[3: Benjamin L White] Bart Ehrman’s “New Insights Into The New Testament” Conference (2024 Apostle Paul)
Benjamin White is one of the top and most respected Pauline scholars in the world. White’s talk is about how mathematics is used to help decide which of the New Testament letters are authentically written by Paul. I would like to highlight one point he makes about 1 Thess 2: 14-16. This passage reads:
- 14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last.
This is an important text for mythicists to dismiss as an interpolation because it says the Jews killed Christ: SEE CARRIER HERE. The claim is further that references to destruction in the verses identify the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, and so is post-Paul. Either it was an interpolation, or it was original to 1 Thessalonians which makes that entire letter inauthentic. The anti Judaism in the text reflects something the movement later grew into over time.
White disagrees and does not find reason to dismiss it as an interpolation. Paul seems to be a first century apocalyptic Jew navigating through other Jews like the pharisees, Essenes, he says he is not of the Christ group, etc., and we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls these groups were always going after one another as to who the true people of God are. It is certainly possible Paul speaking among gentiles to speak badly of Jews he thought killed Christ. I would note too Paul thought the apocalypse was underway, he says the resurrected Christ being the first fruits of the general resurrection harvest of souls at the end of the age, so he thought the judgment of the enemies of God had begun, and so need not refer to post-70 CE destruction of Jerusalem.
Relatedly, in a later presentation in the conference Dr. Joel Marcus points out that Paul says the Jews are beloved by God because they come from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but enemies of God for rejecting Jesus and his message (Romans 11:28)