PhilosopherJay

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for these arguments. They are quite interesting.

It is funny that some people get upset at Archarya S. when she brings forwards arguments from the late 19th century and early 20th century, but when many people bring forward arguments from the early 19th century, as do many websites, nobody claims the arguments are out of date.

The arguments you have presented appear to be from The Life of Christ Critically Examined by David Strauss from 1835 (part II, chapter 10, pages 465-467). So, I will consider Strauss' arguments.

We should remember that Strauss is writing at a time before Darwin opened the door to the study of evolution, Marx opened the door to history as a class struggle, and Freud opened the door to studies on the human subconscious; he is writing before all the scientific work on memory and oral traditions done in the last century; he is writing before the critical examinations of fictions, narratives cinema and deconstruction done in the past fifty years. We cannot blame him for the errors that he made. He assumed an historical Christ and the possibility of a nearly perfect oral transmission of teachings and incidents of that historical Christ.

In examining the relevant passages, Strauss gives six reasons for preferring the antiquity of Matthew: 1) ambiguity of the word PAIS, 2)increasing severity of the sickness of the young man, 3)further distance of the miracle, 4) simpler pronouncement of time of death, 5) weaker faith on the part of the pleader equals greater miracle, 6) the decision not to visit made by centurion and not Jesus, which shows a weaker (earlier) Jesus.

In the first case, Strauss' logic is that the word PAIS was ambiguous in Matthew, so Luke translated it as slave and John as Son. He is correct if we assume an oral transmission of the story and ignore Matthew's use of the word doulos (slave) in the passage. However, there is no reason to assume an oral transmission over a half century (with a miraculous/impossible degree of precision) when the hypothesis of a conscious change of text for ideological reasons is sufficient to explain the evolution of the text.

Matthew's use of the ambiguous term PAIS can be seen as a transition device to his use of the term doulos (slave) in the next sentence. He does not want to directly contradict John by using the term "slave" against John's term "son," so he uses the ambiguous term PAIS and then explains it as meaning slave in the next sentence. Matthew has changed the Jewish official into a Roman Centurion. He does not want to be accused of distorting John's story or of making a new story out of it. At the same time, he does not want it to be seen as a totally separate story; he just wants people to think that John misheard the story. So he uses PAIS to give the impression that John was confused by the word PAIS when he heard the story.

The underlying reason for making the change is that he wants to show that Roman soldiers are good people who care about their slaves. We may take it that Matthew was interesting in converting Roman soldiers or at least one particular Roman soldier. Matthew also adds the Centurion in the crucifixion scene: "When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!" ". It is true that Mark has a centurion suddenly appearing, but the phrase "ο παρεστηκως εξ εναντιας αυτου" only makes sense if it is referring to one of the thiefs that were executed with Jesus. The expanded story that Luke tells about the thieves is another indication that the line originally did not belong to a centurion.

Mark gives us the opening of the story, (15.27) "And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left."

Luke gives us the story:

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!" 23.40 But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 23.41 And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." 23.42 And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 23.43 And he said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

We may reconstruct the full story that appeared in Mark before it was edited out and the word hanged changed to crucified and the word robber changed to centurion :

John's gospel reflects a time when the Jesus community still believes it is possible to convert Jews. That is why it shows Jesus saving the life of a Jewish official. Matthew belongs to a time where the hope of Jewish conversion is over. The recruitment is aimed only at Greeks and Romans.

In any case, we take Strauss' argument that the use of an ambiguous term by Matthew indicates the original state of the text as dependent on his conception of the text as being orally transmitted. This is an unnecessary hypothesis if Jesus is not an historical personage. Matthew using the ambiguous term to discredit John is another explanation.

As far as Strauss' other points are concerned:

2) John's dying child is sicker than Matthew's paralyzed servant. Strauss is correct that dying is more severe and therefore more likely to be an embellishment of a true tale, just as a war story of killing 20 enemy soldiers is more likely to be an embellishment of a story in which two enemy soldiers are soldiers. However, if we are dealing with fiction, than a second author might very well decide that 20 enemy soldiers is not believable and cut it down to two to make it more realistic or for other reasons.

In this case, Matthew is embellishing John's tale. He is explaining why the servant has not come with him to Jesus to be healed. Even if he was dying, the centurion would have dragged the servant off to be healed by Jesus if he really believed in Jesus' power instead of dragging Jesus off to his home to save the slave. Rather than John embellishing the suffering, Matthew is embellishing the nature of the suffering to explain why the sufferer can't come seeking the medical care.

