← Catholic Bible Study
Catholic Bible Study
Lectio The Case for Jesus: Question and Answer
00:36:03
Dr. Pitre takes time to answer numerous questions regarding the material covered over the course of the study.
Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:03]
A
Well, welcome back, everyone, to what might be my favorite session of all, and that's Q and A, Question and answer. As a professor, I love getting questions and I love to give answers when I know them. So if you have any questions about any of the sessions, sessions one through eight, any topic that we covered, or even any related topics, I'd love to hear your thoughts, hear your questions, and I'll do my best to give you some answers.
- [00:26]
B
You mentioned that Judaism and Christianity are the only religions that proclaim the resurrection of the body. Can you expand that regarding other religions?
- [00:37]
A
Sure. This is a great question. So when I said Judaism and Christianity are the only religions that proclaim the resurrection of the body, what was I talking about? Well, if you look at the Greco Roman world, the time of Jesus, right, Most of the members of the Greek Empire, whether through Greek religion or Roman religion, didn't have the most positive view of the body, right? So they. They tended to see salvation in some way, shape or form, if there was even salvation. There were very bleak views of religion that just thought all there was was this world and there wasn't anything after. But if they had some concept of the afterlife, it was usually about escaping from the body. There was a very famous Greek saying, soma sema, the body is a tomb. So Judaism's belief, going all the way back to the Book of Daniel, for example, or second Maccabees, that in the age of salvation, our soul and our body would be reunited was really kind of a unique and radical idea. Because most of the pagan world would say, now I want to get out of the body. And now that I've hit my 40s, I know why they say that, right? Because what starts to happen 33 is like the perfect age. But as you, once you pass that, the body starts to what? It breaks down, right? You have all kinds of pains and aches and suffering. Let's just think about so sickness and disease and death. So it's very understandable that in the pagan world there was a negative view of the body. But because Judaism and of course Christianity, being founded on Judaism, had a belief in a creator God that had made the world good and that had created humans not just as souls, but as soul and body together. Their view was that the true view of salvation in the age of salvation, that the soul and body would be reunited. And this was a radical thing. It was very unique idea. But it also had a certain appeal too, because, let's face it, as human beings, have you ever tried to conceptualize what it would be like to be a disembodied spirit. Can you wrap your brain around that? Very easily? No, because we are bodily creatures. And so Judaism, Christianity proclaimed that message. And it was a very unique message at the time. And it was actually hard for some people to accept precisely because they had such negative views of the body. Does that help? A little bit. Great. It's a very important question. And by the way, along those lines, today we need to proclaim the goodness of the body too, because people have lots of confusion in our day and time, know that it's revolving around the meaning of our bodies, the meaning of sexuality and gender, and just the body in general. Right. And Judaism, Christianity always said that the body was sacred and created good by God, but that it's in a fallen state that needs to be restored. And that's one of the things that the resurrection does. It gives us hope for that restoration.
- [03:28]
C
Well, more than a question, maybe is a comment. I had never heard the parallel of Jonah with the Resurrection. And that really hit me hard. I was born and raised Catholic and I attended Catholic schools all my life, so I had never heard that.
