20. Holy places and relics

People do not talk long about people and events they think are important without sooner or later mentioning places that are historically connected with those people and events. Methodists discussing their particular version of Christianity will eventually mention a place called Aldersgate. Likewise with Mormons and Palmyrya or Nauvoo. Likewise with Pentecostals and Azusa Street or Topeka. Nor does this hold only in religion. No discussion of America's origins can go on long with mention of St. Augustine, Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, or Boston. Examples can be multiplied endlessly in other areas of discourse. For anyone who paid attention to astronomy in the last half of the twentieth century, Mount Palomar was a household name. To naval history buffs, such names include Trafalgar, Midway, Coral Sea, and Leyte Gulf. And Texans, of course, will always remember the Alamo.

If there was a historical Jesus, then in this regard, the early Christians were uniquely different. Not until the gospels achieved wide circulation is there any mention in Christian writings of Calvary, Gethsemane, Bethlehem, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, or Nazareth. Even Jerusalem, when mentioned at all, is never associated with Jesus' salvific sacrifice. It is instead just the place where a certain congregation of Christians was led by some people Paul referred to as "pillars." Paul gives no hint that he connected that place with anything Jesus did.

Ted remarks, "Holy places and relics are important to some people. To others, they simply aren't." And that is quite true. But to whom are they not important? Nearly always, to people not interested in whatever they are associated with. There are surely exceptions, but not enough of them to account for what we see and don't see in the record of Christianity's formative years. Possibly, Paul was enough of an oddball to care nothing about walking where Jesus walked, but it cannot be believed that every other first-century Christian writer, as well as practically every second-century Christian writer, was just like him in that respect. Ted says he thinks "a person can have a great interest in the person of Jesus without having an interest in the holy places or relics." Yes, it is possible. I don't think Doherty would argue otherwise. I certainly don't. But we're talking about probabilities. Paul could have been an anomaly. But the way to prove an anomaly is to prove a pattern from which it deviates. In this case Paul himself exhibits the pattern. There are no exceptions to his habit of silence until the late second century. When you act like everyone else acts, you can't be called an oddball.

Ted suggests a few reasons for thinking they could all have been anomalous, but they are unpersuasive.

1. Early Christians were expecting the imminent Day of the Lord. Some, Paul tells us, had stopped working in anticipation of it. . . . The view was forward, not backwards.

Ordinary human beings are not that single-minded. On the historicist assumption, early Christians' belief about the future was grounded in and dependent on particular beliefs they had about the recent past. They would not have been so fixated on the one that they would have ignored the other.

2. I would also expect a lesser interest in relics and places by those who knew Jesus personally:

I would expect the opposite, but it doesn't matter which of us is right. This argument is irrelevant because no surviving Christian document was written by anyone who knew Jesus personally.

But it might be worth noting how Ted tries to make it relevant. He points out that according to Christian tradition, among those who knew Jesus personally were the authors of the Petrine and Johannine epistles, James, Jude, and Revelation. Now, Ted knows good and well that except among inerrantists, the scholarly community is practically unanimous in saying that Christian tradition is wrong about that, and his appeal to tradition here is doubly disingenuous. In the first place, in any discussion of Jesus' historicity, assuming the factual reliability of Christian tradition is tantamount to assuming the conclusion that Jesus did exist. In the second place, if Ted can treat a scholarly consensus as if it were irrelevant, then so can I.

But I don't, and neither does Doherty or any other intellectually responsible ahistoricist. On the particular issue of whether Jesus exists, we are disagreeing with a scholarly consensus that approaches unanimity, and we are obliged to justify our disagreement, and "Just because they're experts doesn't mean they can't be wrong" is no justification at all. We need to present facts and arguments that support our conclusion, and we're trying to do that, and we think we're succeeding. If Ted believes, contrary to the scholarly consensus, that Christian tradition is right in affirming that certain NT documents were written by acquaintances of Jesus of Nazareth, then he needs to present some reasons for doubting the consensus.

3. Just because an early writing doesn't mention holy places or relics, doesn't mean they didn't exist.

Another irrelevancy. Doherty's argument is not They aren't mentioned; therefore, they didn't exist. It is instead They aren't mentioned, therefore they were not associated in the writers' minds with any significant events or any significant person.

