Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

twelve that almost certainly passes the criterion of dissimilarity. This is the Q saying I mentioned earlier, given in Matthew as follows:

“Truly I say to you, that you who have followed me, in the new world, when the Son of Man is sitting on the throne of his glory, you will be seated—even you—on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28).

That this saying probably goes back to Jesus himself is suggested by the fact that it is delivered to all twelve disciples, including, of course, Judas Iscariot. No one living after Jesus’s death, who knew that he had been betrayed by one of his own (as reported in all our early sources), would have made up a saying in which the betrayer would be one of the rulers of the future kingdom. The saying, then, was generated before the events leading up to Jesus’s death. That is to say, it appears to be something that Jesus actually said.

One reason this matters is that the saying reveals the apocalyptic significance of Jesus’s decision to call twelve, and specifically twelve, disciples. Why not nine or fourteen? For Jesus the number twelve mattered, probably because in ancient Israel the people of God were formed into twelve tribes. And so too, for him, in the future kingdom there would be twelve tribes, headed not by the patriarchs of old but by the twelve men he had chosen to be his disciples. When Jesus chose an inner group of twelve it was an apocalyptic statement to the world that those who followed him would be the ones who would enter into the future kingdom and that those closest to him would be the rulers of the kingdom.

And who would rule over them? Jesus himself was their master now. Who would be the ruler of that future kingdom, where the twelve sat on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes? Since he “ruled” them now, he would almost certainly still rule them then. What this means is that Jesus probably taught his closest followers that he would be the king of the coming kingdom of God. In other words, at least to those of his inner circle, Jesus appears to have proclaimed that he really was the future messiah, not in the sense that he would raise an army to drive out the Romans, but in the sense that when the Son of Man brought the kingdom to earth, he, Jesus, would be anointed its ruler. No wonder his disciples considered him the messiah. He appears to have told them that himself.

The Opponents of Jesus

It is thoroughly attested throughout our early traditions that Jesus was in constant conflict with other Jewish teachers of his day. And so, during his public ministry in Galilee, he is shown as raising the ire of Pharisees, who roundly attacked him for not keeping the Jewish Law to their satisfaction. These confrontations should not be read as meaning that Jesus had abandoned Judaism. Far from it. The controversies involved instead the proper interpretation of Judaism. Jesus stood over against the Pharisees and their oral law, as did many other Jews of the time. In Jesus’s view, a strict observation of Pharisaic law was not what God wanted. He wanted his people to keep the essence of the law in the commandment to love God above all else and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

We do not have any indication that Jesus entered into direct conflict with the Essenes, although it should be clear that his interpretation of the apocalyptic realities that were bearing down on the world was very different from theirs. Whereas they believed in separating themselves from the rest of society so as to maintain their personal and communal purity, Jesus believed in spending time with the impure, the “tax collectors and sinners,” who would be the ones to be brought into the kingdom. Jesus’s views would have been anathema to the Qumran community.

One other area of opposition from Jesus’s public ministry involves not a Jewish group but a widespread social entity: the family. As odd as this may seem today to modern proponents of “family values,” who often cite Jesus as one who was simpatico with their views, Jesus appears to have opposed the idea of the family and to have been in conflict with members of his own family. This opposition to family, we will see, is rooted in Jesus’s apocalyptic proclamation.

Jesus’s opposition to the family unit is made clear in his requirement that his followers leave home for the sake of the coming kingdom. Doing so would earn them a reward:

Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left a house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and the sake of the good news, who will not receive them all back a hundred fold in this present time—houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and lands, along with persecutions—and in the age that is coming, life that never ends. But many who are first will be last and the last will be first. (Mark 10:29–31)

His followers are to be concerned for the coming kingdom, not for their families. This is a hard saying in Jesus’s historical context. The men who became his followers by leaving their homes, in most or all instances, would have been the principal breadwinners of their households. By leaving their families high and dry, they almost certainly created enormous hardship, possibly even starvation. But it was worth it, in Jesus’s view. The kingdom demanded it. No family tie was more important than the kingdom; siblings, spouses, and children were of no importance in comparison.

That is why Jesus is reported as saying (this comes from Q): “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even his own life, he is not able to be my disciple” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 10:37).4 A person must “hate”