Vorkosigan

That is not the point, Ben. The issue is that Bauckham claims to be opening new ground in the study of NT names, but neglects a very important critique of such names in the literature. Neglects the entire possibility of invention.

Well, as you know, I think the evidence overwhelmingly suggests fiction for that pericope, from the signifying name to the parallels to the OT to the cite of the Septuagint at the end. I have serious qualms about accepting such as sequence as history.

You can, if you like, believe that there was a Jairus whose daughter was somehow healed by Jesus. But we all know the problem -- the "historical core" is an highly malleable and essentially unfalsifiable faith position that is not based on the data of the text itself. The most parsimonious explanation is that the pericope is invented, since all its features can be explained in literary terms, and since it resembles numerous other pericopes in the Gospels similarly derived from the OT.

Bottom line: if any other text contained (a) signifying names (b) parallels with a previously extant text and (c) a citation of the text with the parallels, nobody would have any trouble declaring it a case of literary invention.

Don't have one. Don't need one, either. They are all writing fiction; reasons for their changes are contingent and probably will never be known. Where there is little data, there can only be speculation. Why did Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow add, subtract, and rewrite characters from Washington Irving's tale? Why did the Disney version add music and change different things? Why does Matthew change Mark's tales? Unlike Bauckham I don't claim to read Matt's mind ("matt scrupulously....." so can't tell you.

I could, of course, fill this space with speculations as to why Mt & L might have done that. But just as Bauckham's speculations are unsupported, so would mine be.

I never claimed it was "too radical to be suggested." What I noted was that it was completely unsupported, yet it still got published. Is that a high quality scholarly work? It is simply an elaborately-described presupposition about the nature of the text. Of course it could be presented, but not in its present form, as methodology-free faith statements.

I could, same as Bauckham, and on the same evidence, claim that the reason Bar-Timaeus and Jairus weren't named in Luke and Matthew is that they were transported bodily away by aliens. Even assuming that Jairus and Bar-Timaeus were real persons, nothing can be known of them after their appearance in Mark. That's all that can be said. You can advance the idea that the reason they don't get mentioned in Luke and Matt is that their memory had faded -- but no evidence supports that view.

I'm always happy to listen politely to PHDs, Ben. But at the same time, I don't listen uncritically to what they say.

Definitely A. Why should I want conservatives banned?

Michael

Steven Carr

I don't have any evidence.

And neither does Bauckham.

But I'm not the person who claims to be able to deduce facts where there is no evidence.

Ben C Smith

Is it not the case that the invention of the names Jairus and Bartimaeus fits in most easily with the notion that the gospels are, in fact, fictional writings?

You stated before that you do not expect Bauckham to make mythicists his dialogue partners, but it appears that you do expect him to make fictionalists (and there is a lot of overlap there) his dialogue partners.

I repeat my original point; in this essay Bauckham is specifically targeting the form critics. Both he and his named opponents share the assumption that the gospels are trying to transmit history, not fiction. Bauckham is under no obligation to address your views in this essay.

If you wish to express disappointment that Bauckham does not tend to address mythicist or fictionalist views overall, fine. But to express disappointment that he does not address them in this article is, I think, misguided.

Scholars make suggestions in print all the time. Here is how Bauckham introduces this part of his thesis:

In this section we shall suggest the possibility that in many cases named characters were eyewitnesses....

Later he writes:

An explanation that could account for all of the names in the lists above... is that all these people joined the early Christian movement and were well known at least in the circles in which these traditions were first transmitted. This explanation has occasionally been suggested for some of the names..., and has been widely assumed for others..., but it deserves consideration as a comprehensive hypothesis to account for all or most of them.

Bauckham is, by his own admission, offering a possibility. If at times his language gets a little firmer later in the article, I think that is natural given that he is at that point arguing from within the suggestion. It ever remains just that, a suggestion. He concludes:

Further criteria for these purposes need also to be explored and tested. What has been demonstrated is sufficient to make it a genuine possibility that many gospel pericopes owe their main features not to anonymous community formation but to their formulation by the eyewitnesses from whom they derive.

A genuine possibility. Is that too reaching a claim?

Yes, of course.

That these figures (granted their historicity, which both Bauckham and his dialogue partners do) at some point became less well known and at some point died seems plausible. That they were abducted by aliens seems implausible.

That indeed is the idea that Bauckham is advancing. And he advances it openly as a suggestion, a possibility, a topic for further discussion.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Facts or suggestions?

BTW, In poking around looking for your comments on Jairus from several years ago, I discovered that you have your own blog. I did not know that. I have added it to my list on my links page.

Ben.

Steven Carr

No data. No evidence. No worth. Luke and Matthew are silent about the names of Bartimaeus and Jairus, therefore it is all eyewitness stuff.

All he has done is pull stuff , such as the timing of the death of Bartimaeus, out of his anatomy and built a mountain of speculation on it, using one of the most ridiculous arguments from silence imaginable.

Speculation that it seems now that even Bauckham admits has nothing going for it.

Ben C Smith

Now? What is the force of that adverb here? If by admits has nothing going for it you mean presents as a suggestion, when did it seem differently to you?

Ben.

Steven Carr

Perhaps the 'we shall find important evidence....' and the 'doubtless.'

And the 'we know that the four brothers of Jesus named in Matthew 13:55 were prominent leaders in the early Christian movement.' Presumably the brothers of Jesus became too 'obscure' by the time Luke was writing.

Where is the 'important evidence' that Jairus and Bartimaeus were named by Mark because they were so well known to his readers, and that Matthew and Luke dropped the name because they were now so obscure?

Ben C Smith

I agree that the important evidence line is overstated. It comes in the introduction to the entire piece. Once one actually reads that section, the suggestion is put forward as just that, a suggestion.

On which page is the doubtless line? (I do not doubt that it is there, but I cannot place it for some reason; thanks.)

Ben.

Steven Carr

The way Matthew and Luke change the names of the women at the crucifixion demonstrate their 'scrupulous care'.

They must have agonised for hours.

They knew that Mark had taken 'scrupulous care' to name the women who had been at the crucifixion, drawing on their personal testimony and the testimony of Peter about all of this.

So it could not have been a light decision to drop names which had been compiled with such scrupulous care.

But still they could not put their names to documents stating that those women had been there. But 'for Matthew, Salome was evidently not a well-known witness', and he knew his readers would not accept a name not already well-known to them. No amount of his protesting that the list was compiled by somebody who knew Peter would convince his readers that the name was genuine.

So with a heavy heart, and with scruplous care, Matthew confined himself to those women that were well-known to his readers.

But what luck! There was another woman there, Mary the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

While not well known to Mark, or Mark's readers, and presumably also Peter, Mary the mother of the sons of Zebedee was a well-known witness at the time Matthew was writing among Matthew's intended readers.

So , with scrupulous care, Matthew could use that well-known witness rather than Salome, the witness who was only well-known at the time Mark was writing.

That was a bit of luck, wasn't it?

Steven Carr

Bauckham says in an interview 'It also highlights the apostle Matthew by adding the description ‘taxcollector’ to his name in the list and by transferring to Matthew the story of the call of a taxcollector that Mark tells of Levi.'

'Transferring' a story from one person to a different person?

The Gospellers felt quite free to change who the story was about and pretend it happened to somebody else instead.

How does that tie up with the 'scrupulous care' with which people preserved names?