At least as far back as the writings of Heinrich Reimarus (1694 – 1768), some critical scholars of the New Testament and Early Christianity have taken the position that Jesus falsely predicted that the end of the world would come in the lifetime of his disciples. I even remember the objection being made in an off-the-cuff line in Friedrich Nietzsche's polemic, Antichrist. The work of Johannes Weis (1863 – 1914) and Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) in particular made the view respectable in the halls of academe. C.S. Lewis even called Mark 13:30, where Jesus says, "truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place," the "most embarrassing verse in the bible."[1] I have long held that this is the strongest historical argument against Christianity. Indeed, my main reason for abandoning Christianity for a time was that I had come to sincerely believe that Jesus did in fact falsely predict that the end of the world would occur during the lifetime of his disciples. And obviously, if Jesus really did make such a prediction, then he was a false prophet, and clearly not divine. Moreover, the probability that God would raise such a false prophet from the dead, in effect vindicating his message, is very low indeed. I have no time to entertain the preposterous views of scholars like Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928 – 2014), who profess belief in Christianity but who think that Jesus made an importantly false prediction here. If Jesus made a false prediction here, then Christianity is false, period. So, I believe that the arguments for the failed-apocalyptic-prophet view (FPV) are ones that every sincere veritas-seeking Christian should wrestle with. For recent defenses of FPV, I recommend reading Bart Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of a New Millenium, and Dale Allison's Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet.
Now, whether Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet is a
huge topic that involves an assessment of a wide variety of different items.
For example, does Jesus' authentic uses of "kingdom" refer to just a
future state, a la Albert Schweitzer? What does Paul mean in 1 Thessalonians 4?
was he really expecting Jesus to come in his lifetime, a la Schweitzer, Bart
Ehrman, et al? or did he just think that it was possible Jesus would come in
his lifetime, a la Ben Witherington? are 2 Thessalonians and 2 Timothy written
by Paul, and if so, what does that tell us about Paul's eschatological views?
What does Jesus mean in his Olivet discourse? Was the Book of Revelations
written before or after the destruction of the second temple? Was John the
Baptist really an apocalyptist, or was his warnings just standard rhetoric
amongst Old Testament prophets? Does Jesus' radical ethical teachings, which
include teachings like "sell all you have and follow me," (Matthew
19:21) imply that he thought the end was near? Was there really a widespread
belief among Christians of the very primitive church that Jesus would return in
their lifetimes, or was this belief specific to some people in Thessaloniki? Is
there a trend of de-apocalyptization in the New Testament? And so on and so on.
Unfortunately, I do not know of any scholarly books written in English that
devote themselves to comprehensively refuting the failed-apocalyptic-prophet
view (FPV). The closest thing I can think of is Witherington's book, Jesus,
Paul and the End of the World. This is a very strange lacuna in the
literature; you would think that Christian scholars would have spent a
considerable amount of time addressing this important issue.
I was recently asked about FPV, and so I plan on writing a
series of blog posts explaining why the arguments for FPV are not, in the final
analysis, successful. In this first post of a series of posts, I discuss some general
or a priori considerations that count against FPV. They are as follows:
1.
Given FPV, the Synoptic
authors very likely wrote their Gospels before the destruction of the second
temple, i.e., before 70 A.D. This is because it is implausible that they were
consciously writing down what they believed were false prophecies of Jesus.
This implies something important: while FPV implies that Jesus was a failed
prophet, it also implies that the historicity of the Synoptics is a lot
stronger than is typically granted by critical scholars of a liberal slant. FPV
implies that all of the Synoptics were written within forty years of Jesus'
death, well within the time of eyewitnesses of Jesus and those who knew
eyewitnesses. This is a consequence of FPV that some of its proponents, like
Bart Ehrman, don't want to accept. But I think they should accept this, given
their view. So one consequence of FPV is that the evidence for the general
reliability of the Gospels and resurrection of Jesus is stronger than it would
have been if the Synoptic gospels were written after 70 A.D—and this itself
somewhat lowers the probability of FPV, since the evidence for the resurrection
is itself evidence against FPV (God would almost certainly not vindicate the
message of a false prophet by raising him from the dead).
2.
