Vorkosigan

Haha. I was just looking at Tom Thatcher's new edited volume on Amazon. I sure wish someone would take on the works outside the canon from an oral lit perspective.

Toto

McGrath endorses Thatcher's work Interesting point - the evidence of oral authorities is that Mark tried to discredit them.

Toto

Thatcher is concerned with "memory" and endorses April DeConick's approach.

Read more at these previous threads:

Refracted memory of the historical Jesus

Memory and unreliable history

JonA

Reply to post #6824204 in Bart Ehrman on the genre of the gospels ...:

The difference is quite simple: Assuming that the gospel writers made use of only one or two of the different types of sources available them would set the gospels off as being unique. There seems no reason to think them unique.

Of course, it isn't inconceivable that they might be unique; it isn't inconceivable that they may have made use of only one or two of the different types of sources.

There, presently, however, appears no reason to think that they are or that they did.

If you read an article on a particular topic, and the facts you can check aren't accurate, how much do you believe the author on the facts you can't check?

Jon

Toto

So you take the proposition that the gospels used oral traditions as the default assumption? And you assume that all writings from the period make use of oral traditions?

Do you have any basis for believing or assuming this?

So you are assuming that the gospel writers were trying to pass off the gospels as based on facts, and that their audience had some background knowledge that would allow them to check those facts?

What is the basis for this assumption? It is generally agreed that the gospels were written after 70 CE and were not written in Galilee. Why would there be anyone able to fact check this gospel, even if it were intended as factual?

I think that you have uncritically accepted the standard Christian narrative of early church history.

discordant

I would argue that Mark's incorporation of so many different titles for Jesus is evidence that he was drawing from tradition. Teacher, Rabbi, Son of God, Son of David, Christ, Prophet, Son of Man. I see Mark as commenting on a set of pre-existing titles by arranging them strategically in his story. By placing them on the lips of certain people at certain times, some titles come off better than others.

If Mark has an agenda in his portrayal of the disciples and in Jesus' rejection of his family, I suspect the titles are also employed with an agenda.

DCHindley

Didn't R H Charles do this very thing in Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (APOT), or in his various translations of 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Ascension of Isaiah, etc?

Here is an example from his translation of Jubilees (The Book of Jubilees, 1902, pp. lxxxiii - lxxxvi):

§ 23. INFLUENCE OF JUBILEES ON THE NEW TESTAMENT

The points of connection between the gospels and our author are very slight, except in the beliefs respecting angels and demons—a subject to which we shall return later. We shall now place the passages side by side where the New Testament is dependent on our text, or presupposes it, or presents a close parallel.

