Today I'm going to address a claim made by Bart Ehrman. The claim that the historical Jesus's own statements pertaining to forgiveness could be construed as a self-designation to be apart of a priestly class:
"Someone may argue that there are other reasons, apart from explicit divine self-claims, to suspect that Jesus saw himself as divine. For example, he does amazing miracles that surely only a divine figure could do; and he forgives people’s sins, which surely is a prerogative of God alone; and he receives worship, as people bow down before him, which surely indicates that he welcomes divine honors...When Jesus forgives sins, he never says “I forgive you,” as God might say, but “your sins are forgiven,” which means that God has forgiven the sins. This prerogative for pronouncing sins forgiven was otherwise reserved for Jewish priests in honor of sacrifices that worshipers made at the temple. Jesus may be claiming a priestly prerogative, but not a divine one." (How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, Kindle Edition With Calibre (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2014.) p. 247)
Best Interpretation of the Account
Before I begin, it is worth noting that the reason why Ehrman had to appeal to the priestly office to account for the phenomenon of the forgiveness of sin is due to the fact that in ancient Israel, it was priests and not prophets (or kings) who were responsible for the forgiveness of sins. As Ehrman knows the roles of these anointed classes were always segregated. Even a king could only make pronouncements not forgiveness of sins, that was for God who appointed and reserved a priestly rank to perform such functions. There are no examples of prophets and kings forgiving sins before or contemporary to Jesus, it's solely, solemnly and exclusively the role of priests. This means if Jesus is not claiming a priestly prerogative then the only alternative is that he is definitively exclaiming an outlandish divine and supernatural prerogative by Jewish reckoning, that no other king or priest or prophet has ever attributed to himself in all the known history of Israel.
In the context of this historical account (Mark 2:1-12 cf. Matthew 9:1-8; Luke 5:17-26) Jesus is not asserting, nor even hinting at a claim to be an earthly high priest. Nor is he implying or espousing he acquired any form of judeo-priestly authority, nor did his opponents (or allies) view him as a member of the priestly elite, rather the import of his statements resulted in them deducing he was making a divine claim about himself and that he personally had authority direct from God, something God alone possessed was accessible to this man from no where, the backwards town of Nazareth, a preacher from Galilee that no one had heard of. Neither the historical Jesus nor his audience viewed him as someone who had undertaken formal theological training in any setting whatsoever. He was neither a priest representing the Pharisees or Samaritans, let alone was he employed as an errand boy for the temple.
According to Ehrman's view he was taken to be a renegade rabbi, someone who had no formal Jewish education who had never been to Yeshiva (Jewish School), he was merely from the remote village of Nazareth, along with his illiterate, village-peasant fishermen group. He had no prominence or reputation as a scholar or a priest, a scribe, or lawyer but he was a persistent public nuisance and disturbance. He was seen according to Ehrman as a controversial local who preached an apocalyptic message in every town he imparted himself upon. It is with that prolific context, we can point to the account. They ask: "how is he able to enunciate the forgiveness of sins?" They say: "who can forgive sins but God alone!". But does this imply the scribes (very educated in Jewish Law and Tradition) were exclaiming priests were excluded from their own prerogative to forgive sins? That is highly unlikely or dubious since we are talking about educated, literate Jews who had a formal theological training. By "God alone" then, it is implied forgiveness cannot take place outside of the domain, government, kingdom or authority decreed by God, his Law or his pre-set authorities in conjunction with his temple.
This was taken to be an infallible and permanent authority by almost every living Jew at the time. God established the systematic procedure to acquire forgiveness through Moses and ordained the temple and it's restoration for Israel, there was no negotiation with that system, rather this was a collective and universal authority given to the custodians of the Temple, the Sanhedrin, that is the Elders instilled by God himself through Moses and protected by the Priests, Prophets and Kings. God set up a system, he planned the appropriate means to declare atonement through the temple, the Sanhedrin, priests, the official rites, rituals and ceremonies associated with Torah and Jewish tradition. No one is suppose to claim they independently of God's pre-established rulings and offices are given God's very power/authority to forgive sins, that would be literal idolatry from the Jewish perspective who were co-dependent on the religious priesthood and atone made and ordained by God.
God had already supposedly related his own divine authority to Moses and his successors, a divine authority that cannot be usurped. Now apparently the historical Jesus was contradicting what was viewed to be God's very own fixed decree. He was just a rural preacher, a Rabbi among a group of relatively unknown men who had no formal authority to usurp divinely mandated institutions given to Israel by the Almighty. How could Jesus possibly claim this? He was on the outside, he was not apart of the recognized system. He was the prophet who asserted God's kingdom, but now (according to Ehrman) he claimed he had the very authority/power belonging to this everlasting kingdom and universal government, including even the very power to forgive sin. Who exactly was this audacious character claiming to be? Not only was he merely claiming to be the prophet announcing his own coming kingdom, he was now telling his disciples he was to be the Ruler and Judge of this kingdom. But now he appeared to claim to fully represent the authority of God's kingdom on earth, evening claiming God's very own divine prerogative to forgive others without paying his dues to God's ruling priesthood and authorities as if he were even the Lord of the temple itself
Challenging The Priestly Interpretation In Light of Bart Ehrman!
