The Bronze Age Collapse: The Bible’s Invisible Catastrophe?

This post is part of our “Voices from the Academy” series—an initiative highlighting standout content from members of the Biblical Studies Academy. Each month, we feature a few of the most insightful, thought-provoking posts from our community on BartEhrman.com.  The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

Often, when people first start looking at the Bible through a historical lens, they look at the events mentioned in the Bible and try to line them up with the things that we know from history. Some things — the Kings of Judah, the Babylonian Captivity, the Herodian dynasty — are all clearly confirmed by the historic record. Others — the United Monarchy, the existence of the Patriarchs, much of Jesus’s career — are not directly confirmed, but fit plausibly into the historic context. And still others — the Deluge, the Exodus as described, the Massacre of the Innocents — are very difficult to square with the historic record.

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But there’s another way to look at things: you can start with what we know from history about the time and places described, and then see if the Biblical authors seem aware of the most important events, and if so, how those events affected their narratives. And when you do that, you notice something odd. If you add up the lengths of years of various events and reigns as listed in the Bible, it appears that Moses would have lived around 1300 BCE, David would have reigned around 1000 BCE, and the Conquest and Judges would have been in between. But in that general time and place occurred one of the most catastrophic events in human history... and it is not mentioned at all. It's what I call "the invisible catastrophe": the Bronze Age Collapse.

A little background. Ever since the beginnings of civilization, human society had grown more and more advanced, century by century. Great kingdoms were sometimes destroyed, but they were quickly replaced by greater kingdoms, more powerful, more technologically advanced, with new innovations that led to increasingly organized societies. This had been the progression of history for literally thousands of years. But then around 1200 BCE, in a frighteningly brief period of time, it all came crashing down. Many of the greatest empires of the world were utterly destroyed. In Asia Minor and Syria, the most advanced cities were sacked and left uninhabited for centuries. In the South, Egypt survived, but it went from being a superpower that utterly dominated the Levant to being an inward-looking region, a museum piece frequently ruled by outsiders. In the North of the Aegean, literacy was completely forgotten and had to be reinvented from scratch centuries later. It was a collapse so total that it makes the European Dark Ages seem like a brief inconvenience in comparison. The causes of this collapse are still debated, but what I want to note here is, the Biblical authors don't mention it. They don't seem to even know that it happened.

Before the Collapse, the Hittites were one of the most powerful and centralized empires in the world, and Egypt had a sprawling empire that included all of Canaan. After the Collapse, “Hittite” was more of a scattered ethnic group living in clusters here and there. Egypt was still wealthy and impressive, but it was far away and no longer invincible. And new peoples, such as the Philistines, had been resettled as Canaan’s neighbors. Even if the people of Canaan would never have a good grasp on the scope of the disaster, they should have known the parts that most affected them. They wrote eloquently about the post-Collapse reality, but there doesn't seem to be any awareness of Egypt having been a power in Canaan, of the Philistines coming in from outside, or of the Hittites as ever having been a centralized power.

What do you make of this? And are there any echoes of this disaster or its effects in the Hebrew Bible? What's your take?

The Parable of the Sower: Dramatic Irony in Mark

This post is part of our “Voices from the Academy” series—an initiative highlighting standout content from members of the Biblical Studies Academy. Each month, we feature a few of the most insightful, thought-provoking posts from our community on BartEhrman.com.  The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

Irony is when things are different, very different, from how they are being presented. But the person hearing or seeing the ironic situation has to understand this. If someone says something ironic and no one understands he’s being ironic, then their true meaning is missed and communication fails. The viewer or the reader has to get it in order for irony to work.

Dramatic irony is a specialized version of irony. When you’re reading a book or watching a film or TV story, you will almost always learn something that almost none of the characters know. Hitchcock gave an example of this by describing how he could show a shot of a bomb strapped under a table in a crowded restaurant. Then he would continue to show scenes in that restaurant, the patrons (and our heroes) completely unaware of the bomb. The tension is astounding, now: what will happen?

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The identity of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, the Messianic secret, is another example of dramatic irony. As Drs. Ehrman and Méndez say in their latest Introduction to the New Testament textbook, the author knows Jesus is the messiah because he says so in the first sentence. The reader knows it, too, because they read it in the first sentence. But for eight chapters, almost no one else but the demons know who Jesus is. Indeed, Jesus overtly acts to keep that knowledge from coming out throughout the story, commanding people not to tell others about what they know.

So, when Jesus finally tells the parable of the sower, that dramatic irony should kick into overdrive. We readers should recognize that we have seen or will see examples of all four soils in the people Mark describes. The people who reject him outright, like his family members, are the soil of the wayside. The people who respond enthusiastically to the miracles, wanting more, quick to blow away when persecutions arise, are the soil of the rocky ground. The people who will let the seed choke due to cares of the world and the lure of wealth are the soil of the thorns. But the good soil people are those who follow Jesus to the end, letting the seed grow as it should, and thus produce more fruit …and more seed.

The parable of the sower should then make us realize that when Jesus tells people to hide who he is, he is attempting to give that knowledge, that seed, the best chance to land in good soil. He is planting that knowledge in the people who see and hear him. Indeed, Jesus enforces the Messianic secret in order to avoid the ill effects of the rocky soil (which raises a clamor of attention and hatred which hinders his ministry) and the thorny soil (which will frustrate the time and labor he’s done to let the knowledge grow properly).

Dramatic irony teaches this to the intended readers, those who wish to become sowers for Jesus themselves. Reading, after all, is something most people could not do in the time Mark was written. It’s an investment of time, even for those who could only listen to someone else read the gospel aloud. Mark, by telling or reaffirming for the reader or listener from the beginning that Jesus is the Christ, is planting that seed with them as well. He is using dramatic irony, a fantastic device to build tension and interest in a narrative, to trick the readers into maintaining silence about who Jesus is long enough to let the seed of how to teach others about Jesus grow within them as well, all while reading cautionary tales about the pitfalls of ministry gone wrong.

As such, this may be seen as Mark taking a huge problem for the early Christian communities (the early Jesus never mentioning the need to suffer and die as the Messiah, as recognized by Wrede) and turning it into an opportunity for teaching (Jesus was hiding this information in order to make the most and best opportunities for people to learn about him). Using the Messianic secret as dramatic irony was how Mark solved the problem.

Symbolism in Mark: Rethinking the Gospel's Portrayal of Judas Iscariot

This post is part of our “Voices from the Academy” series—an initiative highlighting standout content from members of the Biblical Studies Academy. Each month, we feature a few of the most insightful, thought-provoking posts from our community on BartEhrman.com.  The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

Hearing Dr. Hugo Méndez demonstrate Mark’s creative license through the symbolism he uses (i.e. the double healing pericope, the Markan Sandwiches, parables, use of irony) reminded me of something I had read about the Judas story earlier.

Let’s face it: the Judas story in our Gospels (primarily from Mark) is weird. If Jesus was given a sentence to be crucified by the ruling authorities for some sort of significant offence like causing unrest in the temple or declaring himself to be the Messiah, or even some sort of zealot-like or violent activities, it did not require one of his followers to betray him for him to be crucified! It would have happened regardless of whether any followers stuck to him or not.

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So what are the reasons why this story may be made up?

Against a fictional betrayal story, is the “criterion of embarrassment”: It must have been embarrassing for Mark to deal with a story of one of Jesus’ own disciples turning his back on Jesus and therefore if he included the narrative in his gospel, it surely must not be invented.

But could have it been invented?

The criterion of embarrassment does not hold if Mark stood to gain something from the narrative — like an agenda or ideology. But what could he gain?

Scholars like John Dominic Crossan, Gerd Lüdemann & Robert Eisenman suggest the following.

It’s quite possibly in the name  — Judas or Judah: the tribe of Israel that housed the temple cult, from where we get the words “Jew” and “Judaism” from.

Against the backdrop of the gospels, we have a hostile environment where Jews were persecuting christians for their beliefs. Could Judah’s betrayal of Jesus be symbolic of how Jews have treated their Messiah? It certainly fits with Mark’s literary profile!

So was the Judas story a symbolic myth from Mark, and the other evangelists liked the story and ran with it? It certainly fits Mark’s creative literary style and once more displays his genius!

Did Jesus Predict the End? Understanding Mark’s Little Apocalypse

This post is part of our “Voices from the Academy” series—an initiative highlighting standout content from members of the Biblical Studies Academy. Each month, we feature a few of the most insightful, thought-provoking posts from our community on BartEhrman.com.  The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

Mark 13 is Mark’s “Little Apocalypse,” the first apocalypse in the New Testament chronologically (followed Matthew 24, and of course Revelation). Here are a few interesting features of Mark 13.

It starts with a short exchange between Jesus and an unnamed disciple. The disciple admires the temple building, to which Jesus replies, in a characteristic reversal, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (v. 2). That blunt pronouncement sounds like something the historical Jesus would say, although had the temple not been destroyed in 70 CE (or ever) it might not have been preserved.

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By contrast, the following long discourse (vv. 3-37) is rather uncharacteristic of Mark, where Jesus gives witty replies and insightful aphorisms rather than long discourses like one sees in Matthew and John. In this long discourse in Mark, Jesus warns against coming persecution, false messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, a “desolating sacrilege” (referring to some sort of defilement of the Jewish temple), and finally the Son of Man “coming in the clouds with great power and glory.”

The first question is about dating Mark. Conservative scholars want an early date, say the late 50s CE, to tie the author of Mark to the apostles, Peter in particular, to give the text more credibility. Critical scholars place Mark around the year 70 CE, with the statement about the destruction of the temple as well as some of the traumatic events described in Mark 13 being contemporary with the writing of Mark (and the horrors of the Jewish War) rather than a prophecy of a future event. Myself, I now lean toward the later date of around 70 CE.

The second question — particularly for the genre of apocalypse — is the whole question of predictive prophecy. A supporter of predictive prophecy has no problem putting the temple destruction prophecy in the mouth of Jesus in the early 30s or writing it in the early 60s. Others, even some believers, prefer to see prophets as “forthtellers” rather than “foretellers”, and don’t rely on prophecies — or at least don’t highlight them. Myself, I don’t place much confidence in predictive prophecy, biblical or otherwise. As I see it, the track record is not good. For example, both Jesus and Paul expected a climactic end to the present age (the Son of Man coming in the clouds) within a few years or decades. With prophecies all over the Bible, one needs to give serious consideration to the issue of prophecy.

The Historical Jesus vs. the Jesus You Want to Believe In

This post is part of our “Voices from the Academy” series—an initiative highlighting standout content from members of the Biblical Studies Academy. Each month, we feature a few of the most insightful, thought-provoking posts from our community on BartEhrman.com.  The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

Dr. Méndez’s next lecture will be about reconstructing Jesus, engaging the Gospels with an eye to discovering the historical Jesus. What I often observe is that most people are more wont to envision a historical Jesus who embodies their own ideals and values. When we're reading the narratives of Jesus we don't really do so with the aim of ferreting out the real Jesus.

Of course, for centuries, the vast majority of Bible readers were believers in the theological Christ, and uncritically equated the historical Jesus with the Second Person of the Trinity, and the vicarious sacrifice for our sins that Orthodox soteriology portrays him as. The quest of the historical Jesus didn't really get going until European scholars like Reimarus, Strauss, and Renan undertook it. Today, thanks to their opening the modern mind to the question of who and what the historical Jesus really was; and to the secularization of our culture, to our no longer being locked into Christological dogmas, it has become common among both scholars and laypeople to speculate about the first-century rabbi from Galilee whose death and purported resurrection sparked the birth of Christianity.

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To return to my point, I find that most of that speculation among those of us who are not trained critical scholars is highly biased toward our own values. For instance, among my fellow theological liberals, the image of Jesus as a paragon of love is quite popular nowadays. To a great many liberal Christians and non-Christians, the historical Jesus can be summed up as a lovely fellow who taught that we should love one another. Then you have someone like advertising executive Bruce Barton, whose vision of Jesus in his 1925 book The Man Nobody Knows aligned with his organizational and business-oriented values. For him, Jesus was a consummate organizer and advertising man who "picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world." Barton's book and reimagining of Jesus actually became very popular! And he isn't the only author or evangelist who's anachronistically viewed the historical Jesus through a modern market lens as a model of business virtues and a capitalist work ethic. And then of course there was the “muscular Christianity” movement that viewed Jesus as the ultimate incarnation of hegemonic masculinity! And so on.

Regardless of how out of keeping it might be with his life, ministry, and teachings, one's reconstruction of Jesus tends to be shaped by one's value system and ideology. Few of us approach the historical Jesus like proper critical scholars and strenuously bracket our own values and biases when trying to get a bead on him. I'm curious to hear from my fellow BSA members if they honestly think they're exceptions, that they're really trying to objectively reconstruct, and come to terms with the real Jesus and not merely constructing a Jesus to their liking? Of course, there’s also a case to be made for idealizing Jesus, if you’re more of an idealizer than a reconstructor (and realize it) please feel free to share your perspective too. I’m not against the idealization of Jesus, I’m just keen on distinguishing reconstruction from idealization.