd edn.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
The most recent edition.

Sommerstein, Alan H. 1973. The Sound Pattern of Ancient Greek, Blackwell, Oxford.

IV.2 Pronunciation of New Testament/Koine Greek
Christidis, A.-F. 2007. A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity, (rev. and exp. trans.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. p. 599ff.

Teodorsson, S. T. 1977. The Phonology of Ptolemaic Koine, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Goeteborg.

Rife, J. M. 1982. “Greek Language of the NT,” in Geoffrey W. Bromiley (ed.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. E–J (rev. edn.), Paternoster, Grand Rapids and Exeter 1982. 568–573, at pp. 568–569.


V. Accentuation
Chandler, Henry W. 1881. A Practical Introduction to Greek Accentuation (2nd edn.), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Lukinovich, Alessandra and Steinrück, Martin. 2009. Introduction à l’accentuation grecque ancienne, Georg, Chêne-Bourg.

Postgate, John P. 1924. A Short Guide to the Accentuation of Ancient Greek, University Press of Liverpool, London.

Probert, Philomen. 2003. A New Short Guide to the Accentuation of Ancient Greek, Bristol Classical, Bristol.

Probert, Philomen. 2006. Ancient Greek Accentuation: Synchronic Patterns, Frequency Effects, and Prehistory, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.

Voyles, J. B. 1974. “Ancient Greek Accentuation,” Glotta 52: 65–91.

VI. Web Resources
New Testament Greek Grammar Books: A List of Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced N.T. Greek Grammars
http://www.ntgreek.org/books/grambook.htm


Extended Bibliography
Pronunciation
Brodotskaya, Anastassia. 1997. “Notes to the Reconstruction of the Ancient Greek Pronunciation offered by S. G. Daitz,” Hyperboreus 3.2: 353–361.

Daitz S. G. 1984. The Pronunciation and Reading of Ancient Greek. A Practical Guide, Norton, Guilford, CT. (20 pp. 2 cassettes).

Daitz, Stephen G. 2001–2002. “Further Notes on the Pronunciation of Ancient Greek,” Classical World 95.4: 411–412.

Dillon, Matthew. 2000-2001. “The Erasmian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek: A New Perspective,” Classical World 94.4: 323–334.

Else, Gerald F. 1967. “The Pronunciation of Classical Names and Words in English,” Classical Journal 62.5: 210–214.

Hatch, Norman L. 1969. “The Pronunciation of Aeschylus, Etc., in English,” Classical Journal 64.5: 213–215.

Miller, Walter. 1935. “The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin Proper Names in English,” Classical Journal 30.6: 325–334.

Skiles, Jonah W. D. 1948. “The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin,” Classical Journal 43.4: 222.

Grammar
De Jong, Jan R. and Laan, Nancy M. “A Grammar for Greek Verse,” in Research in Humanities Computing. 4, Selected papers from the ALLC/AHC Conference, Christ Church, Oxford, April 1992. 171–184 (details on a metrical analysis computer program).

Funk, R. W. 1973. A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek, I: Sight and sound. Nominal System. Verbal System, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA.

Gignac, F. T. 1970. “The Language of the Non-Literary Greek Papyri,” in D. H. Samuel (ed.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 12–17 August 1968, Hakkert, Toronto and Amsterdam. 139–152.

Rydbeck, L. 1975. “What Happened to New Testament Greek Grammar after Albert Debrunner?,” New Testament Studies 21: 424–427.

Wahlgren, Staffan. 2002. “Towards a Grammar of Byzantine Greek,” Symbolae Osloenses 77: 201–204.

Wouters, A. 1977. “A Greek Grammar and a Graeco-Latin lexicon on St. Paul (Rom., 2 Cor., Gal., Eph.). A Note on E. A. Lowe, C.L.A., Supplement N° 1683,” Scriptorium 31: 240–242.

A Bibliography of Recent Work on Resurrection in First Century Judaism

I have compiled a bibliography below on recent work on the history of the idea of resurrection in Judaism of the early Roman Empire.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Avery-Peck, Alan J. 2009. “Resurrection of the Body in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in T. Nicklas, F. V. Reiterer, and J. Verheyden (eds), The Human Body in Death and Resurrection, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 243–266.

Collins, Adela. 1993. “The Empty Tomb in the Gospel According to Mark,” in Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint (eds.), Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, In. 107–140.

