To judge the beliefs of ancient peoples we can only judge by texts from their time? We have the New Testament and the writings of the early church fathers, but Professors Tabor and Erhman believe that we must also consider the Gnostic writings. Following the German scholar Walter Bauer (1877-1960), Erhman claims there were competing Christianities from the beginning of the faith, never a single gospel preached by Jesus' disciples. He explains the New Testament as due to the victory of powerful Roman bishops over other "Christianities" such as the Gnostics and Jewish "Christians" of the kind that Professor Tabor suggests.

  

Before showing that these professors claims cannot be true, it is fair to point out the work of each has become popular not just because of the current popularity of anti-Christian sentiment, as we tend to think, but also difficult to refute because they point to problems that many orthodox Christians prefer to ignore. In the case of Professor Tabor, it is the promise in the Scriptures that the Messiah would create a righteous Kingdom of God in the earth. Though Christians through the centuries have brought wonderful changes to a dark world, we have yet to see the Kingdom of God below as promised in the Scriptures. The reason is the problem to which Professor Erhman points: the lack of unity among Christians. Erhman fails to understand that believers must separate themselves from those who preach a different Christ than the Apostles. But he is correct in noting that institutional politics and power divide believers. Our unity will be achieved only by the Spirit of Jesus that comes through the weakness of the cross.  

 

Disappointingly, many evangelicals defend disunity in the church using the same argument as Professors Tabor and Erhman: that the Apostles themselves lacked unity. I can't think of anything more destructive of the faith than believing that those who knew Christ, over whom he prayed for unity, were obedient neither to Christ nor their own teachings. What hope is there for the world if there is no peace in Christ! Supposing a conflict between Paul and James is just how destructive skepticism of the Bible began. The Apostles did have disagreements, as the New Testament is not ashamed to note, but they were willing and able to resolve their differences as we see them doing at the Council recorded in Acts 15. They submitted one to another and to the Spirit of Christ as they preached our common faith. Neither the New Testament nor the earliest church fathers know of lasting disagreements among the Apostles. 

 

As in the letter of Jude, the New Testament writings do acknowledge that from the time of the Apostles, some were teaching things that did not accord with the common faith. Jesus foresaw that tares (false teachings) would soon appear among the wheat that he planted. This parable (Matthew 13: 36-43) is important for understanding the problem championed by Erhman and Jesus' solution. Jesus goes on to declare that at the end of the age the tares will be removed and the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. What a glorious day! Erhman himself seems to recognize that problems with the text are small potatoes compared to differences in interpretation that have beset the church from earliest days. Those come from interpreting text in the light of false theologies. Jesus' promised removal of false teachings might also be accompanied by correction of the far less significant problems with the text. With recent discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament manuscripts, some scholars see a complete recovery of the essential biblical text.  

 

But if some evangelicals have wrongly supposed that permanent disagreements existed among Jesus' Apostles, Erhman's thesis that radical departures from the common faith stem from the earliest days of Christianity is absurd. How could Gnostics who reject the Old Testament have been part of the same community as Judaizers who wanted to subject the faith to the Law of Moses? How could these groups that denied either the divinity or humanity of Jesus have belonged to those who believed that their Heavenly Lord dwelt among themselves as a man? Far from the explosive expansion that in fact occurred, such a "community" could only self destruct.    

 

Erhman's attribution of the New Testament canon to Catholic bishops mistakes historical fact for cause. Were it the cause rather than result of the success of the gospel, where are the New Testament books that teach monarchical episcopacy? Ignatius' epistles that do teach monarchical episcopacy are among the earliest of the Christian writings. Why aren't they in the New Testament? To the dismay of monarchical pastors, in the Scriptures we possess, Jesus and his Apostles clearly teach against kingship in the family of God on earth. Then, as today, there were a lot of things that the bishops would love to add to the Bible, but they are stuck without them and with having to explain away what is actually said there.

 

In attributing the divinity of Jesus to the bishops, Erhman ignores or glibly dismisses the evidence from history. As early as 110 AD, the Younger Pliny writes to the Emperor Hadrian that the Christians are singing hymns to Christ as a god. Instead of fabricating Scriptures, Pliny claims they were taking oaths never to falsify their word or deny a trust when they are called upon to deliver it. They would hardly sacrifice their life had they not believed what they told him. 