- [03:48]
A
Well, thank you for that. You know, I hadn't heard it either till I was working on the book. No, actually I was teaching. I was teaching it. And it was one of these things where I just, I read a lot of ancient Jewish literature and having to study Hebrew, for example, and read the book of Jonah in Hebrew, you see things that you'll miss sometimes if you just read through in English or if you just listen to the Gospels. We've heard that gospel so many times. A lot of times what happens is when Jesus says something strange or weird like the sign of Jonah and it doesn't quite fit for us, it usually means we need to go back to the Old Testament and look at it more carefully and try to see it through Jewish eyes so that we can understand it. And once we do put it in its first century Jewish context, it's not less Catholic, it's actually more Catholic. It makes the Catholic faith even more clear. And that's why I brought up Eusebius saying this almost matter of factly in his books, or Ephrem the Syrian. This is the tradition of the early church fathers. So scholars, one of our duties is to go back to those sources and share what we've discovered. So I'm glad you found it helpful too. And obviously it's important because Jesus says, this is it. This is the one sign I'm going to give you. So that should tell us that this is A very significant thing. This isn't just Dr. Petrie's little pet theory about the sign of Jonah. Jesus says, this is the one thing that's going to move them either to believe or to not believe. What role, if any, do you think the Enlightenment has played in the rise of skepticism about the Gospels? This is a great question. What role has the European Enlightenment played in the rise of Gospel skepticism? I think it's played an absolutely foundational role because one of the things that happened after the Enlightenment was the spread of philosophical skepticism toward the possibility of supernatural events such as miracles and prophecy. And I would actually argue that one of the reasons it wasn't until the 19th and 20th century that scholars began to suggest that the Gospels weren't biographies, but that they were folklore is not because the Gospels changed. They're the same. It's not because there's any evidence in the Gospels that would mean that the genre needed to be shifted. It's because, philosophically speaking, people began to doubt the possibility of miracles and prophecy. So when they read the Gospels, what are they full of? Miracles and prophecy. And so, from an Enlightenment perspective, a kind of skeptical perspective toward the supernatural, when you see all these supernatural things in the Gospels, the perspective that you would take is, well, this can't be history, because we know those things don't happen, therefore it must be some other kind of literature. It must be folklore, fiction or myth, or oral traditions that really don't have any anchoring in history. So it was the philosophical changes in Europe in the wake of the Enlightenment that changed the way people read the Gospels, not the other way around. Does that help? So that's why I tried to approach it from the perspective of reason, because what did the Enlightenment claim? We look at things through the lens of reason, and that's still with us to this day. Right. If you're talking to a secular audience, what does the word secular mean? It comes from the Latin secula, which means this world or this age. Right. So we're just looking at the world at time, at space, at matter. Right. So there's an openness to arguments from reason and history within time and space. So it's important that when we're sharing the faith, we don't just assume, oh, well, you believe in the supernatural just like I do. It's important to start with the history because we're talking to a secular audience who has imbibed that philosophical skepticism toward miracles and prophecy. And you have to kind of take people step by step from the foundation of history and lead them To a point where they can make the decision to come to faith. Now, you can't force people into faith at the same time, Right? I mean, I can give you all the arguments that the Gospels are reliable and they. And that Jesus claimed to be God and that he fulfilled the prophecies of the Messiah and that he was raised from the dead and the tombs of. I can give you all those historical arguments. But at the end of the day, you have to decide for yourself. Right. How are you going to answer the question, who do you say that I am? And even Peter himself. You remember in the gospel Matthew 16, when Jesus asked Peter, who do you say that I am? And Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, who. What did Jesus say to him? Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. So you can take people to the edge of faith, so to speak. But at the end of the day, even for Peter, faith in the divinity of Jesus is a supernatural gift. It's a gift that God gives us. It's something we can't do on our own power. We really have to be humble enough to receive the gift of faith in Jesus divinity because it's a mystery. I mean, we can't wrap our brains around it. I can't give you a mathematical proof for it. I can give you all the historical evidence and take you to the edge of it and show you how it's reasonable to believe it. But at the end of the day, you have to make that decision to have supernatural faith and ask for that gift. And that's part of what evangelization is all about. Yes.
- [09:11]
D
I just wanted to ask the question. You talked about the early Church Fathers.
- [09:14]
A
Yes.
- [09:14]
D
Do you have any recommendations for a comprehensive book or something that would be
- [09:19]
C
the best to read?
