[This is the final installment of a four-part series of articles written by Tom Tozer that reviews Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus Before the Gospels.] See also: Tom's review, Part 1 Tom's review, Part 2 Tom's review, Part 3 And now, here is Part 4. Chapter 7: The Kaleidoscopic Memories of Jesus: John, Thomas and a Range of Others. Ehrman starts out Chapter 7 by asserting that Mark was “a collective memory” and says that now we're going to talk about the “other collective memories.” However, he hasn't demonstrated that Mark is anything less than the account of an eyewitness. He doesn't believe it is, but he hasn't established that. So this is not a promising start. He asserts that the Gospel of John – or “the memories contained” in it – “differ radically from Mark.” On the surface, there is something to this. John is elaborately theological. Mark is more like a police report. If John is a Persian rug, Mark is a grocery list. And yet, at the core of these two Gospels, for 2,000 years, Christians have found the same Jesus. Oddly enough. Now why that might be Ehrman doesn't bother to ask. The purpose of this chapter for Ehrman is “to show that there was not one remembered image of Jesus among his early followers, but “a kaleidoscopically varied set of images.” But how can Ehrman include Marcion, the Gospels of Judas, Thomas and Theodotus as “remembered images of his early followers”? He doesn't demonstrate that any of these authors had any connection to a witness to Jesus' life. In fact, that lack of connection is exactly what kept these documents out of … [Read more...]

 [This is the third installment of a four-part series of articles written by Tom Tozer that reviews Bart Ehrman's book Jesus Before the Gospels.] See also: Tom's review, Part 1 Tom's review, Part 2 Chapter 5 is called “Distorted Memories and the Life of Jesus.” There is something strange about the story Ehrman begins with, about a man with a remarkable memory. He says a Doctor Luria studied a man “named S, to protect his privacy.” S could memorize long lists of data effortlessly, and even recall lists memorized years before that he had not thought about in all that time, backwards or forwards, again without effort. But, Ehrman says, this ability was detrimental to S's life and he could never hold a job, even when he toured as a professional mnemonist (memory freak). See any- thing odd there? Why did Luria need to protect the identity of someone who toured the country highlighting his abilities? It's odd that Ehrman doesn't ask this question. It makes me wonder if S is a fiction? Anyway.....Ehrman spends most of this chapter making the case that oral cultures (which he has so far failed to established is what the first century Jewish or surrounding Greek and Roman cultures were) did not have better information strategies for oral material than literate cultures do. This is aimed at, again, showing that when person A tells person B a story, it morphs a little, and then B tells C, with more morphing, and C tells D, etc etc etc. And again, this is irrelevant if the Gospels derive from eyewitnesses. Some of this is interesting anyway. There was a study of oral … [Read more...]