In the chapter “Prophecy Historicized or Tradition Scripturalized? Reflections on the Origin of the Passion Narratives” in New Testament and the Church (T&T Clark 2015), Mark Goodacre examines the question still debated in mainstream New Testament studies: whether the Gospels compose their stories by converting prophecy (essentially a pesher of prophecy) into history (thus creating historical fiction that “reifies” prophetic claims about the messiah, as a technique to teach how the imagined character of Jesus embodies and communicates the ideals of the movement), or by taking an oral tradition (which often supposedly at least goes back to some original eyewitness report) and “dressing it up” (exaggerating and embellishing and reframing it) with those same prophetic scriptures. His paper outlines and critiques the two sides of that debate, using the Passion Narrative as his working example; and it is another example of his well-informed and balanced treatment of issues in Jesus studies generally. I won’t summarize it here. It’s well worth reading on its own.

Questioning Axiomatic Assumptions

My interest today is in the question of historicity generally, given my publication of On the Historicity of Jesus a year before (Goodacre may have completed this chapter around the same time). In other words, I am not here interested in whether the Gospel stories contain anything historical; but whether even the “Savior of God” (as Jesus literally means) starring in them was ever historical. Like most scholars, Goodacre simply assumes the latter, and then proceeds to ask—if we interpret all the evidence we have on that assumption—how much history might there still be in these stories (and I must reiterate that the answer could be none and still there be a historical Jesus, so Goodacre is not entertaining a circular argument). Overall, Goodacre sides with the growing majority of scholars who side with “scepticism of the historicity of the bulk of the Passion Narrative” (p. 49) but concludes it’s on balance more probable that there is at least something of history in it (hence admitting that “the bulk” of it is scripture-based fan-fiction does not require going all the way to saying all of it is). Goodacre does not propose to reconstruct what in the story is historical; and he could easily allow that to be impossible. It is no contradiction to say “something historical is likely in here, but we don’t know precisely what” (in OHJ, p. 34, I allow minimal historicity to maintain even as little as that “someone” even just eventually called Jesus was executed by someone, it need not even be the Romans, who was then believed by his followers to have been subsequently raised by God).

Goodacre rests this conclusion of allowing some history yet within the Passion Narrative on two premises: the assumption (which he does not here defend) that, regardless of how much of anything about him is true in the Gospels, there must have been a historical Jesus; and his conclusion (p. 50) that Paul refers to oral tradition in the Epistles. Paul does not do that, however. In fact, he repeatedly denies it. We can doubt Paul’s honesty on that point (OHJ, pp. 536, 587-90), but we ought not mistake what he is nevertheless claiming: that he had nothing from oral tradition, but all from scripture and revelation. I’ve debated Goodacre on this point before. He seems to think Paul somewhere in the Epistles refers to receiving oral traditions from the Apostles (who were presumably “Disciples,” even though Paul never says so). But Paul adamantly denies he did (even swearing to that). Every time he refers to received tradition, he means by revelation from the Lord. All he did with former Apostles is confirm his revelation matched theirs (at least well enough for them to diplomatically accept his mission in conjunction with theirs; and cash payoffs raked off his various churches might have played a part in that: see J.D.M Derrett, “Financial Aspects of the Resurrection,” in The Empty Tomb). We therefore have no evidence in the Epistles of any historical tradition about Jesus—the only traditions there were (such as Paul, for example, was handing down to his congregations) were revelatory traditions, and new inspired readings of scripture.

So we really ought not be starting from Goodacre’s assumption of historicity; least of all for that only reason he gives. We ought to be leaving that as the unknown that we have yet to prove; not a premise from which all other arguments must then follow. When Paul says his source for the crucifixion is scripture (which is what the use of kata indicated in Greek), he might mean exactly what he says: it was learned from scripture. In which case there is no history at all in the Passion Narrative. It is all made-up. Of course we shouldn’t assume that, either. To “assume” either is equally unjustified. Hence we need evidence that one interpretation is the more likely. It is of course when I tried looking for that evidence when completing my grant-funded postdoc study on historicity that I discovered there isn’t any; or worse, that what evidence there was, pointed in the other direction—even if not as strongly as many mythicists would like; my conclusion, after all, was that there is as much as a 1 in 3 chance Paul did mean a historical man’s execution was matched to scripture, not that a cosmic man’s execution was learned from scripture. But that I found the latter had at least a 2 in 3 chance of being the case enraged historicists. So my results pissed off both sides of the debate. But I always go where the evidence leads, not where peer pressure demands.

