A friend just forwarded this article from Fortune Magazine to me. It is called What it takes to be great and it explores the "talent myth" in fields like sports, music, chess and investing.

My question, upon reading the article: What does it take to "be great" in the field of Biblical Studies? If, as the article contends, innate talent has little to do with "greatness" and more to do with intense, purposeful practice; then how does one practice Biblical Studies intensely and purposefully?

For me, it means reaching beyond my comfort zone.

It means reading things that are hard to understand but fighting to grok them.

It means reading footnotes and even looking up (and buying!) the books that sound interesting and central to the argument. And then reading those, and looking up those footnotes ... you get the picture.

It means surrounding myself with folks who know more than me but who are willing to guide me along. My humble thanks to those of you out there that do this for me (you know who you are), I do appreciate it greatly.

It means stretching to submit and present papers at academic conferences (e.g. ETS, SBL) where the bar is high.

It means writing papers and articles at home to work through things that nobody will likely ever read (nor need they read) in order to better understand the issues at hand.

It means writing blog articles (here, on PastoralEpistles.com, and on the Logos Bible Software blog) and potentially looking really stupid with my observations and thoughts on particular passages or concepts.

In short, it means work. I'm curious, though — what am I missing in the above list? How do y'all purposefully and intensely "practice" Biblical Studies?

So much of so-called "Christian" music today is piffle. A pastor-friend of mine calls them "Jesus is my girlfriend" songs.

But some of it isn't. I'm listening to a guy called Andrew Peterson. He has a song called "No More Faith". Here are the lyrics to the bridge of the song, into the last chorus:

So I will drive these roads in thunder and in rain
And I will sing your song at the top of my lungs
And I will praise you, Lord, in glory and in pain
And I will follow you till this race is won
And I will drive these roads till this motor won't run
And I will sing your song from sea to shining sea
And I will praise you Lord, till your kingdom comes
And I will follow where you lead

Till there's no more faith
No more hope
I'll see your face and Lord, I'll know
When there's no more faith
And no more hope
I'll sing your praise and let them go
'cause only love
Only love remains

The song is called "No More Faith" based on 1Co 13. It's looking forward to the time when only love remains; when our hope has been fulfilled and our faith is no longer necessary because we are with God. μαράνα θά!

Side note: I've got a three-part series on "the love chapter":

• Part I (1Co 13.1-3)
• Part II (1Co 13.4-7)
• Part III (1Co 13.8-13)

[See Part I and Part II in this series]

Well, I'm through the whole book, so it's time to blog about chapters 9-11. Recall these chapter titles:

• Who Was Judas Iscariot?
• What Did Judas Betray and Why Did He Betray It?
• The Gospel of Judas in Perspective

I've got to say, I'm a bit Bart-ed out. As he rolled to his conclusion, the battle-of-the-competing-orthodoxies vibe became more and more prominent. This is enough for me to commit, here and now, to say that I will not read any more of Bart's "popular" books. If he pops out some editions of gnostic texts in their original and translation, with or without commentary, I may jump on those. But the whole "victorious orthodox party" schtick is tired, old and has begun to grate on me. For perhaps the prime example of the last chapter of the book, consider this sub-section-ending paragraph on p. 179:

Is it just a coincidence that none of the noncanonical writings discovered over the course of the past century embody an orthodox perspective? If orthodoxy was so widespread, why is it that only heterodox documents of the second century have been discovered? The answer to this question leads me to consider why, after all, the Gospel of Judas should be seen as so important. (Ehrman, 179)

Where to start?

First ... uh ... well, we have this thing called the "New Testament" that Erhman would classsify as "orthodox" ... and we've had it for almost 2000 years. I don't think we're going to magically discover new canonical gospels seeing as how the canon is closed.

Second ... well ... we have these writings from guys called "church fathers" and the dudes they dialogued with in their writings. Some are orthodox, some are heretics, and some walk the line (that's right, a Johnny Cash reference in a post on Bart Ehrman!). We've had these for hundreds of years.

Third ... er, wasn't the Didache discovered in the mid-to-late 1800's? And wouldn't that be considered to be, for the most part, "orthodox"?

In other words, the orthodox stuff from that time frame (and before) is well-known and has been for centuries. Is Ehrman really saying that because no "orthodox documents" dating to the second century have been discovered in the past 100 years (so, pre-1906?) that therefore, QED, "heterodox Christians" must've been in the majority? I can't think so, but that seems to be the force of his argument here.

If we're measuring on mass of documents discovered alone — and not just documents located in the past 100 years — then we have scads of orthodox (and heretical/'heterodox') stuff from the NT canon, to the writings of the Church Fathers on down. (On that count, shouldn't Ehrman subscribe to the priority of the Byzantine text if numbers are the important thing?)

