Miken
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You know guys, sometimes you just have to agree to disagree and call it a day...
Where's the fun in that?
Mark 13:30 'The Most Embarrassing Verse in the Bible'
- Thread starter RJM
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Where's the fun in that?
Miken
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All of the Gospel writers have their own agendas and do not appear at all leery of invention. Look at Matthew’s treatment of Mark’s resurrection scenario, and then Luke’s treatment of Matthew’s. We can easily see references to the earlier version in the later ones but changed for discernible reasons. For that matter, look at the hatchet job Luke does on Matthew, major changes to remove undesirable characteristics from Matthew and refocus on Luke’s Gentile community. Not just detail changes or presenting different aspects but outright references to Matthew with clear contradictions. Very large and complex explanation that I will hold off on for now.
As I commented earlier, Mark clearly had a source of accurate detailed information about how things were in ‘the old days.’ This could very well have been Peter as tradition has it. But Mark did not depend entirely on Peter. His description of the Last Supper includes language from the Lord’s Supper institution narrative in 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Cor also includes Paul’s imagery of Jesus being the Passover sacrifice. Put them together and you get the Last Supper being a Passover Seder. However, Paul also states that this happened on the night Jesus was betrayed. That complication leaves Mark in the position of requiring that there be a formal trial with many important personages and witnesses planned for the first night of Passover. This simply would never happen. Mark made this up, inspired by Paul’s story and imagery.
Matthew and Luke follow Mark’s lead in their Last Supper narratives, again having that impossible trial. John realizes the problem and changes it. The Last Supper is not a Seder. It takes place on the previous evening. No Lord’s Supper institution and Jesus is crucified on the day before Passover starts, not on the first day of Passover. Not only does John avoid the trial timing problem but he also allows a tighter connection between Jesus as the sacrificial lamb by having Jesus die at the time the lambs are being sacrificed in the Temple.
Matthew and Luke also tell the same sort of story in their versions of the Olivet discourse with the appearance of the Son of Man happening before the current generation passes away. Likewise having a ‘not taste death’ passage earlier, which ties in with ‘this generation’ witnessing ALL of those events. Mark getting confused about what Jesus said also has to involve getting that passage wrong as well. And Matthew and Luke agreeing with it.
John, written later when the idea of a swift eschaton was no longer credible, omits the Olivet Discourse completely. And ‘not taste death’ with its sense of still being physically alive becomes ‘never taste death’ in the sense of eternal life after the resurrection.
But there is no need to go beyond Mark's gospel here, assuming that Mark was the original gospel? Did Mark himself believe in the second coming within his own generation? What motivated him to write his gospel in the first place?
@Ahanu suggests here that John's gospel may have been the first one?
https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19528/
I"m not in your guys league of scholarship, I'm afraid ...
https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19528/
I"m not in your guys league of scholarship, I'm afraid ...
Miken
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As I have said earlier, Mark wanted to revive a fading faith in Paul's prediction of a near term return of Jesus, which would lead to a loss of faith in the whole thing. This explains why he bothered to write a Gospel at all. The punchline was that the recent destruction of the Temple, which would have been a blow to Jewish Christians and Pauline Christians alike (as I have previously discussed) could now be viewed as a good thing if Jesus said it would be the first sign of the end of days rapidly approaching.
In his Olivet Discourse, Mark mentions the fig tree blooming as a sign summer is near. Previously he had made a series of overlapping references to the Temple and a fig tree which got withered. In the midst of that series of references Mark said that you had to have lots of faith, enough to move mountains. Now near the end of the Olivet Discourse, which begins with the destruction of the Temple, Mark talks about a fig tree blooming and summer coming. The destruction of the Temple was not such a bad thing, it was the sign of a good thing coming. Jesus will come back in 'this generation' before everyone who lived in the tome of Jesus 'tastes death'. Just have faith.
Miken
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If so, then the end of days as well. This is too coherent and explicit a section and ties into earlier passages too well to not have that meaning. If Jesus prophesied all of that, then he was wrong. If Mark made it up to suit his purpose of reviving faith, then it works very well even if it did not happen.
Miken
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To go into it very briefly, I do not buy it. The change from 'not taste death' in a physical sense into 'never taste death' in a spiritual sense points to John being last. John ignores the Olivet Discourse as would be expected if he wrote last when that story was no longer credible since too much time had passed. John also refers to ALL of the Synoptic Gospels, with Matthew and Luke copying text and ideas from Mark and John using their modified versions. If John preceded Mark, exactly how did that come about? John's resurrection account clearly is a follow on to Luke's, embellishing it to further amplify the need for faith, especially with Jesus not having made an appearance as expected.
Ok. But then we have the acts of the apostles written by the same person who wrote Luke's gospel and accompanied Paul on his travels, written between 70 and 90 AD. If Mark's gospel was written after the 70 AD destruction of the temple, how does that tally in with Luke's gospel -- the last synoptic -- coming later after it? The timing has to be quite tight?
I'm sure you have the answer but I'm just asking anyway?
From wiki:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark
" ... Most scholars date Mark to closely after AD 70. They reject the traditional ascription to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Peter, which probably arose from the desire of early Christians to link the work to an authoritative figure, and believe it to be the work of an author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative.
It was traditionally placed second, and sometimes fourth, in the Christian canon, as an inferior abridgement of what was regarded as the most important gospel, Matthew.The Church has consequently derived its view of Jesus primarily from Matthew, secondarily from John, and only distantly from Mark.It was only in the 19th century that Mark came to be seen as the earliest of the four gospels, and as a source used by both Matthew and Luke.