Mark iii. 22 (Matt. xii. 24).— o arcwn twn daimoniwn [the ruler of the demons]	Jub. X. 8.— "Chief of the spirits " ; xlviii. 9, 1 2, " Prince of the Mastema."
Luke xi. 49.—" Therefore also said the wisdom of God : I will send unto them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute.	i. 12.—"And I shall send witnesses unto them, that I may witness against them, but they will . . . slay the witnesses also and persecute those who seek the law."
John xiv. 26.—"The Holy Spirit . . . will bring to your remembrance all things, etc."	xxxii. 25.—" I will bring all things to thy remembrance." Here God is to cause Jacob to remember all that he had seen in a vision.
Acts vii. 15-16.—"And he (Jacob) died, himself and our fathers, and they were carried over unto Shechem, and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought, etc."	xlvi. 9.—" And the children of Israel brought forth all the bones of the children of Jacob save the bones of Joseph, and they buried them in the field in the double cave " (i.e. Machpelah). This is the oldest source of the tradition in Acts.
Acts vii. 23.—Moses when " well nigh forty years old " smote the Egyptian.	xlvii. 10-12.—Moses forty-two years old.(1)
Acts vii. 30.—Moses spent forty years in Midian.	xlviii. 1.—Moses spent thirty-eight years.(1)
Acts vii. 53.—"Who received the law as it was ordained by angels and kept it not." Cf. Gal. iii. 19.	i. 27.—"And He said to the angel of the presence: Write for Moses, etc." i. 14 : "They will forget . . . thy law." Our text is the earliest authority for the statement that the law was given through angels.
Acts ix. 2.—" If he found any that were of the way."	xxiii. 20.—" Turn them back into the way."
Rom. iv. 15.—"Where there is no law, neither is there transgression."	xxxiii. 15-16. — Anticipates this Pauline doctrine.
2 Cor. V. 1 7.—"A new creation" (Gal. vi. 15).	V. 1 2.—" A new and righteous nature."
2 Cor. vi. 18.—"I will be to you a Father and ye shall be to me sons and daughters."	i. 24.—" I shall be their Father and they will be My children." (2)
Gal. ii. 15.—"Sinners of the Gentiles."	xxiii. 23.—"Sinners of the Gentiles" (cf xxiii. 24).
Gal. iii. 17. — "A covenant confirmed beforehand by God, the law which came 430 years later, etc." Does the confirmation here spoken of mean the birth of Isaac ? In that case 430 years exactly elapse between this confirmation of the covenant and the law according to Jubilees.	XV. 4 sqq. contains the covenant made in 1979 a.m. [i.e. anno mundi, “year of the world”] with Abraham on his circumcision. The law was given in 2410 [a.m.]. Hence 2410 - 1979 = 431. Isaac was born in 1980 [a.m.], or exactly 430 years before the legislation on Sinai according to Jubilees.
Gal. v. 12.—"I would that they which unsettle you (i.e. Judaisers) would cut off the member " (apokoyontai).	Contrast xv. 27, according to which the angels were created circumcised.

[Notes] 1) Jubilees gives here the oldest dates on this subject. The Midrash Tanchuma on Exod. ii. 6, which was many centuries later, gives a tradition practically the same as that in Acts. " Moses was in the palace of Pharaoh twenty years, but some say forty years, and forty years in Midian and forty years in the wilderness." Observe that our author makes Moses stay twenty-one years with his own people and twenty-one years at Pharaoh's court.

2) The righteous individual is called " a son of God " first in Jubilees, so far as I am aware. See note on i. 24.

2 Thes3. ii. 3.—"Son of perdition."	X. 3.—" Sons of perdition."
1 Tim. i. 4.—"Fables and endless genealogies." iv. 7 : " old wives' fables." Titus iii. 9 : " Genealogies and strifes and fightings about the law."	The Pauline phrases form a just description of a large portion of Jubilees. The " old wives' fables " may be an allusion to the large role played by women in it.
James i. 1 3.—" Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God tempteth no man."	The author of Jubilees enforces the same view by representing Mastema as suggesting the temptation of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (xvii. 16), as hardening the hearts of the Egyptians (xlviii. 12, 17), etc.
James ii. 23.—'•' Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God."	xiv. 6.—"And he believed on the Lord and it was counted to him for righteousness " (Gen. xv. 6).xix. 9 : " He was found faithful and was recorded on the heavenly tables as the friend of God."
2 Peter ii. 5. — " Noah, a preacher of righteousness."	vii. 20 - 39 contains Noah's sermon.
2 Peter iii. 1 3.—" New heavens and a new earth."	i. 29.—"The heavens and the earth shall be renewed, etc."
2 Peter iii, 8.—"One day is with the Lord as a thousand years."	iv. 30 contains the oldest dogmatic statement of this fact.
Rev. i. 6. — "A kingdom, priests." V. 10: "A kingdom and priests."	xvi. 18.—"A kingdom and priests." Our text alone gives this form of Exod. xix. 6 antecedently to Revelation.
Rev. iv. 5 (xi. 19, xvi. 18 ; cf. viii. 5).—"Lightnings and voices and thunderings."	ii. 2.—" Angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the lightnings."

