2 As most scholars recognize, e.g., Charlesworth and Evans, “Agrapha,” 491; Dunn, New Perspective, 34; Ellis, “Gospels and History,” 49; cf. Tuckett, “Sources and methods,” 121; Wright, “Dialogue,” 246; Frye, “Analogies in Literatures,” 287-302 (esp. 302); De Rosa, “Vangeli.”
3 I have made use of journal abstracts to increase the number of works I could at least mention, but even here come nowhere close to a comprehensive survey of the literature.
4 Likewise, Matthew omits Mark’s overly sweeping summary of Jewish practice (cf. Mk 7:3-4), perhaps reflecting a common practice of Mark’s Diaspora audience; even pious Jews may have washed their hands especially for Sabbath or festival meals (m. Ber. 8:1-2; tos. Ber. 5:25; Davies, Matthew, 112).
5 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 151-75, addresses theologically motivated changes, especially due to second- and third-century christological debates; while emphasizing changes, he recognizes that the copying process was mostly conservative (177-78). He addresses changes due to social worlds in 178- 205 (e.g., regarding women, 178-86; anti-Jewish passages, 186-95). Most scholars will agree with the information here.
6 Evans, Fabricating Jesus, 27-31. On 30 Evans offers the example of Ehrman noting that some later scribes delete “nor the Son” in Matt 24:36 for Christological reasons; Ehrman’s observation is of course correct, but “nor the Son” remains unchanged in Mk 13:32. To make such changes problematic for all knowledge of early Christianity more generally may constitute what one of my doctoral professors called a “fundamentalistic,” all-or-nothing approach. Copyist changes pose few theological problems except to strict literalist Christians who hold a more typically Islamic view of inspiration. Thus whereas the Qur’an appears to have been standardized early (e.g., Peters, Origins, 257), thereafter copied in noble courts, the earliest Christian manuscripts had more royal persecutors than sponsors, and were copied under much freer conditions. Yet such factors trouble most Christians far less than they would trouble many Muslims, due to different understandings of inspiration. Most Christians do not “recite” the New Testament, and their theology generally focuses on the substance rather than details of the texts.
7 Egyptian Judaism was decimated in the Judeophobic conflicts of the early second century; while this state would not preclude some Jews from resettling there, the vast majority of later Christian scribes there would surely have been Gentiles.
8 Nevertheless, this is not the sort of work designed primarily to defuse the nonsense of works like The DaVinci Code. I did address this book on a popular level in “Decoding Da Vinci,” but I am hoping that most readers of the present book will be able to distinguish between scholarly research and an intriguing but historically fanciful novel. See also Ehrman, Fiction.
9 See e.g., the following bibliographies: Evans, Jesus; idem, Life of Jesus Research; Mills, Christ and Gospels.
10 Keener, John, 3-139, 289-91, 296-97, 300-7; very briefly, idem, “Genre.” See also many others, e.g., Bauckham, Testimony; Blomberg, Reliability; Vellanickal, “Historical Jesus”; Segalla, “Gesù di Nazaret”; Moloney, “Jesus of History”; works by my doctoral mentor, D. Moody Smith (including Smith, Johannine Christianity; idem, John Among Gospels; idem, “Problem of History”).
11 Interestingly, one of the early objections to John that led to its frequent current exclusion from consideration was its “Greek” ambiance (Harnack, Christianity, 21; Schweitzer, Quest, 6) — a presupposition no longer often accepted in Johannine scholarship (Brown, Essays, 188-90; Charlesworth, “Scrolls and Gospel”; Longenecker, Christology, 19-20, 76; Martyn, “Religionsgeschichte”; Davies, “Aspects”; Scroggs, “Judaizing”; Flusser, Judaism, 23-24; Keener, John, 142-232, esp. 171-232).
13 With McClymond, Stranger, xi; similarly, Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:21-31.
14 That is, a historian, as historian, is not intrinsically opposed to a particular community’s beliefs about past events, so long as those beliefs are not simply assumed to be identical with past events. Likewise, historical reconstructions are partial and rest on probability, and cannot easily be substituted for a community’s beliefs, since the overlap is not likely to be coextensive. Extant historical evidence about events two thousand years ago is too limited to “prove” or “disprove,” even to a high degree of satisfaction, every purported event or saying of ancient history, including in the Gospels. Although a historical purist would object on epistemological grounds, some (Evans, “Naturalism,” esp. 205) also advocate appeal to other lines of evidence (including theological evidence) in addition to historical evidence. McClymond, Stranger, x, emphasizes the compatibility between faith and history (despite their different approaches).
18 See the fuller argument in Keener, John, 185-94; also see Safrai, “Literature”; Silberman, “Use”; Vermes, Religion, 8-9; Neusner, New Testament, ix; for similar methodological observations, e.g., Levinskaya, Diaspora Setting, 16-17. Archaeology often provides earlier attestation of some customs attested later in rabbinic sources (see e.g., Sanders, Jesus to Mishnah, 243; Avigad, Jerusalem, 171). Parallels to rabbinic sources also exist (pace some of these authors, merely reflecting “common Judaism”) in Josephus (see e.g., Goldenberg, “Halakha”; Goldenberg, “Antiquities iv”); Philo (Belkin, Philo, passim); Qumran (Schiffman, Law; idem, “Light”; Mantel, “Oral Law”; cf. Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 100-14; Adler, “Sectarian Characteristics”); haggadic traditions in L.A.B. (Feldman, “Antiquities”); and of course in the New Testament (de Jonge, “New Testament,” 40-41). Because later rabbis would not have cited Jesus, I argue in these cases, as classicists normally argue with regard to the chance sources that have survived in their discipline, that the alignment of data suggests early ideas or customs that happen to be attested in both places. David Instone-Brewer’s work on rabbinic tradition (Instone-Brewer, Traditions), following Jacob Neusner’s most refined methodology, seems likely to prove most helpful. Most historical Jesus scholars allow rabbinic sources into the discussion, even if they do not use them as extensively (see e.g., the index in Crossan, Historical Jesus, 495, citing 11 references from Tannaitic sources and 12 from later Amoraic ones). Some apply them more extensively (e.g., Chilton even makes significant use of later Targumic traditions).