Collins, Adela Yarbro. 2009. “Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis in Relation to the Empty Tomb Story in Mark,” in T. K. Seim and J. Okland (eds.), Metamorphoses. Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 41–58.

Collins, John J. 2007. “Conceptions of Afterlife in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in M. Labahn und M. Lang (eds.), Lebendige Hoffnung – ewiger Tod?!: Jenseitsvorstellungen im Hellenismus, Judentum und Christentum, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig. 103–125.

Collins, John J. 2009. “The Angelic Life,” in Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Okland (eds.), Metamorphoses. Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 291–310.

Flusser, David. 2000. “Resurrection and Angels in Rabbinic Judaism, Early Christianity, and Qumran,” in Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem. 568–572.

Habermas, Gary R. 2005. “Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying?” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.2: 135–153.

Hogeterp, Albert L.A. 2009. “Belief in Resurrection and its Religious Settings in Qumran and the New Testament,” in Florentino García Martínez (ed.), Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament, Brill, Leiden and Boston. 299–320.

Hutter, Manfred. 2009. “The Impurity of the Corpse (nasa) and the Future Body (tan i pasen): Death and Afterlife in Zoroastrianism,” in Tobias Nicklas, Friedrich V. Reiterer, and Joseph Verheyden (eds.), The Human Body in Death and Resurrection, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 13–26.

Labahn, M. and M. Lang (eds.), Lebendige Hoffnung – ewiger Tod?!: Jenseitsvorstellungen im Hellenismus, Judentum und Christentum, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig.

Lehtipuu, Outi. 2009. “‘Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God:’ The Transformation of the Flesh in the Early Christian Debates Concerning Resurrection,” in Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Okland (eds.), Metamorphoses. Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 147–168.

Martin, Michael. 2011. “Skeptical Perspectives on Jesus’ Resurrection,” in Delbert Burkett (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Jesus, Wiley – Blackwell, Malden, MA. 285–300.

Nickelsburg, George W. E. 2006. Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity (exp. edn.), Trinity Pr. International, Valley Forge, Pa.

Osborne, Grant R. 2009. “Jesus’ Empty Tomb and his Appearance in Jerusalem,” in Darrell L. Bock and Robert L. Webb (eds.), Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus. A Collaborative Exploration of Context and Coherence, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen. 775–824.

Popovic, Mladen. 2009. “Bones, Bodies and Resurrection in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Tobias Nicklas, Friedrich V. Reiterer, and Joseph Verheyden (eds.), The Human Body in Death and Resurrection, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 221–242.

Segal, Alan F. 1998. “Paul’s Thinking about Resurrection in its Jewish Context,” New Testament Studies 44.3: 400–419.

Setzer, Claudia J. 2004. Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and Self-Definition, Brill, Leiden and Boston, Mass.

Van der Kooij, Arie. 2007. “Ideas about Afterlife in the Septuagint,” in M. Labahn und M. Lang (eds.), Lebendige Hoffnung – ewiger Tod?!: Jenseitsvorstellungen im Hellenismus, Judentum und Christentum, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig. 87–102.

Wright, Nicholas Thomas. 2003. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, London.

Joseph of Arimathea and the Burial of Jesus

In Mark, the earliest gospel, there is the assertion that Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable member of the council (presumably the Sanhedrin) buried Jesus (Mark 15:42–47).

But it is not even clear that this is a genuine tradition. The Christians might have invented this to give Jesus an “honourable,” rather than a shameful, burial. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mark 15:43 does preserve an echo of historical data.

In a speech placed in the mouth of Paul by the author of the Acts of Apostles made in Antioch in Pisidia, there is a tradition that Jesus was buried by his enemies:

οἱ γὰρ κατοικοῦντες ἐν Ἰερουσαλὴμ καὶ οἱ ἄρχοντες αὐτῶν τοῦτον ἀγνοήσαντες καὶ τὰς φωνὰς τῶν προφητῶν τὰς κατὰ πᾶν σάββατον ἀναγινωσκομένας κρίναντες ἐπλήρωσαν, καὶ μηδεμίαν αἰτίαν θανάτου εὑρόντες ᾐτήσαντο Πιλᾶτον ἀναιρεθῆναι αὐτόν• ὡς δὲ ἐτέλεσαν πάντα τὰ περὶ αὐτοῦ γεγραμμένα, καθελόντες ἀπὸ τοῦ ξύλου ἔθηκαν εἰς μνημεῖον.