Angelology.—We shall confine our attention here to notable parallels between our author and the New Testament. Besides the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification there are the angels who are set over natural phenomena (ii. 2). These angels are inferior to the former. They do not observe the Sabbath as the higher orders ; for they are necessarily always engaged in their duties (ii. 18). It is the higher orders that are generally referred to in the New Testament ; but the angels over natural phenomena are referred to in Revelation: angels of the winds in vii. 1, 2, the angel of fire in xiv. 18, the angel of the waters in xvi. 5 (cf. Jub. ii. 2). Again, the guardian angels of individuals, which the New Testament refers to in Matt, xviii. 10 (Acts xii. 15), are mentioned, for the first time, in Jubilees xxxv. 17. On the angelology of our author see § 16.

Demonology.—The demonology of our author reappears for the most part in the New Testament:
(a) The angels which kept not their first estate Jude 6 ; 2 Peter ii. 4, are the angelic watchers who, though sent down to instruct mankind (Jub. iv. 15), fell from lusting after the daughters of men. Their fall and punishment are recorded in Jub. iv. 22, v. 1-9.
(b) The demons are the spirits which went forth from the souls of the giants who were the children of the fallen angels, Jub. v. 7, 9. These demons attacked men and ruled over them (x. 3, 6). Their purpose is to corrupt and lead astray and destroy the wicked (x. 8). They are subject to the prince of the Mastema (1) (x. 9), or Satan. Men sacrifice to them as gods (xxii. 17). They are to pursue their work of moral ruin till the judgment of Mastema (x. 8) or the setting up of the Messianic kingdom, when Satan will be no longer able to injure mankind (xxiii. 29).

So in the New Testament, the demons are disembodied spirits (Matt. xii. 43-45; Luke xi. 24-26). Their chief is Satan (Mark iii. 22). They are treated as divinities of the heathen (1 Cor. x. 20). They are not to be punished till the final judgment (Matt. viii. 29). On the advent of the Millennium Satan will be bound (Rev. xx. 2-3).

[Note] 1) See note on x. 8.

So, it is all already available, if you know where to look ...

DCH

Vorkosigan

Thanks, Dave. One quibble: Isa 65 already has the new heaven and the new earth. Do you see Jubilees as a kind of intermediate step on the way between OT prophecy and the idiosyncrtic readings of it in the NT?

JonA

No and no. I make no 'default' assumptions.

Read closely. What you responded to was an analogy. Take 'fact' to mean any tidbit presented in the text.

These objections become meaningless when you read my analogy as an analogy—as it was meant to be read.

I'll try again:

If you are trying to inform your audience about the 'real' secret life and deeds of George Washington, would your uncheckable information (that he suffered from a bad case of anal prolapse on account of his regularly receiving anal sex) be more or less believable if you claimed that he wasn't the first president of the United States?

When there are things that are 'factual' as far as your audience is concerned, you cannot counter those 'facts' without damaging your credibility.

The same would be true of any of the gospel writers. If there were oral traditions held by their audience, then to maintain their credibility (which is necessary to convince the audience of whatever it is they want to convince the audience of) they may not present information counter to those traditions. That is, they can only bend and alter the traditions so much while still holding their audience's trust.

Imagine reading a newspaper that described Iraq as an island nation in the Pacific.

And I can go on. But must I?

Jon

DCHindley

I figure when Charles says "We shall now place the passages side by side where the New Testament is dependent on our text, or presupposes it, or presents a close parallel," he means that these parallels can represent either a) direct dependence, b) indirect dependence, or c) both sources reflect a common tradition.

But to answer your question, I do not think that Jubilees directly or indirectly influenced the NT, as I cannot catch any of the "flavor" of Jubilees' unique POV in the NT. As a result, Jubilees would not be an "intermediate step" towards the idiosyncratic way that the NT uses OT ideas.

However, Jubilees probably does reflect a great deal that was common tradition in that intermediate period, where OT ideas were precolating and marinating. IMO, Jubilees and the NT share some common traditions.

DCH