Having dispatched his straw man, Ted tries to respond to the actual argument. "There is evidence," he says, that Peter's home in Capernaum "was considered special early on." Well, OK. And what is this evidence? Well, according to a Web site he links to, "a great part" of first-century Capernaum has been excavated, and archeologists have found remnants of a building in which the walls and floor of one room had been plastered. And how do we know it was Peter's house? Actually, we don't. The site's authors offer no evidence beyond "tradition," and the tradition apparently cannot be traced farther back than the fourth century, by which time the building seems to have been used as a church.

But, what does the plaster have to do with Ted's point? Well, plaster was a luxury in those days, and ordinary homes (or the homes of ordinary people) didn't have any. This and certain other clues, according to the Web site, indicate that in the late first century, the building was used not as a residence but for some other purpose.

How Ted might have reasoned from those data to "First-century Christians thought Peter's house was special" can be left as a supplemental exercise. It may be noted, though, that the Web site offers no hint of evidence that the first-century structure was ever anybody's home, much less who the occupant might have been. According to the site authors, the plaster suggests use as a meeting place. That is plausible enough, but there is no hint of evidence that would indicate who was using it for that purpose during the late first century. We cannot simply assume that it was the same folks who were gathering there 300 years later for church services.

4. Doherty says Paul doesn't mention Jerusalem in connection with Jesus. He mentions Zion, the name for Jerusalem, in connection with Jesus twice

Ted then quotes Romans 9:33 and 11:26, where Zion is indeed mentioned in connection with the savior. But Paul is here quoting scripture, and the scriptural language is clearly allegorical or poetic. Paul is not reporting history. He is interpreting literary imagery. Furthermore, although Zion was indeed often a figurative reference to Jerusalem, it was also used as a metaphor for the entire Jewish nation, as either a political or a cultural entity. And considering the context, the more general construal seems clearly to have been in Paul's mind.

Similarly, according to Ted, "Hebrews also strongly implies that Jesus was crucified just outside the gate of Jerusalem." I think otherwise but will say no more here. Doherty devotes an entire essay on his Web site to Hebrews, and Ted needs to address his arguments there before making unsupported claims about what that book "strongly implies."

5. Doherty downplays the effect that a threat of or actual persecution may have played

Yes, he does, and not strongly enough, in my opinion. The notion that Christians would have hestitated to speak directly of Calvary or Gethsemane or any other place in order to avoid persecution is beyond preposterous. Are we to believe that this avoidance was presumed sufficient to hide the fact that these people were Christians? Ted points out the the NT epistles were read in public. OK. And when that happened, are we to think that even though they talked endlessly about "Jesus Christ," they felt safe because there was no mention of "Nazareth" or "Bethlehem" or "Mount of Olives"?

6. There is a reasonable explanation for Paul not going to Jerusalem for 3 years: 1. He was feared and distrusted by those who knew of his prior persecutions. (Acts 9:26) 2. He already had learned enough about Jesus to convert, and had access to Christians elsewhere.

Doherty's point is that Paul expressed no eagerness to go to Jerusalem, not just that he didn't go there right away. There is no hint in his writings that he delayed going for any reason except that it didn't suit his convenience. Nothing that the author of Acts has to say in the matter is relevant until Ted or someone else demonstrates its reliability as a source of historical data. Plenty of scholars who take Jesus' historicity for granted are convinced that Acts is a work of fiction, and Ted needs to prove them wrong before using the book to prove anything about what Paul might have been thinking.

On the next point, Ted seems to agree with Doherty and to be stymied for a counterargument:

7. Paul doesn't say why he stayed with Peter for 15 days. Did they study scripture together? Did they discuss revelations or the life of Jesus? Did they visit Calvary? Paul doesn't say one way or the other. What a great silence this appears to be! Should we expect that? Even if we shouldn't, it is there.

Yes, it is there, and Ted can't think of any reason it should be there if Paul believed that Peter had spent three years in close personal contact with the lord and savior Jesus Christ.

I cannot comment on Ted's point #8 because I cannot figure out what it is. In #9 he refers to the destruction of the Jewish War, but there is no help there for him. Despite the devastation, none of the communities or other places mentioned in the gospels ceased to exist. And even if they had, that would only have heightened Christians' fascination with them, not diminished it.

Ted ends his concluding paragraph thus: "there are a number of reasons that might reasonably explain this silence." Maybe so, but he has failed to give us any.

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This page last updated on June 15, 2015.