Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

What does history tell us about who Jesus was? New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has a simple thesis:Jesus is best understood as a first-century Jewish apocalypticist who expected an apocalyptic climax to the history of the world within his generation.On the other hand, Zealot: The Life & Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan (2013, Random House) is the first book about Jesus to be number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Aslan's thesis is that Jesus was a "zealous revolutionary," who necessarily advocated insurrection. Ehrman contends that Jesus was a pacifist who predicted that God would soon intervene and overthrow the Romans.Ehrman defines his terms. In brief, apocalpticism is the doctrine that "God was soon going to intervene in the affairs of this world, overthrow the forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment,destroy huge masses of humanity, and abolish existing human political and religious institutions." This would be a prelude to the arrival of a new order on earth, the Kingdom of God.This worldview emerged among many Jews in first-century Palestine as they suffered under foreign domination and struggled to make sense of why God had not liberated them. They blamed Satan, seeing the world as a clash between good and evil. In the short-term, before God intervenes, things will get worse.Ehrman walks readers through the historical evidence. The information about Jesus from non-Christian sources is sparse. The best evidence is the four gospels, though they must be used with care by applying historical criteria to identify which stories have more credibility than others. On problem for historians is when gospels give conflicting accounts of events such as the birth narrative, the day of crucifixion, and the discovery of the empty tomb.Ehrman points out that none of the gospels claim to be written by an eyewitness.Jesuś' baptism by the apocalypticist John was consistent with Jesus being an apocalypticist. Jesus spoke highly of John, calling him the greatest man ever to live. (Matt. 11:11) Jesus and his followers started baptizing others. (John 3:22).The first words attributed to Jesus are in Mark 1:15:“The time is fulfilled (filled up), and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”This reflects his apocalyp-ticism, explains Ehrman, the notion that there are two ages, and the first is almost over, so people must repent while there's still time.Jesus repeately talks about the coming judgment by the Son of Man: Mark 8:38; Mark 13:24–27; Luke 17:24; 26–27, 30; cf. Matt. 24:27, 37–39; Luke 12:8–9; cf. Matt. 10:32–33; Luke 21:34–36; Matt. 13:40–43; Matt. 13:47–50.The term "Son of Man" originates in Daniel 7:2–14 to refer to the one who will rule the earth in an eternal kingdom.The summary of his ethical teaching is that his "followers were to live in ways that prepared for this coming Kingdom and that embodied the values that would be manifest completely and finally when it arrived." Thus Jesus told his followers to abandon their homes and families to follow him.Jesus expected the new order to happen during the generation of his disciples. “Truly I tell you, some of you standing here will not taste death before they have seen the Kingdom of God having come in power” (Mark 9:1).“Truly I tell you, this generation [i.e., presumably, the one he was addressing] will not pass away before all these things take place”(Mark 13:30).The fact that the second coming was not as imminent as Jesus and Paul believed has not preventedapocalypticism from remaining alive and well. For 2000 years, many if not most Christians have been waiting for God to establish his new order.Being a Christian doomsayer can be a lucrative career. Hal Lindsey’s book, Late Great Planet Earth (1970), wasthe best-selling work of nonfiction of the 1970s with over 28 million copies in print. He predicted Armageddon would occur by about 1988. The Left Behind series consists of 16 books, followed by movies, about the rapture and end times.Ehrman's theory about Jesus is not new. It was proposed by Albert Schweitzer in The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). Ehrman's book was published in 1999. A book published in 2021 has the same conclusion: Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet (2021) by Wassen and Hägerland.One note of caution: Christ-followers who embrace history only when it confirms their faith will be disappointed with this book. That's because some evidence conflicts with their belief that the Bible is the "literal, inspired, inerrant, no- mistakes-of-any-kind and no-historical-problems-whatsoever, absolute words directly from God." -30-

This is not the end of your faith... at least not necessarily. In two key books, Apocalyptic Prophet (about the historic Jesus) and Misquoting Jesus (about the New Testament), Dr. Ehrman searches the most reliably accurate parts of the gospels to better understand who the historic Jesus was. From this effort, Ehrman makes an exceedingly strong case that the person we think of as Jesus was an actual human product of his time, not of All Time.This is hard reading for Christians because Ehrman, formerly a Christian, methodically examines other historical sources along with the oldest surviving materials of the New Testament to make informed, rational, evidence-based arguments consistent with proven principles of scholarship. He's not pulling this stuff out of the air — in fact, much of it has been long-proved but ignored — and he's well aware of the crisis this awareness can cause. But evidence in the text and subtext of the gospels shows that the historic Jesus’ life was altogether human. That story, however, made a compelling impression that took on a life of its own almost immediately. Ehrman traces where emphases, errors and additions were made to the Jesus story from the start, possibly while the historic Jesus was still alive. (Possibly, by him.)But it became a powerful story, one that his followers couldn't let go of. Many of us still can't.Ehrman's point is that the actual person, Yeshua from Nazareth, was not the same character that emerged through First Century fan fiction. We can only discern a broken image of the real, historic man who inspired the legend that became 'Jesus.' But the Jesus legend has withstood the test of time because, for good and for ill, the canonical gospels allowed believers from different times, cultures and contexts to build upon those parts of the story that they most craved. And even with all the tampering the official story received as a result, some of the underlying ideas communicated by the mortal Yeshua from Nazareth can still be identified within the text. Those ideas carried weight in their moment, enough for generations to pass them along over the last twenty centuries. The Common Era world was sorely ready for that rabbi’s radical ethics — made all the more contagious because Yeshua mixed his message with an equally radical license of apocalyptic urgency. It turned out to be a powerful combination, but flawed. The actual Yeshua believed that the world, a mistakenly tiny world, was about to end in a spectacle of doom and magic. He wasn’t the first cultural leader to bet his life on magical thinking, and we of course know that history wasn't over. Indeed, Yeshua was writing history in ways he never imagined or intended.So the personal question Christians are left with after considering Ehrman's work is: What do we do with God, without ‘Jesus’ as God? For some, faith dies without religion. Ehrman went from being an evangelical fundamentalist Bible college Christian to a moderate, literate Christian, and ultimately an agnostic influenced by the New Atheism. He had very good reasons for this, and his journey was painful and real. But the same route isn't for everyone.The truth is, if you're a Christian who has seriously considered Ehrman's work then you've already crossed the Rubicon into literate faith. Literal faith is over for you, whether you recognize it or not. You probably don't need a textual historian to convince you that Earth is more than 5700 years old, that theocracy is disastrous, that the Left Behind series is reckless huxterism. You may have already come to the conclusion that God wants you to be rational and intellectually honest, and that loving God — however less certainly you view God now — involves doing so with the mind you were given.It’s true that sometimes faith dies. But as the Jesus legend demonstrates, sometimes that's how we experience faith anew. It's possible that Ehrman's observations have been part of your spiritual curriculum all along; that you actually understand God better now than when you experienced faith and doctrine as the same things; that it's time to be further changed into the thinking spiritual person you're meant to be. If so, welcome again to the Emmaus Road, where God no longer has the face you knew. For what it's worth, you're not traveling alone.