Block 7 - Crucifixion, Ehrman, Pages 207-225

While Borg is very vague on what events actually happened that precipitated Jesus' death, Ehrman is very certain he knows. On page 208 (bottom paragraph), Ehrman lays out his theory of the why and wherefore of Jesus' last week on earth. Jesus was in Jerusalem to announce that the Son of Man would soon arrive and destroy all those who opposed God and destroy the temple as well. Jesus causes a "mild ruckus" overturning some tables. Fearing an uprising the priests confer, arrest Jesus, question him about his statements against the temple, decide that he is too incendiary as an anti-temple activist, so they arrange for his elimination.
While it is now a cliche of scholarship, Ehrman still mentions the scholarly position I mentioned in the Borg entry that "the Gospels are Passion narratives with long introductions" (this is especially true for Mark, where the resurrection plays a small role. But in the other three Gospels the central feature is crucifixion plus resurrection.)

Ehrman is a little inconsistent on page 210. On the one hand he says that Jesus' actions in Jerusalem are "well thought out." But then later on the same page he says that the ride on the donkey could not have been historical because it is too neat of a fit with the corresponding prophecies. Or if Jesus did ride on a donkey the disciples (long after the fact) read more into the event than Jesus intended. (I say, maybe Jesus really planned the ride on the donkey to fulfill the prophecies.) If Ehrman does not believe Jesus' ride on the donkey is historical and intentional, on what basis does he conclude that Jesus actions are "well thought out"?

In the section on the Temple Incident, Ehrman gives his reasoning why he believes that what Jesus did in the temple (the "mild ruckus") was the immediate cause of his death. Ehrman may well be right that Jesus' actions (and words) in the temple (that caused the "mild ruckus") were intended as a "prophetic gesture, an enacted parable" that "demonstrated on a small scale what was soon to happen in a big way on the coming day of judgment," the destruction of the temple (page 213). The question is whether the intent of Jesus' actions was none other than a condemnation of the entire temple business or rather a warning or a call to clean up the corruption. But given the fact that the temple did come down in 70 CE, the early Christians interpreted the event as justified punishment of the Jerusalem Jews for rejecting the Messiah.

And from the perspective of the early Christians, Jesus' death ended the need for temple sacrifices, and they probably interpreted Jesus' actions in the temple in this way. But scholars debate whether Jesus thought along such lines himself. For Ehrman, Jesus believed that when the new kingdom of God arrived, there would be no longer any need for temple sacrifices, and therefore, no need for a temple (page 214 top). For Borg and Ehrman, Jesus would not have thought of his death as providing an end to the need for sacrifices, because that would have required Jesus to think of his own death as a sacrifice for human sins. And for most historical critical scholars, Jesus had no such notions about himself whatsoever. At this point it is obvious that such conclusions by these scholars are really subjective value judgments that do not really have a firm basis in any historical fact. Rather the only basis for such conclusions are their own theoretical reconstructions of the message and ministry of Jesus.

Like Borg, Ehrman is quite vague on how much of the account of Jesus' arrest and death can be considered historically accurate. For instance, regarding the events surrounding Jesus' last supper with his disciples (page 215), Ehrman echoes what numerous Jesus scholars have been saying for the last 50 years, that what Jesus says at the last supper about the bread and the cup is so highly Christianized that it tells us more about the church practices of early Christians (just 20 years after Jesus' death) than it tells us anything about the events of that passover meal. (And it may well not have been a passover meal at all, some scholars would argue. But instead the account of the last supper was changed to a passover meal later, in oral tradition, by the early Christians for theological purposes).

Ehrman is certain that the betrayal element in the arrest of Jesus is historical, because it is Not something you would create to make your leader look greater. Ehrman takes a stance similar to Borg concerning Jesus' trial before the high priest. The charges that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God (to which Jesus offers his assent) are not statements that Ehrman believes Jesus would have said publicly about himself, given Ehrman's application of the criteria of authenticity (page 216 middle). Strangely enough though, Ehrman turns around and says that the charges against Jesus were real, and the chief priests got the information from Judas the betrayer, who was divulging Jesus' private teachings. In order for this theory of Ehrman's to make sense Jesus would have had to believe that he was the Messiah, and that he himself would have been enthroned, and that he taught this to his disciples (page 217 middle). Furthermore, this theory requires that Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah but not the Son of Man! This is a very curious arrangement indeed in these suppositions of Ehrman.