But those in Jerusalem and their rulers, who did not know him [sc. Jesus] and the voices of the prophets read every Sabbath, fulfilled the prophets when they condemned him. Without finding a reason for putting him to death they asked Pilate to have him killed. And when they had carried out all the things that were written about him, they took him down from the tree and put him in a tomb. (Acts 13:27–29).

The view that Jesus’s enemies buried him may well be true, but seems at variance with the gospel accounts that make Joseph of Arimathea a secret disciple who buried Jesus.

The explanation may well be that Joseph of Arimathea was remembered as the member of the Sanhedrin who supervised the burial of Jesus, but the earliest Christian gospel writers gradually embellished this datum, as follows:

(1) Mark already transforms Joseph of Arimathea from an enemy of Jesus to one “expecting the kingdom of god” (Mark 15:43), which is itself ambiguous and need not exclude the possibility that he was an enemy. Mark simply says that Joseph “placed him [Jesus] in a tomb which was hewn out of rock” (Mark 15:46). Mark does not say that it was Joseph’s tomb. An absurd detail in Mark is the visit of the women to the tomb after the Sabbath, when they are already said to have seen that a great stone (Mark 16:4) had been rolled against the entrance (Mark 15:46), a problem which strikes them only when they are already on the way to the tomb or close to it (Mark 16:3).

(2) By the time of the gospel of Matthew, Joseph has been transformed into a disciple of Jesus (Matt. 27:57) who laid the body of Jesus in his own tomb (Matt. 27:60). Matthew does not even say that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin.

(3) In Luke, Joseph of Arimathea is a member of the Sanhedrin, but had not agreed with the council and their action in condemning Jesus (Luke 23:51). Luke takes over Mark’s assertion that he was awaiting the kingdom of god (Luke 23:51).

(4) In John, Joseph of Arimathea is now a secret disciple of Jesus (John 19:38), and a certain Nicodemus helps him (19:39) to bury Jesus. The tomb is not said to be Joseph’s tomb, but a new one at the site of the crucifixion.

It is clear from this how the gospel writers embellished and changed their accounts of Joseph of Arimathea.

Even the actual details of the burial in a rock cut tomb as reported in the gospel of Mark could be nothing but a fictional account. Joseph may have buried Jesus somewhere, but it is unclear whether the early Christians knew where. Already Mark’s narrative is ridiculous by the visit of the women to the tomb when they could not even have entered because of the stone blocking the entrance. This screams fiction to me.

This all suggests that even the actual details of the burial in Mark are fiction (see also Collins 1993). The Christians did not know where or how Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus. The original tradition might well have been that Joseph of Arimathea, an enemy of Jesus, buried him out of piety, not wishing to leave a corpse on the cross during the Sabbath. But it simply does not follow that the burial in Joseph’s own family tomb occurred. It may well have been nothing but an anonymous burial in a grave for criminals.

The burial in a rock cut tomb could already be a redactional, apologetic fiction of the author of gospel of Mark, which was the necessary preliminary to his invention of an empty tomb story. Nor does it necessarily follow that the disciples or the early church knew where Jesus had been buried, even if Joseph had buried him in some place.

There is not a shred of credible evidence that the early church knew the location of Jesus’s burial. There is no credible evidence whatsoever that the early church venerated the place or knew of its location.

Even if the Jewish authorities knew the location of Jesus’s body, we are told in Acts that the disciples waited for at least 40 days before proclaiming Jesus’s resurrection (Acts 1:3). Even if the authorities had produced the rotting body, this would hardly have convinced the early Christians anyway, who were religious fanatics, since the body would already have been unidentifiable.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Adela. 1993. “The Empty Tomb in the Gospel According to Mark,” in Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint (eds.), Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, In. 107–140.

O’Brien, K. S. 2006. “The Curse of the Law (Galatians 3.13): Crucifixion, Persecution, and Deuteronomy 21.22–23,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29: 55–76.

Robert M. Price on Jesus: Legend or Son of God?, Part 2

Part 2 of a great debate between Robert M. Price and Gregory Boyd at UCLA 2003.

Robert M. Price on Jesus: Legend or Son of God?, Part 1

Part 1 of a great debate between Robert M. Price and Gregory Boyd at UCLA 2003.