- [09:21]
A
Sure. Oh, wow. Okay. A comprehensive book on the early Church Fathers. That would be the best to read. Well, first and foremost, I always try to tell my students, start by actually reading the Fathers themselves. Okay. And there's a great compilation. I'm trying to remember the editor. I think it's Andrew Loth L O U T H. He's an orthodox scholar. It's called Early Christian Writings, and it's a nice collection of the earliest apostolic fathers, like the writings of Polycarp, the Letter of Barnabas, the Didache, some of these early Christian writings that weren't included in the New Testament but were very early witnesses to the apostolic faith. That volume, Early Christian Writings, is a great place to start with reading the early Church Fathers and then as you go on from there, Mike Aquilina has a great introduction to the Church Fathers that will give you kind of an overview the landscape and introduce you to each of the different people. In fact, I didn't think about this. Here's another one, Paul. Pope Benedict. Anybody heard of Pope Benedict xvi? He actually did a series of general audiences over the course of about four or five years. And Ignatius Press has a four volume set on the Church Fathers going from the time of the New Testament all the way up to Saint Therese of Lisieux and the doctors, medieval doctors, and even some of the modern saints. That's by Pope Benedict. And they're nice short little introductions to each of the Fathers by a man who knew the Fathers, who knows the Fathers like they're his friends. When you read Pope Benedict writing about the Fathers, you know this man has not just read them in translation, he's reading them in the original. And he knows each one of them personally. So Pope Benedict's introduction, an overview of the early Church Fathers would be a great place to go as well. And then as for their writings, you can also find, I hate to even say this because I love books, but you can find many of them online for free@newadvent.org NewAdvent.org has a link just called the Church Fathers and it's one of the most comprehensive English translations of the Church Fathers in English. You can print them off on your computer and read them for yourself. Some of my favorites to start with would be saints like Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, his discussion of the sacraments. Some of the Fathers are really hard to read, others are a little easier to go with. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem is a favorite of mine as well as of course, St. Augustine. If you haven't read the Confessions, you better do it because you're going to spend time in Purgatory if you die and you haven't read the Confessions yet. Okay. Trust me. Alright, Read the confessions to St. Augustine. I'm joking, I'm joking. That's not Catholic doctrine, but it's a classic for a reason. Alright, I hope that helps a little.
- [12:03]
B
So this is referring back to session four and you were talking about Jesus and the apostles were walking up Jerusalem and they were impressed by the city of Jerusalem. But if the, if they had never been there before and you had to go to the Temple to slaughter your Passover Lamb, it just.
- [12:24]
A
How do you reconcile that? Okay, yeah, let me be clear. When I was talking about Jesus and the Apostles going to Jerusalem and being impressed by the Temple, what I Didn't. I didn't mean to imply that they'd never been there before because as adult male Jews, they would have to go up year after year. But I know people who've been to the Holy Land 30 times and who are still impressed when you come over the Mount of Olives and you see the city of Jerusalem across the valley. It's impressive every time. Okay, so I didn't mean to imply that. What I meant though is they are from a different part of the Holy Land, they're from Galilee, which is much more rural and agricultural. So coming into the city, they're impressed by the glory and the splendor and the grandeur of the temple complex which in the first century, King Herod had. It was under construction for most of the first century because he was expanding it to. To make it into one of the wonders of the ancient world. And it was until the Romans came and destroyed it. So does that help? I didn't mean to imply that. So thanks for helping me clear that up.
- [13:20]
E
Your reference to Jonah, that's really cool. I like that it talks about being rescued from the pit where the bars don't close. So how do you. Thinking about Sheol, thinking about the pit and thinking about the abode of Abraham and all these different words, and Sheol is used for hell, it's used for Hades. How do you avoid the idea that he went down into the pit where the bars close forever? Kind of sounds like hell, you know, how do you avoid the error of can he escape from hell?
