The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man

[Craig]

Recently, I read through The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert M Price, a member of the Jesus Seminar. In it, Price exhaustively examines the various aspects of the gospel testimony of Jesus' ministry in order to discover, what, if anything, can be said about the historical Jesus. His conclusion? That there is nothing about Jesus from the gospels that can be considered reliable.

To even begin to read this book, it helps immensely if one has an extensive knowledge of the Old and New Testament, something that I do not. When reading this book, actually having a copy of a Bible in hand to look up the verses cited is immensely useful. A familiarity with some of the non-canonical gospels helps too, as Price draws upon them for some of his arguments.

Some of the criteria Price uses for analysis are controversial, and he acknowledges as much. And some of his arguments are certainly more persuasive than others. Nevertheless, he raises many solid and interesting parts about Jesus.

One of the most interesting elements is his examination of the four gospels as written by individual authors, with individual concerns about Jesus. Once we move beyond trying to harmonize and synthesize the gospels (which simply does not work), we can approach them from a fundamentally far more interesting perspective: why are they different from one another? Price argues that the four gospels contain various elements of competing Christologies. He argues that we see a progressively more theologically complex view of Christ emerges in Matthew, Luke and John when compared with the earlier gospel of Mark. Likewise, he indicates tensions within a version of a gospel that might cause lead it to be re-written, or omitted, by particular gospel author.

To give but a single example of this, Price discusses the story of Peter's confession of Jesus' messainic identity at Caesara Philippi:

"Our earliest version, Mark, has Jesus solicit Peter's opinion 'You are the Christ' (Mark 8:29). Luke modifies the title accorded to Jesus "You are the Christ of God" (9:20), a simple clarification: the anointed of God. Matthew wants a beefier Christology, so his Peter says a mouthful: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God' (16:16). Merely 'the Christ' is no longer good enough. Matthew piles on the theology: Jesus is also the Son of God, and not just of some pagan Gentile God but 'the living God,' the God of Israel. For some reason, John has transferred something very much like Matthew's version of the confession over to Martha of Bethany (11:27), and to Peter he allows but the curt 'You are the Holy One of God' (6:69) the acclamation of the demoniac to Jesus in Mark 1:24!

"Whatever is going on here, we can be sure of one thing: in the original circumstance, Peter did not say something like: 'You are the Christ, the Holy One and Son of the Living God,' with each evangelist picking and choosing whatever verbal fragments he liked best. The differences, at least among the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew and Luke) do not lend themselves to that analysis. Instead, there is a clear development from a 'lower' Christology to a 'higher' one. Thus, if any version is most likely to be historical, it is surely the earliest and simplest, the least theologized" (p. 12-13).

While this book undoubtedly will not be that persuasive to believers, it is an interesting read that illuminates aspects of the gospels to the non-specialist reader.

[cpwill]

Anyone who starts from the notion that the Gospel accounts can be summarily thrown out when discussing the historical Jesus is attempting to fit the evidence to a predetermined theory. Price is no different; as was the Jesus Seminar. Whenever people try to "reach beyond the bible to find the "real" Jesus" they tend to see a reflection of themselves. the Jesus Seminar was made up of poets, dreamers, and literary critics, and found that Jesus was a.... Poet, a Dreamer, and a 20th Century Postmodernist Literary Critic.

unfortunately, their approach was also generally not academic. Three of the 4 (Mark Matthew and Luke) Gospels are, in fact, so harmonized that they are known as the Synoptic Gospels, and it is widely assumed among the academic community that there was a 4th source (known as "Q") which was a written collection of Jesus' teachings from which they all drew.

i've posted this information before in response to similar challenges. but here goes again:

the new testament documents simultaneously agree with each others' stories while differing on details of the accounts. had they differed in the same basic story; then obviously there were major parts that each was having to provide on his own, but had they contained no divergent details whatsoever it would have had to have been a collusion; something predetermined by a group prior to the writings. Simon Greenleaf, the Harvard Professor who wrote the standard study on what constitutes legal evidence actually declares that the four Gospels "would have been received in evidence in any court of justice without hesitation." if that's an appeal to an authority, it's an appeal to a dang good one who is a bit of what you might call an expert in these affairs.

