Christian Forgeries, the Endings of the Gospel of Mark, The Implications

The “Strange” Ending of the Gospel of Mark and Why It Makes All the Difference
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/the-strange-ending-of-the-gospel-of-mark-and-why-it-makes-all-the-difference/
James Tabor presents a new look at the original text of the earliest Gospel [I added some edits and some information at the end, Ed Babinski]

The last verse in the Gospel of Mark (16:8) reads...

"And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing."

The problem with the Gospel of Mark for the final editors of the New Testament was that it was grossly deficient. First it is significantly shorter than the other Gospels–with only 16 chapters compared to Matthew (28), Luke (24) and John (21). But more important is how Mark begins his Gospel and how he ends it.

He has no account of the virgin birth of Jesus–or for that matter, any birth of Jesus at all. In fact, Joseph, husband of Mary, is never named in Mark’s Gospel at all–and Jesus is called a “son of Mary,” see my previous post on this here http://jamestabor.com/2012/07/19/did-you-know-that-2/ But even more significant is Mark’s strange ending. He has no appearances of Jesus following the visit of the women on Easter morning to the empty tomb!

Like the other three Gospels Mark recounts the visit of Mary Magdalene and her companions to the tomb of Jesus early Sunday morning. Upon arriving they find the blocking stone at the entrance of the tomb removed and a "young man"–notice–not said explicitly to be "an angel" nor "two angels" as in later Gospels–tells them:

“Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing. (Mark 16:6-8)

And there the Gospel simply ends!

Mark gives no accounts of anyone seeing Jesus as Matthew, Luke, and John later report. In fact, according to Mark, any future epiphanies or “sightings” of Jesus will be in the north, in Galilee, not in Jerusalem.

This original ending of Mark was viewed by later Christians as so deficient that not only was Mark placed second in order in the New Testament, but various endings were added by Christians in some manuscripts to try to remedy things. The longest concocted ending, which became Mark 16:9-19, became so treasured that it was included in both Catholic and Protestant Bibles (including the King James Version) and considered part of the holy canon of inspired Scriptures. Here is that forged ending of Mark, added after the women fled and "told no one":

"Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover. So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs."

This long added ending is not found in our earliest and most reliable Greek copies of Mark.1 Clement of Alexandria and Origen (early 3rd century) show no knowledge of the existence of these verses; furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them. The language and style of the Greek is clearly not Markan, and it is pretty evident that what the forger did was take sections of the endings of Matthew, Luke and John (marked respectively in red, blue, and purple above) and simply create a “proper” ending.

Even though this longer ending became the preferred one, it was not the only such ending added to Mark! A different ending that was shorter, as well as an expansion added to the end of the longer ending also were found in ancient manuscripts:

[1] "But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told. And after these things Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation."

[2] "This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits [or, does not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God]. Therefore reveal your righteousness now’ – thus they spoke to Christ. And Christ replied to them, ‘The term of years of Satan’s power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was handed over to death, that they may return to the truth and sin no more, in order that they may inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness that is in heaven."

That being said, what implications can we draw from the existence of additions to the original ending of Mark? (If you recall, the earliest manuscripts end simply with the women exiting the empty tomb and "telling no one.") The implications challenge naive understandings of Christian origins which ignore the development and trajectory of tales about the "resurrected" Jesus that grew over time. I have dealt with this issue more generally in my post, “What Really Happened on Easter Morning” http://jamestabor.com/2012/08/05/what-really-happened-easter-morning-the-mystery-solved/ that sets the stage for the following implications.

In Mark, on the last night of Jesus’ life, he told his intimate followers following their meal, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (Mark 14:28), which was repeated at the tomb by the "young man," who tells the women, "Go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'" What Mark believes is that Jesus has been “lifted up” or “raised up” to the right hand of God and that the disciples would “see” him in Galilee. Mark knows of no accounts of people encountering the revived corpse of Jesus, wounds and all, walking around Jerusalem as in the two last Gospels written, Luke and John. The story in Mark is that the disciples experienced their epiphanies of Jesus once they returned to Galilee after the eight-day Passover festival and had returned to their fishing to ponder the death of their leader, whose cause they had hoped would succeed, and who had originally abandoned their livelihoods to follow. They probably could not imagine the time spent following their leader had been in vain, and that's when they had their "epiphanies," whatever they may have been. But there is little evidence to suggest such epiphanies/early appearance tales were the same as in the latter most Gospels, which either changed or deleted the messages in both Mark 14 and Mark 16. Those messages in Mark were that "He would go before them to Galilee" and be seen "there," rather than in Jerusalem.

The faith that Mark reflects, namely that Jesus has been “raised up” or lifted up to heaven, is precisely parallel to that of Paul–who is the earliest witness to this understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. You can read my full exposition of Paul’s understanding “the heavenly glorified Christ,” whom he claims to encounter, here. And notably, he parallels his own visionary experience to that of Peter, James and the rest of the apostles. What this means is that when Paul wrote, in the 50s CE, this was the resurrection faith of the early followers of Jesus! Since Matthew, Luke and John come so much later and clearly reflect the period after 70 CE when all of the first witnesses were dead–including Peter, Paul and James the brother of Jesus, they are clearly 2nd generation traditions and should not be given priority.

Mark begins his account with the line “The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Clearly for him, what he subsequently writes is that “Gospel,” not a deficient version that needs to be supplemented or “fixed” with later alternative traditions about Jesus appearing in a resuscitated body Easter weekend in Jerusalem.

James D. Tabor [with some edits by Ed Babinski, and additional information at the end]
____________________

TWO QUOTATIONS CONCERNING THE ADDED ENDING OF MARK
FROM NT TEXTUAL SCHOLAR (AND CHRISTIAN) BRUCE METZGER

The last twelve verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts (? and B), 20 from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis, the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, 21 and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written a.d. 897 and a.d. 913).
--Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd edition

Since Mark was not responsible for the composition of the last twelve verses of the generally current form of his Gospel, and since they undoubtedly had been attached to the Gospel before the Church recognized the fourfold Gospels as canonical, it follows that the New Testament contains not four but five evangelic accounts of events subsequent to the resurrection.
--Bruce B. Metzger The Text of the New Testament Oxford: OUP, 1992, 229.

So Metzger pointed out that the church canonized four Gospels and one mini-post-rez-Gospel story. Ha.

The most significant NT textual variants, including the added long and short endings to Mark, appear to be these: http://www.textexcavation.com/textualvariants.html#mk16.9-20

What such variants demonstrate is that by the time the Christian churches finalized their New [and Improved] Testament it was 300 years after Jesus had died and they were editing it right up to the last minute--adding multiple endings to the last chapter of Mark, adding explicit Trinitarian passages to one letter, adding entire letters that appeared so late that the apostles who allegedly wrote them were already dead. For additional “last minute” changes see, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, and, Misquoting Jesus, both by Bart D. Ehrman.
____________________

LARRY HURTADO (NT SCHOLAR AND CHRISTIAN) ON HOW STORIES CHANGED OVER TIME FROM GOSPEL TO GOSPEL

"Mark was significantly re-shaped by the authors of Matthew and Luke, which is well analyzed in modern redaction-critical and literary-critical studies. For example, Matthew embodies about 90% of Mark and generally retains the Markan order of the material taken over from Mark, but this material is wedded with much additional material (the "Q" and "M" material), and is appropriated in a narrative with additional components producing a significantly different narrative plan (e.g., the "birth narrative" in Matthew 1-2, the resurrection appearances and "great commission" in Matthew 28). Moreover, Matthew exhibits frequent and well-known modification of the Markan material appropriated (cf. Mark 6:45-52/ Matt 14:22-33), and a considerably different cluster of thematic concerns (e.g., lessened negative portrayal of disciples, greater emphasis on Jesus as a teacher of specific rules of life as in 5:19-48 and 18:7-35, and a more positive emphasis on Peter as in 16:16-20, etc.).

"The adaptation of Markan material in Luke is probably even more thorough. In Luke one finds only about 60% of Mark, and, as in Matthew, the Markan material is joined by a large body of "Q" material as well as a sizable amount of "special" Lukan material (e.g., Luke 1-2, the mission of the 70 in 10:1-20, parables in 15:8-32, the post-resurrection narratives in Luke 24, etc.). In addition, as in Matthew, the Markan material has often been modified in style, content, and emphases, producing significantly different versions of the incidents and sayings taken over from Mark (e.g., the Lukan eschatological discourse in 21:5-38); and the material is submerged in an account that has a distinctive narrative shape (e.g., the "travel narrative" of 9:51-19:27, and the beginning and ending of Luke) as well as distinctive emphases and narrative devices (e.g., the chronological concerns in 2:1-2 and 3:1-2).

"Also, as studies of the use of the Q material in Matthew and Luke have shown, the authors apparently felt free to adapt their other written source similarly.

"As another example of the way ancients often provide significantly new renditions of texts, we may note Tatian's Diatessaron, in which the material in the four canonical Gospels was woven creatively into a new continuous sequence producing an account of Jesus' ministry that was thereby markedly different from any one of the four sources. Though the Diatessaron is the most well known ancient Gospel "harmony," indications are that this was not the first or only such literary creation. The ancient Gospel harmonies show that the textual integrity of Mark and the other Gospels was not always important to at least some Christians, and that they felt free to draw upon the Gospels as sources to create their own compositions and renditions of the story of Jesus. This freedom can be demonstrated in the ancient handling of other texts as well, such as the radical abbreviation and modification of Jason of Cyrene's five-volume work by the author of 2 Maccabees.

"In addition to the ancient freedom to give new renditions of ancient texts, we must also reckon with the freedom some ancient copyists exercised in transmitting texts. Although NT textual criticism appears to be regarded by some as an arcane and uninteresting area, a better familiarity with the manuscript tradition would perhaps help NT scholars develop a better grasp of ancient textuality.

"In the ancient setting, where texts were transmitted by being copied by hand, the transmission often involved a considerable freedom in modifying the text being copied. Modern research has shown that, while some copyists apparently practiced their craft with great care for exactness, many others made all sorts of changes: stylistic modifications, frequent harmonization (especially harmonization of Mark with parallels in the other Synoptics), deletions (e.g., the so-called "Western non-interpolations" in Luke), insertions (e.g., the famous pericope of the adulteress added after John 7:53, or 7:36 or 21:25 or after Luke 21:38), and modifications of a doctrinal nature (e.g., the several variations in Mark 3:21 and 13:32).

"Perhaps the most extensive example of the somewhat free textual transmission of the NT is the so-called Western text of Acts, which is nearly one-tenth longer than the more familiar Alexandrian text. In particular, E. J Epp has called for more attention to the modification of the NT text of a thematic nature exhibited in the western text of Acts.