- [13:54]
A
Sure, that's a good question. So when Jonah says, the bars closed upon me forever and I went down to the pit, does that mean that he goes to hell as the realm of the damned and then escapes from it? I don't think it means that. Because if you look at the Old Testament very carefully, the notions of the afterlife and even the names for the realm of the dead are still rather open ended. Okay, so Sheol as well, even as the pit, are just names for this dark underworld, this dark place, this mysterious realm of the dead. And it's going to take some time in Jewish thought for that to develop into a more clear notion of distinct realms within the realm of the dead, some of which are places of peace, like Abraham's bosom and Jesus parable, and others of which are places of eternal torment, such as Gehenna. You'll see Jesus use that term in the New Testament to describe what we would call hell as the realm of the damned. But even there, it's actually a little fuzzy because some Jewish sources describe Gehenna as a place of fire, but. But of temporary fire, where your sins are purified, but then which you will exit. I know that's hard for you as a Catholic to imagine, a place of spiritual fire and purification that's only temporary, but just try to wrap your. I'm being sarcastic, okay? This is like purgatory, right? Which is why St. Paul will talk about being saved through fire. So Jonah doesn't use anywhere the image of fire or the realm of damnation. Pit and Sheol are just names for the realm of the dead. So I wouldn't press that any further than just in its context. Jonah saying that he's dying and going to the realm of the dead, but that God delivers him from that realm. And this is going to be foundational, everyone too, for one of the articles of our faith. In the Apostles Creed, Jesus descended into hell. I remember as a little boy thinking, well, why did Jesus go to hell? I thought, only bad people go to hell, you know, And I just didn't understand. Even to this day, there's terminological confusion because the Apostles Creed is originally in Greek. And what it actually says is he descended into Hades, which is just the Greek name for the realm of the dead. And some parts of Hades are bad, right? And then some parts of Hades are just kind of, you know, the place where dead souls go. And they're not necessarily have the same connotation of damnation as we would think of it. So things haven't been categorized and defined and clarified by the first century. They're still some openness, certainly at the time of the Book of Jonah, for how these terms were used. So just for now, think of the general realm of the dead. But for us, it's important because the early church is going to lay that foundation and say, not only did Jesus experience a real human death, but he entered into the depths of what it means to be dead insofar as his human soul descended to the realm of the dead, accompanying the dead, all the dead since the time of Adam, right, To bring the gospel to them. That's what he's doing on Holy Saturday. And then on Easter Sunday, he rises from the dead. So it's a full participation in the reality of human death. That's what we mean when we say Jesus descended into Hades. And Jonah is an anticipation of that in the chapter one and two there. Does that help?
- [17:12]
E
Yeah, I think it does. I think it does it all.
- [17:14]
A
Sound convinced. Well, cut this guy out of the tape. We're going to Edit that part, Dovet.
- [17:18]
E
On the Christian side.
- [17:19]
A
Sure.
- [17:19]
E
The church is coming up with these more concrete.
- [17:22]
A
No, it's not just the church. What I'm saying is that Judaism itself had not yet developed the idea of a realm for the damned at the time Jonah was written. That's going to take time until you get into the Second Temple period before that is very clearly laid out.
- [17:37]
E
Right, so you see that in the Mishnah, or you see that in other.
- [17:41]
A
Yes, that's exactly right. Actually, even by the time you get to the Mishnah in the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. there's still some ambiguity about what Gehenna, which is the name they use for the realm of the damned, whether it's permanent for everyone or whether it's temporary for some, whether it's eternal torment or temporary torment. There's debate about all of that that's still going on by the 2nd 3rd century A.D. so some things aren't as clear as we'd like them to be. And one of them is ideas about the afterlife.
- [18:06]
D
Okay, this is probably simple or maybe not. I don't know. When you quote John and he says, this is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
- [18:24]
A
Very good.
- [18:26]
D
Why we.
