Stephen J. Patterson > Quotes

“Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all written in Greek. But Jesus probably did not speak Greek. He was a Jewish peasant. He might have known a little Greek, but his normal tongue would have been the Semitic dialect commonly spoken by the peasants of Palestine in the first century CE, Aramaic. The original oral tradition associated with Jesus would have been communicated among the peasants of Galilee also in Aramaic. Now, here is the problem. When we compare the same stories in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they agree not just in general or in gist, but often word for word, verbatim. Not 100 percent verbatim, but often as much as 80 percent, and sometimes even more. How shall we explain this?

Does a theory of oral transmission work? Say a set of stories circulated orally in Aramaic; they were told and retold in great variety. They usually communicated the gist but were never word for word the same. Then, gradually, bilingual listeners began to repeat the stories, now sometimes in Aramaic, sometimes in Greek. Greek versions began to circulate orally, told and retold in great variety, usually communicating the gist but never being told word for word the same. Imagine the various ways in which any particular story might have been told, in two different languages, by dozens of different people, in myriad different contexts. Now imagine a story from this oral tradition beginning with Jesus, spreading around in Aramaic, then trickling over into Greek, and spreading around again in the new language; finally one particular version falls on the ears of, say, the author of Matthew, who includes it in his gospel. Now imagine that a different author, say, the author of Luke, hears the same story, but a version of it that has taken a different route through that complex process of being passed on, and he also decides to include it in his gospel. What are the chances that these two versions of the story will agree with one another, in Greek, nearly verbatim? A clever mathematician could perhaps compute the odds. Let us just say, they would be astronomical.

But that’s not all. Jesus was an aphorist and a storyteller. How many times would he have told one of his parables, a good one like the Sower? Dozens of times? Probably. But when a gospel writer includes a parable in his narrative, he can only really use it once. If he were to repeat it as Jesus actually had done, over and over again, that would be tedious. He has to choose one place to put it and one way to tell it. Now, when the authors of Matthew and Mark include the Parable of the Sower in their gospels, they both just happen to portray Jesus telling it right after a scene in which Jesus is accused of having a demon, Beelzebul, so that his family must come to try and take him away. And that story, in both gospels, follows close after a story in which Jesus is healing and exorcizing multitudes. And that story, in both gospels, follows one in which Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. And before that, in both gospels, there is a story about Jesus and his disciples passing through the grain fields of Galilee, feeding themselves from the gleanings. It is not just that Matthew, Mark, and Luke share a large number of stories, sayings, and parables, or that these common traditions often agree almost verbatim from gospel to gospel. They also present these things in the same order. Could oral tradition account for all of that? Never.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins

“Everyone agrees that the three dyads in verse 28 are its central feature, its basic claim. Baptism exposes the follies by which most of us live, defined by the other, who we are not. It declares the unreality of race, class, and gender: there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female. We may not all be the same, but we are all one, each one a child of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“The creed was originally about the fact that race, class, and gender are typically used to divide the human race into us and them to the advantage of us. It aimed to declare that there is no us, no them. We are all children of God. It was about solidarity, not cultural obliteration.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“The apocalypse never came, and it's not going to come. This idea belongs to the world of ancient mythology, and it wasn't a very good idea to begin with. In it the Jewish God of shalom becomes a violent overlord, and the Prince of Peace becomes a supernatural warrior, a fire-breathing monster who lays waste the earth, its forests, its animals, and all but a remnant of its people -- the chosen few. How many have believed they were the few! (pg. 250)”
― Stephen J. Patterson

“In baptism they were committed to giving up old identities falsely acquired on the basis of baseless assumptions—Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—and declared themselves to be children of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“If that all makes sense, the original credo would have read something like this: For you are all children (sons) of God in the Spirit. There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female; For you are all one in the Spirit. This is my best guess on how the original creed went, but it is by no means the only way to imagine it.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“But the interesting and compelling thing to me about this early wisdom tradition is its malleability: it does not mean one thing; the meaning of its various sayings and parables is negotiable. What would it mean in some concrete situation to refrain from judgment? Why are beggars blessed? What will you do when you hear the story of a rich man who dies sitting on a pile of money? Will you snicker in delight, or will you wring your hands and worry about your own accounts? It depends. It depends on your place in life, your experience, your own wisdom and insight. This tradition makes meaning only when people hear and contemplate it for themselves. It does not state the Truth. It provokes you to seek for truth. In that seeking, everyone is on equal footing. The sayings, parables, and prophetic criticisms we see in this tradition all begin in a place where everyone is in the same boat— life itself. There is to be no special pleading. If you would have truth, you must seek the truth, and when you find it, you must advocate for it.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins

“That is what it’s about—being a child of God. Ethnicity (no Jew or Greek), class (no slave or free), and gender (no male and female) count neither for you nor against you. We are all children of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“The slave was a kind of surrogate body placed at the disposal of an owner to do with as he or she pleased. Masters used their slave bodies for all sorts of things, including manual labor, of course, but not only this. A slave was a surrogate body in every sense. Slaves could receive corporal punishment on behalf of his or her master; a slave could be imprisoned instead of his or her master. Conversely, attacking a person’s slave was tantamount to attacking his or her master. Slaves performed the duties of a hit man, leading to various legal puzzles about culpability—when was the slave liable, and when the master? Slave gangs could be deployed as private armies. Female bodies had their own special uses—milk, for one. As Glancy notes, the slave wet nurse was a stock character in generations of Greek and Roman literature.28 Sex, for another—although one should not assume this to have been a burden borne only by female bodies. Greek and Roman men also made use of their male bodies in this way.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“Slaves, women, and foreigners were all essentially the same to ancient men—contemptible. They were all other.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“So Paul did not create the baptismal creed embedded in Galatians 3:26–28. The creed, then, must have preceded Paul. But there is not very much in the New Testament that precedes Paul. His voice is the first voice we hear from the nascent Christian movement. That makes Galatians 3:26–28 one of the oldest statements of faith in all of the New Testament, perhaps even the first such statement in all of Christian history.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“So, an ancient Christian credo declaring solidarity across ethnic lines, class division, and gender difference sounded a little unbelievable to someone who had come to see the Christian church as more a symbol of social ills than of starry-eyed utopian dreams.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“This creed claims that there is no us, no them. We are all one. We are all children of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism