Vorkosigan

Evidence for this condemnation?

the_cave

I'm not trying to persuade anyone. I am in fact expressing my personal ignorance. I don't see why the young man would send the apostles back to Galilee unless there was already a tradition of Galilean appearances.

Would it have been better if I had said "It is clearly not necessary for the young man to send the apostles back to Galilee unless there was already a tradtion of Galilean appearances"?

Again, Galilee as a prophetic locale has been taken care of by the Galilean ministry. There is no narrative need, prophetic or otherwise, to send the apostles back to Galilee.

No real contest here.

But I am providing evidence...

Again, Luke is very late, and may be speaking to a different region. Galilean appearances may have been unimportant to either Luke or them.

Sure, ok.

But there must have been some tradition of appearances somewhere. Paul speaks of it in Corinthians. Even if it is a late insertion, the point is the tradition was there (and seems to be independent of the gospels.)

Maybe, but note that Matthew also includes the appearance to Mary Magdalene.

John does eventually include the appearance by the Sea of Galilee. I take it you're saying it wasn't originally a part of the gospel?

But are you then saying that when people read the gospels of Matthew and Mark, nobody assumed that Jesus appeared in Galilee?

It might also be the case that there were competing traditions.

Quite possibly. But it seems they had to happen somewhere.

Unless he knew of a Galilean tradition, suggested by the fact that his young man tells the apostles to return to Galilee, even though there is no longer any narrative need for them to do so.

Unless Jn 21 was originally a part of Mark, and Vork and I have discussed (but if it wasn't a part of Mark, where did it come from?)

Their reasons could have been 1) a late date and a relative lack of knowledge about the initial apperances, and 2) a need to emphasize the authority of the Jerusalem church.

I agree. This is a Jerusalem appearance.

To varying degrees.

But there is an alternate explanation--that is, there were competing claims to be the first place that Jesus appeared.

I'm just contrasting the competing traditions.

But John 21 is in Galilee.

They are not mutually exclusive, with the exception of Luke. Luke has a very explicit timeline that caused him to eliminate Galilee. Besides the appearance to Mary at the tomb, the others have a more indefinite description of the location and timeline of the appearances. If it weren't for the Pentecost at the beginning of Acts that drives Luke's narrative, the appearances which Luke includes wouldn't have a very exact timeline, either.

Amaleq13

If you require conclusive evidence indicating the author's motivation, I suspect you will never "see why". Perhaps the author just wanted to locate the appearances where the Kingdom of God prophets operated. Perhaps the author wanted to locate the appearances where he, himself, grew up. There really isn't enough information to know.

Not really. I don't see where there is enough information for one to reach a conclusion about whether it was "necessary" for the author.

An absence of an apparent "narrative need" is not sufficient to establish some tradition as the motivation.

Where do you provide evidence of a tradition? Even if you could objectively establish the absence of a "narrative need", you would not have evidence of a tradition.

This does not change the fact that Luke's treatment of this portion of Mark's story argues against the notion that the first appearances were known (via oral tradition) to have taken place in Galilee.

Why "must" there have been? The evidence we have from Paul denies your assertion. He offers no location for anyone's appearance experiences. Perhaps all that was important was the fact that they had taken place.

This is irrelevant to any alleged tradition about the initial appearance to the disciples.

I'm not saying anything about this story because it isn't relevant to an alleged tradition about the location of the initial appearance to the disciples.

I think it is entirely possible that the original audience did not consider the story to be a history lesson.

If that is true, what does it suggest about their historical reliability?

If they happened, they obviously had to have happened somewhere. The mistake is assuming that the location must have been important to early believers.

Either the initial appearances took place in Galilee or they took place near Jerusalem. The possibilities are mutually exclusive.

Chili

I made that comment to include the idea that charismatic movements are very much anti-Catholic (even if today they are tolerated in some churches), which is especially true since Jesus compared his way with the way of the Children of Israel who were also on a spiritual high. In John 6 the words "unlike your ancestors who ate manna etc. but they died nonetheless" speaks for this comparison wherein the way of Jesus is the true way and not the way of Moses.

Messianic movements have always been suspicious of heresy and that is what the Inquisitions were all about and is why they were called Inquisition. The distinction to be made here was if the believer was begotten by God or reborn from below (based on Jn.1:13).

