From kottke.org: Searching for Jesus:

From a recent issue of the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik surveys a recent selection of books about who Jesus was.

The American scholar Bart Ehrman has been explaining the scholars’ truths for more than a decade now, in a series of sincere, quiet, and successful books. Ehrman is one of those best-selling authors like Richard Dawkins and Robert Ludlum and Peter Mayle, who write the same book over and over — but the basic template is so good that the new version is always worth reading. In his latest installment, ‘Jesus, Interrupted’, Ehrman once again shares with his readers the not entirely good news he found a quarter century ago when, after a fundamentalist youth, he went to graduate school: that all the Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death; that all were written in Greek, which Jesus and the apostles didn’t speak and couldn’t write (if they could read and write at all); and that they were written as testaments of faith, not chronicles of biography, shaped to fit a prophecy rather than report a profile.

Shame about those, you know, facts.

We’re in business.

$1.19 at your local Apple app store. (Cheap at twice the price, etc., etc.)

Another debate, this one entitled Jesus: Messiah, Myth, or Legend?, was held at Macquarie University on March 16, 2010. The event was co-sponsored by the Christian group I’m part of, Macquarie University Christian Union, and the Macquarie University Atheist League.

The speakers were Dan Barker and Chris Forbes.
Dan Barker is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (USA), was a former teenage evangelical preacher and an ordained minister, but is now one of America’s leading atheists. Dr Chris Forbes is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History, and Deputy Chairman of the Society for the Study of Early Christianity. His areas of interest include New Testament history, and the intersection of early Christianity and Graeco-Roman culture.

It was a really good debate, and very well attended by all sorts of people. Further, it didn’t suffer from the format in the same way as the previous debate. It was, however, incredibly one-sided. In my opinion, Barker was thrashed. This is one of the best defences of Jesus as a historical figure I’ve heard.

Have a listen, and see how what you think.

(Note: the debate goes for well over an hour, so the file is relatively large: ~70 MB.)

A debate on whether the Bible is an Acceptable Guide for Morality was held at Macquarie University on March 16, 2010. The event was co-sponsored by the Christian group I’m part of, Macquarie University Christian Union, and the Macquarie University Atheist League.

The speakers were Dan Barker and Greg Clarke.
Dan Barker is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (USA), was a former teenage evangelical preacher and an ordained minister, but is now one of America’s leading atheists. Dr Greg Clarke is co-founder and director of the Centre for Public Christianity. His PhD in literature was focussed on how theology is discussed in the arts and humanities. He is primarily interested in talking about the importance of Christianity for understanding the meaning of life.

It was a fascinating exchange, but left me feeling deeply sorry for Dan. It also suffered a little from the debate format. The speakers were at cross purposes most of the time, so I think it needed to be a little more conversational than it was. Have a listen, and see how you react.

(Note: the debate goes for well over an hour, so the file is relatively large: ~70 MB.)

When surveying the verbal changes made by NT authors in their use of the LXX, several patterns emerge. Firstly, in general, the form of verb chosen by the NT author mirrors the content. That is, the point of the passage or clause is not proven by the choice of verbal aspect, but the writer’s intent is supported and strengthened by the chosen morphology. Acts 2:32 is the strongest case of this, where a clear, intentional temporal change is made from David’s Psalm. Peter’s argument depends on his interpretation of David as a prophet who spoke about the present time of Jesus’ death and resurrection—however, the verb form is not the only way this conclusion is derived. The surrounding content leads us to this understanding, an interpretation which is supported by means of his removal of future temporal elements from the verb form and clause.

This coherence between content and morphology, while hardly surprising, explains the exegetical conclusions achievable with such an analysis. In the main, they aren’t a host of earth-shattering readings of NT texts. Comments above are not too dissimilar from popular commentaries. However, looking closely at the verbal semantics can give on a number of occasions some extra nuance to our reading.

We hear the reality of γέεννα, and the urgency of righteousness (compare the imperfective up-close-and-personal Mark 9:48 with the more distant future form of Isa 66:24). With the disciples we can feel the immediacy of the kingdom of heaven. We can stand on this side of the cross and God’s revelation in Christ and see the fulfilment of his promises. Our exegetical conclusions cannot be based only in verbal semantics, but with an appropriate consideration of context looking carefully at the chosen morphology helps to discern the subtleties of particular applications of OT texts to Christ and the church.

The New Testament authors were thus creative in their use of Scripture, but faithful at the same time. They had keen insight in understanding Jesus as the climax of theological history. Old Testament texts are used to show that Jesus is the Messiah, the anti-type of the Davidic King, the one who has ushered in the eschatological age. Furthermore, his people, the church, are also the fulfilment of God’s purposes for his people in Christ. We stand in continuity with Israel, but can see how God has acted for us in Christ as promised beforehand. This theology is of course writ large throughout the New Testament. The edited forms of scriptural verbs employed by the authors simply aids their explanation and confirms their conclusions.

For those interested in how verbal aspect figures in this, here are some more general conclusions based on all the cases where the NT cites the LXX and changes the verb form but retains the same lexeme.

