Includes study aids and discussion questions. If using in a group, personal study is needed between meetings. 12 sessions
Includes study aids and discussion questions. If using in a group, personal study is needed between meetings. 12 sessions
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Overview
Includes study aids and discussion questions. If using in a group, personal study is needed between meetings. 12 sessions
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780891095620 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | NavPress Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/01/1989 |
| Series: | LifeChange |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.54(w) x 8.44(h) x 0.38(d) |
About the Author
The Navigators is an interdenominational nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people "know Christ and make Him known” as they look to Him and His Word to chart their lives.
Navigators have invested their lives in people for more than seventy-five years coming alongside them life on life to study the Bible develop a deepening prayer life and memorize and apply Scripture The ultimate goal is to equip Christ followers to fulfill 2 Timothy 2:2—to teach what they have learned to others.
Today tens of thousands of people worldwide are coming to know and grow in Jesus Christ through the various ministries of The Navigators. Internationally more than 4 600 Navigator staff of 70 nationalities serve in more than 100 countries.
Read an Excerpt
Killing History
Jesus in the No-Spin Zone
By Robert M. Price
Prometheus Books
Copyright © 2014 Robert M. PriceAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61614-966-6
CHAPTER 1
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OR HISTORICAL BALLAST?
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard spend a surprising amount of space, perhaps too much, filling in the historical setting of the gospel story. The stories of Julius Caesar, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, and others are made into novelistic narratives just like the Jesus chapters. One is tempted to say the authors are verging on the docudrama genre. While I have no quibbles about their depictions of these historical figures, I suspect that the material actually turns out to be counterproductive to their purpose, since we are soon going to find out that the gospel appearances of these characters do not match what history tells us about them, suggesting that the historical connection between them and the gospel story of Jesus is less secure than O'Reilly and Dugard would have us believe.
DOES JESUS BELONG IN HISTORY?
First a word about the larger function of these background chapters. It is common, and altogether natural on certain assumptions, to regard the gospel episodes as iceberg tips emerging into view from larger bodies beneath the surface. That is, the gospel stories seem to presuppose much about the culture, the politics, the religions, and so on, of the period in which the episodes are set. The evangelists (gospel writers) may be expected to have taken a good deal for granted, since they could count on their contemporaries to be familiar with the relevant facts. Living so long afterward, modern readers require some help filling in the picture. Bible commentaries are properly filled with such information. But there is a forgotten or unsuspected question being begged here. To some scholars, the Jesus stories bear an unmistakable resemblance to oft-recurring archetypal myths and legends, and we have to ask whether the gospel writers have sought to bring an originally mythical Jesus figure down to earth by clothing him in a plausible historical-cultural setting, much as Herodotus tried to place Hercules as a historical figure in the reign of this or that king. Plutarch similarly figured that Osiris and Isis must have originally been an ancient king and queen of Egypt. Hercules and Osiris were, like Jesus, dying and rising savior deities. And, like them also, Jesus was placed conjecturally and variously in the first century BCE, imagined crucified by Alexander Jannaeus or his widow Helena, or as late as the reign of Claudius. It is perhaps significant that in earlier New Testament epistles we read of Jesus' death being brought about not by any Roman or Jewish government officials but rather by "the Archons [angels] who rule this age" (1 Cor. 2:6–8), "the Principalities and Powers," fallen angels (Col. 2:13–15); while of the Romans we read that they never punish the innocent, only the guilty (Rom. 13:3–4; 1 Pet. 2:13–14). Does it look as if these writers knew the crucifixion story we read in the gospels? The very notion of the Son of God put to death on a cross makes plenty of sense in terms of ancient astronomy and Gnostic mythology, where the celestial cross is the junction of the ecliptic with the zodiac.
The effect as well, perhaps, as the intent of providing a wealth of historical detail as O'Reilly and Dugard do, is to make Jesus seem as real as Julius and Augustus Caesar, Herod the Great, and Herod Antipas. The goal is analogous to having a US president appear in a movie or a comic book. Clinton is made to look like he is announcing a communication from outer space in the Jodie Foster movie Contact. Superman has been depicted shaking hands with Clinton and with JFK. Forrest Gump met Kennedy, too, even though Gump never existed. The Incredible Hulk once received a pardon from Lyndon Johnson. Bill O'Reilly himself appears on TV commenting on Stark Industries in Iron Man 2.
O'Reilly and Dugard repeatedly simply assume that Jesus must have done what Jews regularly did. On pilgrimage to Jerusalem, pilgrims typically waded into the mikvah, a ritual bathing area, for the sake of ceremonial purification, so we read simply that Jesus did it, too. (This is the kind of baseless inference from "what most people did" that led William E. Phipps to suggest, in a once-controversial book, that Jesus was probably married—since most rabbis were.) I think they are a bit too sure about these things, insignificant as most of them are. But it is vivid to tell the tale this way, so they do. It gets worse when our authors make up events from Jesus' life out of whole cloth.