"But there is, of course, a major example of the somewhat fluid nature of ancient textuality that we can note directly pertaining to Mark: the several scribally-supplied endings to Mark, all of which are significant modifications of the shape of the Markan narrative. [For a review of the variations, see Metzger, Textual Commentary, 122-26. See also J. L. Magness, Sense and Absence: Structure and Suspension in the Ending of Mark's Gospel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). For an innovative study of the "long ending" to Mark, see P. A. Mirecki, "Mark 16:9-20: Composition, Tradition and Redaction," (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986).] These scribal innovations in the ending of Mark show how free some ancient Christians felt to modify even those texts deemed to have some sort of authority; and the reshaping of the Markan ending is only the most well-known example of the fluidity of ancient texts.

"We must beware of assuming that the concern for exactness characteristic of the printed text or attributed to the Massoretic copying of the Hebrew Bible was shared by ancients in general. That was manifestly not the case."

SOURCE: A section in Hurtado's online paper, "Greco-Roman Textuality and the Gospel of Mark A Critical Assessment of Werner Kelber's The Oral and the Written Gospel," Bulletin for Biblical Research 7 (1997) 91-106.
____________________

The latest issue of New Testament Studies, 2011, raises a further question:

"Matthew’s Use of Mark: Did Matthew Intend to Supplement or to Replace His Primary Source?*" by David C. Sim [School of Theology/Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University] The abstract reads: "Most scholars acknowledge Matthew’s debt to Mark in the composition of his own Gospel, and they are fully aware of his extensive redaction and expansion of this major source. Yet few scholars pose what is an obvious question that arises from these points: What was Matthew’s intention for Mark once he had composed and circulated his own revised and enlarged account of Jesus’ mission? Did he intend to supplement Mark, in which case he wished his readers to continue to consult Mark as well as his own narrative, or was it his intention to replace the earlier Gospel? It is argued in this study that the evidence suggests that Matthew viewed Mark as seriously flawed, and that he wrote his own Gospel to replace the inadequate Marcan account."
____________________

The mere fact that Mark, ostensibly the earliest Gospel, lacked a brith narrative and a post-resurrection narrative, while those were added to later Gospels (Matthew and Luke), and that Matthew and Luke disagree the most in exactly those birth and post-resurrection stories that they added to the Markan narrative, raises questions as to the validity of such tales.

The Search for Connections That Is "Science" (Compared with the Intelligent Design Hypothesis)

I don't mind if someone is an I.D.ist who believes a Designer spent eons "tweaking" DNA base pairs. Maybe the Designer also spent eons tweaking the paths of asteroids, planetoids and planets, as well as the paths of suns and black holes (once you hypothesize "tweaking" why limit yourself just to a Designer who only tweaks DNA base pairs? Even Isaac Newton hypothesized that God was required from time to time to tweak planetary orbits (without invoking at least that a minimal degree of divine intervention one might dare to conclude that planets orbited entirely by themselves, a rather "godless" idea of how the cosmos functioned according to many of Newton's fellow theists, and in fact I think I read that the atheist, Laplace, was referring to Newton's "tweak" hypothesis when Laplace said, "I have no need of that hypothesis").

Of course it's a unfalsifiable and probably unprovable whether a Designer has invisibly tweaked things or not. Neither does it lead to new scientific knowledge, since there's always more to be studied concerning possible CONNECTIONS throughout the natural world, rather than sitting back and claiming a universal negative, that no such connections will ever be found, between lifeless molecules and self-reproducing ones (though we have already found connections that explain how the simplest molecules, hydrogen and helium, gave birth to all the rest, look up nucelosynthesis, a natural process).

Another nonfalsifiable hypothesis is that of Rupert Sheldrake's "morphogenetic fields," namely that all living things have undetectable morphogenetic fields (undetectable by present day instruments) that interact in an invisible fashion with other fields of members of the same species and allow permanent evolutionary structural or behavioral changes to be handed down from generation to generation. Unlike I.D. this hypothesis involves changes that take place between organisms, information being exchanged "horizontally," compared with say, "top down" changes being instituted directed by a Designer from "on high." But if there are other "morphogentic" energies outside of the known ones that make up the electro-magnetic spectrum, we have not detected them yet, though we also still don't know exactly how gravity fits in with the electro-magnetic spectrum of energies, and neither are we sure what dark matter and dark energy is.

As for myself, I'm not eagerly placing bets or trying to prove the existence of anything supernatural to other people, neither I.D. nor morphogenetic fields. Because I figure that "mysteries of nature" only get solved via hard work after long periods of experimentation, investigation, and scholarly debate over how to interpret the data. Speaking of which, science's track record continues to grow. For instance the means by which an animal's body type and some behaviors is inherited from its parents used to be a total mystery, but the discovery of Mendelian genetics as well as the DNA molecule and the human genome project have continued to show us more and more about how the inheritance of body types and some behaviors occurs. Embryogenesis used to be a total mystery, but we have begun to discover how certain biomolecules are released in one cataract spilling over into another, like one sprung mousetrap setting off others, and how different gradients of certain chemicals in certain parts of the growing embryo lead to the differentiation of different body parts, and how the same genes that catalyzed the embryonic formation of "eyes" were found in both fruit flies and humans and that such genes appear way back in our shared ancestral trees. Photosynthesis used to be a mystery of nature, but we discovered the structure of the chlorophyll molecule and quantum mechanics, and together they explained how photons striking the chlorophyll molecule imparted energy that was stored biochemically in other molecules in the plant cell (I believe in ATP-like molecules). It's not magic. But it took hard work to discover such CONNECTIONS: 1) How atoms of far greater sizes and with new properties arose from hydrogen and helium the smallest of atoms (nucelosynthesis). 2) How inheritance works (the DNA molecule). 3) How embryology works. 4) How plants obtain energy from sunlight. All considered such unfathomable mysteries in the past that only "miracles" could explain them all, from the formation of elements to the formation of people in the womb to the ability of plants to grow from sunlight, water and some minerals. But such gains in scientific knowledge came about because scientists were seeking to discover how things in nature were CONNECTED, not disconnected.

Let's say an I.D.ist goes to heaven and gets to meet God (aka "the Designer") and He admits "I was constantly tweaking things, invisibly for over 10 billion years." If the I.D.ist is also a scientist that's not all he would want to know. Because as a scientist he would still be curious about the CONNECTIONS behind each tweak, "Yes, God, but what individual reasons were there for tweaking things THAT particular way instead of some other? What were the CONNECTIONS in nature that you saw that made you tweak things in such and such a way, and how did you determine the ripeness of time and place for each tweak based on how it connected with changing circumstances? What kind of grand schematic inside your head were you following out, CONNECTING this tweak with that change and how each tweak would affect further changes down the line? I am very interested in particular examples! And have an eternity to learn more about such CONNECTIONS inside your mind! It's all so fascinating to me, a scientist!" So again, a scientific mind would wish to find out more about the CONNECTIONS rather than the disconnections.

Seeking to learn more about CONNECTIONS is what science is about. How do rainbows form out of sunlight, air and water and the eye's ability to see perceive colors? What CONNECTIONS exist? How did stars as well as stars that go nova produce all the elements out of mere hydrogen and helium? How do those elements naturally form molecules in space, congealing together on asteroids, planetoids and planets? Can those molecules then form reproducing units? Let's look into all the possible CONNECTIONS.

New Testament Questions Galore, Free Audio

For those who enjoy listening to free NT scholarship. I think listening to these sites and podcasts beats listening to the maximally conservative Evangelical scholarship over at Apologetics 315. The questions raised, the uncertainties pointed out by the following scholars are well worth pondering. (I've heard them all, great stuff)

Mark Goodacre at Duke, NTPod:
http://podacre.blogspot.com/

Dale Allison, The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/kenneth-w.-clark-lectures/id420546495

David Sanchez, The Apocalyptic Worldview of Mark:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/exploring-origins-christian/id449085254

Robert M. Price, The Human Bible (26 show so far)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-human-bible/id506886767

Robert M. Price, The Bible Geek (over 300 shows so far)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bible-geek-show/id360861303 You can search for particular topics discussed in past Bible Geek shows by visiting http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss20430.xml which summarizes topics covered per show, then use Firefox to find specific text. Chrome doesn't list all entries from the RSS feed. Not sure about other browsers.

Dale Martin at Yale, Introduction to the New Testament: History and Literature
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

Dale Martin recently debated maximally conservative Evangelical scholar/apologist, Michael Licona, and Dale raised some obvious knotty questions: http://www.apologetics315.com/2012/10/michael-licona-vs-dale-martin-did-jesus.html (http://apologetics315.com serves as a clearing house for maximally conservative Evangelical apologetics on the web, plenty to listen to there, as I have done, though you soon discover that apologists like Habermas, Keener, McGrew, Blomberg, and many others, were either raised Christian or converted in their teens, and they seem less interested in asking questions than supplying answers to fellow Christians with doubts, including themselves. But why not continue to ask questions, especially since the questions are obvious as pointed out by scholars at the sites I am sharing? And I don't think Martin, Goodacre, Allison or Sanchez are atheists, but they raise some interesting questions for their maximally conservative brethren and recognize that "proving Gospel history" or even proving the physical resurrection of Jesus is far from being a slam dunk. And the theological questions are even more varied and slippery than the historical ones.)

I had heard Dale Martin via his free NT lectures at itunes U, so it was refreshing to see him debate Licona. After you listen to Dale's questions regarding the NT's resurrection stories you might want to read my post, A Carnival of Questions for Resurrection Apologists, which was posted before I had listened to the debate, though my questions mirror many of Dale's points: http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2013/03/carnival-of-questions-for-resurrection.html

EXAMPLES OF LATER ADDITIONS TO SCRIPTURE, INCLUDING PAULINE INTERPOLATIONS

Also, there are some things even an Evangelical apologist can't help but notice and hence needs to try and explain away, like the endings that later Christians added to Mark (of which there are more than one, and even those appear in variant forms in different early texts).

Speaking of adding to Scripture, there is also evidence that Paul's letters feature interpolated material (1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16). See this fascinating discussion and link to a slide show: http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2011/06/pauline-interpolations.html These are basic questions raised by Pauline scholars, and arranged well by Richard Carrier. Worth pondering, along with William O. Walker's arguments concerning additional interpolations in Paul's letters: https://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/a-case-for-interpolation-does-not-rely-on-manuscript-evidence/

Furthermore, the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, DIFFER MOST FROM EACH OTHER in exactly those places where the ostensibly earliest Gospel, Mark, was silent, i.e., in their tales of Jesus' infancy and post-resurrection appearances (where Mark was silent, so neither Matthew nor Luke could maintain their closeness to one another by following Mark in those areas, hence they diverge the most from each other in exactly in those places).

