Vinnie

Yes, this much anticipated article has finally arrived. I know you have all been waiting patientily for so long and I thank you for doing so. Wait no longer for proof that the Gospels are Historically Reliable has finally arrived!

Well, maybe not

But anyways, I am doing a new series on my site on Christian Creativity. It goal is to avoid all the present polemic and caricatures and present a balanced and level-headed look at Christian creativity. This is part one and it features a discussion of Gentile Related material in the Synoptic Gospels.

The good news: its only 4-5 pages long. The bad news: its irrefutable

Seriously though, I think this turns out to be pretty solid evidence for the historicity of Jesus in the end. It completely undermines how mythicists and co. have to treat the text of Mark! (see baptism thread for several examples!)

It also demonstrates a fact about the historical Jesus!

Here is the link to the first part of the Christian Creativity Series:

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/paucitygentile.html

Let the flames begin...

Vinnie

Layman

Vinnie,

Thanks for your time on this.

I always thought the complete nonexistence of references to circumcision in any of the gospels posed a serious problem to the "high" or "total" creativity schools. Whether the argument was that the gospel authors were writing fiction to meet the concerns of their communities or that Christain prophets added to the Jesus tradition, it seems inconceivable that such methods would not produce reams of material on circumcision. Instead, Jesus is utterly silent on the issue.

Vorkosigan

Sure, Vinnie, here it is.....

"scraps of evidence" simply begs the question of how you know they are "scraps evidence." As you yourself noted, Jesus never went to Tyre, and so never experienced any of these events; ergo, they are all fiction. Matthew and Luke had no compunction dropping or rearranging these stories.

Here's the passage in question from the NIV

• 24Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.[7] He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil[8] spirit came and fell at his feet. 26The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
  27"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
  28"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
  29Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter."
  30She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

You've done a decent job of explaining it here. Mark has a Q&A pair that mentions dogs and children, much as Thomas, which contains two mentions of dogs, the first (scholar's translation):

93 "Don't give what is holy to dogs, for they might throw them upon the manure pile. Don't throw pearls [to] pigs, or they might ... it [...]."

Here is Mark with a sayings collection that looks something like Thomas but is probably even more primitive. The original saying, still preserved in Mark, probably ran: "Do not feed dogs with bread meant for children" which by easily imagined processes mutated into the one we have now in Thomas.

Mark is fiction, Vinnie, from top to bottom, based on "midrash."

"Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped."

and an extant collection of sayings.

Speaking of circumcision, the Gospel of Thomas has a passage on it. For some reason, it has disappeared from the Canonicals. Let me guess...purged? Or so controversial it was left out? For the food laws were no problem......the major controversies of the "later" period are all dealt with -- mission to the gentiles, food laws -- but not circumcision. The silence is deafening, but it doesn't appear to have the import you assign it.

Mark created this little story to fit the saying. Simple as that. Using Crossan's dictum that anything that is fiction on the shallow, intermediate, and deep structural levels is pure fiction, it is easy to see that this is entirely fictional. Not only does he make it up to fit a saying, but at the intermediate level Mark arranged the deaf-mute healing as part of a triadic pattern of three healings that climaxes in Mark 10 (see Klosinki via Crossan, tHJ, p 366), and at its deepest level, the whole thing addresses the problem of the Gentile mission. On every level, 7 is a fiction, and everything in it is.

A clue lies in the fact that the Syrophoenician woman (7:24-30) is, according to Theissen and Merz, the only apothogem in the NT in which Jesus allows himself to be convinced. In other words, it shows a gentile begging Jesus to come to the Gentiles, a proper supplicatory posture and one that may well have resonated with Mark's tiny community of Xtians in a Rome (?) of many Jews and many more Gentiles. Mark is not showing Jesus rejecting, but Gentiles begging.

Vorkosigan

Layman

Just more evidence that the Gospel of Thomas is a second-century document.

(53) His disciples said to him, "Is circumcision beneficial or not?"
He said to them, "If it were beneficial, their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become completely profitable."

Why would all of the Gospel authors purge this from their writings? You give not even a hint, just a label: "controversial." How so? For whom? They all seem to approve of the Gentile mission. Yet they excise the one passage that goes to heart of what made that very mission possible--removing circumcision as an obstacle?