The hypothesis of Marcan priority (that Mark was written first) continues to be held by the majority of scholars today, and there is a new recognition of the author as an artist and theologian using a range of literary devices to convey his conception of Jesus as the authoritative yet suffering Son of God ..."
Interesting ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark
" ... Most scholars date Mark to closely after AD 70. They reject the traditional ascription to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Peter, which probably arose from the desire of early Christians to link the work to an authoritative figure, and believe it to be the work of an author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative.
It was traditionally placed second, and sometimes fourth, in the Christian canon, as an inferior abridgement of what was regarded as the most important gospel, Matthew.The Church has consequently derived its view of Jesus primarily from Matthew, secondarily from John, and only distantly from Mark.It was only in the 19th century that Mark came to be seen as the earliest of the four gospels, and as a source used by both Matthew and Luke.
The hypothesis of Marcan priority (that Mark was written first) continues to be held by the majority of scholars today, and there is a new recognition of the author as an artist and theologian using a range of literary devices to convey his conception of Jesus as the authoritative yet suffering Son of God ..."
Interesting ...
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Miken
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To begin with I do not believe a word of Acts. It seems to be all about resolving discrepancies, problems and even embarrassments in earlier scriptures. But that is a big story in itself. One quick example: Paul says that he got his gospel straight from Jesus and not from the disciples. There are multiple places in his letters where he recounts clashes with Jewish Christian missionaries. But in Acts, Paul does not get any information from Jesus. He just gets knocked down and blinded and then converted into an already fully formed Christianity. Luke tells that story three times to make sure you get the point. The idea that Jesus did not tell the Apostles the real story about salvation but told Paul later, as Paul claims, is clearly a problem. Lots of things like that in Acts starting right at the beginning.
My timeframe guesswork:
Mark 70-75
Matthew 75-80
Luke 80-85
John 85-90
Or maybe a little later for each.
Why do I put John so early compared to most commentators? John is the first to use the phrase ‘Lamb of God’ or even explicitly use the word ‘lamb’ with respect to Jesus. John moves the crucifixion from the first day of Passover as the Synoptics have it to the day before Passover starts. This avoids the ‘impossible trial’ problem but also has Jesus die as the lambs are being sacrificed in the Temple in preparation for Passover.
Revelation refers to Jesus as the Lamb including the Lamb of God over and over. Revelation is just chock full of references to earlier scriptures, being aimed at demonstrating that everything points to the end of days about to happen. Part of the imagery used by John of Patmos is equating the seven-headed beast of Daniel 7 with the emperors of Rome, and Domitian being the evil Nero come back to life. The end of days was supposed to happen during the reign of Domitian which ended with his death in 96 CE. Revelation being composed in all its elaborate scripture referencing glory before 96 CE including tying into the Gospel of John puts that Gospel well before 96 CE.
Thank you.
It's all very convincing. It would take someone of the same level of scholarship and study as yourself to be able intelligently to take the debate any further.
I wonder what your own views are on Jesus?
Miken
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Since Paul mentions that there is a Jesus movement before him and that the people he writes to appear to already know that there was a religious leader named Jesus who got crucified, this sounds like there really was a Jesus. Also the idea that someone hailed as the messiah should be killed by the Romans is not something that would simply be invented. (“Say what???”) The most reasonable explanation is that there really was a Jesus.
However I do not believe in a supernatural miracle working Jesus. Paul uses the term Son of God with respect to Jesus but describes him as a pre-existing heavenly entity who was responsible for all of creation. This sounds very much like the Son of God idea put forward by Philo of Alexandria. At that time, Son of God was a term used to mean not just the Messiah but a revolutionary style of Messiah who would throw out the oppressive Romans and re-establish a Jewish Kingdom. The scriptural justification for using the term Son of God in this context was:
Psalm 2
7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”
Mark seems to be in possession of very early traditions. His account of the trial of Jesus in Mark 14 has the high priest asks Jesus “Are you the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Blessed?” This is the way a high priest would talk, avoiding explicit reference to God. When Jesus says he is and adds a reference to Daniel 7 about the Son of Man being given dominion over the world. They then turn Jesus over to the Romans with the charge of claiming to be King of the Jews. One gets the feeling that this might really have happened that way.
Notice that Jesus refers to the Son of Man in the third person here as always throughout the Gospels. One gets the impression that a real historical Jesus did not think of himself as that heavenly being but as a human type of Messiah as everything in the Jewish scriptures seems to indicate.
OTOH the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees in Mark suggest a different point of contention. At that time, the Pharisees were seeking to spread holiness among Jews by adapting rules of behavior found in the Written Torah intended for use by priests into practices to be observed by all Jews. This was justified by use of the Oral Torah, which Pharisees believed to have been received at Mt. Sinai with the Written Torah and passed on orally. Jesus was of a different opinion, saying that these customs were made up by people and that only the Written Torah was valid. In the handwashing narrative, the reference to Isaiah expressing that same idea way back suggests that although the Pharisees, who originated in the 2nd century BCE, believed in the Oral Torah, it and the debate over it were older than that.
I am reminded of a passage in Matthew about the Pharisees laying burdens on people. Jewish Christian Matthew might possibly have had possession of ideas about what a real Jesus believed passed down. Matthew’s real target in his accusations was post-Temple Rabbinic Judaism, a rival to his Jewish Christian community. But that movement was founded by Pharisees who of course believed in the Oral Torah. The difference of opinion here is over the prescripts of the Oral Torah being a ‘burden’.
The apparent opposition of Jesus to Pharisaic ideals would explain the mutual enmity. And preaching to those of low social and economic status about how the Pharisees have it wrong and are oppressing them would be a good reason for his popularity and serve to aggravate that enmity.
Some thoughts on the subject anyway.