GOSPEL TRAJECTORIES

Later Gospel stories certainly appear to depend on earlier ones, starting with Mark (with of course, a few later urban myths/tall tales about Jesus added to each freshly written Gospel as each appeared). Tracing obvious Gospel trajectories (developments in the story from Mark, Matthew, Luke and finally John) is something done in this brief article: http://www.umass.edu/wsp/journal/wsp1/wsp1-171-ebb-gospel.pdf

There's even a trajectory in the Gospels involving the Judas character: http://www.umass.edu/wsp/journal/wsp1/wsp1-173-kly-judas.pdf

GOSPEL IMPROBABILITIES

Richard Carrier, VIDEO, Why the Gospels Are Myth: The Evidence of Genre and Content
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e7uhaed594&feature=youtu.be&t=12m12s

Interesting stuff.

NOT FREE AUDIO, BUT MORE NT QUESTIONS... (if you can't afford them try obtaining them via interlibrary loan at your local library--they are worth a listen!)

Bart Ehrman, The Historical Jesus http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=643

Bart Ehrman, The New Testament http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=656

Luke Timothy Johnson, Jesus and the Gospels http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=6240

Carnival of Questions for Resurrection Apologists

("Fear of the Question" by David Hayward, the "Naked Pastor")

Why does Christianity need apologists if the evidence for the resurrection is as undeniable and unquestionable as apologists claim it is? They say "it's a fact!" (Really? An infinite Being couldn't provide any more evidence than cult-written second-hand sources? And also expect everyone to believe in heaven and hell, sight unseen? And believe in all the related doctrines and practices of Christianity with few questions asked?) Instead, when I think of Christian apologetics I think of this quotation from a personal letter by C. S. Lewis:

I envy you not having to think any more about Christian apologetics. My correspondents force the subject on me again and again. It is very wearing, and not v. good for one's own faith. A Christian doctrine never seems less real to me than when I have just (even if successfully) been defending it. It is particularly tormenting when those who were converted by my books begin to relapse and raise new difficulties.

C. S. Lewis to Mary Van Deusen, June 18, 1956

WHAT EXACTLY DO APOLOGISTS MEAN WHEN THEY CLAIM TO HAVE PROVIDED EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION? ESPECIALLY IN LIGHT OF...

1) The DISHARMONY of the death and resurrection tales.

2) The TRAJECTORY from early to late NT sources that suggests the death and resurrection tales grew in the telling, not just in growing in length, but also via enhancements that believers added over time to make the tales appear more convincing. (Jesus also being portrayed as more in control, more philosophical, regal or divine in the last two written Gospels and their versions of his capture, death and burial.)

3) The LACK OF FIRST HAND TESTIMONY. The documents we possess are all second hand information produced by members of the Jesus cult. Paul's extremely brief statement, "he appeared to me," is first hand but that's the only "first hand" statement we possess. (1 Peter is disputed.) I guess an infinite Being with infinite resources wanted things that way. All apologetic works that claim the "evidence" is enough for a successful "court case" flounder on the fact that courts require first hand testimony.

4) The LACK OF OPEN PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION, JUST SECRET SIGHTINGS CLAIMED BY CULT MEMBERS. The book of Acts only mentions sightings of Jesus granted to a limited number of apostles without any mention of an appearance to "over 500 brethren." Neither was that appearance open to the public at large, just to "brethren." In fact when Paul stated that Jesus "appeared" to "over 500 brethren at once" (1 Cor. 15:6), that would have been to a far greater number than the "120 brethren" mentioned in Acts after Jesus had allegedly ascended bodily into heaven, i.e., "In those days Peter stood up among the believers, a group numbering about a hundred and twenty." That is the total number that Acts gives after "Jesus was taken up from us." (Acts 1:9,14-15,22)

Acts goes on to say:

He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen--by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. Acts 10:41

After giving instructions... to the apostles he had chosen... he presented himself to them [the apostles only]... He appeared to them over a period of forty days... On one occasion, while he was eating with them... they gathered around him... [and] he was taken up before their very eyes [those of the apostles alone], and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going. Acts 1:1-11

By the time the resurrection tale was told in Luke the message at the tomb had undergone a distinct change (The raised Jesus was no longer "going before them to Galilee to be seen there," as in Mark and Matthew, but instead only the word, "Galilee," remained in the Lukan version with no mention of where Jesus was going or where he would be seen.) The author of the third Gospel has the resurrected Jesus appear to all the apostles not in Galilee but in Jerusalem, and eat fish, say he is "not a spirit" but has "flesh and bone," afterwards Jesus "led them to Bethany," from the city of Jerusalem to a nearby town. But in this moment of triumph, beating death, sin, hell (which surely trumps Jesus' entry into Jerusalem) we find no crowds, no shouts of Hosanna. If such a tale were true then surely the silence concerning this moment of triumph is deafening, especially since moments before Jesus had been intent to prove he was not a spirit, but had bones and ate fish, and then decided to "lead them" on a trip through Jerusalem. "Nothing to see here, move along."

5) DAMNED FOR NOT BELIEVING? Even if all the appearance and resurrection tales by Jesus cultists were harmonizable and true (they appear to be more a mixed bag, "I didn't recognize him!" "He was suddenly just there." "He ate fish and talked and dined with us for weeks on end and walked out of Jerusalem with us" which are what one might expect from second hand accumulations of tales by people trying to convince others that their cult or master they followed was the best), I still would not expect any truly ethical God who knows the limitations of human knowledge to demand that literally everyone must believe such stories or be damned eternally. And when one notes Matthew's embellishment of Mark, his insertion of the brief "many raised saints" passage, and his "angel coming down out of the sky to sit atop the rock outside the tomb," it makes me wonder what Jesus cultists were NOT capable of adding to the story to try and make it sound more grandiose, or what people back then were NOT willing to believe.

Some of the questions above are fleshed out further in posts below.

CARNIVAL OF POSTS ON THE RESURRECTION and EVANGELICALISM
(click on the final word of each title to visit the article or post)

Miracles from all religions (including amazing coincidences that seem to just happen and are not related to a religion), when viewed together, provide a crazy mixed bag of "evidence." So how can "God or WhateverIsOutThere" expect us to know what to make of them? (One does not need to claim that everyone's religious experiences are false in order to ask, How can God expect us to know exactly what to make of the wide diversity of religious beliefs and miracle stories?)

Richard Carrier's Five Questions Concerning "The Resurrection"

Letter to Gary Habermas on the resurrection stories

"No Stomach" for N.T. Wright (and the questions that raises concerning the life of the world to come)

Has Michael R. Licona considered the raising of many saints story in Matthew in light of questions of Markan priority?

Yet More on The "Many Resurrected Saints"

The Non-Historicity of Jesus' Conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 (the chapter with John 3:16, a key verse for many Evangelicals). Bart Ehrman's Question

Scent from heaven? Who nose? Do tales of Jesus' anointing, resurrection & bodily ascension, bear the aroma of truth?

Evangelicalism: What Is One To Make of the Phenomenon? [a collection of quotations]

Crisis After Crisis Among Evangelicals Concerning Biblical Authority

Evangelical Christian publishers admit Christianity's "image problem," "postmodern turn," differing rival "views" within the Evangelical fold, and speak about "hopeful skepticism" and "questions" rather than dogmatic truth

________________

FURTHER THOUGHTS

WHAT IF THE NT GOSPELS, ESPECIALLY MATTHEW, WERE TOTALLY TRUE? Jesus dies, suddenly the sky is darkened for three hours, an earthquake shakes the city, splitting the very rocks, an earthquake so violent it opens graves (and probably does a lot more damage than that), undead Jews crawl out of their graves and are seen by the Roman guards overseeing Jesus' crucifixion, who are terrified, and cry out in unison (Matt), "This was the son of God." But the undead then take a sabbatical, waiting till Sunday morning* to enter the holy city and show themselves to many. Naturally all this crazy stuff caused the Jews to worry that if the disciples were to steal Jesus' body, then that might convince people that a miracle had occurred. All that other stuff going on, and THAT's what they fear might convince people that a miracle had occurred? [Richard Carrier, my paraphrase, CLICK HERE for the original statement by Carrier]

*The Greek in Matthew states literally that the graves were opened and the saints were raised at the time of Jesus' death, but that they didn't enter the holy city and show themselves to many until "after his resurrection" on Sunday morning. Why? Apologist J.P. Holding suggests it's because they were obeying the Sabbath day of rest. Really? Acts mentions that Jews COULD travel on the sabbath for a limited distance, but probably enough to reach the holy city. In Luke that distance was called "a sabbath day's journey." And why couldn't someone from the city simply walk over to the graves? Others suggest that some scribe added the phrase to Matthew, "after his resurrection" so that Jesus would rise before the saints, i.e., that Jesus would be the first fruits of the resurrection, but that little phrase also forces them to hang round in the graveyard for a day and a half. For more on the raised saints tale, CLICK HERE.

AND IF THE RESURRECTION TALES WERE TOTALLY HARMONIZED...CLICK HERE to read the article

New Book: Evolving Out of Eden: Christian Responses to Evolution. (Portions of the book can be read free online)

 

WEBSITE, click here

 

FACEBOOK PAGE, click here.

 

I am cited in the book, including passages from an article I wrote concerning the different types of "creationism" that Bible-believers arrive at after reading the Bible, and how the range of biblical interpretations continued to broaden in response to advancing scientific knowledge concerning the earth's position in space, its age, and the inter-relationships of species.

Randal Rauser : Arachnologist for Christ

Randal Rauser, a Christian apologist, blogged about spider webs in 2011 and 2012. The image above is not the rotting carcass of a spider stuck in its own web.  It is a photo of some thickened filaments (called stabilimentum) filled with "trash" -- hence the name of the spider that produced this particular web-pattern with these oddly shaped filaments, the Trashline Orbweaver (Genus Cyclosa).  Did a particular species of Trashline Orbweaver learn how to make an image of a spider and incorporate it into its web-building? Randal wrote in his two posts on spider webs:  

Nobody teaches a spider. They just know how to spin a web. Don’t you think that’s a miracle?

Can a superintending intelligence categorically be excluded from that explanation? 