Messianic movements are always promoted by believers who have been reborn from carnal desire (below) because there is no freedom in belonging to a special group because we feel special but have no victory over sin.

Rev.13 makes the distinction between "above" and "below" wherein from above came from the [celestial] sea and from below came from the [old] earth. Those who came the sea are able to transform their own world and will have the mortal wounds to prove this (metaphor), while those who came from the earth will try and transform the world around them (for real). Notice that it can be said that both were in Galilee if Galilee is where the Messiah is moving but the first beast was there only for 42 months (our Purgatory).

In my view Luke is the subconscious mind point of view and there is certainly is no Galilee there because that is the place from where Mary and John were in charge (or there would have been no resurrection for Jesus).

Blueskyboris

derailment deleted - mod

the_cave

I agree, and this applies to both our positions.

I agree--we cannot conclude with certainty one way or the other whether it was necessary or unnecessary.

Not sufficient to establish, no, but efficient to suggest.

I am suggesting a reasonable interpretation of the evidence we have, which is ambiguous.

I am not arguing they were known, I am arguing it was (by then) known there was a tradition.

That's not what I'm saying--I agree that perhaps the location was not precisely known, or was unimportant, or disputed. But obviously there must have been a location.

No, you were claiming that Matthew denied the inconsistent tradition of a Jerusalem appearance. But there is a Jerusalem appearance in Matthew, so obviously he found the notions quite compatible.

Sure it is--whomever used it was reflecting the Galilean tradition.

Do you really think this is true in the case of any gospel besides Mark?

Not much. Nobody knows when or where American baseball was invented, but that doesn't mean they didn't play baseball in the 19th century.

Perhaps not. But that doesn't necessarily mean the knowledge was lost.

Perhaps, but they could have been very close in time. They could also have been simultaneous, or nearly so--perhaps we are looking at the traditions of more than one group. Who knows.

Amaleq13

I should hope so in my case because it is my position.

Your position seems to be that despite the insufficient evidence there is reason to think there might be history in this part of the story(ies). If that is the case, then I think you are setting the standard for "might be" far too low.

You also seem to be using the term "tradition" in a different, and far more ambiguous, way than I am. As I said before, I consider a "tradition" as something reliably historical as it can be followed back to eyewitnesses of the actual events. You seem to be calling any unsubstantiated but repeated belief a "tradition" which, IMO, essentially renders it meaningless with regard to establishing historicity.

Ambiguous evidence can only be interpreted subjectively and "reasonable" doesn't seem relevant. What would constitute an "unreasonable" interpretation of ambiguous evidence?

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. If the "tradition" was not based on reliable information, how can it have any relevance to establishing historicity?

Given that the appearance experiences took place, this is as obvious as it is irrelevant to establishing historicity.

You are switching "traditions" on me. We are talking about the initial appearance to the disciples. The appearance to Mary is a different subject though it seems to be little more than an elaboration on Mark.

It is irrelevant to the specific claim of a "tradition" of an initial appearance to the Disciples in Galilee.

I think Luke's author is clearly attempting to at least create the appearance of a record of history. John's author is offering an argument to convince. I'm not convinced that Matthew's author intended his story to be read by non-believers or to be taken as history.

Not much. Nobody knows when or where American baseball was invented, but that doesn't mean they didn't play baseball in the 19th century.


The burden is on anyone who wishes to claim "history".

I think it is entirely possible that we are dealing with two different groups but the connection between them seems to be a guy named "Jesus" rather than resurrection experiences.

the_cave

Oh! Well, in that case...

Ok, well, I guess we have different criteria. I think it's as likely as the the OP's hypothesis. I don't think we're going to agree on this.

In this discussion, yes.

Well, not meaningless--merely establishes it as a possibility.

I might grant you this.

Spacemen or time travel, for example.

It doesn't establish historicity--it merely suggests it as a reasonable alternative.

Well, it does establish the historicity of the experiences, which opens up the possibility of some tradition, somewhere, that remembered the place and time they happened.

Why? It seems to be reflecting that tradition.

Well, then we might not be able to go any farther than this in the discussion. Unfortunate, but it's alright.

I'm saying the burden is on anyone who wishes to claim anything.

Interesting.