the second problem is that it's not just the disciples and the apostolic church who claimed that Jesus claimed to be God. on the contrary; the Jews certainly believed it, which is why they originally agitated for Jesus' execution and then began a general persecution against that which they saw as the ultimate heresey. even the Talmud (hardly a pro-christian source) does not deny that Jesus performed miracles and claimed to be the messiah (God). Altogether, Jesus life and claims are recorded by 10 non-christian sources: Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Phlegon, Thallus, Suetonius, Lucian, Celsus, Mara Bar-Serapion, and (again) the jewish Talmud. to bring this perhaps further into note: we only have 9 mentions of the ruling emperor, Tiberius Caesar, at that time.

the new testament is incredibly detailed and accurate. there are over 84 historically and archaeologically verified details in the second half of Acts alone; ranging from local slang, Roman troop deployments, to the correct lines of trade routes, to officials names, to harbor depths, and there are over 30 historical characters presented in the New Testament who have been independently confirmed by non-Christian sources. Jesus' words are recorded in the same, matter of fact, detailed manner. furthermore, as there were several new testament writers; the ability to alter such a detailed text would require a 40 year long conspiracy; which has it's own problems, as the testament writers constantly refer to facts which "everyone knows", or common places, names, events, etc.. as the test of whether or not a theory is valid is whether or not it is falsifiable; the New Testament is extraordinarily so; had they referred to large events that "everyone knows about" when their audience knew for a fact that they were not true, they would have been rejected out of hand as lunatics; yet, somehow, the early church experienced an explosion in membership; with even members of the priestly class becoming believers. thus, it is evident that they recorded their history as accurately as at least everyone else believed it to have happened. as historians; men like Luke stick out as particularly accurate among the ancient writer.

The events were written down shortly after Jesus' death; mostly by the first generation; no less. to give you perhaps an idea of what this means; let's take a look at how this compares to other ancient documents. firstly, the time gap. obviously, the longer the time between the surviving copies that we have and the originals'; the less sure we can be that errors have not crept into the manuscript over time; thus, the versions closest to the original are most likely to be the purest copies.
Time Gap Between Original and First Surviving Copies That We Have
Homer: 500 years.
Demosthenes: 1400 years
Herodotus: 1400 years.
Plato: 1200 years.
Tacitus: 1000 years
Caesar: 1000 years.
Pliny: 700 years.
New Testament: 40 years

there is also the issue of the number of surviving manuscript copies; the fewer the number of copies available, the higher the possibility that errors that are existant in a couple of accounts will not be corrected or contradicted by the others. the number of copies we have?
Number of Manuscript Copies That Have Survived
Homer: 643
Demosthenes: 200
Herodotus: 8
Plato: 7
Tacitus: 20
Caesar: 10
Pliny: 7
New Testament: 5,686

the funny thing is; even if these two tables above turned out more poorly for the new testament than they do; we'd still have accurate portrayals of the original manuscripts. how? because the early church fathers, from Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and others quote the New Testament books so extensively (36,289 times in the copies of their letters that we have found) that we can instruct the entire new testament from their writings, and only miss 11 verses, none of which are crucial.

[Craig]

Anyone who starts from the notion that the Gospel accounts can be summarily thrown out when discussing the historical Jesus is attempting to fit the evidence to a predetermined theory. Price is no different; as was the Jesus Seminar. Whenever people try to "reach beyond the bible to find the "real" Jesus" they tend to see a reflection of themselves. the Jesus Seminar was made up of poets, dreamers, and literary critics, and found that Jesus was a.... Poet, a Dreamer, and a 20th Century Postmodernist Literary Critic.

Oddly enough, this is precisely the point that Price makes himself, which has been damaging to the whole historical Jesus debate, namely that people see Jesus as they want to see him.