Rauser, who is pro-evolution, and not a creationist, does not seem interested enough in the topic of the evolution of spider species or their webs to look either up on the web and share that information. Instead he wants us to look at this image and think of God. So he doesn't discuss anything but what a "miracle" of "superintending intelligence" such an image appears to illustrate.  But does he imagine that evolutionists hypothesize that the earliest spider-like species began spinning orb-shaped webs?  Some early spiders probably just lined their burrows with whatever sticky stuff they exuded, like some species of spider today. Later species may have evolved the ability to make webs that hung outside their burrows but not orb-shaped webs, rather more haphazard shapes or even a funnel shape (like an outside burrow) like some species of spider do today. The orb-weaving species would come later. Therefore orb-shaped web making probably had precursors, from spiders that simply had silk-lined burrows, to early non-orb shaped webs, all before orb-shaped web making arose in some (not all) species. There's also peculiarities of spider anatomy and genetics that point to their probable evolutionary ancestry and changes over time. And, as jury-rigged as evolutionary change is, there have been a wide range of uses made of the sticky excretions by different species of spiders as their species divided and sub-divided over millions of years. There's a species that flings out just a string of web to catch insects flying nearby. And there are species that do not rely on web-making. One such species simply sits atop flower petals the same color as they are, see the pic below: 

That species lies in wait for insects attracted to the flower's nectar: Robert Frost wrote a poem after seeing a "fat dimpled" spider atop a flower of the same color as the spider. The spider had just devoured a moth that had flown unsuspectingly right into the spider's jaws, "it's dead wings carried by the spider like a paper kite." After encountering such a sight, Frost asked:

What brought the kindred spider to that height, 

Then steered the white moth thither in the night? 

What but design of darkness to appall?-- 

If design govern in a thing so small.

As for the Trashline Orbweaver and the significance it's "spider-shaped" web design holds for God's existence, doesn't the architecture of an orb-web lend itself naturally to the likelihood that we humans "see" a "spider-like image?"  Any orb-shaped web, if filled in with extra-sticky fibers and trash in the center (and on a few of its spokes that extend outward from the center) will look like a "spider." So if a species fills in the center of its web and also fills in a few spokes running from that center then you get what "looks like a spider."  But it's the orb-web architecture that came before everything else, and it's the human who is "seeing a spider" just like we humans also see faces in clouds. 

There's various hypotheses put forth regarding why Trashline Orbweavers weave trash into their webs. One hypothesis is that it makes the web more visible and keeps other animals from walking into the web and destroying it. Another hypothesis (from an article in the Journal of Arachnology) is that because stabilimentum (the trashlines) reflect ultraviolet light similar to flowers, spiders incorporate them into webs to attract insects associated with flowers. The research concludes that trashline webs with stabilimentum attract more insects. On the other hand, a recent article in the journal published by the Arachnological Society of Japan reported no difference in the number of prey captured by cyclosa stabilimentum webs and cyclosa non-stabilimentum webs. Differences in research methodologies adopted by the two studies could partially account for different results.  

Does a trashy blob in the center of an orb-web with a few thickened trashy strands running outward from the central blob constitute proof of anything metaphysical? Has that same spider been coaxed to make a second web and did it have the same number of "legs" as the first?  Even without performing that experiment, the naturalist who discovered and filmed this spider has done us the favor of taking snapshots of nearby webs built presumably by the same genus and species of Amazonian spider but those webs don't show "eight-legs," in fact none of his photos of nearby webs by that same type of spider show "eight-legs." They just show a central blob and some thickened strands running from the blob.  Here are the additional pics he took of nearby webs:  

This last photo was taken by someone else. It is of a colony of Trashline Orbweavers of the same genus as the spider discovered by the naturalist, and these are all living close together. Loads of trashlines. 

And here are a few more webs by other Trashline Orbweavers of the same genus: 


I suspect that the most one can "prove" via comparing webs of different species of Trashline Weavers as well as comparing different Genera and Families of spider species and their webs and behaviors is that evolution is jury-rigged, using whatever it has in order to achieve whatever it can.  And it's likely that it's our species with it's large pattern-seeking brain that "sees" a "spider" in a central mass of trashlined webbing with some extra-thickened spokes extending from the center of an orb shaped web. 

SPIDER JOKE OF THE DAY

PREACHER: God has designed for us an insect by which He reveals his infinite ingenuity and wisdom, a lowly insect, it shouts out that "God Exists!" from the steeples of every church in the land! 

CHURCH MATRON: So what's this ugly, dust and trash-collecting, poisonous, blood-sucking vermin doing in a nice clean house of God? SWAT!   

On the Rationalizations Christian Use to Support Their Unproven Hypothesis of the Bible's "Inspiration"

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll (an Evangelical Christian and historian) is an interesting read and probably a challenging one for some Evangelicals who don't know much about the role theology played in catalyzing and maintaining such a conflict. Noll was interviewed after his book appeared and admitted that he cried when he read about how Evangelical Protestant theologians in the U.S. disagreed so strongly over how to interpret the Bible concerning slavery. 

Kevin Giles had a similar reaction:

The written defences  of slavery from the pens of these evangelicals were legion but they are not easily obtainable today. . . No one can really appreciate how certain these evangelicals were that the Bible  endorsed slavery, or of the vehemence of their argumentation unless something from their writing is read. I can only give a  pale reflection of their righteous zeal for 'the biblical case for slavery'.  [Kevin Giles, "The Biblical Argument for Slavery: Can the Bible Mislead? A  Case Study in Hermeneutics," Evangelical Quarterly 66:1  (1994), 3-17] 

A reference work from Oxford Univ. Press adds,

In the United States disputes over slavery brought Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists to schism by 1845, and encouraged the fratricidal Civil War that finally resolved that crisis. One of the chief ironies of the conflict over slavery was the confrontation of America’s largest Protestant denominations with the hitherto unthinkable idea that the Bible could be divided against itself. But divided it had been by intractable theological, political, and economic forces. Never again would the Bible completely recover its traditional authority in American culture.  [Stephen A. Marini, “Slavery and the Bible,” The Oxford Guide to Ideas & Issues of the Bible, ed. by Bruce Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford University Press, 2001)

I bring this up because I am waiting for a Protestant or Catholic scholar to compose a definitive study of what Christians said for 1300+ years concerning the duty of rulers to persecute heretics, blasphemers and witches. 

For at least 1300 years, up till and including the era of Luther's and Calvin's views on the matter, theologians agreed that it was the proper duty of the state, kings, magistrates and other rulers, to support and enforce laws against heresy, blasphemy, even witchcraft. 

To paraphrase what Kevin Giles wrote concerning defenses of slavery by Christian theologians: The written defenses of anti-heresy, anti-blasphemy laws, as well as anti-witchcraft statements from the pens of Catholics, as well as Protestants like Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, are not easily obtainable today (especially in the cases of Calvin and Melanchthon, whose published works, including letters in those areas, remain untranslated) . . . No one can really appreciate how certain these Christians were that the Bible endorsed the legal prosecution and persecution of heretics, blasphemers, and witches, or of the vehemence of their argumentation, unless something from their writing is read. I can only give a  pale reflection of their righteous zeal for 'the biblical case for persecution.'"

Like the issue of slavery the issue of which laws ought to be supported by Christian rulers and/or Christian laity, needs to be explored by Christian historians. It is a question that also brings into sharp relief the continued disagreements by Christians over how to understand the Bible as an "inspired" book: 

Conservatives try to harmonize the many voices of the Bible into a single voice via "dispensationalism" or "progressive revelation" or other ingenious excuses they invent (which to them do not appear to be human rationalization or inventions at all, blinded as they are to their own creativity).  They imagine God slowly revealing his full plan of salvation over time, via a series of conflicts, reversals, metaphors, and anything else they can toss into the mix, until God finally revealed the truth, which is this, that if you don't believe Jesus was the only eternally begotten Son of God who loves you, then God already has judged you worthy of eternal damnation. 

To the left of the Conservatives are the Moderates and Liberals who claim that the loving passages in the Bible are without question "inspired," but they try to hold onto all the other passages as well, claiming that they are at least as "inspired" as other "conventions of their day." Though one might ask them just how "inspired" "conventions of the day" are, and whether they ought to be viewed as "holy writ" in the same sense, or to the same degree, as the loving passages.    (Also, "loving passages" can be found in other ancient literature where one could argue that they too are part of the "conventional wisdom" of those cultures -- including "love thy enemy" found on an ancient tablet of Babylonian wisdom dated centuries before Jesus).  

The question remains, which laws for society are Christians supposed to support? And this remains a question because Moses laid down laws for the governance of a nation, but Jesus laid down none. Both Moses' laws and Jesus' teachings were allegedly inspired directly by the finger or voice of God.  But since Jesus laid down no laws for society's governance and Moses laid down plenty, some Christians are certain that they should seek leadership roles and also expand support for religion politically, while others don't believe in getting involved in government at all. Which view is right, which is more "inspired?' And which laws in particular should a Christian support? 

Most Christians seem to assume that the POLITICAL CONVENTIONS OF OUR OWN DAY are so idiomatic that they can't imagine a world where the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment did not exist, i.e., "Freedom of speech and religion."  But it's obvious from history that biblical teachings do not necessarily lead to First Amendment rights, because one cannot forget the First Commandment, "Thou shall have no other Gods before me, " and the penalty for disobeying that law was death. In the past Christian rulers, informed by Christian theologians, attempted to help their subjects avoid "anti-Christs," which Jesus warned about. And there was pervasive fear back then that injuring a person's eternal soul and dooming them to hell via the spread of heretical ideas was far more disastrous than merely injuring or killing a person's mortal body. And there was the O.T. recognition that a father had the right to kill someone attacking his children, so how much more must the government have the right to kill those poisoning a child's soul, or the soul's of citizens? Add to that the very real fear people used to feel that a city or nation might experience horrendous judgments from God if they should "turn away" from Him to follower "other gods" or "anti-Christs." Such fears were extremely real to folks living back then, and are emphasized in both testaments. "Fear not he who can kill only the body, but fear him who can cast both body and soul into hell," along with tales of cities or nations judged horrendously whenever God grew displeased with their incorrect worship. 

Calvin wrote on the Duty of Public Magistrates to Punish Heretics, and letters to nearby rulers demanding that they punish heretics. Beza, Calvin's theological successor in Geneva, wrote a longer work demanding the punishment of heretics. I have not found those works in English translation.  Melanchthon drafted and Luther signed a paper that demanded the death penalty for anyone who dared to question articles in the Apostle's Creed, but it was mainly directed at Anabaptists (preachers of various sorts who did not belong to any particular denomination and whose teachings varied). Melanchthon wrote a whole book cursing Anabaptists, and held his own little inquisition concerning any of them who dared venture into Saxony to preach. I have not found a translation of Melanchthon's book into English.  A few of Luther's and Calvin's words concerning how they viewed humanity and how they interpreted the Fall ("free-will is but a word after the Fall") and the Sermon on the Mount (which neither of them thought instructed them to love "God's enemies"), and their agreement that heretics must be persecuted, can be read in chapter two of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalsits. But there's far more out there that does not even appear in English translation, or which I have yet to find in English translation, though it is mentioned in other books I have read about Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin. On the other hand, Thomas Aquinas' teaching concerning the need to punish heretics, as well as that of the famed Catholic theologian Robert Bellarmine, can be read on the web. Bellarmine even cited Calvin approvingly. See, De Laicis — Saint Robert Bellarmine’s Treatise on Civil Government, chapters 17-21.  Start with chapter 17: http://catholicism.org/de-laicis.html/17  

Earlier still, one can read the laws laid down by Christian Roman Emperors Theodosius and Justinian. Justinian's Code was revered throughout much of the Middle Ages, and began just as the Code of Theodosius by stating that the only true religion is Trinitarian Christianity, adding, "We order all those who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, and considering others as demented and insane, We order that they shall bear the infamy of heresy; and when the Divine vengeance which they merit has been appeased, they shall afterwards be punished in accordance with Our resentment, which we have acquired from the judgment of Heaven."  

