Answering Zealot Part 3- Sir William Mitchell Ramsay answers Reza Aslan for me

Zealot is an enjoyable read. The book proper opens with an embellished narrative account of the assassination of the high priest Jonathan, son of Ananus. This narrative sets the stage for the core argument of the book, that the historical person of Jesus can only be understood by examining and understanding the socio-political landscape of first-century Palestine, and not by the accounts provided in the Gospels. Following the narrative he proceeds to fill in some historical context: he explains the method of conquest that Rome took over peoples like the Jews, often employing the use of a client-king (in this case Herod) as a ruling intermediary between two very different cultures as they embarked on the often decades-long process of assimilating them into Rome.

Aslan proceeds to cast doubt on the “infancy narratives”, present in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, that Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem before fleeing with his family to Egypt, then eventually settling in Nazareth. Aslan’s thesis is that messianic prophecy requires that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem, and since Jesus was called a Nazarene and the earliest Gospel account (Mark) does not include any infancy narrative at all, the later Gospel accounts were written with the intention of inserting facts adequate to cause Jesus to fit the messianic profile. He casts doubt on the historicity of the gospels with claims (quoted later in this post) that no one who was reading the gospel accounts at the time actually thought they were reading true historically verifiable facts, and that the notion of a census at the time that Luke claims there was one is “preposterous”.

As I read the opening chapters, I did a little digging of my own to better understand the viewpoints on the census. I was introduced to a nineteenth-century archaeologist and New Testament expert by the name of Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, whose opening arguments for his book Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? A Study on the Credibility of St. Luke had some thoughts that could have been directed at Aslan himself with regard to his methods of argument.

Aslan insists that since we “can’t know” for sure who wrote the gospels and that it is tradition alone that assigns them to the authors by which they are named, and due to his apparent certainty that Matthew, Luke, and John were written with the intention of elaborating to build out a certain view of Christ which could not have been reached by understanding the historical Jesus, then he is justified in dismissing them outright. But that has not been the position of scholars throughout history- “Like Professor Blass, I see no reason to doubt the tradition ; but those who do not accept the tradition may treat the name Luke in these pages as a mere sign to indicate the author, whoever he may be.”- Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? A Study on the Credibility of St. Luke, 1898. It is worth noting that “Ramsay was educated in the Tübingen school of thought (founded by F. C. Baur) which doubted the reliability of the New Testament, but his extensive archaeological and historical studies convinced him of its historical accuracy.” (Wikipedia)

With regard to the census, Aslan considers a paragraph about how “preposterous” the notion is to be satisfactory, ignoring the careful, fair and thorough scholarship on this minute detail (a helpful treatment to reference, the conclusion of which is based on archaeological evidence, is found in The Expositor magazine, June 1897). Why? Because believers care about the details, and the record has shown that careful study reveals that what appears to be an error, an omission, or a contradiction often is much more complicated and can be either completely resolved or resolved within a margin of error satisfactory to not entirely dismiss the text as Aslan has apparently felt comfortable doing. His endnotes section is a delight to read, it’s massively disappointing that he does not include footnotes for quick reference, but he doesn’t find it important to include any notes at all in support of some of his boldest claims.

Sir William Ramsay, writing over a hundred years before Aslan, addresses his dismissive approach head on: “The whole spirit and tone of modern commentaries on Luke’s writings depend on the view which the commentators take on this question. In some cases the commentator holds that no historical statement made by Luke is to be believed, unless it can be proved from authorities independent of him. The commentary on Luke then the interpretațion which is discordant with external facts or with other statements in Luke. If it is possible to read into a sentence a meaning which contradicts another passage in the same author, that is at once assumed to be the one intended by him ; and his incapacity and untrustworthiness are illustrated in the commentary. But no work of literature could stand being treated after this fashion. Imagine the greatest of pagan authors commented on in such a way; any slip of expression exaggerated or distorted ; sentences strained into contradiction with other passages of the same or other authors; the commentary directed to magnify every fault, real or imaginary, but remaining silent about every excellence. There have occasionally been such commentaries written about great classical authors; and they have always been condemned by the general consent of scholars.” (source)

Ramsay goes on to explain “In this discussion it is obviously necessary to conduct the investigation as one of pure history, to apply to it the same canons of criticism and interpretation that are employed in the study of the other ancient historians, and to regard as our subject, not “the Gospel according to St. Luke,” but the History composed by Luke. The former name is apt to suggest prepossession and prejudice : the latter is purely critical and dispassionate.” This is the critique that I have of Aslan’s book so far overall- that he has decided for himself that the gospel accounts are not historical by any means, and he dismisses them outright without substantiation. He provides tremendous substantiation for his delightful descriptions and discussions of first-century Palestine life and Jewish goings-on. Were his tone toward the veracity of the gospels not unnecessarily dismissive, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or historical accounts written in a narrative style. This is clearly Aslan’s strength.

Why is Luke presumed guilty of an ulterior motive until proven innocent? On the contrary, according to a universally-accepted standard of justice, we presume that the writer is telling the truth until he can be proven otherwise. Ramsay drives this point home: “Luke has not failed to put clearly before his readers what character he claims for his history. He has given us, in the prefatory paragraph of his Gospel, a clear statement of the intention with which he wrote his history, and of the qualifications which give him the right to be accepted as an authority. He was not an eye-witness of the remarkable events which he is proceeding to record, but was one of the second generation to whom the information had been communicated by those“ who were from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word”. The simplest interpretation of his words is that he claims to have received much of his information from the mouths of eye-witnesses ; and, on careful study of the preface as a whole, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that he deliberately makes this claim. Any other interpretation, though it might be placed on one clause by itself, is negatived by the drift of the paragraph as a whole. Thus Luke claims to have had access to authorities of the first rank, persons who had seen and heard and acted in the events which he records. He makes no distinction as to parts of his narrative. He claims the very highest authority for it as a whole.”

And yet Aslan is making a bold contradictory claim, that no one who read this account, which Luke very clearly states is to be read as historical eyewitness testimony, would actually have understood it as such. Again, Aslan presumes to be inside the minds of first century readers as well as inside the mind of Luke himself. Aslan states that “This is an extremely difficult matter for modern readers of the gospels to grasp, but Luke never meant for his story about Jesus’s birth at Bethlehem to be understood as historical fact.” (pg 30) He goes on: “The readers of Luke’s gospel, like most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality; the two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal—indeed, expected—for a writer in the ancient world to tell tales of gods and heroes whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false but whose underlying message would be seen as true.” (pg 31) There are no endnotes to substantiate these claims.

These are extraordinary and dismissive, bordering on condescending, claims that allow Aslan to wave a hand at anything he deems “myth” within the gospel accounts. How could Aslan possibly know what Luke “meant” or “never meant”? What privileged insider knowledge does Aslan possess? What are his sources? As Ramsay pointed out, Luke made it abundantly clear what his intentions were: to set forth a historical secondary account based on the testimony of the eyewitnesses themselves. Aslan contradicts this claim but provides no footnotes, no additional reading of any kind. His notes section for chapter three is devoid of any comment on these claims, which implies that he expects his reader to take his word for it. But because he is making a truth claim that contradicts an earlier truth claim, the burden of proof is on Aslan.

Read the next part here: Answering Zealot Part 4

Part 1 of this response series: Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (introduction)

Part 2 of this response series: Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (Author’s Note)