I'm not sure that criticism really applies to this book, because the entire thing is a deconstruction of the gospels, which illustrates differences between the gospels (and offers arguments as to why such differences exist), which shows parallels between certain Jesus sayings and Hellenic culture of the time, which shows how texts from the Old Testament where used to construct certain key concepts in the Jesus narrative, and so forth.
Price's conclusion is that we don't have any real evidence for a Jesus period. That's not to say that Jesus doesn't exist (although Price does point to a particular passage in his conclusion that suggests this might have been the case). What it does mean is that we know basically nothing about him, because virtually all the sayings and doings attributable to him are dubious.


unfortunately, their approach was also generally not academic. Three of the 4 (Mark Matthew and Luke) Gospels are, in fact, so harmonized that they are known as the Synoptic Gospels, and it is widely assumed among the academic community that there was a 4th source (known as "Q") which was a written collection of Jesus' teachings from which they all drew.

Correct. And ironically enough, the Q thesis is actually one of the lynch-pins assumptions in Price's argument. Remove "Q" and a significant number of his arguments fall apart, or at least have be seriously reconsidered.


the new testament documents simultaneously agree with each others' stories while differing on details of the accounts. had they differed in the same basic story; then obviously there were major parts that each was having to provide on his own, but had they contained no divergent details whatsoever it would have had to have been a collusion; something predetermined by a group prior to the writings. Simon Greenleaf, the Harvard Professor who wrote the standard study on what constitutes legal evidence actually declares that the four Gospels "would have been received in evidence in any court of justice without hesitation." if that's an appeal to an authority, it's an appeal to a dang good one who is a bit of what you might call an expert in these affairs.

I disagree here. Price argues quite cogently that the different gospels were written by different writers with different opinions. A simple comparison of the chronologies reveals significant differences in the events described. Similarly, Price demonstrates that a number of Jesus' parables are re-workings of the same theme found in the other synoptics but re-cast in a different form. And yet it's significant that there are these variations in Jesus' parables from one gospel to another. We can also see attempts made by the gospel writers to deal with various early debates (for instance, responding to claims that must have been put forth by those who believed John the Baptist, and not Jesus, was the Messiah). These points can be gleaned from a careful examination of the gospels, and yet the three synoptics did not always approach the same debates in the exact same way.

In order to claim that the gospels had a completely unified view of Jesus, you have to deliberately ignore any differences between them. That the synoptics seem to have worked from a common source and borrowed from one another is undeniable. And yet each of the authors had a different perspective, and constructed their narrative of Jesus to reflect this. Again, the most simple example is the one I gave above, involving Peter's confession of Jesus' Messianic identity. The synoptics say very similar things, but its significant that they don't say the same things- and if they are records of what Jesus actually said and did, these differences can't be ignored or dismissed.

[Craig]

the second problem is that it's not just the disciples and the apostolic church who claimed that Jesus claimed to be God. on the contrary; the Jews certainly believed it, which is why they originally agitated for Jesus' execution and then began a general persecution against that which they saw as the ultimate heresey. even the Talmud (hardly a pro-christian source) does not deny that Jesus performed miracles and claimed to be the messiah (God). Altogether, Jesus life and claims are recorded by 10 non-christian sources: Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Phlegon, Thallus, Suetonius, Lucian, Celsus, Mara Bar-Serapion, and (again) the jewish Talmud. to bring this perhaps further into note: we only have 9 mentions of the ruling emperor, Tiberius Caesar, at that time.

As Price himself notes, some of these quotations were spurious, like Josephus. Moreover, in some of the texts, a brief mention of Jesus is made, which certainly does not imply the full-blown theologicized Christ that appears as the orthodox belief of Christianity centuries later- or even the views that appear in the gospels themselves. So whoever Jesus was and what he did cannot be deduced fully or reliably from these texts.

the new testament is incredibly detailed and accurate. there are over 84 historically and archaeologically verified details in the second half of Acts alone; ranging from local slang, Roman troop deployments, to the correct lines of trade routes, to officials names, to harbor depths, and there are over 30 historical characters presented in the New Testament who have been independently confirmed by non-Christian sources. Jesus' words are recorded in the same, matter of fact, detailed manner. furthermore, as there were several new testament writers; the ability to alter such a detailed text would require a 40 year long conspiracy; which has it's own problems, as the testament writers constantly refer to facts which "everyone knows", or common places, names, events, etc.. as the test of whether or not a theory is valid is whether or not it is falsifiable; the New Testament is extraordinarily so; had they referred to large events that "everyone knows about" when their audience knew for a fact that they were not true, they would have been rejected out of hand as lunatics; yet, somehow, the early church experienced an explosion in membership; with even members of the priestly class becoming believers. thus, it is evident that they recorded their history as accurately as at least everyone else believed it to have happened. as historians; men like Luke stick out as particularly accurate among the ancient writer.