The phrase, "acquired from the judgment of Heaven," echoes Paul in Romans 13, "Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves." 

See also Christians 0, Christians 0, The Early Church 

Pagans 0, Christians 1

Christians 0, Christians 0, From the Reformation to Today

Indians 0, Christians 1

So I'm waiting for Evangelicals to write a book about the disturbing lack of consensus among Conservatives, Moderates and Liberals who continue to disagree regarding "how" the Bible is "inspired," and what the Bible "really says" about which laws a Christian ought to support for society as a whole. 

Can Conservatives, Moderates and Liberals also justify their views of the Bible's "inspiration" from "cover to cover?"

I suspect the debate between them is endless, and each of their proposed justifications cannot justify itself in the end, as already stated above. 

It might be time for a truly radical approach not unlike that of Thomas Jefferson who cut and pasted together his own Gospel of Jesus. Perhaps the same needs to be done with the entire Bible, though not without heavy reactions from other Christians no doubt.  But why shouldn't someone just highlight for us exactly which teachings were not merely "conventions of their day," and publish those highlighted sections alone, in a new edition of The Bible? It could be titled, The Bible That God Wants Us To Learn and Practice Today, In Private, And Also Which Laws Christians Ought to Support. 

Certainly there's secularists who see value in seeking the best in every book, movie, play, and person, and even collecting parts of each together into anthologies, "World Bibles," or collections of The Greatest, Wittiest, Wisest, or Most Compassionate Things Ever Said.  They have a wish to put together "Best Of" books featuring the world's moral wisdom from multiple sources and cultures.  I think teaching kids about moral wisdom should start young and in public schools, though religious people might find such an idea repugnant or even "blasphemous," since they want their religious books to be revered AS A WHOLE, and their prophets and gods revered as prophets and gods. But consider this, there is no mention of God in the teaching, "Do unto others as one would have others do unto you." And I think more secularists would agree that children should learn and consider such a saying, compared with the percentage of Christians who agree as to what should be focused upon in the Bible when it comes to their theology. As the secularists Robert Ingersoll noted, it's often the application of moral wisdom to theology that creates some of the knottiest difficulties for religion: 

They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be. [Robert Ingersoll]

Preterism : Christianity Debunked by Christianity

Preterism : Critiqued by Three Conservative Christians   

The term preterism comes from the Latin praeter, denoting that something is "past," signifying that either all or a majority of Bible prophecy was fulfilled by AD 70.

According to preterism:

The “tribulation” only affected the Jewish people rather than all mankind, and it occurred in 70 AD when the Roman army conquered Jerusalem and demolished the Temple. They say that what “really happened” was that God was replacing Israel with the Christian Church and demonstrating to the world that all the biblical promises to Israel now belong to the Church. Though leaving such a "divine" explanation aside, one could also say that what really happened was that the culture of Judaism with its expectation that their God must always at some point intervene to save them from remaining a merely conquered nation because He had promised them that they were "chosen" and at some point (after miracles or battle) God would rule the world supernaturally imposing order upon it with the city of Jerusalem being its most important focal point for His rule via a Jewish king or messiah who is placed in charge there, per a prophecy in Daniel [SEE NOTE BELOW]--and such expectation of divine assistance and destiny led the Jews to engage in not just one but two major revolts against Rome, one around 70 AD and again around 130 AD, and they failed both times, thus leading to the rise of two religious offshoots once the Temple and Jerusalem had been destroyed, and Jerusalem was remade into a Roman city and renamed with a Roman name.  The two religious offshoots were rabbinical Judaism, and Christianity, the latter of which arose out of the apocalyptic mania of the time. But that's apparently not a "divine" enough explanation for Christians, especially preterists.

So, sticking with the "divine explanation" for the destruction of Jerusalem preterists believe that in God’s eyes Judaism is kaput. Preterists also believe the Jews deserved everything they got, even going so far as to interpret the “fall of Babylon” in the book of Revelation as “the destruction of Jerusalem,” rather than a prophecy against Rome and judgment for what Rome was doing to Christians. And they add that Jesus “returned invisibly in the clouds” to witness the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army. They round out their view by claiming that Satan has been bound in the abyss ever since Jesus’ day and cannot hinder the increasing spread of the Gospel. Yup, they say that both Satan and the Jews have been kaput in God’s eyes since around 70 AD--so God has a cunning plan that cannot fail now that those two have been sidelined!

Preterists also don't think that the founding of the nation of Israel is anything but a self-fulfilling prophecy performed by men, notably by some Christian men and also Zionists who simply wanted the Jews to get out of Europe and go back to the same land written about in their holy book, i.e., look up the Balfour Declaration in which a Bible-reading British statesman in the 1920s authorized passage to Palestine for any Jews who wished to go. Neither are preterists expecting a Jewish Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem or that such an act matters any longer. I tend to agree with the preterists that the return of Jews to Israel was nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy, the result of Christian statesmen and Jews who saw so many references to Israel in their Bible they just felt that the Jews had to get there somehow. But once more and more Jews began arriving friction started between them and the Muslims who already occupied Palestine, and the British ordered a cessation of all new Jewish immigrants to Palestine and the immigrants refused to stop coming, even bombing British embassies over there, and from there things continued to escalate until by the 1940s Israel claimed nationhood.

But what about this cunning plan of God that preterists believe was accomplished when God disowned the Jews and locked Satan in hell in the first century? Well, when you look back at how God’s cunning plans in the past worked out you begin to notice that . . .

1) God had to toss His first two children out of a really nice garden and curse the ground, then . . .

2) . . .had to drown all their children but eight to cleanse the earth from sin (and we know how well that cleansing from sin turned out, why even back then Sodom and Gomorrah were built soon after the great act that was supposed to cleanse the world from sin),

3) had his people enslaved, then freed them only to commanded them to commit mass slaughter so that He could present them with a land flowing with dried blood and parched soil. Then. . .

4) . . .He sent his chosen people plagues and famines, had them deported to Babylon, then allowed them to return only in order to be conquered by Greeks and then Romans who finally knocked them senseless after two major Jewish rebellions failed, and then God supposedly started over again with The Church, and of course this time God’s cunning plan cannot fail. God has finally got it right. So, based on past experience what could possibly go wrong? Preterists expect the world to last for an untold number of years with Satan in prison and the Jews no longer receiving divine mercy since everyone’s only choice today is convert, so preterists believe Christianity must triumph over the hearts and minds of everyone on earth, increasingly so as each year passes.

However, all is not completely rosy for preterists. There are different franchises, and they are not fond of one another’s “heretical” views. Partial preterists believe the Tribulation is past, while full preterists believe both the Tribulation and the Rapture are past (viz., Christians were taken up into the sky to meet their Lord in the first century).

There are also Christians who reject preterism, who reject that Jesus came invisibly in judgment against the Jews and their city in 70 AD, or who reject theonomy (who find it improbable that Christians will be ruling the earth under theonomic/Bible-based laws when Jesus returns). Those Christians have other ways of interpreting the books of Daniel and Revelation. I won’t get into their various schools of thought or rival interpretations within each school (Amillennialism, Millennialism, Dispensationalism, Historicism, et al) except to say that they all involve the premise that there are no significant errors in the Bible nor its prophecies, so they play at re-arranging the Bible’s eschatological passages like a grand puzzle game, each in their own way, stretching meanings here, ignoring implications or inconsistencies elsewhere, all the while blaming each other for putting together the puzzle the “wrong” way, or being too “creative” in doing so.

Lastly, there are even some Christians of a moderate to liberal bend who don’t try to fit together the puzzle pieces such that all the Bible’s prophecies must be true, but they admit that Jesus and other New Testament writings might contain prophecies that have not proven true, including false prophesies concerning when “the Son of Man/the Lord” would return. I have collected passages from throughout the NT that illustrate this last point of view in my essay, The Lowdown on God’sShowdown. 

I just want to add before sharing the following pieces that if nothing else they illustrate that Christians more so than anyone else, deserve the description, “debunkers of the Bible,” since they have been debunking each other's interpretations for centuries, from Genesis right through to Revelation. Note the interesting questions posed to preterists in the three pieces below by some fellow conservative Christians. (The first piece is pretty involved if you have never read or studied the book of Revelation, nor Roman history, nor know anything about preterism, in which case my Lowdown on God’s Showdown essay might be more up your alley, or my little piece, "Two Difficulties for Preterism" that follows the three Christian pieces.) 

NOTE TO GO WITH THE SECOND PARAGRAPH ABOVE:

First century Jews were grumbling and agitating against Roman rule before Jesus was born. Anti-Roman incidents and minor revolts meant that the Romans had to keep garrisons in Palestine. The Jews had previously survived the destruction of their first temple by the Babylonians and returned to Palestine to renew their kingdom, but then the Greek generals of Alexander took over Palestine and attempted to force the Jews to Hellenize themselves and desecrated the Jewish Temple, so the Jews revolted and after much blood was shed and hundreds of Jews crucified they won back their kingdom after a revolt led by the Maccabees, and so Jewish rulers (the Hasmoneans) ruled Palestine for a while Then the Romans arrived and the barracks of their soldiers were visible beside the Temple. The Jews were looking once again for how they might regain their kingdom, and the already mentioned incidents and revolts began to occur. “There were a variety of underlying causes that helped spark [the 70 CE] revolt; social tensions, bad Roman procurators, the divisions amongst the ruling class, the rise of banditry and poor harvests, but perhaps the most significant feature of all was the apocalyptic storm brewing over first-century Palestine.”