- [18:27]
A
Very good. Okay, so this is a great question. Why does John, if he's referring to himself, speak both in the third person about himself and in the first person plural? Why does he say we and he if it's him himself? And this is one of those idiomatic expressions that we wouldn't do today, but is actually standard for ancient writers. So let me. Well, I shouldn't say that. Sometimes people will do it today. I don't know if any of you remember when Bob Dole ran for president, he would talk about himself in the third person. Bob Dole is going to do this and Bob Dole is going to do that. And it was always kind of weird, like, why are you talking about yourself in the third person? But it was a way of getting his name remembered. Okay, so ancient writers were less enthusiastic about inserting themselves in the first person into their writings. Okay. For example, Josephus writes his autobiography, and he writes his accounts of the Jewish wars. And when he's talking about what he did, you know what he says? Josephus did this and Josephus did that, and then Josephus did this. He'll refer to himself in the third person in certain texts. So that's one thing. A second thing is Jesus himself uses the first person plural. And the third person to refer to himself. Go back to the Gospel of John, for example, in chapter three, do you remember this when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, right, in John 3:10. And Nicodemus says, how can a man enter into his mother's womb a second time? And Jesus said in verse 10, Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you don't understand this? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know. Now, wait, who's the we there? Well, sometimes when you want to give authority to your words in an ancient text or even in a discourse like this, you'll say it in the first person plural. Actually, this was even common in the 20th century with certain scholars. They would use what we might call the royal we. It gives a certain solemnity or authority to the declaration to. To use the first person plural. And so Jesus himself does it. There. We speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. But he's clearly speaking there of his testimony as the Son of God who has come down from heaven. So I just use that as an example. That's just an ancient idiomatic expression. It's a way of making the statement more solemn and more definitive. To use the first person plural and the third person. Does that help? A little bit. Okay, good. It is also possible, and some scholars have said, that the. We know that his testimony is true is a reference to, like, the final editor, the scribe who's writing down the gospel, stepping in at that moment. That's possible because we'll see that happen in Romans. For example, in Romans 16, Tertius, the scribe of Paul, steps in and says, I, Tertius, right. Who writing this letter, he kind of steps into the text. So those kind of things happen in ancient texts. So it's just an ancient way of making that statement more solemn and authoritative. Does that help? The important point is that he says, the disciple who has seen these things has written these things, so he's asserting authorship. That's what I was trying to emphasize.
- [21:36]
D
Oh, I know.
- [21:36]
A
Yeah. You're wondering about the. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it is weird. But remember, after the modern era, we became much more focused on I. Ancient people were much more focused on we, and they were more hesitant to put themselves into their text. They wrote about themselves, even in the third person. And this actually happened even to this day. I was just reading a biography of St Robert Bellarmine. In the 16th century, he was asked to write an autobiography. And he did, reluctantly. But he put the Whole thing in the third person. He didn't want to write it in the first person. It was kind of humility. Does that make sense? Robert did this, then Robert did that. But it was a way of staying out of the text. So it's just stylistic things.
- [22:17]
D
In the section where you were talking
- [22:19]
C
about Jesus walking on water.
- [22:22]
A
Yes.
- [22:23]
D
You were reading from Mark and it
- [22:25]
C
says he meant to pass them by.
- [22:28]
A
Yes. What is.
- [22:30]
D
Can you.
- [22:31]
A
Great question. Okay, so I didn't. I actually cover this question in the book. Why does Jesus. Why does the Gospel of Mark say Jesus meant to pass by? And I take you through this in more detail in the book. So if you want to look at the case of Jesus, you can go there. The short answer is this. First, in the English, it sounds a little different than the Greek. So in the Greek, it's. He intended to pass by them. Por uisti, I think, is the Greek word. And it's a little ambiguous. On the one hand, in English, it certainly makes it sound like he's got somewhere else to be. Like, you know, like he was going to the 711 for a midnight snack and he. He didn't really want to talk to them. He wanted to get somewhere else. But as a number of Markan scholars have pointed out, like Joel Marcus, a Jewish commentator on Mark, the actual word Mark chooses. There is a technical term that's used for God passing by in the Old Testament. Whenever God appears, it's the same word. So for example, when Moses goes up Mount Sinai in Exodus 33, 34, and he says, show me your glory. The very passage that I brought up with Moses on the mountain, it says, the Lord passed by Moses because God in his glory can't stay with us without overwhelming us with his awe and his power. So what he'll do. Same thing happens with Elijah in chapter 19 and other places. Whenever God appears, the author will say, he passed by or his glory to passed by. So even today, commentators on Mark have said Mark uses that word because he wants you to think back to Old Testament theophanies where God appears, but he doesn't let you see his glory for too long. He just lets that glory pass by. So you get a glimpse of the glory, but not the fullness, because that has to wait until the beatific vision. Does that help? A little bit. So even the word pass by is a. Is an allusion to Jesus divinity. That's the short answer. Okay.
- [24:33]
C
It's fascinating to think about the transfigured body and maybe our own resurrected bodies. And so we see Jesus looking Like a human. But they didn't really recognize him at first.
- [24:43]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [24:44]
C
We saw him also in the transfiguration, how he looks so brilliant.
- [24:48]
A
Yeah.