Price throws light on early Christianity as a Messianic movement by invoking the 16th century Messianic pretender Sabbatai Zevi. For good books on Sabbatai Zevi, see
Scholem (1973) and Halperin (2007).













BIBLIOGRAPHY

Halperin, David J. 2007. Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford.

Scholem, Gershom. 1973. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Gerd Lüdemann versus William Lane Craig

The brilliant Gerd Lüdemann debates the resurrection of Jesus with William Lane Craig at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 2002.

Lüdemann is the author of The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology (London, 1994), and debunks the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus.

Some points:

(1) Craig’s first “fact” is that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in a tomb. This is not a “fact” at all: it is merely assertion in the gospel of Mark, and there is no necessary reason why it must be true. The Christians might have invented this to give Jesus an “honourable,” rather than a shameful, burial. Furthermore, Craig commits a gross non sequitur: even if it were true that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in a tomb, it simply does not follow that the location of the tomb was known by his disciples. One astonishing datum is that there was no known veneration of Jesus’s tomb in early Christianity: it is most probable that they had no idea where he was buried.

There is good reason to think that the gospel of Mark (the earliest gospel) is already filled with legends and fictions, and that the empty tomb story is one fiction of Mark (Collins 1989; Collins 1993; Lüdemann 1994).

Despite Craig, even Jesus’s alleged rising on the third day in 1 Corinthians 15:3–6 is said to be in accordance with the scriptures, not with any eyewitness accounts, which suggests that the belief that Jesus rose on the third day could have come from nothing more than exegesis of an Old Testament passage in Hosea 6.2 (as Gerd Lüdemann 1994: 47 argues).

(2) Craig’s attempt to claim that Matthew and John are independent attestations of the empty tomb story is unconvincing. They are no such thing, but secondary and redactional stories from Mark. Nor does Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–6 require an empty tomb story at all. There is no direct evidence for any empty tomb in Paul. There are no multiple, independent sources for the empty tomb story: it is all dependent on Mark, and there is a good case he invented it (Collins 1989).

(3) Despite Craig, the earliest tradition in Mark and taken over by Matthew is that the earliest resurrection “appearances”/hallucinations of Jesus were in Galilee, not in Jerusalem. That may well be true and suggests that the disciples fled back to Galilee after the death of Jesus. That is precisely why Mark has women go to an empty tomb in his ending, because in the tradition Mark received the disciples had fled. The stories of resurrection “appearances” at Jerusalem in Luke and John are therefore fictions. If these gospel writers could write fiction (such as the absurd fantasies one reads in the gospel of Matthew 28:1-3), then why not Mark in the empty tomb story?

(4) Craig asserts that there was no belief in a dying and rising Messiah in first century Judaism. That may well be true, but proves nothing. As Robert M. Price argues, when Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676), a Jewish rabbi who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah in 17th century, apostatised, his movement did not collapse and there were Jewish believers in Sabbatai Zevi as the Messiah for at least two centuries following his apostasy! Even Nathan of Gaza, his leading disciple, continued to think Sabbatai was the Messiah.

Anyway, it is clear that Christianity - before it became a Gentile religion as developed by the apostle Paul - remained a minority sect within Judaism. Is that not precisely what one would expect if early Christian ideas about a crucified Messiah were peculiar and an innovation? Craig’s assertion that Jesus was under a curse because he was crucified was arguably only one view in the Judaism of the first century AD, possibly a minority one (O’Brien 2006), and in the form in which we have it in the New Testament (in Galatians 3:13) is a particular exegesis of Paul himself, probably based on that minority view, to defend his gospel of the abolition of the Mosaic law. Many patriotic Jewish people in Jesus’s time may not have thought that Jesus was the Messiah, but merely held that he had died unjustly, killed by the hated Romans.





BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Adela Yarbro. 1989. The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.

Lüdemann, G. 1994. The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology (trans. John Bowden), SCM Press, London.

O’Brien, K. S. 2006. “The Curse of the Law (Galatians 3.13): Crucifixion, Persecution, and Deuteronomy 21.22-23,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29: 55-76.

Robert M. Price versus William Lane Craig on the Resurrection of Jesus, Part 1

A great debate here, in which Robert M. Price, who is a brilliant speaker and debater, debunks the Christian apologist William Lane Craig on the resurrection of Jesus.