“Of all the messianic movements one in particular drew the most attention; the Essene sect, the community that [allegedly] wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, based their calculations on the ‘end of days’ on a prophecy from the book of Daniel. Josephus says that the major impetus inspiring the Jewish revolt of 70 CE against Roman rule was an ‘oracle found in the sacred scriptures.’ This oracle effectively said when the time came ‘one from their own country would become ruler of the world.’ The writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls calculated that the year 26/27 CE would usher in the messianic age. There was never a time previously quite like it, and there has never been one since; two messiahs, one king one priest would rule over Palestine. The fervor with which many fought against the greatest power of the ancient world could only have come from such beliefs; that the end of days was nigh.” [to quote Susan Sorek's introduction to The Jews Against Rome: War in Palestine AD 66-73, Continuum, 2008] 

Some anti-Roman Jewish extremists equated the Evil Kingdom of Daniel’s prophecy with Rome and the end of days (“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever” Dan 2:44, NIV) (p. 40 of The Jews Against Rome) The book of Daniel is also a work that nobody seems to have known a thing about until the era of the Maccabean revolt against Greek rulers of Palestine, and the book itself claims it had been “sealed until the time of the end” (“He replied, ‘Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.’” Dan 12:9, NIV) That implies that the book of Daniel was “unsealed” during the era of the Maccabean revolt and continued to attract increasing interest from the era of the Maccabean revolt up till the first century growing agitations against Rome.

____________________

FIRST ARTICLE BY A CHRISTIAN DEBUNKING PRETERISM

THEONOMY AND THE DATING OF REVELATION 

by Robert L. Thomas, Professor of New Testament

In 1989, a well-known spokesman for the theonomist camp, Kenneth L. Gentry, published a work devoted to proving that John the Apostle wrote Revelation during the sixties of the first century A.D. Basing his position heavily on Rev 17:9-11 and 11:1-13, he used internal evidence within the book as his principal argument for the early date. His clever methods of persuasion partially shield his basic motive for his interpretive conclusions, which is a desire for an undiluted rationale to support Christian social and political involvement leading to long-term Christian cultural progress and dominion. If the prophecies of Revelation are yet to be fulfilled, no such progress will develop-a prospect the author cannot accept. Inconsistency marks Gentry's hermeneutical pattern. Predisposition keeps him from seeing the book's theme verse as a reference to Christ's second coming. His explanation of Rev 17:9-11 is fraught with weaknesses, as is his discussion of 11:1-2. Two major flaws mar Gentry's discussion of John's temporal expectation in writing the book. Besides these problems, five major questions regarding Gentry's position remain unanswered.

He makes evidence derived from exegetical data within the Apocalypse his major focus in building a case for dating the book prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.2 Though acknowledging that other advocates of either a Neronic (i.e., in the 60's) and Domitianic date (i.e., in the 90's) for Revelation's composition find no such direct evidence within the book, he proceeds to find "inherently suggestive and positively compelling historical time-frame indicators in Revelation."3 He uses the contemporary reign of the sixth king in 17:9-11 and the integrity of the temple and Jerusalem in 11:1-13 to exemplify arguments that are "virtually certain" proof of a date sometime in the sixties.4

HERMENEUTICAL PATTERN

As Gentry weaves his case for Revelation's early date, the absence of a consistent set of hermeneutical principles is evident. It is most conspicuous in a number of inconsistencies that emerge in different parts of the treatment. He does not interpret the same passage in the same way from place to place, or within the same discussion differing principles take him in different directions regarding his mode of interpretation.

For instance, he accepts the principle of the symbolic use of numbers, but only for large, rounded numbers such as 1,000, 144,000, and 200,000,000. Smaller numbers, such as seven, are quite literal.12

Again, he rejects the equation of "kings = kingdoms" in 17:10,13 but in a later discussion of the Nero Redivivus myth in 17:11, he identifies one of the kings or heads of the beast in 17:10 as the Roman Empire revived under Vespasian.14 The latter is part of his strained attempt to explain the healing of the beast's death-wound.

When discussing the 144,000, Gentry is uncertain at one point whether they represent the saved of Jewish lineage or the church as a whole.15 Yet just ten pages later they are definitely Christians of Jewish extraction, because he needs evidence to tie the fulfillment of Revelation to the land of Judea.16 This provides another example of his lack of objective hermeneutical principles to guide interpretation.

The forty-two months of 11:2 is the period of the Roman siege of Jerusalem from early spring 67 till September 70, according to Gentry.17 A bit earlier he finds John, even while he is writing the book, already enmeshed in the great tribulation (1:9; 2:22), a period of equal length and apparently simultaneous with the Roman siege.18 In a discussion of 13:5-7, however, he separates the Neronic persecution of Christians which constituted "the great tribulation" (13:5-7) from the Roman siege of

Jerusalem in both time and place, dating it from 64 to 68 and locating it in the Roman province of Asia.19 So which is it? Is John writing during "the great tribulation" of 64`68 or the one of 67`70?

Later still, he assigns 65 or early 66 as the date of writing,20 so John predicted a forty-two month period of persecution (13:5) that was already partially past when he wrote. This is indeed a puzzling picture.

Another puzzling discussion concerns the raising of the beast from his death-wound. At one point Gentry identifies Galba as the seventh king of 17:10, in strict compliance with the consecutive reigns of

Roman emperors.21 But suddenly he skips Otho and Vitellius to get to Vespasian who is the eighth and shifts from counting kings with his identification of the healing of the beast's death-wound as Rome's survival from its civil war in the late sixties.22 This is enough to dash in pieces any effort to decipher a consistent pattern of hermeneutics, because such is nonexistent.

So much for preliminaries and generalities. The attention of the remainder of this essay will be on individual passages.

INDIVIDUAL PASSAGES

The Theme Verse

All, including Gentry and Chilton,23 agree that the theme verse of Revelation is Rev 1:7: "Behold, He comes with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all the families of the earth will mourn over Him." But these two theonomists do not refer this to the second coming of Christ. Rather they see it as referring to the coming of Christ in judgment upon Israel, so as to make the church the new kingdom.24 To reach this conclusion, they must implement special proposals regarding "those who pierced Him," "the tribes of the earth," and "the land."

"Those who pierced Him."

Blame for the piercing of Jesus falls squarely and solely on the shoulders of the Jews, according to Gentry.25 He cites a number of passages in the gospels, Acts, and Paul to prove this responsibility, but conspicuously omits from his list John 19:31 and Acts 4:27 which involve the Romans and Gentiles in this horrible act.26 This determines for him that the book's theme is the coming of God's wrath against the Jews.27

By limiting the blame for Christ's crucifixion to the Jews, Gentry excludes from the scope of the theme verse any reference to the Romans whom he elsewhere acknowledges to be the chief persecutors of

Christians.28 He also includes the Romans elsewhere as objects of this "cloud coming" of Christ,29 and yet does not give the Romans a place in the theme verse of the book.

"The tribes of the earth."

Without evaluating any other possibility, Gentry assigns fyl (phyl) the meaning of "tribe" and sees in it a reference to the tribes of Israel.30 This interpretation has merit because that is the meaning of the term in the source passage, Zech 12:10 ff., and in a parallel NT passage, John 19:37.31 The problem with the way Gentry construes it, however, is that if this refers to Israel, it is a mourning of repentance, as in Zechariah, not a mourning of despair as he makes it.

For this to be a mourning of despair as the context of Revelation requires (cf. 9:20-21; 16:9, 11, 21), phyl must be taken in the sense of "family" and must refer to peoples of all nations as it does so often in the Apocalypse (cf. 5:9; 7:9; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6).32 This is the only way to do justice to the worldwide scope of the book as required by such verses as 3:10, which even Gentry admits refers to the whole Roman  world.33 The sense of a mourning of despair throughout the whole earth is the sense Jesus attaches to the words in His use of the Zech 12:10 ff. passage in Matt 24:30.34

"The land."

The reconstructionists actually take "the tribes of the earth" to be "the tribes of the land," i.e., the land of Palestine.35 It is true that g (g) can carry such a restricted meaning, but special support in its context of usage is necessary for it to mean this. The acknowledged worldwide scope of Revelation already cited rules out this localized meaning of the term in 1:7.

So Gentry strikes out on the three pitches which he himself has chosen in the theme verse of Revelation. He also leaves other unanswered questions regarding this alleged "cloud coming" in the sixties. He identifies the cloud coming against the Jews as the judgment against Judea in 67`70.36 Against the church that coming was the persecution by the Romans from 64 to 68.37 The cloud coming for Rome was her internal strife in 68`69.38 But nowhere does he tell what the promised deliverance of the church is (e.g., 3:11). It appears to be a question without a clear-cut answer as to how this "cloud coming" could be a promise of imminent deliverance for God's people. All he can see in it is judgment against them and the "privilege" of being clearly distinguished from Judaism forever. He finds covenantal and redemptive import for Christianity in the collapse of the Jewish order,39 but this falls short of a personal appearance of Christ to take the faithful away from their persecution.

The Sixth King

As mentioned above, one of the two internal indicators that make the early date "virtually certain" is the identity of the sixth king in 17:9-11.40 Gentry first uses the "seven hills" of 17:9 to indicate that Rome or the Roman Empire is in view.41 Then he concludes that the seven kings of 17:9 (Greek text; 17:10 in English) are seven consecutive Roman emperors.42 He lists ten kings, beginning with Julius Caesar 49`44 B.C.) and continuing with Augustus (31 B.C.`A.D. 14), Tiberius (14`37), Gaius or Caligula (37`41), Claudius (41`54), Nero (54`68), Galba (68`69), Otho (69), Vitelius (69), Vespasian (69`79).43 The sixth in this series is Nero, so because 17:10 says "one is," he concludes that John must have written the book during Nero's reign.44

Strangest of all, though, is Gentry's unfulfilled obligation to explain what a reference to Rome is doing in the midst of a chapter dealing with Babylon, which he takes to represent Jerusalem.50 The best he can do is theorize that the harlot's riding on the beast is an alliance between Jerusalem and Rome against Christianity.51 To support the existence of such an alleged alliance, he cites Matt 23:37 ff.; John 19:16-16 [sic]; Acts 17:7, none of which support his theory.52 Rome's prolonged siege and destruction of Jerusalem from the late 60's to 70 hardly gives the impression of any alliance. The harlot sits upon or beside the seven mountains (17:9), just as she sits upon or beside "many waters" (17:1). Since the "many waters" are a symbol explained in 17:15, analogy would dictate that the seven mountains are also symbolic and not literal hills.53 The very next clause in 17:9 explains the symbolism of the seven mountains: 

This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction. [Rev. 17:9-11]

As noted above, Gentry as part of his answer to the fourth objection to the Neronian identification rejects the equating of kings with the kingdoms they rule, but later he incorporates such an equation into his explanation of the identity of the eighth head.54

Besides the tenuous nature of Gentry's use of the seven hills, his conclusion that Nero is the sixth or "the one [who] is" also faces serious obstacles. The greatest obstacle is his need to begin counting "kings" with Julius Caesar. He tries to defend this by citing several ancient sources,55 but the fact is that Rome was a Republic, ruled by the First Triumvirate, in the days of Julius Caesar and became a Principate under Augustus and the emperors that followed him.56 Neither does Gentry attempt to explain the thirteen-year gap between Julius Caesar's death and the beginning of Augustus' reign. They were not consecutive rulers as he makes them out to be. The exclusion of Julius Caesar makes Nero the fifth instead of the sixth "king." This scheme is fraught with hermeneutical difficulties.