The silence is deafening. And the most logical explanation for it is that the gospel authors did not feel free to simply invent a saying to meet the situation. And though it seems likely that there were Christian prophets who spoke on the issue, the Christian community did not feel free to incorporate their prophecies into the Jesus sayings tradition.

Vinnie

I must have missed it.

They are all fiction? Its interesting that you blindly assume this without bothering to see if you should make any distinctions. For example, that sayings are more resistant to change than settings.

This does not beg anything. Mark has no other details and one of the two was placed there solely to flush out the account. He created a confused trip just to maximize contact between Jesus and Gentiles. Free creation cannot account for the paucity and need to modify scraps of data.

Furhter, I NEVER SAID THEY WERE ALL FICTION!!! Pay attention! I said Mark took an isolated story he had and put it there. Meaning he changed the setting to soften the flimsy material he did have. You have NOT demonstrated the non-historicty of any of the stories--especially the deaf-mute! It might not even be historical but Mark certainly did not create the healing of the deaf-mute! It was an isolated story he inherited and put there to flush out the account. He changed the setting of it. Mark is doing exactly what I said he did.

I guess its okay for you to invent explanations out of thin air and pawn them off as good history? You have to do more than just quote two quotes and say X evolved into y. More on Thomas later from my side.

The Gospel of Thomas has several in it if I remember correctly. It was opposed to it and saw circumcision as a senseless custom. But if the synoptics didn't create any sayings on it then it shows limited creativity even for a good cause. It shows that the church's social siuatiuon did not always force the whole-cloth creation of Jesus material.

And actually you have this all wrong! The food laws are another evidence of limits on creation of Jesus material. Mark is the only one who has the HJ declare them clean in the whole NT. Two other Gospels dependent on him reject his material!

You have tried to circumvent the obvious problems with Mark creating--from whole cloth--a story very harsh and insulting to Gentiles--his readers. You have not even begun to touch this issue in your post and that is one of the major focal points of my paper.

The fact is that Mark created a context to fit the saying in his Gospel. You have merely tried to change his saying without good reason.

oh okay. I get it. Assumes it all fiction and then use that to argue it is. Good job. You've refuted my paper. The setting has largely been constructed. By merely pointing out what I did in my paper you are not refuting it. You have not refuted the story of the deaf-mute or shown that the saying was not historical. Go right ahead and assume it if you want.

think you are misrepresenting Croissan as well.

When did I ever argue this account shows Jesus rejecting Gentiles? You obviously aren't paying attention. The word "first" shows Jesus accepting the future Gentile mission. You still have to explain his harsh and insulting comment to them if Mark was freely creating.

Nice tour de force....

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

Calm down, OK? I'm just trying to have a conversation here.

I haven't blindly assumed anything.

You know this because.....? And if it were true, then the settings are almost certainly fictions.

Maybe, but you can't prove that. You're reasoning goes in a circle here, and you have offered nothing that would enable you to step out of the circle.

Again, you're stuck with the problem of your underlying circular assumptions. I never said Mark created freely. I said he created fiction from certain sources (namely, a sayings collection and the OT; probably some others as well). The Syrophoenician woman is a fiction that encases a saying. In order to show that Mark is modifying a scrap, first you have to show that there was a scrap.

Yes, but you did say that this trip never happened. Therefore, anything that takes place there is fiction as it stands now, though it might be based on a real story.

I am aware you asserted that. But you have no basis for asserting that. How do you know the isolated story pre-existed the context? It's your methodology I am after.

Maybe. But you have given us no demonstration of that.

On the contrary, I have offered as evidence that it was regarded as fiction by Luke and Matt, who tinkered with it or dropped it altogether, and by Mark as well, who wrote it to fill out a triadic miracle framework he was using, and by the fact that it exists in a fictional sequence written for theological purposes. And of course, by the fact that you cannot heal by spitting and touching.

<shrug> So you keep asserting, with no evidence offered.

<shrug> So you keep asserting, with no evidence offered.

I was speculating, as an aside, on the probable evolution of the saying (its evolution is actually irrelevant). The original is there in the text of Mark.