 

Erhman wants to blame the disappearance of the Gnostics on the bishops, but the problem with Gnosticism's survival is that there is nothing there to die for (not even for Jesus to die for) if anything to live for. The chief value of these teachings is that they could make a good living for teachers so long as they reserved their secrets for the initiated. In this, they follow the mystery religions of their day. By contrast, and despite some minor disputing, it is astonishing how easily and quickly the New Testament canon was accepted by what continues as Jesus' church. An ecclesiastical institution was no more responsible for the canon in the early church than for maintaining the canon in the highly fragmented church of today.

 

One cannot explain what Simcha Jacobovici refers to as the Big Bang of Christianity apart from some great historical miracle that convinced the disciples of Jesus was their Heavenly Lord. (Had his body not come forth from the grave, it would have been a dud.) But Erhman is correct when he says the Gnostic Scriptures don't need explaining: precisely what one should expect when the Big Bang of Christianity spread through the cold skies of Hellenistic philosophy.

  

Jesus explained the reason for the canon: "My sheep know my voice." Consider what happens to mainline Protestants as they abandon belief in this Bible. The survival of texts is no less difficult. If anyone doubt it, let them publish another Bible. Let them publish one, as they ought to do if they believe it shouldn't be there, leaving out only Mark 16:9-20. Professor Erhman would despise that Bible. 

 

But was there ever a time since the day of Pentecost - according to Professor Tabor, prior to the conversion of the Apostle Paul - when Jesus disciples believed differently about his divinity than is reflected in the New Testament? If we are going to have anything reliable about the beliefs of Jesus' brothers and first disciples before the final composition, we must find it in the New Testament itself. I begin with the two letters of Jesus' brothers that Professor Tabor recognizes as authentic. Note that neither brother identifies himself as Jesus' brother but as servant to their Savior and Judge. That alone is powerful testimony to their recognizing Jesus' divinity. Though Jude is a brother of James, he is a servant of Jesus. Reflecting the title of this newsletter, Jude reveals in verse 5 who he believes Jesus is:

  

Most translations have the Lord saving a people out of the land of Egypt, but the ESV follows the majority of manuscripts which contain the word Jesus. As for those manuscripts that don't, scholars acknowledge that it is far more likely that scribes replaced the Jesus in the original than the reverse. Which words were original with Jude doesn't much matter because it is clear that all the writers of the New Testament recognize Jesus as the King of Israel, their previously unseen Lord Jehovah. John the Baptist prepared the way for the Lord spoken of by Isaiah the Prophet. The disciples believed that John was pointing to Jesus.

Though Jesus saves, as he also saved the family of Noah, Jude notes that he inflicts judgment on the rebellious. The other brother of Jesus who left us a letter sees Jesus as the Judge standing at the door. Christians today emphasize Jesus as Savior, but his brothers also saw him as judge of the rebellious. They did so for the same reason that Christians today associate judgment with the Lord God of the Old Testament. Jesus' first disciples had to believe that to be Jesus.

I next turn to the Sermon on the Mount because much of it is among that so-called list of Q sayings that Professor Tabor recognizes as authentically Jesus. Those who heard Jesus noticed that he spoke as one who had authority rather than as a mere teacher. We see that authority in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, even in the reduced form that Jesus' sermon appears among the Q sayings. As hermeneutics expert Henning Graf Reventlow writes: "Jesus contrasted the unconditional claim of his authority over against the Torah." Jesus modifies the Ten Commandments by including intention as making one guilty of murder and adultery. He could do so because his authority surpassed these laws. Jesus commends the Law of Moses as one who confirms by his own authority that the Law remains in effect until everything is fulfilled.

The qualification points not to a continuation but a termination of the Law in Jesus. However kosher Professor Tabor wishes him, it was Jesus not Paul who taught his disciples that the Law and the Prophets end with John the Baptist. Contrary to the kosher Jesus and however much he commends the Law of Moses as a minimum requirement, Jesus is not one who sees himself under the Law that he once gave his sinful subjects. When his disciples were picking grain on the Sabbath, we learn that the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath. Who is Lord of the Sabbath but Jehovah? In his many "I have come" sayings, Jesus reveals his preexistence. In "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers here chicks under her wings..." he reveals the precise nature of his preexistence. These accounts are in the so-called Q list of Jesus' sayings. Perhaps, Q needs to be further sanitized of all hints of Jesus' divinity.