Another point is that the
proponent of FPV has to believe that Jesus did in fact correctly prophesy that
the second temple would be destroyed in the generation of his disciples, even
if he was wrong about the end of the world in general. Ehrman, for example,
does in fact believe this. This correct prophesy is mild, though not very
strong, evidence that Jesus was on a divine mission, contrary to FPV. Note that
I say that the evidence is "not very strong" because while it may
have been improbable for someone in Jesus' position to predict when the second
temple would be destroyed (given the falsity of Christianity), it wouldn't have
been that improbable; as Ehrman points out, we do have evidence of other
first-century figures who prophesied the destruction of the second temple.[2]
Furthermore, Messianic expectations were very high in the first century, which increases
the probability that someone will prophesy an imminent confrontation with Rome.[3]
So the fact that FPV implies pre-70 dates for the composition of the Synoptics
itself mildly lowers the probability of FPV.
3.
If Christianity is false,
which FPV implies, then the prior probability that a first-century Jewish rabbi
with the great moral teachings of Jesus would have an extremely lofty
self-understanding is fairly low. But
given FPV, Jesus did have an extremely lofty impression of himself. For inextricably
found in the very Olivet discourses that proponents of FPV utilize to make
their points, are verses where Jesus implies that he occupies a position higher
than the angels (Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36), and where he says that even though
heaven and earth pass away, his words shall never pass away (Mark 13:31; Matthew
24:35; Luke 21:33). This means that on FPV, Jesus had a very lofty and maniacal
understanding of himself. So this implication lowers the probability of FPV.
4.
If Christianity is false,
which FPV implies, then the prior probability that Jesus' "coming"
sayings (e.g., Matthew 10:23, Mark 14:62) were meant to convey that he was
going to literally "come" sometime in the future is low. This is
because he was already there—with the disciples. If Christianity is
false, then it isn't plausible that Jesus believed that he was going to resurrect
from the dead and then come in power, or anything like that. I infer
that secular scholars of the New Testament unanimously reject the idea that
Jesus thought he was going to rise from the dead three days after his being
executed, and then come back in glory and judge the world sometime afterwards.
The prior probability of his believing and teaching something like this would
be low. Again—he was already there on Earth, in Jerusalem, with the disciples.
It only makes sense to see these sorts of sayings as some sort of reference to
a literal future parousia if one assumes some sort of Christian
understanding of Jesus, like that he taught that he was going to rise from the
dead and then return one day. So it seems to me that proponents of FPV are implicitly
appealing to distinctly Christians views of Jesus, ones which would be
improbable given the falsity of Christianity. On a non-Christian naturalistic
understanding of Jesus, his literal coming simply makes no sense. He was
already there.
5.
The last point is merely
that one cannot assess the question of whether or not Jesus falsely predicted
that the end of the world would come in the lifetime of his disciples without also looking at the evidence for the
resurrection. Since, as I implied above, the proposition that <God
vindicated Jesus' message by raising him from the dead> is probabilistically
incompatible with the proposition that <Jesus predicted that the end of the
world would occur in the lifetime of his disciples>, it follows that
evidence for either proposition will be evidence against the other. If
the evidence for the resurrection is sufficiently strong, it can overwhelm the
evidence that for FPV. However, if the evidence for FPV is sufficiently strong,
it can overwhelm the evidence for the resurrection, or at the least
significantly lower the probability of its occurring.
So, before even looking in depth at the specific evidence
for FPV, we know that there are certain probabilistic costs of the position.
Someone who adopts FPV should, in order to be probabilistically consistent,
adopt the view that (i) the Synoptic Gospels were all written before 70 A.D.,
that (ii) Jesus accurately predicted that the destruction of the second temple
would occur within the lifetime of his disciples, that (iii) Jesus had and
taught an extremely lofty understanding of himself, and that (iv) the prior probability
that Jesus ever said that he would literally come sometime in the future
is low. So the prior probability of FPV, given the falsity of Christianity, is
very low. This implies that the prior probability of FPV given the falsity of
Christianity is a lot lower than the prior probability of ~FPV given the
falsity of Christianity. It remains to be seen whether the specific evidence
for FPV will not only make FPV more likely given the falsity of Christianity,
but if it will make FPV more likely simpliciter—i.e., whether the specific
evidence will make FPV more probably true than false given either
Christianity's truth, or its falsity. We also made the important point
that the evidence for FPV must be juxtapositioned with the evidence for the resurrection
before any final assessment can be made regarding the probability of FPV. In the next post we will examine the specific evidence that comes from Jesus' famous Olivet discourse, and assess how much confirmation this evidences gives to FPV.