Future/Aorist Opposition

Future/aorist oppositions are the most common in such passages. Alongside the aspectual change, a sizeable majority of these have what we might call ‘natural volitional change’. These instances are those where an aorist imperative or aorist subjunctive is substituted with a future indicative, or vice versa. The volitional, intentional, potential, or modal nature of the oblique aorist moods overlaps with the temporal reference of the future indicative. Furthermore, Koine has no future subjunctive or imperative forms. The general conclusion of this set of observations is that this combined aspect- and mood-change is a natural substitution, carrying with it only the addition or subtraction of explicit temporal reference.

This change in how explicit the temporal information is changes the reference frame on a number of occasions.^[1] These fall into two general categories: (i) OT past/present to NT future; and (ii) OT future to NT past/present.

In the first case, an OT verse that originally had a contemporary view is cited as explicitly looking to the future. In particular, it is taken to be looking to fulfilment in Jesus. John 2:17 is such a case, where Jesus’ action is aligned with David’s Psalm of the righteous sufferer. The Psalm is cast as looking to the future, fulfilled by the righteous sufferer par excellence in his cleansing of the temple. A variation on this type of change is to interpret the OT text in a wider salvation-historical frame. This is then not a case of aligning Jesus’ actions with the pattern of the Messiah, but of declaring that the eschatological age inaugurated by Christ’s death and resurrection is the time of fulfilment of God’s promises. Romans 9:33/10:11 and Hebrews 10:16–17 are examples of this latter version of re-interpreting OT texts to point to the present reality in Christ.

Secondly, the reverse case of an OT future form being read as an aorist performs a similar function of highlighting prophetic fulfilment. Here, however, the OT reference was prospective beyond the time of the writer, but the NT author identifies this as now completed. In other words, what the OT text said would come about has now, in Jesus, already happened. Acts 2:31 is a prime example of this: Jesus’ resurrection (and concomitant non-decay) is the very event that David foresaw and wrote about. Romans 11:4 is another instance, where Paul makes summary statements about what for Elijah were future events, commenting on the fulfilment of God’s promises.

Given the frequency of these aorist-future changes, and how little change in overall sense is involved, Campbell’s position on the future verb form appears to have some confirmation here. The future form does act in a comparable manner to the aorist—that is, semantically encoding perfective aspect—but differs in its explicit future temporal reference. The future tense-form is a true tense, with perfective aspect.

Perfective/Imperfective Oppositions

Narrative sections display a good deal of perfective to imperfective alteration, mostly aorist-to-present change. This type of morphological change appears to reflect a heightened application of OT prophecy to contemporary hearers. Note that the overall message is carried by content: this is not a conclusion derived from the verb forms alone. In line with the context, then, certain shifts in viewpoint from perfective to imperfective aspect seem to bring this heightened expectation and reality to the hearers.

The use of Isaiah 6 is a good example. Jesus’ use of the text noting Israel’s response to Isaiah’s ministry are not, in the gospel narratives, universally applicable. As noted above, not all will respond as one in the same way, rather there exists a portion of the people who will hear and see and respond rightly. The disciples see the rejection (and acceptance) of the word of God before their very eyes, hence a change in aspect is warranted. Just as in the aorist/future cases above these instances of alteration reflect a different standpoint in salvation history. Direct relevance and urgent action accompany these narrative viewpoint shifts, reflecting the reality that ‘the kingdom is near’.

The isolated instances of imperfective-to-perfective change are not as puzzling as they initially appear. All cases involve the historical perfect, which functions similarly to the aorist in structuring narrative (and, generally, in referring to an antecedent event). According to Campbell’s theory this change brings a marginal change in prominence, which appears reasonable from some examples considered above but negligible in others. In the end, however, this by no means constitutes a broad enough pattern of usage to say a great deal about the nature of the perfect—a matter of some contention in aspectual studies at the present time.

These two major categories of alteration and re-interpretation by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament may feel like a somewhat laissez faire approach to the scriptural texts. It seems they were not wholly constrained by the exact form of words, being free (at points, at least) to cast their source material into a different context as part of a new discourse. They were concerned with the word of God over and above the words. Before properly assessing this use (and possible abuse) of OT texts, we should remind ourselves of the shortcomings of this study, its scope, and how our conclusions ought to be constrained.

A feasible model

It appears we have confirmation at a number of points for elements of Campbell’s aspectual system. These posts have hardly been a comprehensive study of verbal aspect usage; that being said, having considered LXX texts and others not directly examined in detail by Campbell it appears we can offer some tentative affirmation of his findings.

Firstly, the future tense-form, is a real tense. In all cases I looked at (more than those posted above) this form has explicit temporal reference, alongside its perfective aspect. The common transfer from aorist to future forms supports this understanding of the future.

Further, Campbell’s spatial model of imperfective aspect has quite reasonable explanatory power. The perfective/imperfective and proximate/remote oppositions, when they occur, display the rhetorical power of verb forms that semantically encode spatial values. These instances apply the texts very closely to the hearers, heightening their impact.

On the contentious issue of the nature of the perfect form, there is simply not enough data to make comment.^[2] All occurrences are forms of the historical perfect, which under any model of the perfect is a readily accepted usage.

[2] This lack of data is not surprising: in the entire Greek OT perfects make up only 4.2% of the verb forms. The NT figures are not much higher, at 5.6%. ↩