In the first two videos, Craig gives his main arguments. But from the beginning Craig arguments are flawed, as follows:

(1) he states he will treat the New Testament (NT) as “a collection of ordinary Greek documents.” But they are not ordinary documents: they are the writings of religious fanatics and refer to supernatural events. Therefore the NT writings are on a par with the other religious writings of second temple Judaism and Graeco-Roman civilization, not ordinary Greek documents.

(2) Nor does appealing to the consensus of New Testament scholars prove anything, for they are mostly Christians and hardly disinterested.

(3) Craig’s first “fact” is that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in a tomb. This is not a “fact” at all: it is merely assertion in the gospel of Mark, and there is no necessary reason why it must be true. The Christians might have invented this to give Jesus an “honourable,” rather than a shameful, burial. Furthermore, Craig commits a gross non sequitur: even if it were true that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in a tomb, it simply does not follow that the location of the tomb was known by his disciples. There is good reason to think that the gospel of Mark (the earliest gospel) is already filled with legends and fictions, and that the empty tomb story is one fiction of Mark (Collins 1989; Collins 1993; Lüdemann 1994). One astonishing datum is that there was no known veneration of Jesus’s tomb in early Christianity: it is most probable that they had no idea where he was buried.

(4) Despite Craig, 1 Corinthians 15:3–6 does not in any way require an empty tomb story. All that it asserts is that Jesus was buried, and nothing about where and how. Even Jesus’s alleged rising on the third day is said to be in accordance with the scriptures, not with any eyewitness accounts, which suggests that the belief that Jesus rose on the third day could have come from nothing more than exegesis of an Old Testament passage in Hosea 6.2 (as Gerd Lüdemann 1994: 47 argues).

(5) It is utterly laughable how Craig asserts that Mark’s story of the empty tomb contains no signs of “legendary embellishment”: for there is a young man present who is no doubt meant to be understood as an angel! Both Mark and Matthew require that the resurrection “appearances” to the disciples happened in Galilee (which blatantly contradicts John and Luke), and in Mark the women tell no one of their discovery of the empty tomb: precisely what one would expect if the author of this gospel invented the tale, and required an explanation of why no one had heard this story before. Women are made to be eyewitnesses because the earliest tradition appears to have been that the disciples fled back to Galilee after Jesus’s death, and the author of the gospel of Mark felt bound to respect that tradition.

(6) 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 provides a list of alleged appearances of the risen Jesus. The earliest tradition in both Mark and Matthew suggest that they happened in Galilee, not Jerusalem. But even here the text has problems:
some suspect that verse 6 is nothing but an interpolation. Another view is that it refers to nothing but the mass ecstatic Pentecost experience in Acts 2.

And throughout the passage Paul uses the Greek verb ophthe in the passive voice with the dative for the recipient of the appearance. This Greek verb and idiom is regularly used of visions in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and since Paul puts his own “appearance” in the same terms as the others, what we have here are most probably nothing more than visionary experiences: possibly no more than dreams and oral and visual hallucinations. There is not one shred of direct evidence in 1 Corinthians 15:3–6 for the view that the disciples saw a walking, talking corpse: rather, their “appearances” appear to be in the same category as Paul’s: delusions, dreams, and hallucinations of their dead leader. And note how Paul says nothing about any women seeing Jesus.

The gospels do not provide multiple, independent evidence of the appearances at all, for they are literary documents dependent on one another and distorted by redaction, polemical and theological changes, and fictional elements.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Adela Yarbro. 1989. The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.

Collins, Adela. 1993. “The Empty Tomb in the Gospel According to Mark,” in Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint (eds.), Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, In. 107–140.

Collins, Adela Yarbro. 1997. “Apotheosis and Resurrection,” in Borgen, P., Giversen, S. (eds), The New Testament and Hellenistic Judaism, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts. 88–100.

Collins, Adela Yarbro. 2009. “Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis in Relation to the Empty Tomb Story in Mark,” in T. K. Seim and J. Okland (eds.), Metamorphoses. Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. 41–58.

Lüdemann, G. 1994. The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology (trans. John Bowden), SCM Press, London.

Peter Atkins versus John Lennox

This is a debate on religion, science, and atheism between Peter Atkins and John Lennox. Peter Atkins is a brilliant debater and soundly beats Lennox.