Passover is a time when Jerusalem is packed with hundreds of thousands of worshippers from all over the world, so it was horrific when Archelaus boldly asserted his authority by ordering his cavalry to charge their horses into the thick crowds filling the Temple courts. Wielding javelins and long, straight steel and bronze swords, Archelaus's Babylonian, Thracian, and Syrian mercenaries massacred three thousand innocent pilgrims. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus saw the bloodbath firsthand and were lucky to escape the Temple with their lives. They were also eyewitnesses to the crucifixion of more than two thousand Jewish rebels outside Jerusalem's city walls when Roman soldiers moved in to quell further revolts. (p. 66)
He labors six days a week as a carpenter alongside his father, building the roofs and doorposts of Nazareth and laying the foundation stones of sprawling nearby Sepphoris. (p. 81)
Not one word of any of these episodes is mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. These deeds of violence occurred, as we know from Josephus, but the Holy Family is nowhere associated with them. Sepphoris was constructed about this time, but we have no mention of Jesus and his dad donning their hard hats and carrying their lunch pails down the road to join in. Sure, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus might have witnessed these Roman atrocities. We can imagine them doing so, and that appears to be quite good enough for the authors of Killing Jesus.
Reading Killing Jesus, one may wonder where the authors got all the vivid detail displayed in their recountings of the very brief and sketchy gospel cameos. Again, strictly from their imaginations. They did just what Anna Katharina Emmerich did in the eighteenth century when she wrote The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, a rather hefty and super-detailed gospel novel (the basis of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ). She claimed to have simply received the whole thing in a series of feverish visions as she lay upon her chronic sickbed, but what seems to have happened is that she attempted to visualize the gospel events in this-worldly detail, and they seemed very real to her as a result. The same technique is brought to bear still today as devout Christians, Catholic and Protestant, meditate their way through the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. This is basically what O'Reilly and Dugard have done in Killing Jesus. The rule of thumb is to ask oneself, "If this really happened, what would it have been like on the scene?" Think of the old TV show that promised, "All is as it was then, only you are there." But you weren't. And neither were O'Reilly and Dugard. And, we might wonder, was Jesus?
HEROD THE GREAT (BEAST)
King Herod was fully the villain O'Reilly and Dugard make him, though they do miss one interesting little detail. They quote Caesar Augustus' quip "I would rather be Herod's pig than his son." It is worth knowing that the remark is a clever pun. The Greek word for "pig" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) is but a single letter different from the word for "son" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]),and the joke was that, Herod being nominally Jewish, he would never have a pig slaughtered, but, as a murderous paranoid, he would and did have various of his sons put to death.
Herod's role in the gospels is confined to Matthew's Nativity story (Matt. chap. 2), including the episodes of the Wise Men and of the Slaughter of the Innocents. O'Reilly and Dugard blithely accept this story as accurate history (at least most of it). They trim the apocryphal details that are so familiar from Christmas carols and cards; Matthew never says there were three Wise Men, nor that they were kings, nor that they were named Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior, nor that they represented different nations. And, contra Killing Jesus, Matthew does not say they visited the newborn Jesus. No, Matthew has Herod ascertain that these stargazers detected Jesus' natal star two years before. Thus the order to kill every male up to that age.
As Raymond E. Brown (remember, a believing Catholic like Messrs. O'Reilly and Dugard) argued, it appears quite likely that Matthew has drawn upon first-century Moses lore, much of it preserved in the Jewish historian Josephus, for the basis of his Nativity. Josephus' nativity of Moses, somewhat embellished from the simpler version of Exodus, reads:
One of those sacred scribes, who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly, told the king that about this time there would a child be borne to the Israelites, who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian dominion low, and would raise the Israelites; that he would excel all men in virtue, and obtain a glory that would be remembered through all ages. Which was so feared by the king, that, according to this man's opinion, he commanded that they should cast every male child into the river, and destroy it.... A man, whose name was Amram ... was very uneasy at it, his wife being then with child, and he knew not what to do. ... Accordingly God had mercy on him, and was moved by his supplication. He stood by him in his sleep, and exhorted him not to despair of his future favours.... "For that child, out of dread for whose nativity the Egyptians have doomed the Israelites' children to destruction, shall be this child of thine ... he shall deliver the Hebrew nation from the distress they are under from the Egyptians. His memory shall be famous while the world lasts." (Antiquities of the Jews 2.9.2–3)
Matthew looks to have made Josephus' "sacred scribes, who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly" into his own Wise Men (more about them in a moment). Matthew has split the role of Pharaoh's scribes into that of the Magi from the East and Herod's staff of biblical scribes, who know how to interpret Old Testament predictions. What they tell him about the birth of a child who will topple the wicked king (Herod playing the role of Pharaoh) so alarms him that he orders the elimination of all the possible sons who might fulfill that prophecy. But, thanks to a timely warning from God (or his angels), the child is saved and goes on to fulfill his divinely appointed mission.