Gentry's further use of 666 to prove that the first beast of chap. 13 is Nero, he admits, is only corroborative and cannot stand alone. ["Fanciful" is the best description of some of Gentry's hermeneutical methodology to prove that 666 refers to Nero. He concludes that the beast who is Nero, like Satan himself, is a serpent because in English and in Greek (xjs [chxs]) pronunciation of the number "sounds hauntingly like a serpent's chilling hiss" (215). He adds that the middle number-letter even has the appearance of a writhing serpent: j (x) (ibid.). Another means of identifying Nero as the beast is his red beard that matches the color of the beast (17:3) (217).]57. 

So the efficient course is to turn now to his second major item of internal evidence to prove an early date of writing.

The Contemporary Integrity of the Temple

Gentry finds indisputable evidence in Rev 11:1-2 that the temple was still standing and that the destruction of Jerusalem was still future when John wrote the book.58 He goes to great lengths to prove

that it was the Herodian temple of Jesus' day by locating it in Jerusalem.

He is quite defensive of his hermeneutical methodology in handling these two verses, a method that involves a mixture of figurative-symbolic and literal-historical.60 He takes the measuring to represent the preservation of the innermost aspects, including the naw (naos, "temple"), altar, and worshipers, and the “casting out” (kbale [ekbale]) as indicative of the destruction of the external court of the temple complex. The former or inner spiritual idea speaks of the preservation of God's new temple, the church, while the latter or material temple of the old covenant era will come to destruction. In other words, v. 1 is figurative and v. 2 literal. In yet other terms, the tn nan to ueo (ton naon tou theou, "the temple of God") and tuysiastrion (to thysiastrion, "the altar") are symbolic and tn aln tn jvuen to nao (tn auln tn exthen tou naou, "the court outside the temple") is literal. Gentry justifies the radical switch in hermeneutical approaches by appealing to Walvoord and Mounce, whom he says combine literal and figurative in this passage also.61 He cites Walvoord's silence regarding John's literally climbing the walls of the temple to get his measurements and Mounce's reference to the necessity of a symbolic mixture in interpreting the passage. What Gentry does is drastically different from these two, however. He wants a figurative and literal meaning for essentially the same terminology. For example, he assigns the term naos both a literal and a symbolic meaning in consecutive verses. In fact, he refers the temple and the altar to literal structures earlier62 and to the spiritual temple of the church a few pages later.63 This compares to changing the rules in the middle of the game. Any interpretation can win that way.

His response to objections to his interpretation of 11:1-2 includes an assigning of a pre-70 date to Clement of Rome's epistle to the Corinthians, though its accepted dating is in the 90's. He does this because Clement speaks as though the temple were still standing. Then Gentry has a lengthy discussion of the silence of the rest of the NT regarding the destruction of Jerusalem,64 during which he apparently accepts dates prior to 70 for all four gospels, including the Gospel of John, and the rest of the NT canon.65 This theory creates further problems for his case, with which he does not deal and so this discussion will not either.

Gentry does not venture an explanation of how John, isolated on the Island of Patmos so many miles from Jerusalem, can visit the literal city to carry out his symbolical task of measuring the temple. He seems oblivious to John's being in a prophetic trance (4:2) to receive this and other revelations in this visional portion of the book. His task in 11:1-2 is the first of his assigned duties to perform following his

recommissioning at the end of chap. 10 (10:11). So he is not to transport himself physically across the Mediterranean Sea to Judea, but "in spirit" he is already there.

One cannot quarrel with the conclusion that John's visional responsibility of measuring points in its fulfillment to a literal temple, but it is not the Herodian temple of Jesus' day. His idea that the temple and the altar of v. 1 represent the church leaves no room to identify the worshipers in the same verse. His approach to symbolism is inconsistent and self-contradictory. This aspect of the description as well as v. 2 shows that the entire description is on Jewish ground and is not part Jewish and part Christian.66

Temporal Expectation of the Author

One other temporal feature that Gentry magnifies is the emphasis of Revelation on the nearness of Christ's coming (Rev 1:1, 3, 19; 22:6, 7, 12, 20). He faults those who refer this to Christ's second advent, noting that the "shortly" or "soon" that characterizes the coming is hardly a suitable way to speak of the already 1900-year interval that separates that coming from the writing of Revelation.68 His solution is to refer the book to the imminence of the events to come upon the Jews, the church, and the Roman Empire during the decade of the sixties, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.69

A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE ISSUE

Gentry's book itemizes a number of other supposed supports for the early date, but admits in most cases that these are only corroborative of his main proofs and have no independent value.74

Throughout most of the work he gives the impression that he uses two criteria of independent value in dating the book, Nero as the sixth king of 17:10 and the existence of the temple and Jerusalem contemporary to the writing of the book. Yet when he arrives near the end he speaks of the "wealth of internal considerations for an early date."75 His wealth of considerations consists of only two, both of which are useless in demonstrating his case, as pointed out above. This discussion of internal criteria for dating the book of Revelation would not be complete without posing some questions that Gentry does not answer satisfactorily in his book.

(1) How is it that the "cloud-coming" of A.D. 70 involves no personal coming of Christ (Matt 24:30; 26:64; Rev 1:7; 2:5, 16, 25; 3:3, 11, 20; 16:15; 22:7, 12, 20), but the "cloud-coming" at the end of history does (Acts 1:11; 1 Thess 4:13 ff.)?76  Where did Christ distinguish between two such comings, and where did He say that He would personally appear at one and not at the other? The answer to both questions is "nowhere."

(2) How could John dwell on the prosperity of the church in Laodicea when the city had been completely destroyed by an earthquake only five years earlier? Gentry responds to this problem by suggesting that Laodicea's wealth was spiritual and not material, by supposing the possibility of a quick rebuilding, and by theorizing that the earthquake did not impact the sector of the city where the Christians were.77  A careful exegesis of 3:17, however, shows that Christians in the city thought their material prosperity was equivalent to spiritual prosperity, not that they were spiritually rich while materially poor. The possibility of a quick rebuilding contradicts the facts. The rebuilding effort was still in progress as late as 79 when a gymnasium that was part of the rebuilding effort was completed.78 Also an abrupt numismatic poverty marks this period in all the cities of the Lycus district of which Laodicea was a part. This too illustrates the prolonged effect of the destructive earthquake.79  As for Gentry's theory that part of the city was spared the devastation that affected the whole district, this is pure speculation that belies the available facts.

(3) Did the ministry of John overlap that of Paul in the churches of Asia? Gentry's reconstruction of the chronology of the period would require this. If John wrote in 65 or early 66, he must have been in Asia for at least five years prior to that to have unseated Paul as the authoritative apostle for the region and to have gained the respect of Christians throughout the whole province. It would have been necessary for him to have been there long enough to become a problem for Nero too, resulting in his exile to Patmos sometime after 64. Paul visited Ephesus at least once after this (A.D. 65), following his release from his first Roman imprisonment (1 Tim 1:3). Yet after leaving the city, he left Timothy in charge of the church and made no reference to the presence of John the Apostle and his influence on the church. If John had been there and had taken charge, why would Paul return to Asia? The answer is that he would not have, but he did, so John had not yet arrived in Asia.

(4) When did John arrive in Asia? According to the best tradition, John was part of a migration of Christians from Palestine to the province of Asia just before the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion in A.D. 66, so he did not arrive there before the late sixties.80 A Neronic dating of the book would hardly have allowed time for him to settle in Asia, replace Paul as the respected leader of the Asian churches, and be exiled to Patmos before Nero's death in 68. Gentry does not respond to this problem, but his dating of the book in 65 or 66 renders its apostolic authorship impossible.

(5) What was the condition of the churches of Asia during the sixties, that portrayed in Paul's epistles to Ephesians (A.D. 61), Colossians (A.D. 61), and Timothy (A.D. 65 and 67) or that in John's seven messages of Revelation 2-3? Recognizing true apostles and prophets had become a problem in the latter (e.g., 2:2, 20), but the former epistles give no inkling of this kind of a problem. In Paul's epistles to this area, false teaching regarding the person of Christ was a crucial issue (e.g., Col 1:13-20), but not so in John's seven messages. A need in Paul's epistles was strong emphasis on Christian family roles (e.g., Eph 5:22`6:9; Col 3:18,4:1; 1 Tim 6:1-2), but John's messages do not touch this subject at all. A prominent danger in John's messages is the Nicolaitan heresy (2:6, 15), but Paul's epistles say nothing about it. Differences of this type are almost limitless, the simple reason being that Paul's four epistles and John's seven messages belong to decades separated by twenty years. Gentry responds to this problem only superficially,81 and therefore ineffectively.

A FINAL REVIEW

It has been impossible to deal with all the peculiar interpretations of dominion theology in the Apocalypse, because the proposed topic has been the internal evidence for dating the book. Probably when Gentry completes his forthcoming commentary, The Divorce of Israel: A Commentary on Revelation,82 further works of refutation will have to deal with Babylon a symbolic title for Jerusalem,83 why the seven last plagues are not final,84 why 19:11-16 is not the second coming of Christ to earth,85 why the state pictured in 21:9`22:5 is the church age and not the future eternal state,86 and the like.

ENDNOTES (SCROLL PAST ENDNOTES FOR TWO MORE PIECES PLUS A PIECE OF MY OWN AT THE END)

1Theonomy-also known as "dominion theology" and "Christian reconstructionism"-is a worldview that foresees a progressive domination of world government and society by Christianity until God's kingdom on earth becomes a reality. Its eschatology is essentially that of the postmillennialism so popular around the beginning of the twentieth century.

2Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Before Jerusalem Fell, Dating the Book of Revelation (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989) 113, 116.

3Ibid., 119.

4Ibid., 118-19.

5E.g., ibid., 153-54.

6E.g., ibid., 30-38, 168, 200, 296 n. 50. Many citations in these lists are not from primary sources.

7E.g., ibid., 203-12.

8E.g., Craig A. Blaising, "Dispensationalism: The Search for Definition," in Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church, ed. by Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992) 30.

9Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 5 n. 12, 336-37.

10Ibid., 5 n. 12.

11Ibid., 336-37.

12Ibid., 162-63.

13Ibid., 163-64.

14Ibid., 310-16.

15Ibid., 223-24.

16Ibid., 233.

17Ibid., 250-53.

18Ibid., 234.

19Ibid., 254-55.

20Ibid., 336.

