ON THE HISTORICITY OF THE GOSPELS: Mark Goodacre comments on Bishop Tom Wright's claim that there is a scholarly consensus that the canonical Gospels were written no later than fifty years after the time of Jesus and are dependent on earlier traditions that included substantial eyewitness testimony. Mark rightly takes issue with Wright's claim about the date and he wants to qualify the business about eyewitness testimony. But let's assume that Wright is correct on both counts. I am skeptical about how much bearing this has on the historicity of the Gospel accounts, which is the point he is getting at. Fifty years is a very long time, longer than the average life span of the period; eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable even in court cases; and the contemporary followers of charismatic intermediaries typically think those figures have miraculous powers and a direct channel to the divine (there is a substantial secondary literature on the anthropology of magico-religious practitioners). If I may take the liberty of quoting myself on this issue:

Gershom Scholem's book Sabbetai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973) provides an important cautionary tale for anyone interested in the problem of the historical Jesus. We have a great deal of information about Sabbetai -- who was born in Smyrna in 1626 and grew up to become a manic-depressive with delusions of grandeur -- and the messianic movement that emerged around him in 1665, including much eyewitness testimony and many primary documents written by the major players. When in 1666 he was given the choice of conversion to Islam or execution, he chose the former, and lived until 1676. Strangely, a good many of his followers continued to believe in him, reasoning that only the true messiah would dare to commit apostasy. The movement survived underground in various forms for generations, and for all I know may still exist today.

Scholem's analysis of this material shows that the reinventing of a messianic figure can take place not only immediately after his death but even during his lifetime. The farther removed geographically from the man himself the less interest the movement had in anything to do with the (contemporaneous) "historical" Sabbetai. Miracle stories arose within weeks of the events, sometimes sooner (pp. 480-81, 538-39, 557-64, 592-93). Indeed, before and during Sabbetai's arrest and imprisonment in Constantinople, letters and word-of-mouth gossip from that very city reported that he had raised the dead, healed lepers, passed through the locked doors of his prison, consorted with angels, and called up a pillar of fire (pp. 417-18, 535-36, 605). Within a few years after his death, a legend had arisen of his burial in a cave by the sea and the finding of the empty tomb guarded by a dragon three days later. His followers believed that he hadn't really died, but had experienced an "occultation" into the celestial realm, from which he would return gloriously in due course (pp. 919-20, 922-25).

Gross distortion of the life and message of a charismatic intermediary need not take time. It can arise full blown during the lifetime of the figure, while the true teachings and actions of the actual person are ignored. It can assimilate any and all facts to the contrary by either suppressing them or reinterpreting them. It can present us with a miraculous legendary divine being within no time to speak of after the lifetime of the figure.

From "Melchizedek, the 'Youth,' and Jesus," in The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers from a Conference at St. Andrews in 2001 (ed. James R. Davila; STDJ 46; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 248-74, quote from pp. 267-68, n. 32.

UPDATE: The next post is related.

UPDATE (14 July): Reader "Sarah" e-mails:

Another good example, with respect to the gospel traditions themselves, may well be Papias. What scraps remain of his voluminous work show that he entertained some rather outlandish stories about Jesus and the apostles (particularly the episodes about the death of Judas Iscariot and "remarkable" and "amazing" events involving the disciples and those raised by Christ). Interestingly, Papias wrote directly from oral tradition (such as things he learned directly from the daughters of "Philip the Apostle") about a century from the death of Jesus, and less than a
century after the age of the apostles. The loss of Papias' work is especially tragic, not in shedding light on the "historical Jesus", but in its potential in taking the obscure world of early Christian storytelling a little bit out of the shadows.

It is heartbreaking to think of how many ancient sources have been lost over the centuries.

UPDATE (24 July): Much more on lost ancient sources here.