What does Bart Ehrman really know about Jesus?

Bart Ehrman, textual critic, has written an article disputing the biblical accounts of Jesus' birth. In it he disputes traditional beliefs, apocryphal claims, and biblical claims. I have no interest in discussing non-canonical writings here, though I am likely to concur with Ehrman about this, but wish to clarify popular belief and refute his antibiblical assertions. I will list the claims here but it is worth reading the article in full first.

Ehrman claims that the Bible does not mention

1. What year Jesus came into the world;
2. That Jesus was born on December 25;
3. An ox and an ass in his manger;
4. That it was 3 (as opposed to 7 or 12) wise men who visited him.

Ehrman suggests the following equivalency:

• The Proto-Gospel of James is incredulous;
• The New Testament gospels are incredulous.
• He suggests that if we disbelieve the Proto-Gospel of James we should also disbelieve the New Testament gospels.

He also complains that

1. Matthew and Luke are the only two (New Testament) gospels that contain infancy narratives;
2. Matthew and Luke are inappropriate to use as historical sources.

He mentions that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are historically problematic because they appear irreconcilable. Specifically

1. Luke and Matthew give genealogies of Jesus’ father, Joseph but they are different;
2. Joseph and Mary make a trip from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to register for a census that never occurred;
3. A star—or other celestial body—cannot lead anyone to a particular town or stop over a particular house;

I will consider each of these claims in turn.

Many of the modern ideas about Christmas are not entirely correct. Unfortunately Ehrman has not entirely identified popular misconceptions. The Bible does specify when Jesus was born. It states that the birth was at the time of Augustus' registration (Luke 2:1), that Herod was still alive, and that Jesus was about 30 in Tiberius' 15th year (Luke 3:1, 23). There are several other pointers in the Bible as to the time of Jesus' birth which narrows it down to a year or two as we are not fully certain concerning the intersection of the biblical dates with the Julian calendar.

Ehrman is correct in that we are not clearly given an exact date when Jesus was born, though there are clues that may allow specifying the day. The choice of December 25 may be a reasonable day to celebrate Christmas as there is some evidence that it may correspond to the Magis' visit.

The next item one presumes Ehrman means near the manger rather than in it. There may or may not have been animals around the time of the birth. It is of little consequence, but given that a manger is a feeding trough for animals their presence would not be remarkable. He would have been better to argue that Jesus was not born in a stable.

The 3 Magi possibly derives from the 3 gifts, but Ehrman is correct in that the Bible does not specify their number, or the number of their retinue.

Ehrman's comparison of the Proto-Gospel of James to the New Testament gospels fails on at least two accounts. Firstly, if a work on a topic is palpably false, it does not mean that every work on that topic is just as false. Demonstrating errors in James does not bring Luke into disrepute. Secondly, it seems there is some (unintentional) equivocation around incredulous. To the materialist all miraculous stories are incredulous. It is the miraculous that seems incredulous. Of course if God exists, the miraculous is hardly unbelievable—as if God is constrained by his own creation. To the theist, incredulity has little to do with miracles and everything to do with plausibility of the story. Jesus turned water into wine because they had run out of wine, he healed the crippled and the blind to make them well, and he frequently used such events to teach about the kingdom of God. Compare James' angels feeding Mary, Jesus walking immediately after birth, Mary's hymen remaining intact post-partum. It is not that miracles like these are beyond God's power: ravens fed Elijah. The problem is the miracles are to what purpose? This is the miraculous solely for the sake of miracle. It is incredulous not because there are miracles in the story, it is incredulous because it lacks meaning.

His next two complaints are a non-issue. There are only 4 New Testament gospels, only 2 gospels having material about Jesus' infancy is fully half of all the gospels. His statement that Matthew and Luke are inappropriate historical sources is just assertion. Luke is frequently regarded as a pre-eminent historian.

For all the length of the article Ehrman only identifies three problems specific to what is actually written in the Bible. He is wrong on all three counts.

