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

The forces of evil would soon gain greater and greater power, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. It would not help to develop new technologies, to reform the welfare state, to build up national defense, to put more cops on the beat or more teachers in the classroom. There would be more disasters, more wars, more hunger, more poverty, more oppression—more and more until at the end of this age, when literally all hell would break out.

But then this age would come to a radical end, and God would reassert himself.

Vindication

Many apocalypticists did not dream of conquering the powers of evil by their own efforts. God would conquer them. This would not happen gradually over a long period of time, as good eventually gained back ground ceded to evil. The end would come suddenly and cataclysmically. God would intervene in the course of human and worldly affairs to overthrow the forces of evil and bring in his good kingdom. He would redeem this world and vindicate both his good name and his people. When things got just as bad as they could possibly get, God would send a savior figure who would make right all that is wrong.

Apocalyptic thinkers called this savior by various titles. We have already seen that some referred to him as a messiah; others, basing their views on the earliest surviving apocalyptic text that we have, the book of Daniel, referred to him as the Son of Man (see Daniel 7:13–14). This cosmic figure would destroy the forces that aligned themselves against God along with all the people on earth who joined with them. In the present age it was the rich and powerful who had obviously sided with the forces that controlled this world. They were the ones, then, who would be destroyed when the Son of Man arrived. The weak, the poor, the oppressed, and the righteous were suffering—in the present age—because they had sided with God. But they would be vindicated when the end came and God reasserted himself to establish a good kingdom on earth.

This future judgment would apply not only to those who happened to be living at the time, but to the dead as well. At the end of this age, when the Son of Man arrived, there would be a resurrection of the dead. All who had previously died would be revived and returned to their bodies to face judgment. Those who had sided with the forces of evil would be punished, or at least annihilated; those who had sided with God would be rewarded and granted a share of the coming kingdom. Among other things, this meant that no one should think that they could side with the forces of evil and prosper as a result, causing others to suffer so as to become rich and powerful, and then die and get away with it. No one could get away with it. God would raise everyone from the dead, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop him.

This then is the period in which Jews began to affirm the doctrine of the future resurrection, to occur at the end of this age, as I discussed in the previous chapter. Before apocalyptic thinking came to be in vogue, most Jews thought either that after death a person continued to live on in a shadowy netherworld called Sheol or that the person simply died with his or her body. But not apocalypticists. They believed in a coming eternal life for the righteous, and it would be lived in the body, in the future kingdom of God that was to arrive here on earth.

Imminence

And when was that kingdom going to arrive? Jewish apocalypticists believed it was coming very soon. It was right around the corner. It might happen at any time. Apocalypticists believed that things were as bad as they could possibly get. The powers of evil were out in full force. Now was the time for God to intervene to destroy these powers and set up his good kingdom. “Truly I tell you,” as one famous apocalypticist is recorded as saying, “some of you who are standing here will not taste death before you see that the kingdom of God has come in power.” These are the words of Jesus, from our earliest surviving Gospel (Mark 9:1). Or as he says later in the same Gospel, when asked when the cosmic cataclysm that he had predicted would occur, culminating in the appearance of the Son of Man: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place” (Mark 13:30).

As a Jewish apocalypticist, Jesus believed that the world was controlled by evil powers that were present in full force. But God would cast judgment on this world by sending the Son of Man from heaven. This one would bring about a cataclysmic change in all things, a day of reckoning for all that is evil and for everyone who had sided with evil. And the kingdom would then arrive, in which the powerful and mighty would be taken down and the poor and oppressed would be exalted. This was to happen within Jesus’s own generation. Jesus, like many other Jews of his time and place, was an apocalypticist who expected the imminent end of history as he knew it.

But how do we know that Jesus said these words—or in fact, any of the other words of the Gospels? How can we know that he represented an apocalyptic point of view? Or more generally, how can we know anything beyond the mere fact of his onetime existence?

This question takes us directly to the matter of historical method. Scholars have devised criteria for detecting historically authentic tradition, even within such problematic sources as those we have that discuss the life of the historical Jesus. These criteria apply, in fact, to any figure of the past described in any kind of historical source. But our interest here is obviously with