Carrier versus Ehrman on Procurators and Prefects

The debate between Richard Carrier and Bart D. Ehrman, over Ehrman’s new book Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (2012) seems bogged down on trivial points to me.

Carrier also appears to have made a mistake in his most recent reply to Ehrman:

“The view that Claudius changed the title of Judaean governors from prefect to procurator has long since been refuted (most conclusively by the work of Fergus Millar.”

Richard Carrier, “Ehrman’s Dubious Replies (Round Two),” Richard Carrier Blogs, April 29, 2012.

Carrier then directs readers to his paper about Herod as a Syrian procurator in support of this assertion.

I assume Carrier refers to these articles by Fergus Millar:

Millar, Fergus. 1964. “Some Evidence on the Meaning of Tacitus ‘Annals XII’. 60,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 13.2: 180–187.

Millar, Fergus. 1965. “The Development of Jurisdiction by Imperial Procurators; Further Evidence,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14.3: 362–367.

However, a reading of these does not support Carrier’s assertion.

In Millar 1964, he says plainly on p. 181:

“It is clear that such procurators [sc. governing small provinces], originally called praefecti, exercised a criminal and civil jurisdiction in their areas, which was equivalent to that of senatorial governors, except in that it was only in special cases that they possessed the ius gladii.” (Millar 1964: 181).

He is clear that procurators who were governors of minor provinces were originally called prefects (praefecti in Latin), and Millar (1964: 181, n. 9) cites A. H. M. Jones’s Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960), and does not engage in any refutation of this idea. The rest of the article is an interpretation of Tacitus, Annales 12.60, and Millar argues that it refers to Claudius’s granting of increased jurisdictional power to those procurators who managed imperial properties, a different type of procurator from the type who governed small provinces.

In addition, Millar (1965) simply adds more evidence to the case that Tacitus, Annales 12.60 refers to the authority of procurators of imperial properties: there is no refutation of the view that Claudius changed the official titles of the minor equestrian or freedmen provincial governors from prefect to procurator.

Carrier also asserts that the source Prosopographia Imperii Romani (or PIR for short) that Ehrman cited for his assertion that Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator, is “outdated.”

The most recent edition of Prosopographia Imperii Romani saec. I. II. III. (2nd edn. part 6; eds. Leiva Petersen and Klaus Wachtel; De Gruyter, Berlin, 1998), revised in the 1990s, is quite clear that Pilate carried the title praefectus (PIR [2nd ed.] part. 6, no. 815, p. 348), on the basis of the Pilate inscription (see Année Epigraphique 1963 no. 104).

This source is not “outdated,” but represents the opinion of scholars from the 1990s, who had updated an earlier edition of the work.

In short, I see no evidence at all that the “view that Claudius changed the title of Judaean governors from prefect to procurator has long since been refuted.”

Rather, the view that, from the reign of Claudius, the equestrian governors who were called prefects (or praefecti in Latin) were now called procurators appears to be the common opinion: it is held by Syme (1962: 92), Jones (1960: 124), Weaver (1972: 267-268), Garnsey and Saller (1987: 23), B. Levick (Levick 2001: 48) in her biography of the emperor Claudius, and Schäfer (2003: 105).


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brunt, P. A. 1966. “Procuratorial Jurisdiction,” Latomus 25: 461-489.

Garnsey, Peter and R. Saller. 1987. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Jones, A. H. M. 1960. Studies in Roman Government and Law, Blackwell, Oxford.

Levick, Barbara. 2001. Claudius, Routledge, London.

Millar, Fergus. 1964. “Some Evidence on the Meaning of Tacitus ‘Annals XII’. 60,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 13.2: 180–187.

Millar, Fergus. 1965. “The Development of Jurisdiction by Imperial Procurators; Further Evidence,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14.3: 362–367.

Schäfer, Peter. 2003. The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World (rev. edn.), Routledge, London.

Schürer, Emil. 2000 [1973]. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (vol. 1; rev. and ed. by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Black), T&T Clark, Edinburgh.

Sherwin-White, A. N. 1939. Procurator Augusti, Papers of the British School at Rome, v. 15, N.S. 2.

Syme, R. 1962. “The Wrong Marcius Turbo,” Journal of Roman Studies 52: 87-96.

Weaver, P. R. C. 1972. Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor’s Freedmen and Slaves, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.