The genealogies are not both of Joseph. Matthew's (incomplete) genealogy is of Joseph who is married to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke's is of Jesus via Mary. Jesus was the son as it was supposed of Joseph. Jesus was in fact the son (decendent) of Heli, Heli being the father of Mary. Luke has earlier told us that Mary was a virgin and Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and not Joseph.

Next, there are a couple of problems with the census dismissal. The first problem is Ehrman fails to find corroborating evidence for such census and uses this missing information and reason to dismiss Luke's claims as fiction. Even if Luke were to contradict another historian this does not disprove Luke, if Luke is otherwise more reliable then he deemed more likely to be telling the truth. Yet in this passage it is not even Luke versus others, it is Luke versus no one. Why can we not believe Luke here? Luke is an impeccable historian. And he lived during this era. The second problem is that it probably was not a census. Luke says registration. A census is assumed by some interpreters but not mentioned by Luke. There could be other reasons to register. Some have suggested this registration was to offer an oath of allegiance to Augustus, about the time he was named Pater Patriae.

Lastly, the clue to the star is that it appeared to the Magi. Although God could have made a dazzling light appear in the sky to guide the way this would have been visible to everyone. The Magi saw meaning in various stars that others did not see. It was the conjunction of stars and planets (wandering stars) that led them to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem.

Reconciling the gospel nativities is not that difficult. Though some difficulties may exist in the texts, others difficulties seem to arise from an assumption that the gospels are errant.

Response to the resurrection

Those who claim there was no resurrection of Jesus often do so from the perspective that such an event is impossible. An argument could be along the lines of

1. The laws of nature cannot be circumvented except by the supernatural
2. There is no such thing as the supernatural
3. God is supernatural
4. Thus miracles are impossible
5. Resurrection of dead people is a miracle
6. Thus the resurrection of Jesus did not happen

This argument is not airtight, one could quibble about the relationship of God to the supernatural, and one could be more precise about circumventing laws of nature, but it suffices for our purposes.

The premises in the argument are disputable. Presuppositions are fine. We all have them and use them to filter our experience and construct a worldview. However, once we encounter evidence that challenges our conclusions we do well to examine our presuppositions. If we have good evidence that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, then this means that at least one of the premises is incorrect. This should lead us to change our mind. In this case one would then think either that the laws of nature can be circumvented or, if we have reason to think they cannot, that the supernatural does in fact exist.

The problem we face is that men will accept all sorts of alternative explanations, even completely unreasonable ones, just so that they can keep their presuppositions. Their denial of God means that no evidence for God is good enough because for some God cannot exist axiomatically. Any explanation, however preposterous, is always to be preferred over challenging one's belief about the existence of God. This is not following the evidence wherever it leads, it is restricting evidences to those that conform to the unchallengeable worldview.

A resurrection denier could raise the same objection about those who affirm a resurrection. There is truth to the fact that the theistic presuppositions can be challenged by contrary evidence as atheistic ones can. However it is not the resurrection where this challenge is strong as the explanation of the resurrection is consistent and, one could argue, parsimonious with the data.

Which raises a question, are those who deny the resurrection biased? The answer is yes. We all are biased. Deniers are are likely to be negatively biased to various degrees. This is because the resurrection is not a neutral fact, thus more prone to be affected by underlying bias. I can prefer the birth year of Aquinas to be 1224 AD over 1225 AD with little effect on my obligations. But affirming the resurrection impels me to address Jesus' question, "Who do you say I am?" And if I have already affirmed Jesus' resurrection I am likely to think he has given credence to his claims of who he is.

Therefore the request for historical and modern examples of non-Christians who affirm the resurrection is disingenuous. Sure, such people, if they exist, are powerful hostile witnesses; but the lack of examples is not surprising, and the request for such examples is similar to only accepting evidence for oxygen from ardent phlogistonists.

Messianic Miracles

The Old Testament prophesied about the coming of the Messiah. There were several clues that God had given his prophets over hundreds of years about who and when the Messiah would be. God brought these things to pass in Jesus.

Beresford Job has an interesting article on the rabbinical requirements for the Messiah. His article is based on material by Arnold Fruchtenbaum at Ariel Ministries. The ancient rabbis had a theory about the Messiah and grouped miracles into messianic and non-messianic miracles. The messianic miracles were a list of miracles that could only be performed by the Messiah. Their reasoning meant to them that the person doing these miracles would be the promised Messiah.