This is largely irrelevant to Price's argument, because he doesn't approach the New Testament from the perspective that "it was historically inaccurate". His interest is in whether there is any real evidence for the historical Jesus; other historical details that the gospels may have gotten right are not particularly important. To my recollection, his only points on that subject are:

-There is a dearth of evidence for the existence of synagogues in First Century Palestine (which suggests that the mention of them in the gospels is an anachronism.

-The govenor of Judea at that time is incorrectly identified

-The account of Jesus knocking over the Jewish money lender's tables is deceiving, because the temple was something in the area of 34 acres in size. So that's a lot of money lenders spread out over a large area. Price also notes that the text does not say that Jesus knocks over "some" of the tables. And even if he did, the fact that it was a Jewish holiday meant that there would have been an increased presence from the Roman soldiers, who were located just next door. At any rate, it suggests that whoever actually wrote that particular story was not familiar with the temple at the time that Jesus lived, making it another anachronism.

-The details in Luke's gospel regarding the census of Quirinius is erroneous, because Mary and Joseph would not have been required to return to their ancestral home.

- Many of the theological and factional concerns that have been subtly inserted into the texts of the gospels would have arose after Jesus' ministery, which makes them anachronisms.

No, Price's examination of the gospels is primarily an inter-textual criticism, which is why concerns over historical accuracy are largely irrelevant. Price is interested mostly in comparing the gospels to one another.

[Craig]

The events were written down shortly after Jesus' death; mostly by the first generation; no less. to give you perhaps an idea of what this means; let's take a look at how this compares to other ancient documents. firstly, the time gap. obviously, the longer the time between the surviving copies that we have and the originals'; the less sure we can be that errors have not crept into the manuscript over time; thus, the versions closest to the original are most likely to be the purest copies.
Time Gap Between Original and First Surviving Copies That We Have
Homer: 500 years.
Demosthenes: 1400 years
Herodotus: 1400 years.
Plato: 1200 years.
Tacitus: 1000 years
Caesar: 1000 years.
Pliny: 700 years.
New Testament: 40 years

there is also the issue of the number of surviving manuscript copies; the fewer the number of copies available, the higher the possibility that errors that are existant in a couple of accounts will not be corrected or contradicted by the others. the number of copies we have?
Number of Manuscript Copies That Have Survived
Homer: 643
Demosthenes: 200
Herodotus: 8
Plato: 7
Tacitus: 20
Caesar: 10
Pliny: 7
New Testament: 5,686

the funny thing is; even if these two tables above turned out more poorly for the new testament than they do; we'd still have accurate portrayals of the original manuscripts. how? because the early church fathers, from Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and others quote the New Testament books so extensively (36,289 times in the copies of their letters that we have found) that we can instruct the entire new testament from their writings, and only miss 11 verses, none of which are crucial.

The chronology you've presented for the New Testament is not beyond doubt; Mark can be attributed to 40 years after the time of Jesus at the very earliest, but there are reasons against placing it this early. And at any rate, this may not be as significant as it seems. With the evidence there is for Jesus discussing theological issues that would have arisen "post-ministry", we have evidence from within the text itself, rather than the dating, that indicates much of the gospels are anachronisms, with Jesus' sayings constructed to reflect the various concerns of the day.

But really, you need to read the book before you can argue against it. ;)

[cpwill]

Oddly enough, this is precisely the point that Price makes himself, which has been damaging to the whole historical Jesus debate, namely that people see Jesus as they want to see him.

exactly; but that is a reason for depending more heavily on first-person accounts. there was an early (i want to say segment of the coptic church) branch-off of christianity, for example, that taught that Jesus was a vegetarian, but was laughed off because enough people were still around who had interacted with that first and second generation. there is a reason that those who want to impose a radically different look at "the historical Jesus" have to first discount the firsthand evidence we happen to have about Him.

