Well, its been over a week so time to move on with the NT Follies.
Beginning on Page 44, Ehrman starts discussing the problems with the Passion narrative.
So which is it? Is "Jesus" the laconic dolt that Mark portrays or the chatterbox of John? As always the point is not which is "correct." The point is that the accounts depict radically different behavior by the alleged victim.
Beginning on Page 44, Ehrman starts discussing the problems with the Passion narrative.
Quote:Here I mention just three and point out their potential significance. First, Jesus has a lot more to say in John’s account than in Mark. In fact, he has sustained conversations with Pilate, speaking of his “kingdom that is not of this world” (18:36), indicating that he has come into the world to speak the truth (18:37), declaring that Pilate has no ultimate power over him, except what has been given him by God (19:11). These extended dialogues conform well with what you find throughout all of John’s Gospel, where Jesus engages in long protracted speeches, quite unlike the series of aphorisms and one-liners that you frequently find in the Synoptic
Gospels.
Second, rather than having Jesus flogged after his trial is over and the sentence has been pronounced—which, one might think, would be the sensible time to carry out the sentence—in John, Pilate has Jesus flogged in the middle of the proceedings (19:1). A variety of explanations have been given for John’s change of this detail; it
may be because of what happens next: Pilate brings Jesus out of the headquarters to present him, beaten, bloodied, and in a purple robe, to the Jewish people, and says to them, “Behold the man.” For the author of John, Jesus is much more than a man, but Pilate and the Jewish crowds don’t recognize it. Pilate and his soldiers are mocking Jesus by dressing him up in a crown of thorns and giving him a purple robe and declaring, “Hail, King of the Jews.” In fact, unbeknownst to them their declaration is true. For John, Jesus really is the ing, appearances notwithstanding.
Finally, it is significant that in John’s Gospel, on three occasions Pilate expressly declares that Jesus is innocent, does not deserve to be punished, and ought to be released (18:38; 19:6; and by implication in 19:12). In Mark, Pilate never declares Jesus innocent. Why this heightened emphasis in John? Scholars have long noted that John is in many ways the most virulently anti-Jewish of our Gospels (see John 8:42–44, where Jesus declares that the Jews are not children of God but “children of the Devil”). In that context, why narrate the
trial in such a way that the Roman governor repeatedly insists that Jesus is innocent? Ask yourself: If the Romans are not responsible for Jesus’ death, who is? The Jews. And so they are, for John. In 19:16 we
are told that Pilate handed Jesus over to the Jewish chief priests so that they could have him crucified.
So which is it? Is "Jesus" the laconic dolt that Mark portrays or the chatterbox of John? As always the point is not which is "correct." The point is that the accounts depict radically different behavior by the alleged victim.
