yalla

Besides the linear development of the progressive backdating of JC's divinity there are the other 5 stories mentioned.

Some scholars disclaim a literary dependence between the synoptics and 'John'.
I reckon there clearly is with the closest relationship being between 'John' and 'Luke".
That is 'John' is aware of the synoptics. As shown from the fact that 3 of the 5 stories above are in all 4 gospels. With wording being close enough IMO to show some sort of dependence. In which direction is debatable, at this juncture perhaps.
But also note the commonality of 'Luke' to 'John'.
Where 'John' is the one who does the elaboratation of ideas gained from 'Luke'.

So I take a relationship between 'John' and the synoptics as established.

Now if they copied or were aware of 'John', ie 'John, came first, then you need to explain why they omitted his description of JC as being present from the beginning of time.

All 3 of them.

And why each chose the lesser version of his divinity ie as an adult only ['Mark'] or from birth [ the other 2] omitting about 4000 years of his preexisting divinity according to 'John'.

There is no point in 'Mark' having JC be adopted as the son of god at baptism
if he has been such from the beginning of time.
And 'Mark" would have had to be aware of that to account for the commonality of the 3 stories, with close language parallels, with 'John'.

What are the exact [ there are variations] words..."Today I have adopted thee/This is my beloved son'?
Which the other 2 guys have to include in their versions because they are based on 'Mark' who already has it. They can't get rid of it.
Although they do change it to suit their particular theologies. Much ado about John the Baptist being worthy to baptise the perfect person. Not a problem for 'Mark' but 'embarrassing'' for the other 3.

All of which would be redundant if 'John' was first and the common stories were taken from him directly or indirectly.
Rejecting JC as eternally divine from the beginning and replacing that 'Johannine' concept with the the infancy virgin narratives stories as in 'Matthew' and 'Luke' would be redundant and does not humanise JC any more.
All 4 establish the divinity of JC early in their books. Ch. 1 in each case IIRC. Any relative degree of humanising comes later.
So I think there is a strong case for linearity with 'John' clearly last.

And then add the 5 stories which show similar linearity of development.
cheers
yalla

PhilosopherJay

Hi Yalla et al.,

In my book, the Evolution of Christs and Christianities, I propose that John worked from a prior source and Mark knew both the prior source and John.

I'm glad that people are finally beginning to question synoptic priority. I now believe that John may have been 100 years prior to the synoptics.

In any case, in regards to the five proofs of Marcan priority:

Story 1. Feeding 5000,

If John adds the detail about the bread being barley, Mark adds the detail about the men sitting by 100's and 50. Why does the addition or inclusion of one detail indicate priorty and not the other?

Story 2. Entry into Jerusalem
John may say the more specific "palm" branches, but Mark adds that the ass that Jesus rode "on which no one has ever sat". This is a nice added touch
that Jesus could ride on an ass that had never been ridden before. Furthermore Mark adds a whole story about Jesus telling his followers that they would find the ass in town and to bring it to him. John, in the orginal story just says, "Jesus found a young ass and sat upon it." In John's version there is nothing special about the ass. Anybody could have just sat on the ass and rode into town and been proclaimed king. In Mark's retelling, he corrects this by making it a special virgin ass that only Jesus knows about. Further, the original story essentially has Jesus stealing the ass, while Mark's revision has the desciples confiscating it to fulfill a sacred mission that Jesus has given them. Again, one has to ask why an additional detail in John should be considered grounds for priority, but a dozen additional details in Mark should not?

Story 3. Violence in the garden.
John tells it that it was Simon Peter who cut off the ear of the high priest's slave named Malthus. However, one can readily see that a church that was recruiting slaves would not want the first head of that church associated with cutting off a slave's ear. So Mark had every reason to hide Simon Peter's name. Further Mark adds Jesus saying:

"Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? 14.49Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled."

In this way, Mark has Jesus deny the idea that he was a robber ( a Roman term for Jewish zealot). Further he notes that Jesus taught in the Jerusalem Temple (thus refuting the idea that he was not Jewish or well educated). Further, he makes Jesus aware of his fate by having him say "Let the scriptures be fulfilled). This counters the idea that Jesus wasn't much of a prophet if it couldn't see his own future and could be captured so easily. All of these additions, are refutations of criticisms that would naturally arise from reading the John Gospel first. Here we have much more reason to believe that Mark would delete an accusation against Simon Peter than that John would add one, and much more reason to believe that Mark's additions are responses to later criticisms of earlier Jesus Christ stories.


Story 4. Lazarus raised.
Mark has simply substituted the raising of Jairus' Daughter from the dead for the raising of Lazarus story. The raising of Lazarus story is messy. Mary accuses Jesus of causing the death of her beloved brother Lazarus, "Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Further we read:

They said to him, "Lord, come and see." 11.35 Jesus wept. 11.36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" 11.37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Jesus is shown to be weak by crying and he doesn't even raise Lazarus until someone accuses him of being negligent in the matter.

On the other hand the curing of the menustrating women which Mark places in the middle of the Jairus daughter raising shows Jesus to have great power that he doesn't even have to activate with magical words, just a touch of his clothes will do.