Anyway, I'm babbling. I was unsatisfied with Ehrman's conclusion. Because we really don't know much about Judas apart from that he "betrayed" Jesus (for a sum) and then either commited suicide or died horribly, Ehrman ends up spending much of his conclusion providing his view of Jesus — that Jesus was an itinerant apocalyptic preacher — so he can then posit that because that's what and how Jesus taught, that's what Judas must've subscribed to wholeheartedly. After all, Judas was one of the twelve. So then Ehrman discusses why someone with the sorts of beliefs he ascribes to Judas could possibly have betrayed his itinerant apocalyptic Jesus. Ehrman thinks that Jesus taught one thing publicly (son of man will arrive in judgement) and another thing privately to his disciples (Jesus will be the 'King of the Jews'). What Judas betrayed was that Jesus really did claim to be 'King of the Jews' and therefore provided the necessary evidence for the trial.

I see a few problems with this.

Following Ehrman's logic, then, all twelve of the inner-circle disciples would've believed that same stuff to the degree Judas did. But only Judas betrayed. Why? Why did the others stick it out if they were ultimately looking for the same thing Judas was?

While Judas was in the circle of the twelve, he wasn't routinely (to our knowledge) included in the sub-group of Peter/James/John. So there were likely some disciples closer to Jesus. If Jesus was what Bart says, why wouldn't others (e.g. Peter/James/John) more acutely come to the conclusions that Judas apparently did?

Also, people following Jesus wanted to make him king, and that relatively early on in his ministry. We see this in John 6.14-15:

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. (Jn 6:14-15, ESV, emphasis added. See also Jn 12.12-15)

So the Jesus-as-King vibe is known (or at least desired) outside of the group of twelve. And Jesus didn't want to be king. At least, not a king like the people in John 6 wanted him to be.

I don't have a worked-out alternate view of why Judas did what he did. But Ehrman's view reads just as much into the person of Judas and his motives as any other view does (particularly traditional views). Ehrman relies on his reconstruction of Jesus, then reads a sort of proto-disciple out of that view and applies those attributes/motives to Judas, attempting to make sense out of the gospel texts and his reconstruction. Given his reconstruction, he goes the only places he can.

After examining the "historical Judas", Ehrman then goes into why Gospel of Judas is so spectacular (the last chapter). But he wants to do it responsibly:

How do we put a discovery like this in perspective? We should recognize the Gospel of Judas as the spectacular find it is, without sensationalizing it into something that it is not. (Ehrman, 172).

Sure, I can agree with that. The problem is where it goes next:

The Gospel does matter, a lot. Not because it gives us more reliable information about what happened in the life of Jesus, but because it gives us more reliable information about what was happening in the lives of his followers in the decades after his death. For understanding the early history of Christianity, the Gospel of Judas is tremendously important. It is safe to say that it is the most significant Christian text to appear in the past sixty years. (Ehrman, 173, emphasis added).

My problem with this statement is that he's classifying Gospel of Judas as a "Christian" text. It's a gnostic text, and — apart from the false dialogues between Judas and Jesus — a fairly standard one at that.

The use of "60 years" is a bit specious. Nag Hammadi documents were discovered in 1945 ... just outside that spectacular 60 year window. I'm guessing that Bart would say Nag Hammidi gnostic documents were "Christian" too, hence the 60-year window.

Lastly, note that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1948. So Dead Sea Scrolls have no impact on Christianity but Gospel of Judas does? I'm lost.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. I need to get home (I'm writing this at the office) and think about dinner. The bottom line is: I don't think Gospel of Judas has much if anything to say about early Christianity. I'd say it has something to say about Sethian Gnosticism and it's co-opting of New Testament personae, and that we have (rather) early evidence of this now. But Christianity? Nope.

And so ends my rolling series on Ehrman's Gospel of Judas book. If you've read this far, thanks for doing so, and apologies for the scatteredness. I should end and once again say that there was good stuff in the book, but the use of it as a platform for all this other stuff, as well as the conclusions about the value of the Gospel of Judas* made it a trial for me to read.

* What, a book about Judas and the Gospel of Judas finds that the Gospel of Judas is a spectactular find, the most important "Christian" document in 60 years? Hmmmmmm, why is that a surprise. I'd guess that a book on that topic, written like this one is, would have to come to that conclusion, no?

Stephen C. Carlson informs us that Hypotyposeis is three years old on Monday.

Congratulations!

I recall when I started ricoblog just over two years ago, Stephen was one of the first to link to me and has been an honest, encouraging, and critical (when he needs to be) supporter.

Please do head over and check out his blog, Hypotyposeis. And if you haven't read his book on Secret Mark yet ... well, you need to.