21Ibid., 158, 208.

22Ibid., 310-16.

23Ibid., 121-23; David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance (Fort Worth, TX: Dominion, 1987) 64.

24Chilton, Days of Vengeance 64; Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 131-32.

25Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 123-27.

26Robert L. Thomas, Revelation 1-7, An Exegetical Commentary (Chicago: Moody, 1992) 77-78. Even Chilton allows a reference to Gentiles here (Days of Vengeance 66).

27Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 127.

28Ibid., 144.

29Ibid., 143, 144.

30Ibid., 127-28.

31William Lee, "The Revelation of St. John," in The Holy Bible, ed. by F. C. Cook (London: John Murray, 1881) 4:502; J. P. M. Sweet, Revelation (Philadelphia: Westminster, Pelican, 1979) 67; G. V. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, HNTC (New York: Harper and Row, 1966) 18; James Moffatt, "The Revelation of St. John the Divine," in The Expositor's Greek Testament, ed. by W. Robertson Nicoll (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, n.d.) 5:339-40; J. B. Smith, A Revelation of Jesus Christ (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1961) 44.

32Alan F. Johnson, "Revelation," in EBC, ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981) 12:423.

33Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 143 n. 27.

34For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Thomas, Revelation 1-7 78-79.

35Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 128-29; Chilton, Days of Vengeance 66.

36Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 143.

37Ibid., 144.

38Ibid., 144-45.

39Ibid., 144.

40Ibid., 146.

41Ibid., 149-51.

42Ibid., 151-52.

43Ibid., 152-59.

44Ibid., 158.

45Ibid., 159-64.

46Lee, "Revelation" 4:744; Johnson, "Revelation" 12:558.

47George E. Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 227.

48Martin Kiddle, The Revelation of St. John (New York: Harper, 1940) 349.

49Ladd, Revelation 228.

50Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 240-41 n. 26.

51Ibid.

52Ibid.

53Lee, "Revelation" 4:744.

54Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 163-64, 310-16.

55Ibid., 154-58.

56Collier's Encyclopedia 20:180, 190.

57Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 198.

58Ibid., 165-69.

59Ibid., 169-74.

60Ibid., 174-75.

61Ibid.

62Ibid., 169-70.

63Ibid., 174.

64Ibid., 181-92.

65Ibid., 182-83.

66J. A. Seiss, The Apocalypse, 3 vols. (New York: Charles C. Cook, 1909) 2:159; Ladd,

Revelation 152.

67Henry Alford, The Greek Testament, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1903) 4:657.

68Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 133-37.

69Ibid., 142-43.

70Ibid., 144.

71Ibid., 336.

72Contra ibid., 131.

73Cf. Thomas, Revelation 1-7 54-56.

74E.g., Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 220-21, 246 n. 44.

75Ibid., 329.

76Cf. ibid., 122-23.

77Ibid., 319-22.

78Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting, JSNT

Sup 11 (Sheffield: U. of Sheffield, 1986) 194.

79Ibid.

80Thomas, Revelation 1-7 22.

81Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell 327-29.

82Cf. ibid., 241 n. 26.

83Cf. Joseph R. Balyeat, Babylon, The Great City of Revelation (Sevierville, TN: Onward, 1991) 49-142.

84Cf. Chilton, Days of Vengeance 383-84

85Cf. ibid., 481-89.

86Cf. ibid., 535-73.

SOURCE: The MastersSeminary Journal  5/2 (Fall 1994) pp.185-202

_________________________________

ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN CRITIQUE OF PRETERISM

The Judgment of Matthew 25

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  . . . 46 Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

The separation of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 would seem to mitigate against the preterist view because the judgment passage comes immediately after Jesus’ return and appears to refer to the Final Judgment. Preterists attempt to interpret this separation as not relating to the Final Judgment, but instead as a recapitulation in history of the curses and blessings described in Deuteronomy 27.26   

The preterist believes that the judgment of the sheep and the goats refers to the fall of Jerusalem in fulfillment of the curses of Deuteronomy 27. But the punishments and rewards are eternal: punishment with weeping and gnashing of teeth, on the one hand, and eternal life on the other.

Indeed, if the preterist scenario were true, then the judgment was against Israel alone; no other nation was judged and no one seems to have been rewarded. Although Jews often persecuted Christians during this period, the Romans did as well. Why should Israel as a nation have been judged more severely than Rome?

By A.D. 70 Rome under Nero had persecuted Christians, killing many. Using the criteria of judgment found in Matthew 25 Rome herself should have been judged, yet history shows that she was the instrument of judgment on Israel and survived for many centuries. The preterist interpretation does

not seem to measure up to the language of the passage.

SOURCE

______________________

YET ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN CRITIQUE OF PRETERISM

Preterists reinterpret clear statements in Matthew 24-25 (found also in Mark and Luke) that declare Jesus will be seen. Noe [a preterist apologist] would probably say the destruction of the temple, the abomination of desolation (Mt. 24:15) in 70 AD, was certainly seen ("when you see the abomination …"), but he would then argue that Christ's coming as the Son of Man was not actually seen but simply a spiritual coming not observed with the physical eye. But surely he's merely playing at stretching the meaning of words in ways that attempt to make them fit his preteristic view and has not given himself the credit for his own ingenuity in drawing such distinctions, distinctions not so visible in the text itself:

"When you see" (horao) the Abomination …" (Mt. 24:15).

"All tribes … they will themselves see (horao) the Son of Man coming on the clouds" (Mt. 24:31).

"They will see the Son of Man coming in clouds" (Mk. 13:26).

"If anyone says to you, 'Behold (eipon, Aor. Imper. of horao), or look, here is the Christ, 'or 'There He is…'" (v. 23), do not go with them, for "Just as the lightning comes … and flashes …, so will the coming of the Son of Man be" (v. 27).  Important from the Greek text:  "Just as" is hosper gar with "so" meaning "just as, precisely as" (The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, EDNT) (v. 27). "For just as the lightning comes from the east … so also will the coming of the Son of Man be" (v. 27).  

  

As judgment came on the day of Noah and when fire rained down on Sodom, the same will happen "on the day that the Son of Man is revealed" (Lu.17:26,30). "Is revealed" is apokalupto. On this word, as used in this verse, the EDNT says, "The still concealed Son of Man will be revealed by God, i.e., presented publicly." Was Jesus publicly revealed in 70 AD? 

Matthew 25:31 says "when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered together before Him" (Mt. 25:32). "Together" is emprosthen in Greek and means "to place before one's face, in front of, in the presence of." (EDNT) "With an emphasis on visibility, is significant." (EDNT)  

Even after the time of the New Testament writings the earliest Church Fathers continued to view the "coming of the Lord" as a plainly visible event, and one connected not with the destruction of Jerusalem but with the world's final judgment.   

The Epistle of Clement (95 AD) says 

Of a truth, soon and suddenly shall His will be accomplished, as the Scripture also bears witness, saying, 'Speedily will He come, and will not tarry;' and 'The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Holy One, for whom ye look.' 

In the Second Epistle of Clement we read, 

Let us then wait for the kingdom of God, from hour to hour, … seeing that we know not the day of the appearing of God.

Eusebius quotes Papias as saying 

that there will be a millennium after the resurrection from the dead, when the personal reign of Christ will be established on earth.

Justin Martyr wrote 

For He shall come on the clouds as the Son of Man, so Daniel foretold, and His angels shall come with Him. . . . I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, [as] the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.  

Irenaeus  stated: 

The millennial kingdom would begin with the Second Coming of Christ.  The millennium would last 1000 years, the millennial Sabbath. The new Jerusalem would come after the millennial kingdom.

 SOURCE: TheFatal Mistakes of Preterism Dr. Mal Couch, President Tyndale Seminary

______________

TWO DIFFICULTIES FOR PRETERISM by Ed Babinski 

1) IS THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM TO BE EQUATED WITH "THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN?" OR DO THE GOSPEL AUTHORS MENTION THE COMING AS A SEPARATE EVENT AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND FOR A DIFFERENT REASON? 

Peterists want to identify or connect the tribulation and destruction of Jerusalem with the "coming of the Son of Man" in Mark 13 (and in the parallel passages in Matthew 24). They say that Jesus came "in judgment" or to view the judgment on Jerusalem. But the "coming of the Son of Man" is a separate event in the Gospels and the Son of Man comes for a completely different reason that the one that preterists say he does. 

Mark 13 says, 

Those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. “If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time. But in those days, FOLLOWING THAT DISTRESS, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. AND HE WILL SEND HIS ANGELS AND GATHER THIS ELECT from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.  

Matthew 24 says, 

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DISTRESS OF THOSE DAYS [including AFTER the conquering of Jerusalem, just as in Mark above] the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. AND HE WILL SEND HIS ANGLES WITH A LOUD TRUMPET CALL, AND THEY WILL GATHER HIS ELECT from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. 

Instead of the preterist interpretation one can see that the Son of Man comes AFTERWARDS, after the Tribulation, after the destruction of Jerusalem, and FOR A DIFFERENT REASON, namely to "send forth his angels to gather his elect." 

Earlier, Matthew had made clear the meaning of the "sending forth of his angels" and "gathering of his elect": 

The harvest is the end of the age...at the end of the age...the Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. [Matthew 13:40-41]

Matthew is clearly echoing Daniel 12 which is NOT about the destruction of Jerusalem but about separating the lawless from the righteous in the final judgment of humanity, or as it says in Daniel 12: 

Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens.  

Hence neither Mark nor Matthew are speaking about the coming of the Son of Man as equaling the destruction of Jerusalem, the "coming" is always something that takes place afterwards and for a different reason, and that reason is the final judgment. So preterism has to try and squeeze these puzzle piece together extra hard and ignore such obvious questions. 

Luke 21 changes the story a bit, adding in a "times of the Gentiles" to extend the time further between the Tribulation and the coming of the Son of Man: 

This is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

But then Luke continues just as the earlier two synoptic Gospels did. . . depicting the coming of the Son of Man in final judgment as a separate event that follows the Tribulation:

There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.  “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.

For more on the changes Luke made see The Lowdown on God's Showdown. 

A SECOND DIFFICULTY FOR PRETERISM, WILL JESUS' "RETURN" REALLY BE "INVISIBLE?"

A second difficulty for preterism, especially partial preterism is how to fit the puzzle piece of Acts 1 into place along with the preterist interpretation that Jesus returned "invisibly." It's difficult to do because Acts 1 predicts that Jesus would return "in the same way you have seen him go into heaven," which is not in an "invisible" fashion at all. Here are the relevant parts of the text:  

I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven . . . He appeared to them over a period of forty days . . . They asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority". . . After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

So it won't be an "invisible" return after all! At least the author of that passage doesn't appear to have imagined it that way.