Now this is man's requirement so there is no divine necessity that these miracles be performed by Jesus. Further there is no reason to think the Pharisees were correct in their assertion that only the Messiah could perform these miracles; God could surely work these miracles in any of his servants by the power of his Spirit.

Nevertheless, Jesus acquiesced to these requirements-of-men and there could be no doubt Jesus was the Promised One of God.

What were these miracles?

Healing a Leper. Casting out a dumb demon. Healing a man born blind.

The healing of a leper miracle was reasoned because it had never happened to a Jew since the episode with Miriam. Further the Mosaic Law prescribed the law for investigating healing and ceremonial requirement for one who was healed but not a method for healing.

The healing of a man born blind was also because it had not been known to happen and it was reasoned that the Messiah would be able to do this.

The casting out of a dumb demon came about because of the rabbinical methodology for dealing with demons. They would start a conversation with the demon, get the demon to name himself, then cast the demon out with the use of his name. Obviously this would not work with a mute demon—one that would not speak and dumb he possessed person.

Jesus performed all 3 miracles and that in the presence of the Pharisees. Not that this was necessary for Jesus to do, he was under no obligation to the Pharisees, and the Bible did not hint at these as messianic signs, it gave other ones. Nor was the Pharisees' theology necessarily correct. But by Jesus' actions they were confronted with who he really was by their own reasoning.

The article is worth a read for expanded details about the so called messianic miracles, how Jesus used these miracles to confront the Pharisees with his Messiahhood, and how Jesus performed these miracles in ways that, while consistent with God's law, intentionally broke their traditions.

Physics is descriptive not prescriptive

It is important to remember the laws of physics come from observations. We observe regular patterns and attempt to come up with mathematical models that explain the data and predict related phenomena. The predictive component is validates the model, it suggests that the model is more likely to represent reality. Explaining anomalous data is less impressive because models can usually be adjusted to fit. Models with simple equations, symmetry and covering more fields are generally favoured.

Kepler and Newton came up with orbital equations and gravitational theory that explained the movement of the the planets. Using gravitational laws we can predict the movements of the moon around the earth to great accuracy.

But the moon does not orbit the earth because of these equations, the moon orbits the earth and these equations describe the movements.

God set up the universe to function how it does. But God also sustains it, this means that it is not wound up and would run without him, if God removed his sustaining power the universe would instantly cease to exist. Anti-theists complain that this means we cannot do science, that we are at the whim of a God. Well we are dependant on him, but that does not mean that the universe is irregular and unpredictable. Leaving aside the fact that an atheist view of the universe gives us no reason to even trust our senses, if God is not capricious, then we can rely on his usual providence. We can therefore examine the universe with an assumption of a constant God who set up the world with a high degree of predictability.

This predictability has been known by all cultures and predates the scientific method—the scientific method gives a tool to gain underlying knowledge and make predictions based on models. As the earliest scientists said, they were thinking God's thoughts after him. Isaac Newton stated,

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being.

Because God sustains the universe he can manipulate it at his will. Not that he necessarily does this on frequent basis. This intervention we refer to as (specific) providence if God's hand guides specific events according to his will, or even at our request; we refer to it as miracle if it involves the overriding of physical law. Both the general upholding of the universe and a specific change to how the world usually operates are of equal ease for him. If God can stretch out the fabric of space then the multiplying of loaves and fish is of little difficulty.

That is why science is unable to disprove miracles. Miracles are not within the domain of operational science. Miracles are God's specific activity, not his general activity. We cannot observe regularity in miracles to formulate physical law. However they are provable, just via another method: testimony. Proof of miracles is via witnesses.

Miracle is also proof of the supernatural. Science can say the the world operates "like so" under the normal scheme of things. Observations that contradict what we know may be due to miracle and science can say nothing against it—science does not describe specific providence, only the general. Dead men do not come back to life according to biological science, but there is nothing to prevent God doing this in a specific case if he so wishes.