mountainman

From Vridar's blog:

None of these theologians and/or biblical scholars appear to be doing history.

They appear to be inventing paradigms in order to try and salvage some integrity for a history that has yet to be written.

But for the sake of the argument, let us assume there was an oral tradition and that Eusebius just unfortunately "made another mistake". The logical implication of a prior oral tradition is that we must be dealing with a later editor who assembled the texts we have before us. On a positive note this assumption provides an explanation for the appearance of the universal and consistent use of "nomina sacra" in the earliest Greek texts. But on a negative note, it introduces another NAMELESS player to the saga of the history of anonymous authorship - a player unknown to Eusebius, and hence to us.


Duplicity abounds.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

andrewcriddle

It is hard to regard this as simply an expansion of Mark by Matthew. It probably does witness to an oral tradition, among opponents of Christianity, that the disciples of Jesus stole his body.

Andrew Criddle

MrMacSon

Yes, there was Docetism, Montanism, Marcionism, Zoroastrianism, to name a few. Arianism was developed mid-1st century.

PhilosopherJay

Hi andrewcriddle,

Yes, it does seem to be testifying to an oral tradition and if there were more testimonies like this, we could say that the gospel writers were trying to record some kind of oral tradition, but this seems to be unique. Because it is unique, we cannot be sure it is reporting a true oral tradition, rather than an imagined oral tradition.

One can see it as just another in a long list of rhetorical charges that the gospel writers make against "the Jews" (i.e. they betrayed their God, their prophets, the son of God; they're hypocrites, oppressors, and liars, and dozens of more rhetorical charges that are laid against the Jews).

The writer himself may have felt the weakness of the empty tomb ending of the gospel of Mark and wanted to clarify it. Perhaps, he thought it was too ambiguous and people might have jumped to the logical conclusion that the disciples stole the body. He may have used the opportunity to make up more charge against the hated, evil Jews that the gospel writers are targeting. This time, the gospel writer is charging them with bribery, lying and slander. If this hypothesis is correct, it would not reflect any kind of real oral tradition, but simply be another case of anti-Jewish rhetoric.

What would make the oral tradition a whole lot more credible is if the gospel writers had related their sources and explained their own. For example, if Matthew had written something like "I heard from a Jewish man in the city of Tiberias that the disciples had stolen his body, but I talked with Peter and he told me that the disciples were all in his mother's house for those three days." This would sound more believable and less like another rhetorical hit on the Jews.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

gurugeorge

Explaining the gospels by oral tradition has always struck me as a case of obscurum per obscurius.

And anyway, where is the evidence of any oral tradition whatsoever? So far as I can see the Christian texts all rely and place their authority on other texts.

Adam

Wow, I've won you over!
So nice that someone here finally listens to me.

Tristan Scott

Steve, your response has nothing whatsoever to do with my post. I'm not making any value judgements regarding writing. I'm simply stating that it was rare in the 1st century, and virtually non-existent in some rural areas of Galillee. Information was passed around by oral tradition. Humans began using graphic symbols for their languages about 5,000 years ago, and for the first 2500 years it was done using stone tablets. By the 1st c.of the common era it was still a rare and expensive media. Prior to all this, humans communicated verbally, or with gestures. So, as imperfect as it was, oral tradition was the way most people communicated in 1st century Judea. Because of this, most preaching was done in the form of allegory and parable. Ideas were best spread this way because these stories could convey the idea with the best chance of the idea not being lost after multiple retellings. But the important thing for us to understand is that the art of aral tradition had been perfected for over a 100,000 years, compared to writing which we have only had for 5,000 years. The world of human communication and interaction was completely alien to what we have today.

aa5874

If Jesus did actually exist then he could not have resurrected if he was dead for three days so opponents of Christianity would have had no need to make up a story that the disciples stole the body of Jesus.

The claim that the disciples stole the body of Jesus must have or was most likely invented by Apologetics to explain an earlier story about the Empty Tomb .

In gMatthew, Jesus supposedly resurrected and was NOT seen by anyone except by the women and later his disciples in a mountain in Galilee.

If Jesus did exist did ,claim he would resurrect and the tomb was found empty then it would have been his followers who would have removed the dead body of Jesus to give the impression that he resurrected.

It is either that the disciples stole the body or that Apologetics invented the stolen body story.

If opponents of Jesus actually killed him then there would have been no empty tomb.

mountainman

The fabricators were looking for a story with some antiquity in order to totally subvert the antiquity of the Greeks, and they "found" the LXX, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. They used the LXX to fabricate the New Testament.



Perhaps the writers were instruments of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps they were the instruments of a Holy Sponsor.






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

There was a recent thread Writing structure of Bible aids in brainwashing that discussed the use of chiasmus, a rhetorical structure that reinforces the contained message.

Although this may have no direct relevance to an oral tradition we should be continually reminded that only a very small percentage of people were literate and that these literate minority were the only bridge to the mass of illiterate people. At the time of their origins and appearance in history, the Christian texts were designed to be read out aloud to the sheeples.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia