This 2016 book has been cited in several recent apologetic works, and it is easy to see why: It’s terrific, and a good way to begin the Advent Season.
The author is a professor at the Augustine Institute, a private Catholic theology graduate school. The book is 198 pages of text with 38 pages of endnotes and no index; there is also a 4-page afterword by Robert Barron. The book is available online here: https://dn710208.ca.archive.org/0/items/brant-pitre-the-case-for-jesus-the-biblical-and-historical-evidence-for-christ/Brant%20Pitre%20-%20The%20Case%20for%20Jesus%20-%20The%20Biblical%20and%20Historical%20Evidence%20for%20Christ.pdf.
The last two paragraphs of Bishop Barron’s afterword are a good summary of the book (201-02):
Relying on the groundbreaking work of E. P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, and others, Dr. Pitre has persuasively shown that the Gospels were written by either eyewitnesses (Matthew and John) or those in close association with eyewitnesses (Mark and Luke), that they properly fit into the genre of ancient biography (and not folklore), that they were composed far earlier than the standard scholarly consensus has it, and that they are the results of a disciplined process of communication that commenced even during the earthly life of Jesus. He has thereby mounted what I think is the most successful argument against the Telephone game nonsense and has given Christian evangelists renewed confidence in the message they are bearing to the world.
The second great contribution that Dr. Pitre has made to evangelization is his insistence upon the Jewishness of the Gospel. Though this might strike us as counterintuitive (wouldn’t a de-Judaized Jesus be more relevant to our times?), it actually serves to shed light in every direction. It is a commonplace of many of the debunkers today that the divinity of Jesus is stressed only in the Gospel of John and that John’s version of the life of Jesus is at the furthest remove from the historical figure of the Lord—and hence most susceptible to distortion and accretion. In point of fact, the Synoptic Gospel writers are just as insistent upon the divinity of the Lord as John, but their communication is offered in a distinctively Jewish idiom. To give just a few examples from Dr. Pitre’s analysis, the Jesus who calms the storm at sea is acting in the person of the God of Israel, whom the Old Testament describes as the one who uniquely has lordship over the wind and the waves; the Jesus who dares to purify the Temple shows an authority that belongs exclusively to the one worshiped in the that holy place; the Jesus who blithely pronounces the forgiveness of the paralytic’s sins is, as the bystanders themselves testify, doing something that only God can do. Say that they got it wrong, but please don’t say that Matthew, Mark, and Luke present only the human Jesus. Truth be told, their Christologies are just as high as John’s, but we have to refamiliarize ourselves with the Jewish roots of the Gospels in order to see it.
The author’s first sentence (1, italics in original) states, “This book is about one big question: Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God?” But this is a bit misleading, as the chapter headings show: 1. The Quest for Jesus 2. Were the Gospels Anonymous? 3. The Titles of the Gospels 4. The Early Church Fathers 5. The Lost Gospels 6. Are the Gospels Biographies? 7. The Dating of the Gospels 8. Jesus and the Jewish Messiah 9. Did Jesus Think He Was God? 10. The Secret of Jesus’s Divinity 11. The Crucifixion 12. The Resurrection 13. At Caesarea Philippi. (Note in particular the title of Chapter 9.). As the book jacket says, the author actually answers several key questions, including:
• Were the four Gospels really anonymous?
• Are the Gospels folklore? Or are they biographies?
• Were the four Gospels written too late to be reliable?
• What about the so-called “Lost Gospels,” such as “Q” and the Gospel of Thomas?
• Did Jesus claim to be God?
• Is Jesus divine in all four Gospels? Or only in John?
• Did Jesus fulfill the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah?
• Why was Jesus crucified?
• What is the evidence for the Resurrection?
C.S. Lewis’s trilemma is a theme, discussed at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the book (4-7, 109, 192-94). I’ll note here as well that Pascal’s Pensees is cited re the accuracy of Daniel’s prophecy (117).
The book is Strobelesque in both its autobiographical references and in its frequently ending a chapter with a bridge paragraph to the next (see also 10-11, the last three paragraphs of the first chapter).
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Much of the book is both well-done and unsurprising in the arguments marshaled. What I found most original and least common were his arguments about Jesus’ claims when viewed through Daniel, especially, and Jonah (re Jonah, see especially chapter 12, “The Resurrection,” at 185-91, where a parallel is drawn between Jesus’ and Jonah’s respective resurrections after three days — Jonah is argued to have actually died while in the great fish — and between the massive conversions of Gentiles after Jesus and Ninevites per Jonah).
Daniel is the key to chapter 10 (“The Secret of Jesus’s Identity”), but it’s also mentioned earlier in the book– for example, in this important paragraph (114-15, footnote omitted, italics in original):
Once again, the answer [to the question, Why does Jesus think the messiah must suffer and die?] lies in the book of Daniel. Although the “son of man” in Daniel 7 is not described as being put to death, the future “messiah” in Daniel 9 is described as being put to death. In fact, this is the only explicit prophecy of the death of the “messiah” (Hebrew mashiach) in the Old Testament. Although the passage is somewhat obscure, it is worth reading carefully:
[The angel Gabriel said to Daniel:] “Seventy weeks of years [=490 years] are decreed concerning your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy [one]. Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of a messiah, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, a Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war; desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week; and for half of the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” (Daniel 9:24-27)
It should go without saying that we can’t go into every issue raised by this admittedly difficult passage. All I want to do here is highlight three reasons it has been interpreted since ancient times as telling not only that the Messiah would come, but when the Messiah would come. [And the next paragraph, on page 115, does just that.]
Among other things, the book points to Jesus’ description of Himself as the “Son of Man” per Daniel is a way “to both conceal and reveal his divinity” (144). More broadly (138-39, footnote omitted, italics in original):
But the best explanation [of Jesus wanting, up to a point, to keep secret His identity as Messiah] is that he is biding his time. Because the truth about his identity is so potentially explosive, Jesus keeps it as secret as possible until the time is right to bring his mission to a climax. In the words of New Testament scholar Craig Keener:
[A]t least one important reason for allowing claims of his messiahship only toward the end of his ministry was a matter of practical strategy. Messianic acclamations could (and did) lead the authorities wrongly to classify Jesus as a revolutionary and seek his execution; thus Jesus presumably delays his martyrdom until the appropriate time and place (Passover in Jerusalem)…. If Jesus knew anything at all about the political situation in Jerusalem, he would know that a public messianic claim would lead to his almost immediate execution.
It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of this insight into Jesus’s practical strategy for revealing who he is. Many scholars accept the idea that Jesus keeps his messianic identity secret for strategic reasons. However, they often fail to apply the same logic to his divine identity. In short: the reason Jesus does not repeatedly and explicitly proclaim himself to be the Messiah is also the reason Jesus does not repeatedly and explicitly proclaim himself to be divine. Because the truth about his divine identity is even more momentous than his messianic identity, during his public ministry he only speaks about it in riddles until the time is come for him to reveal it fully.
Chapter 10 is great, and I wonder if it’s the most original part of the book — but see the last section of the chapter (152-54), where the author rather modestly claims that “none of the interpretations that I have given here are really anything new” (152).
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And the rest of the book is excellent as well. In this section of my blogpost, let me provide some examples of points and passages I especially liked.
I noted this excellent point in chapter 3 (28, footnote omitted): “Think about it for a minute: If you were one of the twelve apostles, listening to Jesus’s teaching day in and day out, do you think it might have occurred to someone to take notes at some point? We know other ancient students did. And if it did occur to the disciples, whom might they have selected? Let’s see … fisherman, fisherman, fisherman, fisherman, tax collector.” Toward the end of chapter 4, the author writes (53, footnote omitted): “As far as we know, for almost four hundred years after the lifetime of Jesus, no one—orthodox or heretic, pagan or Christian —seems to have raised any serious doubts about who wrote the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” The chapter on dating the Gospels stresses the temple destruction and ending of Acts.
In the chapter on the Gospels as biography, I noted this long paragraph (79-80, italics in original and footnotes omitted) regarding Luke’s prologue:
If we look at what the four Gospels actually say about what kinds of books they are, we discover that two of them emphasize that they are recording what Jesus actually did and said. They also claim that they are based on eyewitness testimony. In other words, they insist that they are historical biographies. Consider, once again, the prologue to the Gospel of Luke:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write carefully in order for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the facts concerning the things of which you have been informed.” (Luke 1:1-4)
In order to understand the importance of Luke’s prologue for our argument, four points need to be explained. First, as many scholars point out, Luke’s prologue is strikingly similar to the prologues found in ancient Greco-Roman histories, by authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Josephus. Like the prologues of other ancient histories, Luke’s prologue is intended to signal to the reader that the Gospel is historical in character. Second, Luke uses the word “narrative” (Greek diēgēsis) to describe his book. As Joseph Fitzmyer has shown, ancient Greco-Roman authors often use this word specifically for “the writing of history” (see Josephus, Life, 336; Lucian, How to Write History, 55). Third, Luke insists that his historical narrative is based on the testimony of “eyewitnesses (Greek autoptai) from the beginning” of Jesus’s public ministry. Now, why would Luke emphasize the eyewitness nature of his sources if he were just telling folktales? Clearly, Luke wants his readers to know that what he says about Jesus can be corroborated by those who knew him. Fourth and finally, Luke explicitly states that he is writing so that his audience might know “the facts” (Greek asphaleian). Although some English Bibles translate the Greek word asphalēia as “truth,” elsewhere Luke consistently uses it to refer to secure and verifiable facts (see Acts 21:34; 22:30; 25:26). In other words, the Gospel of Luke begins by insisting that it is an accurate, factual account, based directly on eyewitness testimony of what Jesus did and said. In support of this, in the book of Acts, Luke refers back to his own Gospel as an account of “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). So much for the idea that the writers of the Gospels did not intend to tell us “what Jesus really did and said”! According to Luke, that is exactly what he did in writing his Gospel. [There follows a paragraph about John’s Gospel.]
The last paragraph of chapter 7 (101) is the center/midpoint of the book: “In essence, there are compelling historical reasons to conclude that the Gospels are not the late-first-century end products of a long chain of anonymous storytelling. Instead, they are ancient biographies written by the students of Jesus and their followers, written well within the lifetimes of the apostles and eyewitnesses to Jesus. As such, they provide us with a sound basis for investigating the historical questions of what Jesus did, what he said, and who he claimed to be. It is to these questions that we now turn.” And then the following paragraph (102), which begins chapter 8, provides a roadmap to the rest of the book: “With everything we’ve learned about the origins of the Gospels in mind, we can now take up the questions of Jesus’s identity: Who was Jesus of Nazareth? According to the testimony of the four Gospels, who did he claim to be? Who did his first followers believe him to be? And, even more important, why did they believe in him?”
The concluding paragraph of chapter 12 (191) is very powerful:
Indeed, how does one explain the universality of the Church? I guess you could argue that it was a coincidence. I guess you could claim that the many passages in the Old Testament prophesying that one day the pagan nations of the world would turn and worship the God of Abraham just happened to take place after the death and resurrection of Jesus (see Isaiah 2:1-3; 25:6-8; 66:18- 21; Jeremiah 3:15-18; Micah 4:1-2; Zechariah 8:20-23). I guess you could also claim that these mass conversions among the pagans just happened to coincide with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who just happened to live and die at the very time that the book of Daniel said the Messiah would come. And I guess you could believe that after Jesus was crucified, the tomb just happened to be inexplicably empty and hundreds of disciples of Jesus began claiming to have seen him alive again in his body. I guess you could claim all this. I, for one, prefer the simpler explanation. Jesus of Nazareth was right. The Son of Man was crucified. The Son of Man was buried. The Son of Man was raised on the third day. The tomb was empty. It still is. And the Gentiles turn to the God of Israel in droves. Because something greater than Jonah is here.
And the final paragraph of the next chapter, which ends the author’s text, is not bad either (198):
At least, that’s what Jesus seems to have thought [that is, that we must each make up our mind about Jesus’ divinity vel non]. For today, as in the first century, there are lots of opinions about who the man from Nazareth really was. Apparently, it has always been that way, and it probably always will be. But the question Jesus poses to his disciples—the question of his identity—abides. It does not pass away. Despite the almost two thousand years that have transpired since the writing of the Gospels, Jesus’s words to Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi echo down through the centuries, inviting each and every one of us to encounter him as a real historical person and to answer the question he once asked a lowly fisherman from Galilee: “But who do you say that I am?”
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Finally, some odds and ends that I noted:
- The section arguing that “The Gospels Are Ancient Biographies” (70-77) reminded me of Michael Licona’s book, discussed here on this blogsite. Licona and N.T. Wright are cited for their books on the Resurrection (237 n.1).
- Bart Ehrman is the author’s most common foil. Conversely, I didn’t keep an actual tally, but I bet he cited Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) more than anyone else; I’ll also note here his recognition early on (3) of his studying under Amy Jill-Levine, a Jewish professor of the New Testament, who “helped [him] to see Jesus and the New Testament through ancient Jewish eyes. This was a life changing event ….”
- The anonymous authorship of Hebrews is discussed (20-21).
- The author notes, as I have, how remarkably little Paul quotes Jesus directly (47).
- He cites Richard Bauckham in general favorably, but criticizes him at one point (207 n.3), and does not buy Bauckham’s argument that John’s Gospel was written by John the Elder rather than the Apostle John (see 213 n.34, 49-50 paragraph, 215 nn. 32 & 34).