CADRE Comments

One of the most interesting passages in Mark’s Passion Narrative, from a historiographical perspective, is Mark 15:21: A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country and they forced him to carry the cross. First let us compare the passage to its parallels in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (it does not appear at all in the Gospel of John). As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. Luke 23:26. As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. Matt 27:32. Matthew and Luke retain the reference to Simon as well as describe him as being from Cyrene, but drop the reference to Cyrene being “the father of Alexander and Rufus.” It is notable that Mark identifies Simon by name. This is rare for Mark unless the author is referring to the disciples and some...

In their defense of the historical reliability of the Gospel traditions evangelical scholars often appeal to the controlling influence of the eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry: the twelve apostles, other followers of Jesus such as the Seventy, the women who ministered to him, who were present at his crucifixion and who discovered the empty tomb, sympathizers among the Jewish (such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea) and Roman (the centurion whose servant Jesus healed) authorities, Simon of Cyrene and many others. The argument is that these witnesses would not have allowed false rumors and legends to become embedded within the traditions, and they ensured that these traditions were handed down accurately in missionary, catechetical and liturgical contexts. To many skeptics this argument seems unconvincing. Leaving aside the question of whether the eyewitnesses themselves were involved in fabricating stories about Jesus, how could they possibly quelch all false rumors about Jesus whe...

After reading through the chapter on miracles in The Jesus Legend again it seems to me that Boyd and Eddy are conflating two distinct skeptical challenges to the miracle claims of the Gospels. The first uses the mere presence of miracle stories in the Jesus traditions as evidence that the evangelists or their sources concocted them out of thin air, either as a free creative composition or modeled on Old Testament or pagan miracle accounts. They write: "The Gospels claim that Jesus and his disciples performed miracles such as healing the sick and disabled, casting out demons, and even raising the dead. To the thinking of many historical-critical scholars, this is enough to demonstrate that they are substantially legendary." (pp.39-40) According to this line of thinking, the Gospel accounts cannot possibly have their source in the actual eye-witness experience of the disciples, even if they merely record their (confused?) reaction to an unusual event. This amounts to the claim ...

A friend mentioned to me that he ran into an argument I had not heard for a while. Apparently, in A World Full of Gods , Keith Hopkins states that given the extremely low lifespan of the average Middle Eastern person, the eyewitnesses to Jesus must have died out fairly quickly, maybe even by the fifties AD. It goes like this: since the average life expectancy during ancient times was low, reports of eyewitness authors of the gospels or eyewitnesses speaking about Jesus' life in the second half of the first century are unreliable. According to the average life expectancy, no one would have lived that long. How likely is it that eyewitnesses to Jesus' life survived the 50s? A 20 year old at the time of Jesus' death would have been 49 in 62 AD. A 25 year old would have been 54 by that time. How likely is it that Papias--reportedly living from 60-135 AD-- had access to eyewitnesses? A 20 year old would have been 65 in 77 AD. A 25 year old would have been 70 by that ...