現代人の精神構造と古代人の精神構造―バート・イーアマン博士の場合

Modern Mind and Ancient Mind—The Case of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman published one of his popular books entitled Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (Oxford University Press) last year. Although he is now a popular writer in early Christianity, as seen in his Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code (Oxford University Press, 2004), he has been a professional researcher in the above-mentioned area and a New Testament scholar trained under Bruce M. Metzger.

Therefore, I can basically rely on his works in the field of ancient writings, especially non-canonical literature. So, too, with regard to this book, I have no objection against his understanding of ancient literature, except for an odd statement on Papias and modern scholars. Strangely, Ehrman believes that modern scholars are practicing of “selective preference.” In other words, it is an arbitrary decision, “preferring to regard as fact what one wants to be fact, and discounting everything else” (9). Is it really so? Then are you doing so, too, Dr. Ehrman?

As I mentioned in the entry on Dr. Tagawa, I am not thoroughly satisfied with Ehrman’s historical interpretations of the three figures, Simon Peter, St. Paul, and Mary Magdalene. (Ehrman spends some 70 pages on each person.) But for now I would like to concentrate on Simon Peter, in whom I am always interested in connection with Mark the evangelist. Maybe Dr. Ehrman’s first concern is the relationship between St. Paul and Simon Peter. However, from the very beginning of this publication planning, I suspect, “Mary Magdalene” would have been a person to simply attract a popular audience’s concern.

To be sure, Ehrman, too, emphasizes the “ancient mind” I wrote about in the entry on Dr. Tagawa, saying, “Jesus was a first-century Palestine Jew. Any attempt to understand his words and deeds must take that historical fact seriously” (28). On the other hand, however, he also lets himself indulge in a twentieth-century European or twenty-first-century American mind, comparing the social issues of poverty, oppression, racism, and sexism expressed by the folk-singers of the 1960s, “Peter, Paul, and Mary,” to the apocalyptic situation of the first-century Palestine, where Simon Peter, St. Paul, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus of Nazareth lived (xi-xii, 257-60).

In any case, the following are my three comments on (or objections against) Ehrman’s understanding of history:

(1) According to Ehrman, “What we have are handwritten copies (manuscripts) that come from many decades—in most instances, many centuries—after the originals had been produced, copied, and lost” (51), by which he means that our present copies have been distorted decade by decade, century by century. This is the same idea as expressed in his Misquoting Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). Surely, we have many different versions (manuscripts) but nevertheless some unchanged cores still exist in the variety of versions. As I have emphasized in my book The Empty Tomb Tradition of Mark (Agathos Press, 2006), it is called the “tenacity” of texts.

(2) Ehrman believes that Peter was illiterate. According to him, the literacy rate of ancient Palestine was “10-15 percent” (26). Peter was indeed a fisherman in the lower class of Galilee, and therefore, Ehrman believes, Peter could not even read a word. To tell the truth, no one knows the literacy rate in the first-century Palestine. Some say 3%, some 5%, and some 15%. At least we can say that the literacy of Jews has historically been higher than that of other nations. However, the question is why we must put Peter into the illiterate group. He might have been a chief of fishermen and possibly the owner of the boat. It is probable that as a leader of fishermen Peter could understand some Greek (then the international trading language) and some Hebrew (biblical language; Aramaic was used then for daily conversation). In any traditional rural village, several literate men served for the community.

(3) Acts 4:13 reports that Peter and John were agrammatoi and idiotai men. Ehrman reads aggramatoi (aggrammatos) as “illiterate” (26, passim), but many understand it as “unschooled” or “uneducated” or “unlearned” (“unlettered” in the King James version) because as a pair of words the Greek word idiotai (idiotes) indicates “non-professional”—not “idiot.” Peter and John might have had some knowledge of reading and writing even though they had never been trained as rabbis or teachers of the law. These untrained and non-professional rural men preached by quoting the Scripture. This is the message of Acts 4—“illiterate men from Galilee” is not the point of this passage. From this misunderstanding, Ehrman cannot accept the writing skill of Peter and the other followers from Galilee (76). I do not believe that Peter wrote many non-canonical writings under his own name nor the canonical letter Second Peter. But I do believe that he actually wrote the First Letter of Peter. It is quite natural that Peter and other disciples could use Greek for their mission and improve their skill in Greek in the following decades.

Ten years or twenty years, possibly thirty years of life can change common human beings, especially ordinary persons of determined faith, into trained and intelligent leaders. For example, we sometimes see that unschooled criminals repent and later publish their books after much learning in jail. There is no particular reason to suspect that Peter and the other followers could not have matured into literate, dynamic leaders in the early church.