I find it methodologically suspect, if not strange, to use a strict historical methodology to identify Jesus' public teachings, and then throw in (from who knows where) the idea that Jesus engaged in a whole series of private teachings that Ehrman was privy to knowledge of their historical veracity, but they don't measure up as believable by the standards of the historical critical method. For some reason Ehrman wants to believe Jesus thought he would be the Messiah, and even if it does not pass muster by his criteria of authenticity, he simply says, they were private teachings.

Then, at the top of page 218 we find Ehrman's statement that is a crucial piece for this theory. Ehrman concludes that the only way that Jesus' followers would believe he was the Messiah after his death was if some disciples believed he was the Messiah before his death. And why would the disciples think Jesus was the Messiah, unless he had taught them as much? Jesus meant it in an apocalyptic sense, but the disciples took it in a "this worldly" sense (page 218 bottom). So goes Ehrman's thinking on this topic. (Many historical critical scholars attribute the disciples' belief in Jesus as the Messiah to the implications the disciples drew from their belief that he had risen from the dead.)

As with Borg, Ehrman says "we have no reliable way of knowing what happened when Jesus appeared before Caiaphas" the high priest (page 220). This means that like Borg and others, Ehrman does not believe there is any reliable historical information in the accounts of Jesus' "trial" before the high priest. And then Ehrman gives his reasons why he discredits the historical reliability of the account of the trial, and they are very similar to what Borg mentioned. An important assumption made by both Borg and Ehrman is that there is no reason to believe the high priest would ever transgress legal protocol. But I not know how we can be so sure (Jesus had just accused them of corruption with his "mild ruckus" in the temple). But I don't doubt that the high priest and his male relatives (which the gospels call the chief priests) had sufficient power at their disposal that they could have simply turned Jesus over to the Romans for execution if they so chose (and they could have fabricated the reason to fit the occasion). But the Gospels specifically mention the Sanhedrin (the Jerusalem city council) convening to interrogate Jesus, and it does seem very odd to have a meeting late in the evening, especially since Passover began at sundown. (Some scholars believe the trial before the chief priests was invented by the early Christians to cast the blame for Jesus death on the Jews and in the process take some of the blame off of Pilate, who, by Josephus' account, was quite ruthless in dealing with potential revolutionaries.

In discussing the trial before Pilate (page 221), Ehrman points out that we are on more solid historical ground here since both Josephus and Tactitus attribute Jesus' execution to a sentence imposed by Pilate. In the Roman provinces (that is outside of Italy), the Roman governors had great leeway in how they dealt with trouble makers. Unless a person was a Roman citizen could they lay any claim to what we think of as "due process." But few people outside of metropolitan Rome were actually Roman citizens, unless they had been given citizenship as a gift by the government or had purchased citizenship. But it was only Roman citizens who could claim the right to "due process" (as we know it) in a legal proceeding. Otherwise, the accused was literally at the mercy of the regional governor, who had the final say in legal matters concerning the affairs of the Roman empire within the province he governed. This seemed to be particularly true in capital cases, matters of life and death.

Concerning the death of Jesus, Ehrman does a good job of reminding us that the purpose of execution by crucifixion was to be a cruel, violent death that would serve as a deterrent to the general public not to engage in the same kind of activity that got this guy killed. Contrary to Crossan who believes that maybe Jesus' body was not attended to by his disciples (I will mention this in detail in a later entry on the death of Jesus), Ehrman makes a very good point as to why Jesus could not have hung on the cross for very long. The Romans sometimes insisted that the corpse hang on the cross for days (if not weeks) as a warning to others and a punishment to the family of the executed man by denying a proper burial. However, Ehrman points out that the disciples would have had to have known something about Jesus' burial or else they would not have been proclaiming he had risen from the dead if his body was still hanging on the cross two weeks after he had died (page 225). Note: it is Crossan that Ehrman is referring to as the scholars who suggests that Jesus' body was probably eaten by dogs.