Nor did I say it did. I think you are operating under the somewhat artificial assumption that creativity must be traced to theological struggles. That is only one motive out of many.

And? See how difficult it was to get controversial material in? That simply reinforces my point. The gospels shied away from the tough stuff. No circumcision at all, and only limited dealing with some other tough stuff (like divorce).

Au contraire, I gave a compelling explanation of it.

I am glad we agree that Mark built the story around a saying......I think you miswrote here.

Vinnie, the burden of proof is not on me. The stories are fictions until demonstrated historical. I am merely offering positive evidence, in the form of their artificially created structure (among others), which on every level, reveals that they are a fiction. Let's take a look at the sequence.

• NIV
  24Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.[7] He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil[8] spirit came and fell at his feet. 26The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
  27"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
  28"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
  29Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter."
  30She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
  31Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.[9] 32There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man.
  33After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. 34He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!" ). 35At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

As Randel Helms points out at the beginning of Gospel Fictions, the stunning lack of chronology here is a sign we are dealing with fiction. I should add that another is the lack of concreteness, the lack of details like time of day, names, and location. Other than the woman's ethnic identity, we know nothing about her. Of course, the story is basically impossible; there are no demons and no one can heal merely by say-so. The other story, of the deaf-mute, is also basically impossible for the same reasons. Further, it is part of a triad of miracles artificially constructed, and is based on Isaiah 35:5 and the prophecy therein. Finally, of course, the story of the deaf-mute contains one of the most famous geographical errors in Mark -- you can't get to Galilee by going through Sidon (well, you can, but it is like going from Paris to Brussels by way of London!). The whole thing is a fiction.

Demonstrate where I have misread his clear statements. See especially the comments in tBoC on pages 520-1 where he argues that the Passion Narrative is a fiction precisely because on every level it is clearly artificial. Ditto with Mark. On every level, it shouts "CONSTRUCTION." Wherever we look, whether at the contents of a pericopes, the arrangements of pericopes in a structure, or the reason behind sequences of pericopes and structures, we find the same artificiality.

The "harsh and insulting" comment was a saying put in Jesus' mouth. Mark found a place to put it, in Jesus' "Rock the Gentiles" tour of Lebanon. I was trying to point out, clumsily, that the emphasis on this passage is not on Jesus' question, but on the woman's answer. I have no idea why Mark constructed this fiction, and neither do you. Mark probably had this saying, and as a gentile, had to find a way to soften it for the community of gentiles that he served. In a way, it helps answer the question of why Jesus came to the Jews first, and the gentiles later, which must have been a question on quite a few minds back then.

However, that is speculation. I do not need to demonstrate why Mark constructed these two stories, only that he did construct them. I have offered several reasons why they may be considered constructions. You have offered not one why we might consider them as going back to some putative HJ.

Thank you, if I do say so myself.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Nor did I say they did. The gospelers invented stories, not sayings. They had isolated disembodied sayings, as in Thomas, and amybe some traditions. What they did not have was a narrative frame. That Mark constructed.

If you are arguing that Thomas is late, you have a rather strange position...that in Paul's time of before 55, circumcision is a big deal. Then it goes underground, cropping out here and there, but the canonical gospels missing it entirely. Then suddenly it reappears in the second century, in Thomas. What is your take on this evolution?

Layman

So they felt free to invent stores, but no sayings? I think that is a rather too convenient explanation. And so long as he was free to invent narrative, which no doubt requires at least the invention of some dialogue, why not invent narratives that deal with circumcision?


You are manufacting a tragectory where there is none.

Paul wrote about circumcision because he was dealing with it. He never attributed any sayings to Jesus (earthly or heavenly) about the subject.

The reason the Gospels did not include it is because they knew Jesus never said anything about it.

The reason does is because its author, or its community, had no problem inventing sayings and attributing them to Jesus. If they were gnostics, they would have already had to do some inventing to come up with a gnosticized Jesus.

Amaleq13

And that "fact" is changed to Canaanite in Matthew's version (15:22).

Amaleq13

Don't all correct explanations appear "convenient"?<bg>

Do we have any reason to think that circumcision was an issue for Mark's community?

Does that suggest it was not something Jesus had to deal with?

{edited by Toto to fix end quote tags}