[see Part I in this series on Ehrman's Gospel of Judas]

I'm through the first eight chapters of Bart Ehrman's The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. Perhaps it's time for a listing of chapters, so you'll know what I've been reading:

1. My Introduction to the Gospel of Judas
2. Judas in Our Earliest Gospels
3. Judas in Later Gospel Traditions
4. Before the Discovery: Our previous Knowledge of a Gospel of Judas
5. The Discovery of the Gospel of Judas
6. The Gospel of Judas: An Overview
7. The Gospel of Judas and Early Christian Gnosticism
8. Jesus, Judas, and the Twelve in the Gospel of Judas
9. Who Was Judas Iscariot?
10. What Did Judas Betray and Why Did He Betray It?
11. The Gospel of Judas in Perspective

So, I've read the first eight (through page 140) and I'm in the midst of chapter nine, though I'll only report on chapters four through eight here.

Earlier, I mentioned something about the book title being misleading since (to the point I'd read to) the book was more about examining the canonical gospels than the Gospel of Judas. Well, that was true for the first 50 pages, though the emphasis on the Gospel of Judas is alive and well in the last 3/4 of the book. So ... I get to retract that criticism. Please make a mental note of it, apologies for misleading anyone.

Now, on with the new stuff.

Ehrman gives a pretty standard run-down of pre-2005 knowledge of "Gospel of Judas" in referring to Irenaeus' description. Ehrman's typical battle-of-the-competing-orthodoxies vibe runs through this section. You can pick up the vibe in sentences like this:

To help make sense of Irenaeus's comments about the Gospel of Judas, I need to provide some background information on Irenaeus himself and on the book that he produced, in which he attacks "heretical" groups of Christians as nefarious enemies o the truth. (Ehrman, 55-56, quotes are his).

Here's another:

Irenaeus was particularly distressed about the widespread presence of Gnostic Christians in the midst of the church. He viewed Gnostics as false believers propagating a false gospel, sowing weeds among the pure wheat of the true people of God. These heretics needed to be rooted out and destroyed—not by torture and execution by by invective and argument. For the church to be pure, it had to embrace the true teaching about Christ and his apostles. And so Irenaeus wrote a long attack on Gnostic [RWB: are big-G Gnostics different than little-g gnostics?] heretics in which he detailed their nefarious views, described their insidious writings, attacked their heretical perspectives, maligned their immoral teachers, and generally tried to se the record straight so that his readers would know the "truth" about the Christian religion they claimed to profess. (Ehrman, 56-57, quotes are his).

Maybe we need a "Gospel of Irenaeus" so we can rehabilitate our views of Irenaeus. (Yes, that's sarcasm).

Ok, getting back to the show. Again, I can only really say that there is decent information in the book once you get through the trying-too-hard-to-be-folksy approach used to introduce entry-level readers to the larger topics at hand. But getting through that (as in the Irenaeus sections quoted above) can lead to grinding of teeth. Perhaps it reads well if my primary reading on gnosticism (or Irenaeus for that matter) has come from the notes in the NIV Study Bible, and perhaps that's the audience. It just gets tiring after about five minutes.

Chapter five is a recounting of the modern end of the tale, the finding and mis-handling of the Gospel of Judas. Ehrman recounts it just fine, so there's no need to detail it here.

Chapter six is an overview of the Gospel of Judas itself. Again, it is serviceable and adheres largely to the text as established by Kasser/Wurst and translated by Meyer.

Chapter seven paints GJudas in the gnostic milieu. There's nothing really new here, either. And because Ehrman is talking in generalities about gnosticism (or is it Gnosticism?) there's no opportunity to fuss about differences in different accounts. At the end of the chapter, though, he begins to bring out the idea that there are traces of Jewish Apocalypticism within gnostic texts in general and GJudas in particular.

Chapter eight begins to look back again where we left off in chapter three—back to Jesus, Judas and the Twelve. This time, however, they're looked at in the context of the Gospel of Judas. And here we come to the point where, upon reading a sentence (the bold-italicised one below), my only comment was "Why, Bart? Why?!" (you can ask my wife, she heard me say it!). Here's the text:

The Gospel of Judas provides an alternative vision [RWB: context here: 'alternative' to standard treatments with Judas as bungling but vengeful revolutionary fueled by zealousy, greed, sin and devil-possession and subsequently painted as anti-semite]. It is true that over the years some Christians have wondered if the consistent denigration of Judas was fair. Theologically, some have asked, if Christ had to die ofr the sins of the world, and Judas is the one that made it possible, wasn't that a good thing? SOmething that Christ himself wanted? moreover, some scholars have noted that with the passing of time our ancient traditions portray Judas in increasingly villainous ways. Could it be that in the very earliest traditions, which now have been lost, Judas was seen as an itimate of Jesus who simply did his master's will?

