Disappointing interview with Helen Bond
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“There is a fair amount of unsubstantiated speculation and borderline misinformation going on in the episode with Helen Bond. She’s an intelligent and respected scholar, and a good deal of what she said in this episode lines up with the broad consensus in the field of Christian origins - namely that the canonical gospels are not, one the whole, historically accurate biographies of the life of the historical Jesus. There are exceedingly few evidential reasons to believe the character of Jesus portrayed in the four gospel accounts bears much resemblance to the first century Jewish man upon whom the later legends developed. Bond said as much, though she tried to soften the blow on a number of occasions by saying the gospels get the ‘gist’ of Jesus’ life correct, even if the details are almost all fictional.
Nevertheless, Bond slipped over into apologetical territory several times. For example, she seems to give uncritical weight to the writings of Josephus as evidence for the historical Jesus. In this case, the current scholarly consensus is overwhelmingly against Bond. No serious, mainstream biblical scholar or classical historian thinks the Testimonium Flavianum is authentic to Josephus, whether in whole or in part. See the work of Drs. G.J. Goldberg (1995), Ken Olson (1999; 2013), Richard Carrier (2012; 2014), Paul Hooper (2014), and Alice Wheatley (2016). Even the conservative evangelical scholar Chris Hansen (2021) completely discounts the authenticity of the Testimonium. He also rightly concludes that even if the Josephus material is authentic, there’s no way to establish its independence from Christian sources. (The same is true for the references to Jesus in Tacitus and Pliny the Younger. We cannot know if they have independent knowledge of Jesus or if they are simply repeating Christian claims about him, making them useless as independent witnesses.) I realize Bond doesn’t build her case for the existence of Jesus solely on Josephus, but it’s extremely misleading and almost disingenuous to allude to Josephus in an authoritative way without acknowledging that the scholarly consensus does not rely on his work.
Then came the discussion on possible sources for the gospel according to Mark. Bond brazenly says she is absolutely certain the author of Mark had access to written and oral sources when he sat down to compose his gospel. The problem is the anonymous gospel writer never once cites any sources or even claims to have relied on any sources! Bond fails to give a single shred of evidence to support her conclusion. She just states it as a fact.
We simply cannot know with certainty if the author of Mark had access to any kinds of sources. Is it possible he did? Yes. Is it possible he simply made up most of what he wrote? Yes. Both scenarios are equally possible and even equally likely! We know for a fact that both canonical and non-canonical gospel writers of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE made up a huge amount of their material, so it’s no stretch to say the very first writers were simply making up things out of whole cloth. See the work of Drs. Richard C. Miller, Robyn Faith Walsh, Dennis MacDonald, M. David Litwa, Erin Roberts, Dale Allison, John Dominic Crossan, Bart Herman, Marcus Borg, and many others.
Bond also fails to reckon with the obvious: even if the author of Mark had sources, we cannot verify the historical accuracy of these sources. If Mark’s sources were largely fictional and based on unreliable 3rd- or 4th-hand rumor, we’d still be grasping in the dark in our effort to find the historical Jesus.
The truth is, we cannot corroborate the historical accuracy of any of the stories deeds, and sayings in Mark. Odds are, at worst, it’s all creative fiction or an indistinguishable blend of hazy memory and wholesale fiction; at best, we cannot prove that it isn’t all fiction or some alternative amalgam. (This is a point many people fail to grasp when it comes to the New Testament!) There’s no getting around this fact. If subsequent gospel narratives relied on Mark (as the scholarly consensus confirms), and if ‘Q’ turns out to be pure speculation (as Bond seems to agree with), the criterion of multiple attestation crumbles to pieces, and the historical Jesus fades further and further from our view.
I know the two co-hosts have little patience for dogma and unverifiable religious claims, but they seemed uninterested in asking Bond any tough questions or pressing her to substantiate her bold claims.”
gawdeb via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
04/01/24
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