As I wrote:

[In] Galatians 1 … Paul not only makes exactly the opposite argument (that human traditions were worthless and only direct revelations from the risen Jesus held any authority), but clearly feels compelled by his fellow Christians to say that (see Chapter 11, §2). It was evidently so commonly held at the time that human traditions were worthless and only direct revelations of value that Paul had to go out of his way to deny relying on human traditions and insist he had received his information by direct revelation instead. His audience in Galatia would accept no other argument from him, and were evidently alarmed by some accusations that Paul had (gasp!) relied on oral tradition, forcing Paul to remind them that he would do no such thing, and certainly never did; that in fact he relied only on direct revelations of the risen Jesus, the only source they evidently respected. But by the time 2 Peter was written, at least one major sect had completely reversed course on that point and was warring against any continued use of direct revelation by insisting upon verifiable human tradition. A human tradition it freely fabricated—as that letter itself is an example of.

OHJ, p. 353

This transition I have written on before (How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?). But that’s a separate matter. Regardless of whether we think that happened or not, we cannot simply assume the sequence went from “revelatory being discovered in scripture” to “historical man instructing appointed tradents” or the other way around. Thus it is important that Goodacre’s argument regarding the Passion Narrative flips the other way around when we switch the starting assumptions: if Paul really meant what he said, and even the Apostles’ knowledge that Jesus was crucified came from scripture, then we should conclude so did the rest of the Passion Narrative. There is then no basis for assuming any historical data is in it. It’s all fiction.

Questioning Axiomatic Inferences

One of the arguments Goodacre explores is whether we can say it didn’t all come from scripture because we cannot identify the scriptural origin of every detail. That would of course be recognized by any logician as a fallacy. Just because we haven’t identified where, for example, the names of the three women at the cross, burial, and tomb (and their number) “came from” in the scriptures, it does not follow that they didn’t derive in some fashion from the scriptures. One needs a reason to conclude that; one cannot simply assume it. Already the fact that most of the narrative comes from identifiable scriptures actually argues the contrary: it establishes that the prior probability that anything else in the narrative also came from the scriptures is high, not low. But more importantly, scripture-built fiction won’t simply “lift” verses and concepts and piece them together (the way much of the Passion Narrative gets elaborated in the Gospel of Peter, for example). It will use the scriptures for inspiring ideas, and then compose from there, exactly as was taught in Greek schools of the time, with regard to their “sacred scriptures,” their revered poets and playwrights (which schools the Gospel authors most definitely attended; there is no other way to have mastered the literary techniques they employ and the requisite Greek to effect them—on which point see the analysis of Dennis MacDonald and Thomas Brodie: OHJ, p. 398, n. 23).

Thus, for example, we know a lot of Mark is actually just the reification into fiction of the ideas of Paul in his Epistles (a fact for which the evidence now is extensive). So the fact that such material is not a direct lift “from scripture” does not support the conclusion that that material must therefore be historical. It is most definitely a reification of scripture through the mediating ideas of Paul. It’s just accomplished through a more free and creative composition; telling a story, rather than lazily cutting-and-pasting. This includes the invention of “three women” attending the “three stations” of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, and even the choices made as to their names (see my discussion in Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb). They appear out of nowhere (in Mark they are never characters found in the ministry of Jesus), they perform obviously symbolic, indeed even numerological, functions in the narrative (three women, doing three things), their names are bizarrely apposite, and then they vanish from history. Students of ancient myth untainted by exposure to Christian apologetics would immediately recognize these women as a fiction—and a fiction midrashically derived from scripture: a triad of two Marys, one associated with Jacob, i.e. Israel, and the other with Migdol, a place of direct resonance from the Book of Exodus, mediated by a woman who just happens to have the feminized name of Solomon—hence a woman in the role of wisdom: a cypher for Sophia, the very title and main character of the Wisdom of Solomon, a core scripture to the earliest Christians, particularly Paul.