If Judas ever was portrayed this way, there is no surviving evidence of it, no text that speaks of Judas in any positive way—until now. The Gospel of Judas stands alone in insisting that Judas was not only close to Jesus but also was the only one among the disciples who understood who Jesus was and did what he wanted. (Ehrman, 138)

Note to folks that are writing books: If you write sentence that, on first draft, causes you to smile smugly and say "yeah, that's awesome!" ... well, flag it to review in two weeks. Chances are you'll read it then and say "How could I have written that cliché-ridden tripe?!" Have a good friend who can write read it, and they'll say the same thing. Then remove the offending line and re-write the paragraph.

This, in a nutshell, is my interaction with Ehrman's popular work. The bent to sensationalise. I can hear the carnival barker now imploring me to check out the wonders of the incredible, new-found gospel. It makes me cringe. But at the same time, there is enough one can scrape out (once the sensationalism is disposed of) that is decent introductory material (though the babbling about "all the differences" and "competing orthodoxies" does get tired).

I plan on one more post to finish up the book. The last three chapters are where discussion on the "historical Judas" take place, and the part I'm most interested to read. I'm afraid of what I'll read, though; I keep fearing it'll be about inconsistencies of accounts. But I keep telling myself: "It'll be OK. He'll come around, and the sensationalism will be muted at the end. Really." Tune in and see where we end up.

I've recently finished working through looking at variants (in the four Gospels) between Scrivener's 1881 Greek New Testament (ostensibly the Greek text behind the Authorised Version, with variants from the Greek text behind the Revised Version in bold) and the NA27.

In what will come as a surprise to no one who has read of variants between the various TR editions (loosely 'Byzantine') and the NA/UBS editions, I make note of the following sorts of general differences:

• Scrivener's TR seems to be the more harmonizing of the two in accounts among the synoptics.
• Scrivener's TR adds specificity where NA/UBS assumes things. For example, in Jn 20.29, Scrivener's TR explicitly adds Θωμᾶ (Thomas) while NA27 assumes it.
• Also, when editions are different, Scrivener's TR will tend to make pronoun references explicit by including the name (likely with article) instead of the pronoun. This is seen when things like NA/UBS have "and he answered and said to them" where Scrivener will have "and Jesus [with article] answered and said to them" (sorry, no easy refs at hand).
• When different, Scrivener's TR routinely adds an article to personal name (though not neccesarily place names) where NA/UBS lack the article.
• John has far fewer differences (and they're far easier to reconcile) than the synoptics do.
• Differences of case and number (but same word)
• Differences of orthography
• Bona-fide, different-word variants. Though likely to Bart Ehrman's dismay, they are not earth-shattering or of the nature to severely change the meaning of the text in the vast majority of instances. And where they are, they are well-documented in the apparatus and commentaries.

I post this anecdotal list not to present some new, gasp-inducing information; rather it is simply to record it for myself. Writing helps me remember things, which is why you've no doubt noticed that when I discuss things like this, many times I simply restate the obvious or conventional wisdom in different words.

I will say, however, that working through each and every variation (thinking about which parts of the two editions are the same, and which parts are different) underscored the sorts of variations one finds in the Gospels of these two editions. And that, of course, will help me in the future when examining variants of all stripes. "Oh yeah, like the diffs we find in the gospels of NA and TR editions". Note that most Bible Software support textual comparisons for this sort of purpose. Logos has a video showing the feature used with English versions (go to around 1:14 for the specific feature), but it works with any language.

At least for me, it's one thing to read an abstract, digested version of information (such as you'd find in an a book on textual criticism or the Byz/NA debate) and quite another thing to actually work through primary data and come to my own conclusions. The above anecdotal notes are nothing different than an introductory tome on the matter would make note of; but for me, it sticks in my head better (with examples more readily in mind) because I actually worked thorugh it.

I will also say that as I go through Acts, at least at present, the variations are of a different character than the gospels.

Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) points us to the OUP Blog for some stuff by Bart Ehrman on the Gospel of Judas. Two posts:

• Oct 9, 2006: A Few Questions for Bart Ehrman
• Oct 10, 2006: Why I Wrote The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot

I have been discussing this book. The intro post, along with an index to subsequent posts, is Bart Ehrman: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.

I've read through approx. 3/4 of the book and should have another post either later today or tomorrow. I'll revise some of the statements I made earlier, and discuss some of the content I've read.

In addition to Klauck's Ancient Letters and the New Testament and Ehrman's Gospel of Judas book, I have a few others in the hopper at present:

• The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott
• What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
• Great Expectations: Your All-In-One Resource for Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sandy Jones

Hmmmmmm ... what's the common theme here?