"The first is one I have already mentioned, that “Christ” (i.e., anointed one; i.e., messiah) was far and away the most common descriptive title the early Christians used for Jesus, so much so that they often called him Christ rather than Jesus (so that, despite my little joke earlier, it really did begin to function as his name). This is very surprising, given the fact that as far as we can tell, Jesus did nothing during his life to make anyone think that he was this anointed one." (IBID: p. 225)
And:
"Here there are two facts to bear in mind. The first is to reaffirm that we have no record of Jesus ever proclaiming himself to be the future king of the Jews, the messiah, in a public context. This is never his message. His message is about the coming kingdom to be brought by the Son of Man. He always keeps himself out of it." (IBID: p. 236)
Rather Ehrman thinks Jesus privately shared his view of himself as the kingly Messiah with the disciples. One of them (Judas Iscariot) eventually gave this information to the Jewish authorities. Jesus was given over to the Romans as an insurrectionist and upon his trial would not deny this belief, ultimately resulting in an abrupt end to Jesus career and his death under Pilate.
However if Jesus never proclaimed he was the anointed king of Israel in public, why would he proclaim he was an anointed priest? A belief of his which would of been even more concealed over that of his role as Messianic King! And if he was a priest, why wouldn't he just appeal to his priestly heritage upon his trial before the Sanhedrin? Why would he even put on trial, if he was among their brethren from the start? And why would he admit he is the anointed Messiah but not an anointed Priest?
Rather if we take Ehrman's view seriously, then Jesus central public identity was that of an anointed apocalyptic prophet. Further more Ehrman makes a rather candid admission:
"But a much more common understanding of the term did not involve an angelic judge of the earth or an authoritative priest, but a different kind of ruler. Again, as we have already seen: it was the king of Israel who was understood to be God’s “anointed one” par excellence." (IBID: p. 220)
Ehrman himself admits that the term ("anointed") used for priests, prophets and kings is rarely used for priests. Not only then did Jesus not openly declare his Messianic role, but it is less than likely that Jesus claimed to be a (anointed) priest in any sense. Jesus even fails the criterion alluded to Ehrman:
"This prerogative for pronouncing sins forgiven was otherwise *RESERVED FOR JEWISH PRIESTS* IN HONOR OF *SACRIFICES* THAT WORSHIPERS MADE *AT THE TEMPLE*"
This clearly excludes Jesus from being identified within such a category since he failed to fulfill every last one of these functions in the role of a priest. Finally in a list of factors mentioning what Jesus did not claim or believe, even Ehrman makes an incredible admission:
"That is to say, he did not come on the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead; he was not a priest; and he never raised an army and drove the Romans out of the promised land to set up Israel as a sovereign state." (IBID: p. 225)
Challenging The Priestly Interpretation In Light of Historical Jesus
I believe Ehrman's assertion that Jesus may have viewed himself as a priest contradicts (or contravenes) his own view of Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet in many ways. Firstly there is no other passage(s) or historical sources which denote historical Jesus had a view of himself as an anointed priest. If we take some of the miracle accounts he alludes to as historical, since when does a priest, raise the dead, or supernaturally read the hearts of humankind? This fits better with a divine character or conception. If this is to be read as a priestly account then it is the one isolated case. But then that would engage a form of special pleading; that is to construct this text with a priestly interpretation, that doesn't plausibly fit the narrative. Such a view doesn't cohere with anything else we know about Jesus supposed self identification as a priest, yet we do have a variety of factors that could comport with a divine self-perception. In addition since no other references to Christ's priesthood can be found, this fails the criterion of multiple independent attestation which is essential to Ehrman's historical methodology.
"What we can know with relative certainty about Jesus is that his public ministry and proclamation were not focused on his divinity; in fact, they were not about his divinity at all. They were about God. And about the kingdom that God was going to bring. And about the Son of Man who was soon to bring judgment upon the earth. When this happened the wicked would be destroyed and the righteous would be brought into the kingdom—a kingdom in which there would be no more pain, misery, or suffering. The twelve disciples of Jesus would be rulers of this future kingdom, and Jesus would rule over them. Jesus did not declare himself to be God. He believed and taught that he was the future king of the coming kingdom of God, the messiah of God yet to be revealed. This was the message he delivered to his disciples, and in the end, it was the message that got him crucified." (IBID: p. 247).
If Jesus is preparing for a new kingdom where he would rule, then how would a priesthood proclaiming the forgiveness of sins even be relevant to his ministry? The fallacy of irrelevance. Hence casting Jesus as an earthly Jewish priest of some type fails the criterion of congruence (also called cumulative circumstantial evidence) which is a special case of the older criterion of coherence. The criterion of coherence, also called the criterion of consistency and conformity looks back at what has already been established as historical, and tests if a new hypothesis is consistent and coherent with what is already known. Thus this criterion is not simply applied to ancient texts as a star but looks back at the results of modern analysis and considers its coherence and consistency. [1]
Finally the priestly portrayal of Jesus also fails the criterion of contextual credibility, we have no examples of other figures (particularly: apocalyptic prophets) from the period claiming to forgive sins themselves personally without the appeal to the pre-existent divinely instilled paradigm, rather we have texts that demonstrate certain individuals or groups of individuals may have believed that about "other" Biblical (or otherwise) esteemed figures, but there is no evidence this is a position of any contemporaries.
And with that said I end today's article with a quote from one of the 20th century greatest apologists, since they are germane to understanding the function of Jesus divine forgiveness:
As C.S Lewis once wrote in his work, Mere Christianity:
"And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toes and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history." (source)