Sure, we cannot know for certain that this is what is happening here. It could just as well be the case that there just “happened” to be, coincidentally, these three conveniently-named women in oral historical traditions of these events for Mark to make use of. But absent evidence weighing specifically either way, it’s equally likely either way (on this point, using Joseph of Arimathea and Simon of Cyrene as examples, see the works of William John Lyons, cited in OHJ, p. 643). And when we then look at the fact that most of the book of Mark is constructed fictionally in this way (OHJ, Chapter 10.4), we really ought to admit it’s more likely so is the rest of it. This holds even for Passion Narrative content that doesn’t derive from scripture but from the literary or philosophical needs of the author, as I show could easily be the case for Mark’s invention of Simon of Cyrene, forming another triad (a structure Mark is routinely fond of), being a father of two conveniently-named men, Alexander and Rufus (OHJ, pp. 445-51). If we read this as a symbolic allusion to Alexander the Great and Musonius Rufus (historical, not biblical, figures), a very apposite reason for Mark’s introducing them arises. I explain how in OHJ, but importantly I add there the point that in no way do I thus mean I have proved that this is what Mark meant. Rather, I have proved it is just as likely what Mark meant as that there was any real such triad of people associated bizarrely with the crucifixion of Jesus. So we cannot simply assume Mark meant one or the other—rendering this material of no use for deciding the question. When we look at the material we can establish as one or the other, every single case falls on the side of fiction. Not a single detail of the Passion Narrative can we corroborate as a real event. So odds are, at worst, it’s all fiction; and at best, we cannot claim to know it isn’t (that apologists, and even secular historians who came up through an apologetics tradition, have a hard time grasping that distinction is a major theme of my Postgame on My Pastor Damon Richardson Debate).

That conclusion would have gone differently if the evidence had. If we had reliable corroborating evidence for the historicity of some of the details in the Passion Narrative, then we would be in a different position (compare, for example, the situation we are in with Haile Selassie: OHJ, pp. 18-20). But that is not the position we find ourselves in with Jesus. This all explains why I am not convinced by Goodacre’s argument here that these women and men signify something historical behind Mark’s account. Goodacre brings this up in his critique of Crossan. I’ve already elsewhere addressed Crossan’s arguments for the historicity of Jesus (which are minimal, because he agrees the Gospels are mostly fictional: see The Power of Parable for his most complete defense of that point, one with which I concur). Here Goodacre notes another argument Crossan has made (pp. 43-44), pointing out that “one of the very few details in the Passion Narrative that Crossan regards as historical is the note in Mark 15:40-41, that certain named women were watching the crucifixion from a distance” and “in favor of the historicity of this detail Gerd Theissen points out [in The Gospels in Context, pp. 177-78] that the names given here appear to presume the reader’s knowledge of their identity.”

To be clear, Goodacre reminds us, Crossan argues that the women being at the burial and empty tomb is probably made up, but is their being at the crucifixion a historical fact? “My best answer,” Crossan says, “is yes, because the male disciples had fled; if the women had not been watching, we would not know even the brute fact of crucifixion (as distinct, for example, from Jesus being summarily speared or beheaded in prison).” Goodacre already identifies the flaw in Crossan’s reasoning here: “His basis for affirming” this is that “the male disciples had fled” but “there is no way Crossan can know this,” since their flight derives from “a quotation of Zechariah 13:7, ‘Strike the sheperd and the sheep will be scattered'” and therefore Crossan’s argument “presupposes that an explicitly scriptural element in Mark’s story is historical” (p. 45). Quite right. This is a common defect of apologetics as a methodology (which is the only method Crossan has learned to use, even if he has stopped using it for what it was originally designed for): to simply presume something in the Gospels is historical, and use that to “bootstrap” something else into being historical. That’s circular reasoning. If the story is admittedly fiction, it could well all be fiction. (It’s all the worse that Crossan’s argument isn’t even logical; the manner of Jesus’ execution would be publicly announced and generally known. No one needed to “be there” to know of it.)