I'm not sure that criticism really applies to this book, because the entire thing is a deconstruction of the gospels, which illustrates differences between the gospels (and offers arguments as to why such differences exist)

divergent details within a range are an argument for the accuracy of the Gospels, not against them.

which shows parallels between certain Jesus sayings and Hellenic culture of the time

given that that section of the world had been partially hellenized for going on three centuries that wouldn't be very odd at all.

which shows how texts from the Old Testament where used to construct certain key concepts in the Jesus narrative, and so forth.

:lol: and it never occurs to him that there might be multiple reasons for the inclusion of Old Testament references in the Gospel writings?

Price's conclusion is that we don't have any real evidence for a Jesus period.

well then Price will have to also discount pretty much every single historical figure from that time period and before; the evidence for the existance of a historical Jesus is comparatively staggering, as I think I've already demonstrated.

What it does mean is that we know basically nothing about him, because virtually all the sayings and doings attributable to him are dubious.

a charge that is without evidence. as i have also painfully pointed out, the Gospels and the Jesus they describe were anything but convenient for the early church.

Correct. And ironically enough, the Q thesis is actually one of the lynch-pins assumptions in Price's argument. Remove "Q" and a significant number of his arguments fall apart, or at least have be seriously reconsidered.

i completely fail to see how the existance of yet another first person source demonstrates a likeliness that they are all independently making up this story.

I disagree here. Price argues quite cogently that the different gospels were written by different writers with different opinions.

well yes. otherwise it would be evidence of a deliberate attempt to fabricate a story.

A simple comparison of the chronologies reveals significant differences in the events described.

yup, as i pointed out, the variance of divergent details exactly what we look for today in verifying multiple accounts of testimony in court cases.

Similarly, Price demonstrates that a number of Jesus' parables are re-workings of the same theme found in the other synoptics but re-cast in a different form.

.....almost as if multiple people remembered the same event but remembered it differently.....

again, if you're going to create a story and you are a first century Jewish male, you are not going to create the story we find in the Gospel. however we find that several of them did write down this story in reaction to events that clearly took place that fundamentally altered the way in which they see the world; and they were just part of (leadership perhaps but still part of) an entire movement spawned by something that was also inspiring these writings and others. The Gospels didn't appear in a vacuum, they appeared in a community struggling to get by and make sense of this incredible individual and his teachings; they appeared alongside the Epistles and yes probably Q, which sadly has been lost.

I remember watching the initial invasion of Iraq on television, and had flipped the TV to CNN. there was a horrible battle going on, the reporter was telling me, RPG's were flying everywhere it was pandemonium chaos horror and We Were All Going To Die. I flipped over to FOX and they were covering the same town but were on the radio with the unit commander via an embed who was telling them that, yes, they'd caught alot of RPG's, but they were locked up in Tanks; the RPG's had managed to knock off some treads so they were going into a defensive formation once the fedayeen had left so they could repair the treads and be on their way. two Very Different stories of the same account. however, the fact that i had recieved two divergent accounts did not mean that i immediately assumed that there were no tanks, no iraqi town, and no fedayeen.

[cpwill]

And yet it's significant that there are these variations in Jesus' parables from one gospel to another.

aw heck; I'd take the notion of the hidden messiah that is nowhere in John before I'd look at any of the parables if I was going to make this argument.

We can also see attempts made by the gospel writers to deal with various early debates

wrong we don't. for example the earliest real debate that we have on record as affecting the early church was on whether or not gentiles could join. specifically, whether or not they could join while still "gentiles", without becoming first Jewish through circumscision. The debate was early enough that it is recorded in Acts and in the Pauline letters (the earliest Christian writings that we still have). how convenient it would have been for "Jesus" to suddenly say something on the subject... but you comb the gospels in vain if you search for something definitive on the subject. Jesus has nothing to say in the Gospels on church heirarchy (which is ASSUREDLY something that would have come out of an early power struggle were the early church in the process of "creating" the gospel accounts) outside of "the least of you shall be first", something distinctly unlikely to appeal to someone attempting to create a religio-political system for their own benefit.

