Last time in the Analysis section about Ehrman’s first talk we thought about the lens of the Absurd with the example of God making a covenant with Abraham to have a great line of descendants, and then telling him to kill his son Isaac.  Abraham was the paragon of faith because he tried to sacrifice Isaac, but was divinely stopped.  What I noted is that this absurd faith went beyond God’s contradictory mandates, because we have the doubly impressive faith of the willingness of Isaac to die.  Such willingness to die by Isaac was invalidating God’s implied promise to Isaac of a great line of descendants (since God’s promise to Abraham was also a promise to Isaac of a great line of descendants), but Isaac’s faith was greater than Abraham’s still because he was willing to die.  The New Testament views Isaac as a type of Christ.  Why was Isaac’s willingness to die so impressive?

The concept of an afterlife in early Israelite religion was not well-developed or central to their worldview, unlike later Jewish thought. The earliest Hebrew traditions, as reflected in parts of the Torah (e.g., Genesis), do not explicitly describe a detailed belief in an afterlife. There is little to no mention of heaven, hell, or a personal existence after death in the texts associated with Abraham and Isaac’s era. The focus was primarily on earthly life and covenantal relationships with God.  The idea of “living on” through one’s male line of descendants was significant. The patriarchal narratives in Genesis emphasize the importance of progeny, land, and God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants (e.g., Genesis 12:1–3, 15:5). Having many descendants, particularly male heirs, was seen as a form of immortality or legacy, ensuring the continuation of the family name and God’s promises. For example, Abraham’s concern about lacking an heir (Genesis 15:2–3) underscores the cultural weight placed on lineage.  By the time later biblical texts were written (e.g., during or after the First Temple period, 10th–6th centuries BCE), there is mention of Sheol, a vague, shadowy underworld where all the dead, righteous or wicked, go to exist in a diminished state (e.g., Ecclesiastes 9:10). This concept, though, is not prominent in the patriarchal period and likely reflects later development in Israelite thought.  The surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures (e.g., Mesopotamian, Canaanite) had varying beliefs about the afterlife, often involving underworlds or ancestor veneration, but these were not necessarily adopted by early Hebrews. The Hebrew focus on covenant and earthly blessings (land, descendants, prosperity) suggests a this-worldly orientation.  During Abraham and Isaac’s time, there is no strong evidence that the early Hebrews held a developed belief in a personal afterlife. Instead, their theology and culture emphasized living on through descendants, particularly the male line, as a means of perpetuating one’s name and fulfilling God’s promises. Later Jewish texts (e.g., from the Second Temple period) show evolving ideas about resurrection and the afterlife, but these are not relevant to the patriarchal era.  An important Old Testament worry against ethical/religious living was if the dead are not raised we might as well be gluttons and drunks for tomorrow we die.  Jesus’ resurrection was so important because it supposedly proved the pharisee interpretation resurrection of the dead at the end of the age had begun. 

So, in the Gospel of Mark as I said we have a text of such absurdities, my favorite example being the corrupt trial of Jesus by the Jewish elite where a whole host of corrupt practices according to Jewish law and tradition are presented, but the surface respectability of the trial is maintained by the Jewish elite exposing loopholes in the law and tradition.  This was picked up on by Matthew with the Devil quoting scripture in the temptations of Jesus, and Jesus responding with the spirit of scripture overruling the letter of scripture (do not tempt the Lord).  This paves the way for Jesus as an innovator of scripture interpretation, such as the “you have heard it said, … but I say to you” passages like going beyond love of neighbor to love of enemy in the Q source.

What Ehrman is trying to do with his isolating of what he sees as Jesus’s forgiveness theology as opposed to his followers’ later substitutionary atonement theology is leverage the principle of contradiction to attain historical knowledge about Jesus.  He has modified the criterion of embarrassment (the idea that something is likely historical about Jesus if the writers include embarrassing details like Jesus being baptized by John) which has fallen into disrepute lately (who’s to say the baptism by John is embarrassing because it retells the story of Elijah and Elisha giving a double portion of power), with a criterion of opposing purpose, where in this case Ehrman argues Mark is writing a propaganda document selling the cross/resurrection and yet presents material invalidating this purpose (salvation through forgiveness rather than atonement payment). 

What existential philosophy since Kierkegaard noted with the absurd lens for viewing Abraham and Isaac’s story is the lens of the absurd causes the principle of contradiction to falter.  The principle of contradiction was popularized by Aristotle that “something cannon both be and not be, at the same time and in the same way.”  Kant modified it a little to remove the “at the same time” clause: If I say all bachelors are unmarried, denying this is a contradiction without a reference to “time” because it just deals with the relationship of the concepts of bachelor and unmarried, and so does not refer to time.  Existentialism thus moves beyond the either-or of contradiction logic to “both-and” conjunctive logic and “neither/nor” disjunctive logic.  Put in simpler terms, we need to overcome finding spurs/traces in Mark that lead back behind substitutionary atonement purposes to a forgiving historical Jesus because while they may be historically true, we can’t know because Mark has constructed an Abrahamic absurd document that embraces contrariety. 

After all, Mark says he is presenting a gospel about Jesus, not just his crucifixion/resurrection.  And we know the crucifixion serves a dual function.  On the one hand, it appeases God’s wrath at sin as such ancient sacrifices did, but it also is a catalyst for repentance when we see ourselves in the corrupt Jewish elite and bloodthirsty crowd that turned on Jesus.  Our eyes would be opened, as Adam’s were.  Why invent a crucified failed messianic claimant especially beloved by God?  As an explanation for why God allowed the destruction of the temple 70CE and booted the Jews from the land in the 130s, if the Dutch radical critics and Livesey is right about the late date of Paul.  But, even if Paul is early, the general argument still holds.