- [24:48]
C
And then also I think I see him also as something edible, a piece of bread. And does the Catholic Church tell us anymore, like what our body are they going to be the 30 year old bodies?
- [25:03]
A
I detect a note of longing in your voice there. All right. Is that what you're hoping for? Yeah, yeah. This is a great question. So a couple of points. First, the Church has never defined exactly what our resurrected bodies will be like in the sense of how old will we be? How precisely? Because Paul himself says that there's a mysterious element to this right Eye is not seen, ear is not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has in store for those who Love him. That's 1 Corinthians. So we really can't wrap our brains completely around the mystery of our resurrection. However we can, and this is something the Church has done over and over again, and St. Thomas Aquinas is a good example. We can infer solid conclusions from the nature of Jesus resurrected body. So it's a real body. It's the same body, it's transfigured, it has new powers and new properties. Right. It's in a new mode of existence, will never die again. There'll be no more suffering, more crying, no more pain anymore. I mean, these are the kinds of basic truths about the resurrection that the Scripture reveals to us. And then the Church allows us to ponder in the mystery that of the resurrection. Now, as soon as I say that, I will point out in The Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas does forward the opinion that we will all be the same age. Christ was in the Resurrection because he's the model for all of us. Right. And that 33 years is the perfect age, like the human being comes to its telos in terms of complete growth and development and all that. And I kind of like that idea. But that's not a doctrine of the faith that we have to accept. That's an opinion of a great saint and doctor of the Church. What I would say though, and what is clear, and I would encourage you to read the section of the Catechism on this, if you have a chance and you want to take a look and you want more on this, look at the section on the Resurrection of the Body and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and it will take you step by step through the truth of the resurrection. Let me Point you to that real quick. It's Article 11 in the Catechism I believe in the resurrection of the body. It's Catechism, paragraph 988 through 1019. And it's all about our resurrection in Christ. And. This is what it says. Let me read from one paragraph, just to answer Your question. Paragraph 1000. Actually, 997 and 1000. What is rising in death? The separation of the soul from the body. The human body decays and the soul goes to meet God while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. That's what we're waiting for. God in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls through the power of Jesus resurrection. So that's the Catholic faith. Now. Think about that. Think about spending eternity with your spouse, family, your friends, your children, the Blessed Mother, Lord Jesus. Not just in your soul, but in your body. That's the truth of the bodily assumption of Our Lady. Why is that a dogma of the faith? Because it safeguards the fact that the truth of the resurrection of the body isn't just for Jesus, it's for all of us. And Mary is the archetype of that for us. And that's what the Catechism is teaching here. Now. How does that happen? Paragraph 1000. The how exceeds our imagination, and our understanding is accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies. So it's important that when we go up to Communion, we participate in the Mass. The priest does not say the soul of Christ, right? It's the body of Christ. Because the Eucharist itself, as John Paul II said in his letter on the Eucharist, is the. How does he put it in the Eucharist? I'm quoting now. We digest, as it were, the secret of the Resurrection. That's John Paul ii, Ecclesia d Eucharistia. So every time we see the Eucharist, it's a foretaste, literally, of our own bodily resurrection. Because what happens in the Eucharist? The priest takes bread and wine, elements of the earth, and they are transformed, transubstantiated into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. It's a little foretaste of the resurrection. But we're not there yet, so we still have to wait for the unveiled glory. Right now he hides under the appearance of bread and wine, just like he hid on the road to Emmaus. But in the resurrection that will be unveiled, the glory will be unveiled.
- [30:04]
F
When you talk about the writers of the Gospels, particularly the apostles, potentially being illiterate and you refer to it the rulers and the elders and the scribes, think about them in Acts and calling them agramatos, illiterate, uneducated. Might that be more the prejudice of those higher educated people? In Capernaum, next to the synagogue there is the largest school in Galilee for educating young people. Might they have been more educated?