These points can be gleaned from a careful examination of the gospels, and yet the three synoptics did not always approach the same debates in the exact same way.

well, yes. for it to have been otherwise (again) would have required the very kind of collusion that Price is accusing these accounts of.

In order to claim that the gospels had a completely unified view of Jesus, you have to deliberately ignore any differences between them.

i don't; i celebrate their differences for many reasons not least of which is the fact that they provide further evidence that they are the actual product of actual human beings each attempting in their own way to describe what they saw and felt and interacted with.

[MikeD4o7]

Cpwill, I'm confused on whether or not the gospels were actually first-hand accounts in your opinion. I don't understand how believing they're eye witness accounts and also believing that they all draw from Q can be reasonably reconciled. I would think that if they were four different eye witness accounts, then each would only be drawing from the events they saw themselves.

[Chappy]

To my knowledge, some of Paul's letters are the oldest accounts of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament; there seems little doubt that Jesus existed and Paul firmly believed that he himself was living in the End Times.

[MikeD4o7]

To my knowledge, some of Paul's letters are the oldest accounts of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament; there seems little doubt that Jesus existed and Paul firmly believed that he himself was living in the End Times.

I find the idea that Jesus didn't exist at all to be very unlikely. I just find the idea of the accounts of what he did as described in the gospels as being even more unlikely to be true.

[cpwill]

Cpwill, I'm confused on whether or not the gospels were actually first-hand accounts in your opinion. I don't understand how believing they're eye witness accounts and also believing that they all draw from Q can be reasonably reconciled. I would think that if they were four different eye witness accounts, then each would only be drawing from the events they saw themselves.

if I were going to write an autobiography of my college years, i could sit down and write out an account... and frankly screw up alot. I'm far more likely to call or talk to one of my roomates at any given time about individual events or issues. "hey man, was josh with us that one day we sat in the caf and ate two whole chocolate pies?" etc.

now, if i am not writing about my college years, but instead writing about something that i consider to be The Most Important Event Ever, then i am dang sure i'm going to reference the other people who were there.

that is one of the reasons i like Luke (who is not an eyewitness). Luke from the very beginning states plainly that he is not a witness to the accounts of Jesus life, but instead has done his research, talking to these individuals who were there and then and where and when and offering references and falsifiability. as a fellow historian, i can relate :)

[Craig]

To my knowledge, some of Paul's letters are the oldest accounts of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament; there seems little doubt that Jesus existed and Paul firmly believed that he himself was living in the End Times.

That's what Price indicates about the subject (i.e. Paul's writings are the oldest). I think it's First Corinthians that's the oldest text we have of the New Testament.

[cpwill]

That's what Price indicates about the subject (i.e. Paul's writings are the oldest). I think it's First Corinthians that's the oldest text we have of the New Testament.

there is a debate between it and Galatians, as i understand.

[MikeD4o7]

if I were going to write an autobiography of my college years, i could sit down and write out an account... and frankly screw up alot. I'm far more likely to call or talk to one of my roomates at any given time about individual events or issues. "hey man, was josh with us that one day we sat in the caf and ate two whole chocolate pies?" etc.

now, if i am not writing about my college years, but instead writing about something that i consider to be The Most Important Event Ever, then i am dang sure i'm going to reference the other people who were there.

that is one of the reasons i like Luke (who is not an eyewitness). Luke from the very beginning states plainly that he is not a witness to the accounts of Jesus life, but instead has done his research, talking to these individuals who were there and then and where and when and offering references and falsifiability. as a fellow historian, i can relate :)


I really have trouble believing any of them are eyewitnesses. It had been a while since I had read the gospels, but just reading through Matthew again for example, there's absolutely no difference in style or level of detail between when he's describing Jesus' birth vs describing his ministry. There's no way somebody who was a witness to one series of events would write about them in the exact same manner they would write about events they weren't a witness to.

[cpwill]

:shrug: easily countered with the example of Luke-Acts, which switches deliberately at the point that it becomes first-person by adopting first-person terminology (ie "we went down in this direction") halfway through Acts and going to lengths to source his material and state that he is gathering information from eyewitnesses for Luke and the first half of Acts.