Again, while the Lazarus raising shows Jesus' weak and hesitating (he doesn't come for two days, allowing Lazarus to die), the Jairus raising shows him as quick acting and forceful (ignoring his own followers who want him to pass by). Is it more likely that Mark replaced the Weak Jesus-Lazarus raising story with the Strong Jesus-Jairus raising story or John did the reverse?

Story 5. It's a bit fishy.
It appears here that Luke has combined Mark 1:16-20 with John 21.1-6.
Note that Luke and Mark mention Simon Peter's companion's as only James and John, sons of Zebedee. The John Gospel list is different: "Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together."

John doesn't even mention who the sons of zebedee are. Thus Luke appears closer to Mark in this detail.

Most importantly Luke adds an important detail to the story he finds in John -- the number of boats needed to haul in the fish. In John (21.6)we get, "So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, for the quantity of fish."
Two sentences later (21.7)we get:

But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off.

This is a contradiction in John. If the nets were full and they were not able to haul it in, how did they haul it in?

Luke in re-using material from John, Luke gives us the answer: 5.7 they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats,

Luke has gotten rid of the contradiction in John by doubling the miracle of Jesus and making the catch big enough for two ships.

In all the examples where synoptic priority are asserted, we find that there is equal or better reasons for seeing them as examples of Johanine priority.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Malachi151

Yes, but there is a scriptural basis for Mark's story (1 Sam. 9), so it proceeds along these scriptural lines. John deviates further from the original scriptural basis.

It would be odd that John tells a story from no basis, and then Mark finds a scriptural basis, but its not odd the other way around.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Malachi151,

Could you explain what you mean by this more explicitly? Thanks.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

neilgodfrey

To return to the reference initiating this thread and without getting into the 'linear trajectory discussion, Powell in Unfinished Gospel (another Web 2.0 LibraryThing link!) actually argues that the original ending of Mark was some form of our current final chapter of John.

(To me that goes against the grain of Mark, both thematically and structurally, but it is nevertheless a plausible argument -- if one demands a more 'logical' ending to Mark (forget Virgil, Herodotus, Euripides' 'Hercules'), denies Mark literary subtlety (so much for secular literary critics like Frank Kermode) and is bugged by the double-ending of John (forget the Odyssey and others discussed in Roberts, Dunn's and Fowler's "Classical closure: reading the end in Greek and Latin literature". Vork has argued differently without denying literary finesse on Mark's part, however.)

Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com

aa5874

It is my opinion that 'adding' or 'subtracting' from a story, or a 'simpler' versus a 'detailed' story is not directly related to chronology but more related to the audience or the jurisdiction in which the story is presented and to some extent the concept that the author would like to portray.

If we examine Matthew, Mark Luke, John or even the Epistles, it can be seen that there are major differences in the portrayal of Jesus, and these differences are not because of chronology but of concept and jurisdiction.

Now, it is a known fact that stories get simplified with time, we all know the term 'Liberal Christian' and those who say that the Bible should not be taken literally and if they had a chance to rewrite the Bible, it probably would not contain many books if any at all.

Clivedurdle

Has anyone asked if this is a description of a ritual?

Dividing into four - classic alchemic number, magical maths. One bit undivided "seamless" ie pure.

Casting lots - happened in judaic ritual - to decide on a leader?

Imagine this is not describing something that happened, but is a bit of alchemic pythagorean stuff, with jewish links.

It does feel to me that John may be earlier and his alleged more divine christ is actually nearer to the original heavenly christ! I see no reason to assume the divinity of christ is later thinking.

neilgodfrey

Whether a story gets simplified or expanded with time will be a reflection of the values underpinning the culture of those preserving the story. If a scribe knew of 2 different textual variants of a story he was copying -- not impossible if one text was the result of someone slipping in a unique teaching of his sect or inserting a marginal gloss that was later mistaken for part of the original text -- was anxious not to lose anything "from God", and did not know which one was the more valid, then he would be more likely to attempt to fit the two together, thus expanding the text (Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, 3rd ed.).

One of the "twelve basic rules" for textual criticism in Aland and Aland's 'The Text of the New Testament', based on myriads of studies of textual transmission, is that the shorter text is "as a rule" to be taken as the more original. (Of course there will be exceptions as Aland & Aland explain, but the conclusion of these scholars is that they will be the exceptions.)

Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com

WishboneDawn

No, it's not actually. In fact, many think that often when dealing with oral tradition it's pretty much the opposite case. As neilgodfrey explained. I wish I could find my source on this (I'll keep searching my textbook).

Anyhow, whenever anyone says, "It is a known fact," I get suspicious.

aa5874

Well, I ask you a simply question, 'Has the creation story been expanded with time by those who call themselves Jews, today?

It is known that initial reports of any event tend to be blown out of proportion, this situation is generated by speculation and rumors, however with time, as the truth of the matter is brought to light, these speculation and rumors are dispelled.

This is not 'rocket science', just read or listen to a 'beakimg news report' and then notice how the report of the event is generally downplayed with time as more credible information is gathered about the event.