- [30:33]
A
This is a great question, so I'll rephrase it slightly. What exactly does agramatos or illiterate mean when the Sanhedrin makes that accusation against Peter and John? Does it mean that they are fals, functionally illiterate in the strict sense that they can't read or write? Or does it mean that the Jewish leaders are looking down on the lower level of education that Peter or John might have had since they were there in Galilee, we know there were synagogues there in which the Scriptures were being read. What level of literacy is in view here? That's actually a debated point among scholars. So I was giving the strict interpretation because my point was, even if that's true, that doesn't mean that they can't dictate their Gospels to scribes. Is that point taken? Okay. At the same time, Josephus and other writers. One of the reasons this is debated is because other Jewish writers will say that among the ancients of the world, the Jews were the most literate people because of their love for the Scriptures. Right? So that the synagogues themselves were schools of study for reading the Scriptures and perhaps also for writing. Think about it. Jesus goes all around the Galilee and Judea. Who does he keep running into? Scribes, Right? Which means that there was a level of functional literacy, both reading and writing within Judaism, which is pretty widespread, at least as far as the Gospels depict it. What we don't know is exactly how literate Peter or John would have been as full time fishermen. Right? To this day, if your full time job isn't in writing and reading, you might spend time writing and reading, but it's not the main thing that you do. And we do know from ancient studies or studies of ancient literacy that, that the levels of literacy were dramatically lower in antiquity than they are in modernity. And the estimate's somewhere between 4 and 6% at the highest 10% of the population. But that's really debatable. So the question becomes, how literate were they? I don't know. That's a hard one to Answer. I'm inclined to think that more Jews were able to read. But as you know, if you've ever studied a foreign language, you can read a foreign language and not be able to write a sentence. Writing and reading are two different skills. And writing takes time. It takes practice. You have to have the leisure time that a lot of farmers and fishermen didn't have to practice their writing. So I'd say either interpretation is possible. But even on the strict one, that doesn't. My point was that it doesn't preclude them having written the Gospels. All right. That's a really great question. I incline toward thinking that they were more literate in the Scriptures than most scholars give them credit for. And even if they weren't, they spent three years with Jesus, who's a pretty good teacher. Right. So you also want to take into account the fact that time of study can increase one's knowledge. Right. Once they gave up fishing. See, this is the thing people say, oh, they were fishermen. Well, actually, they're ex fishermen who are now mathetes, students of a rabbi, and they spent three years being students of a rabbi. Did all they do was listen to Jesus or did they learn to read and study the Scriptures? I think you can make a good case for the latter two. Is that fair? Good.
- [33:37]
D
Are there any other scholars that agree with your point of view or perspective about what you have shared with us?
- [33:45]
A
Yeah. This is a really important question. Am I alone in giving you these perspectives? You might get that impression from the video series, because what I'm trying to do is give you a very short presentation on each of these topics. I. But if you look at the book the Case for Jesus, it has over, like 600 footnotes where I show you many, many other scholars who are taking the same positions, the same interpretations and the same perspective that I've given you in the course of these lectures. So if you're interested in diving into that a little bit more, I just want to make sure it's clear this is not just me and Bart Ehrman. There are lots of people out there. For example, Richard Burridge is an Anglican scholar who has written several books on the fact that the Gospels are biographies, and I would highly recommend reading his work. He actually won the Ratzinger Award, named after Pope Benedict for his contribution to Gospel scholarship, showing that they are biographies and not folklore or fiction. Other scholars, like Richard Baucom, another British scholar, wrote a book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, showing that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony as well and then there are countless scholars who have written commentaries on the Gospels. I'm giving you a number of Protestant ones here. Richard Hayes, who teaches at Duke University, has a book on the four Gospels where he walks through all four of them and he shows. It's called Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, where he shows that Jesus is divine in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So although I haven't given all of these different scholarly sources in my oral lectures here, I do reference them all in the book. So I'm not alone. I'm actually trying to share these recent developments because I think it's actually exciting that after about a century and a half of scholarly skepticism, what we see is a lot of newer studies coming around to positions and conclusions that the church has already taken and in fact anticipated in her teachings. For example, example at Vatican ii, about the historical truth of the Gospels and the genre of the Gospels and the apostolic origin of the Gospels. So I hope and would encourage any viewers who are interested in that to check out the footnotes in the case for Jesus. If you want to dig in deep. All right, I'm not alone.