3) Strauss thinks that Cana being further away from Capernaum, John has embellished Jesus' miracle by making it stretch between two towns. But Matthew has eliminated all traces of Cana from his text. Since John identifies this place as where Jesus' wedding takes place, for John it is Jesus' hometown. Both Matthew and Mark switch Jesus' hometown from Cana to Capernaum. Thus it is accidental and dependent on this switch of hometowns that we find the miracle distance longer in John than in Matthew. The real question is why did Matthew and Mark switch Jesus' hometown?

4) Strauss thinks John's description of the hour that the miracle took place is more complicated than Matthew's simply declaration that the miracle took place when Jesus pronounced it. However, we can also see this as Matthew simply truncating the story. Why? If Matthew follows John at this point, then the centurion meets servants coming to report to him about his other servant. This means that the centurion had more servants. A reader of the tale would think, "This centurion had more servants, so what was the big deal about that one servant." This would have diminished the value of the miracle. Thus the best thing to do at that point for Matthew was just to end the story and not have the centurion encounter servants on the way home.

5) Strauss suggests that the weaker faith of the Jewish Official than the Roman centurion makes Jesus' miracle greater. John wanted to show a greater miracle so he made the faith weaker. Actually, it is simply that Matthew wants to contrast the strong faith of the Roman to the weak faith of the Jew that causes the Roman Centurion to show more faith in Jesus. It is only a coincidence that the weaker faith of the Jew makes Jesus' miracle look greater, if it does at all.

6) Strauss' final argument seems to be that somehow since the centurion suggested that he was unworthy to have Jesus in his home, and therefore he forced Jesus to do a long distance miracle, this is a smaller miracle than Jesus just deciding to do a long distance miracle on his own as in John. In other words, Jesus looks stronger in John by not offering to visit the stranger's home then he does in Matthew. Strauss fails to note that this also makes Jesus look kinder and, more importantly, compliant to Romans (as long as they are believers). Establishing the good relationship between Jesus and Roman Officials is the overriding concern for Matthew here and he rewrites the John story in light of that.

In conclusion, we can say that Strauss was a man of his time, the early 19th Century. Now, in the 21st century, it is easy to see his errors.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

ph2ter

Thank you for the links.
I don't think that influence of Purim on the Passion can be excluded only because Frazer's theories are outdated. Does Purim originated in Saceae or have connection with some other 'vegetables' cult, is of no importance in this examination. Common heritage, borrowing and mutual influence of similar cults between different cultures is I believe not in question.
Triumphal procession and mock trial of the effigy of Carnival which is on the end hunged and burned or drowned is common heritage of almost all Mediteranean cultures. Negating some connection of that custom with the Passion is hardly avoided.

mg01

This is something that I've had on my wishlist for a while. Has anyone here taken a look at it? The hypothesis is Mark was written through a process of "mimesis" based off styles and themes from Greek classics.

The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (or via: amazon.co.uk)

andrewcriddle

Hi Philosopher Jay

I have never I'm afraid read Strauss. What I wrote was partly based on memories of Meier's A Marginal Jew volume 2. It is not a weakness of claims found in modern scholarship that these arguments go back to the 19th century.

In any case my argument is rather different from that of Strauss'. He claimed that Matthew was the original form I suggested that Matthew and John both drew on an earlier form of the narrative that has not survived.
I entirely agree that having the sufferer paralyzed in Matthew is secondary. (As is having the person who asks Jesus for help a centurion and not just an official.) I also agree that Strauss' arguments 4/ 5/ and 6/ are at best not particularly strong.

Your other arguments are not (at least IMO) particularly convincing. Cana is mentioned only in John and your argument about Matthew and slavery although ingenious is rather speculative. (I should have noted by the way that Luke does use PAIS in verse 7 although this doesn't really affect the argument.)

One other argument for primitive elements in the synoptic account is the idea of Jesus being amazed in Luke 7:9 and Matthew 8:10. This is not in John and the idea of Jesus being amazed is unusual in the Gospels. The only other example is Mark 6:6 where Matthew rewrites so as to omit this idea. (Matthew 13:58).

It is hence most unlikely that Matthew would have added this and it was presumably in his source.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

Richard Carrier has an enthusiastic review here. Most commentators were not so positive (just google the name of the book.) But it's literary criticism, with at least some explanatory value.

Note that the author of the book is a practicing Christian, and does not regard his thesis as invalidating a historical Jesus.