Where did Matthew get the idea of making his Wise Men into Persian Magi from the Parthian Empire (the Magi were well known as the ancient Persian caste of astrologers)? I suggest that he derived these characters from a widely reported (Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Pliny) case of political butt kissing. In 66 CE, Tiridates, king of Armenia (part of the Parthian Empire), made a grand journey to Rome, bringing with him the sons of three of his fellow Parthian kings. In Natural History, Pliny the Elder refers to them in his account as "magi," the same word Matthew uses. In a great public ceremony, Tiridates strode forward and bowed before Nero (as Matthew's Magi do before Jesus, the newborn King of the Jews), swearing fealty: "I have come to you, my god, to pay homage, as I do to Mithras" (XXX vi 16–17). Nero then confirmed him in his kingship, whereupon Tiridates and his delegation returned to their own country, but by a different route than the way they had taken to Rome, just as Matthew's Magi "departed to their country by another way" (Matt. 2:12).
I think this is a bona fide case of literary dependence or at least of fictionalizing history. But there is another factor to consider. Martin Dibelius called it the Law of Biographical Analogy. Spontaneously, a certain type of story will be told in similar cases. In the case of a faith community celebrating the epoch-making (as they view it) entrance of their hero into world history, believers will almost inevitably spin a miraculous Nativity story. Usually these stories feature some kind of divine annunciation of the historic birth. Another frequent feature is an attempt by some tyrant to nip the mission of the savior in the bud by destroying him as soon as possible. The mythical character of such a tale is evident from its early occurrence in the nativity of Zeus. The Titan king Kronos fears that one of his offspring will grow up to kill him and to usurp his throne, as he usurped that of his father Uranus. To avoid this fate he seizes every newborn son and devours him. But when baby Zeus arrives, his mother Rhea contrives to get him to safety while covering a rock in the swaddling. Kronos swallows it and does not know the difference. Sure enough, Zeus grows up and unseats his father, becoming king of the immortals.
But there are a number of such rescues related of religious and other founders. News of the birth of Octavian (Caesar Augustus) upsets the corrupt senators of the Roman Republic, who know he is the one destined to overthrow their regime, so they conspire to have the infant murdered. They are unsuccessful. When the Iranian prophet Zoroaster is born, he who shall one day convert Prince Vishtaspa to the new faith and cause the Magi caste to lose their position, the chief Magus, Durasan, tries to have the baby hero placed in the path of a stampeding herd, but the cattle swerve around him. The infant is next dropped into a wolves' den, but, like Daniel in the lions' den, he is unharmed. Nimrod learns from his wise men that Abraham, the future scourge of idolatry, has been born, so he tries, unsuccessfully, to have him killed. When Krishna is incarnated, the demons arrange for his wet nurse to smear poison on her breast, but he is rescued. You get the idea. So even if Matthew did not derive the Slaughter of the Innocents specifically from Josephus' story of Moses, we would still have to classify it with these parallels. If all the rest are manifestly mythical, why should Matthew's Nativity of the Son of God be regarded any differently?
Of course, one might point to Herod the Great's bloody record of eradicating anyone he thought might one day plot against him. Josephus catalogs Herod's numerous atrocities. So it sounds reasonable to picture Herod learning of some newborn hailed by a group of potential rebels wanting to use him as a standard to rally the people against Herod, the false king. One can imagine Herod figuring it is not worth the risk to let this seed grow into a real threat—and having all the local children killed, just to be sure. But can we be sure we are dealing with history? Or is it just literary verisimilitude? Herod is the obvious choice if the myth-making imagination is looking to cast the role of the stereotypical nativity villain.
Not only that, but if you're going to appeal to Herod's rap sheet to make the Slaughter of the Innocents look suitably historical, just realize that the argument cuts both ways: the ample, detailed record of Herod's atrocities does not record this one. Given all the crimes against humanity Josephus lists, shouldn't this one be on the list? It's not like it was kept quiet, as if such a thing were possible. Matthew 2:3 says that all Jerusalem knew of the reason for the Wise Men's visit and dreaded to hear what Herod might do. If he did what Matthew says he did, they'd have heard about it, and so would Josephus.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Killing History by Robert M. Price. Copyright © 2014 Robert M. Price. Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: Jesus in the No-Spin Zone, 7,Chapter One: Historical Background or Historical Ballast?, 11,
Chapter Two: Bird Man of Nazareth, 33,
Chapter Three: How Not to Behave in Church, 47,
Chapter Four: Fishermen, Prostitutes, and Pharisees, 63,
Chapter Five: The Amazing Jesus, 79,
Chapter Six: Theology Hidden in Plain Sight, 93,
Chapter Seven: Liar, Pinhead, or Lord, 109,
Chapter Eight: Temple Tantrum, 123,
Chapter Nine: Messiahs and Matchstick Men, 137,
Chapter Ten: The Imp Act Segment, 153,
Chapter Eleven: Check, Please, 161,
Chapter Twelve: Trial and Error, 173,
Chapter Thirteen: Cross Examined, 187,
The Missing Chapter: Raising Jesus, 205,
Appendix One: When Were the Gospels Written?, 215,
Appendix Two: Do Ancient Historians Mention Jesus?, 237,
Index of Modern Authors, 277,
Scripture Index, 279,
Subject Index, 285,