Goodacre proposes instead two “better” reasons to trust the historicity of these women, one being the juxtaposition of scriptural and non-scriptural material in their presentation, and the other the use of the names of people “about whom we know little else.” Yes, he admits, “it may be that this material also turns out to be unhistorical but if so, its lack of historicity is clearly not explained by prophecy [being historicized]”; Crossan’s thesis, Goodacre concludes, is thus incomplete, as “substantial amounts of traditional material are left unaccounted for.” Goodacre then indeed uses Simon of Cyrene and his named sons as an example of historicity-indicative material. “Perhaps,” he says, these sons and the women are all witnesses and thus the original sources for the tale passed down to Mark. In other words, Goodacre’s argument is that we can’t explain how they are in the narrative otherwise. But this is a modal argument (an argument about what’s possible), and a modal argument can be refuted by any possible alternative explanation–we need not prove the alternative probable, only possible. The burden is then on anyone who wishes to insist the “historicity” explanation is the one that’s more probable (and as I find, there simply is no argument for that to be had).

And here’s where things go poorly for the historicist. Mark never says this is why these men are in the story; and they are not in the story as mere observers (Alexander and Rufus are not even present), but all play strange roles, with unexpected symbolism (three men, three women; symbolically convenient tasks and relationships; convenient names). The fact that none of this weird stuff is explained is actually evidence of fiction, for having strange people show up and perform apposite narrative functions and then vanish, without explanation, is not a characteristic of any kind of historical reporting. Goodacre thinks the lack of explanation must mean the audience already knows these people, but there is no basis for assuming that; they could instead be people whose names were intended to convey a parabolic meaning for the discerning—exactly as Mark has Jesus explain, covertly to the reader of his own Gospel, in Mark 4:9-13. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The scales are balanced. We get nowhere here. And when we look at what the trend is in Mark, it is not toward listing witnesses or anything historically indicative; it’s toward cryptic symbolism (see OHJ, Chapter 10.4). We therefore have more reason to trust that assumption, than the other. Either way, we don’t get to Goodacre’s conclusion here, or Crossan’s.

Conclusion

Mark Goodacre is an excellent critic who does not truck with dogma. He’s also a great educator and all-around guy: see his recent interview on MythVision for a classic example, where you’ll have a good time learning a ton of interesting things (shout out here to Derek Lambert, a great host). It’s always a joy watching Goodacre explain stuff, as I have had the privilege of in person; and we also did back-to-back interviews for Cameron Reilly’s film Marketing the Messiah. Goodacre admirably needs reasons to agree with something any “consensus” maintains, and he is a true skeptic: he will always ask the Socratic question why are we supposed to believe that. In this case he advances two reasons to believe in at least a fractional historicity of the Passion Narrative: that Paul linked an oral tradition to the creedal belief in Jesus’s crucifixion (which I’ve explained isn’t the case; and Goodacre might have a more nuanced position on that by now) and the inclusion of two named triads of otherwise-unexplained people (the three woman; and Simon and his sons).

That latter argument, however, rests on a modal argument: that there is no other explanation for these inclusions. Goodacre can be excused for not then knowing that, actually, there is. So the question then becomes two-fold: (1) are the alternative reasons I’ve suggested for their invention plausible (is it credibly possible that they all, in both their narrative function and their names, serve a symbolic, indeed parabolic purpose for Mark; indeed one we can even identify, which exactly matches Mark’s overall messaging?) and/or (2) is there evidence against that being Mark’s intention and instead for his intention being the preservation of incidental historical data? I think the case for (1) being yes and (2) being no is strong enough to discard this as even worth the bother of further inquiry. But for anyone not yet convinced, that’s where your next step is: to prove (1) a no and (2) a yes. Which you have to accomplish not with apologetical methods (such as with possibiliter fallacies and the like), but genuine historical methods (on which see How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed (or Anything Else in the World)).