Amaleq13

No, we have very different levels of expectation and for very good reasons.

There is no good reason to expect Mark to portray a ministry to the Gentiles by Jesus regardless of whether we operate within an historical or mythical context. Either way, there was no such ministry and this fact would have been known by Mark's audience.

There are very good reasons to expect Paul to provide some historical references while describing his belief in the Risen Savior. This is especially true when he is addressing communities very distant from Jerusalem. The reasonable nature of this expectation is even acknowledged by Christian scholars like Crossan. IMHO, none of the Christian attempts to explain this silence have been very credible. The "best", again IMHO, focuses on Paul's desire not to make himself appear any less authoritative than the "Pillars". Referring to the living Jesus would clearly make anyone who was his Disciple appear to have greater authority. I can't ignore that possibility but I don't feel it is sufficiently supported to hold the entire weight of Paul's silence. A simple reference to visiting the site of the crucifixion, for example, wouldn't necessarily have introduced the problematic implications.

Seriously, can you imagine Paul NOT feeling compelled to at least visit the place where his Resurrected Messiah had been killed? The same could be said of the tomb. Within the context of an historical Jesus, I think it is unthinkable to suggest that Paul wouldn't visit such places nor do I think it is reasonable to suggest such visits wouldn't have been so emotionally powerful to him that he would have failed to make some reference to them whenever he wrote.

In reply to the claim that Mk 7:27 may have been placed in the mouth of Jesus by a Jewish-Christian hardliner, I wrote:
Vinnie replied:
I don't consider this to necessarily conflict with my comment so, no, I wouldn't disagree with it. I think it might oversimplify the actual process but I wouldn't want to assume that Nogo considered it to be anything but an oversimplification. How can we be sure that Mark's author was not a Jewish-Christian writing to a primarily Gentile audience? If that were the case, then some Jewish-Christians were involved in the "hijacking".



PS I'm really enjoying playing with the format codes (it must bring back memories of my ancient programming days).<bg> Thanks for giving me the FYI, Vinnie.

Vinnie

I understand my own position well enough. You are right though. I do not understand the skeptip positiioon since it looks largely incoherent.

Why is that not relative? Haven't you ever heard of election? See 2 Pet 2:10 and surrounding context, Romans 1:16, Romans 9:25 and surr context. And so on. Gentiles haveing a secondary status as people would not hav any relevance to the issues at hand? I find that a rather difficult position to embrace.

Good, we are getting somewhere.

Meaning there is no indication that Jesus conducted a ministry to Gentiles. Any contact between them is either them coming to Jesus, or created by the ecangelists with the possible acception of the story of the Syrophoenician woman. For instance, the centurion healing (as my article will show) was alered to be given to a Gentile early one.

All four Gospels and Paul agree that Jesus conducted his minsitry to Jews, not Gentiles. THis is very important. This then becomes first stratum, multiply attested (three fold -- Mark, John Paul). I am also going to throw Q in there later.

When we look at the synoptic portraits we see that this was somewhat troubling. By their amplifications of material---and by the use of non-Gentile material being put in a Gentile context it shows 1) limits on creation from whole cloth 2) that they had no Jesus Gentile material to work with 3) they clearly wanted some but didn't have any. Ergo, this confirms the record found in all four Gospels and Paul already.

It also shows that there were limits on creation. Which--if I recall--you seem to be arguing that Mark is entirely fiction. The rest of us realize that Mark is largely spinning existing material about Jesus (parables, sayings, miracles, baptist account, fact of his ministry, his followers, calling of twelve and on and on) to fit his theological purpose. Its only the narrativee framework itself that is the fiction. Even if Jesus said X, we don't know who or where or what prompted the saying of X. This is easily demonstrated by lots f material being used in different contexts by the evangelists.

So complain that scholars break material down into complexes in your review of JDC, but now argue that its only the framework of Mark that was created and he inherited lots of tradition. This looks a wee bit silly to me. Scholars break it down precisely for these reasons. If we have multiply attested sayings we might be able to find a past trajectory given their current direction. We know settings were more prone to change than the material itself. Would you STILL dispute this?

No.

Paul has the Jews first line. Mark has it. Matthew has it. Luke has it. They decide to divide history into two periods: Jesus' mission during his life to the Jews and its scope afterwords. John refuses altogether to have Jesus minister to Gentiles if I remember correctly. It is shown that the evangelists (synoptic) did not like this so they had to work with it. mark amplifies some details in chapter 7. The story of the centurion was not originally Gentile (as my update is going to show) and so forth.

What part of Jesus did not coduct any sort of sustained mission to Gentiles did you not understand? That does not mean they might not have attemoptd to come to him or so forth.

Jesus conducting a ministry to Gentiles. he did not such thing. My whole point was that Mark tried to soften the harshness of the syrophoenician woman account and ampify Gentile contact between Jesus (Jesus going to Gentiles!) by that little crazed tour he created in chapter 7.) He is trying to strengthen the faith of his audience. Thats part of the point.

The point is that Mark did not create material whole cloth here. I feel I have shown that you hve not demonstrated the isolated healing of the deaf mute to be nonhistorical. There are also good reasons for affirming that it predates Mark. It would also be very strange for Mark to have Marl illuminate things for his Gentile audience by having Jesus calkl them dogs and give them a secondary status.

This is part of the reason for the messianic secret n my opinion as well. It deals with election of some sort but I'm not going there now.

It depends. We only have 7 Pauline letters don't we? We disagree on this. Paul does mention several things from my perspective. The nature of the literature and the audiences background knowledge could account for some. That Paul believed Jesus became son of God after death could account for his non-concern with Jesus' life even though he shows he knows some details.

For others, it will suffice to say that Paul simply did not know them. Th claim that Oaul knew the apostles and the they told them everything (everything being whats in the canonical Gospels) is far from proven. I have demonstrated the hazards of appealing to silence in the Pauline corpus here in the past though and will do so again if necessary.

For instance, if you think Paul not mentioning something like the name Pilate is significant I might be inclined to laugh at you. However, there are instances where we might expect Paul to say some things and he doesn't. Possibly he didn't know them, they were invented by someone and he refused to use them, simple fact of human memory and so on. I've forgotten good points in my responses before--sometimes I'm just hasty.

At the same time it shows limits on creation by Paul. He was not at liberty to create Jesus material, even when it served a good purpose. Paul doesn't have a complete silence though. That has been forced into the corpus by some exegetes.

[quote]In other words, the irony of your sarcastic attack is that it exposes how completely you have failed to put forth even the tiniest sliver of an argument that the limited "gentile ministry" material in Mark is due to historical, rather than some other constraints.[/uote]

I demonstrated quite well that Jesus--in all probability--conducted a ministry to Jews. I explained that is why a large portion of the record seems to know this (Paul, Mark, Matt, Luke, Jn, and even Q--as the udpate will show). There is a lot of evidence and I showed that this fact goes against the theological grain of the what the synoptic authors would have liked.

The Jesus movement clearly started off Jewish and turned Gentile. This is probably why NOGO wrote that the Jews believed in a cosmic Christ and the Gentiles made him a human.

I find this rather strange though. The Gentiles invented the HJ but Mark in 70 and is using lots of inherited tradition about Jesus that he has from a numer of sources (oral and written). This gets rather interesting.

You were right. I don't understand the position it in the least!

Vinnie

Vinnie

First off, I'm convinced the followers of Jesus probably did not know what happened to the body. Ergo, there was no tomb to visit. Your assumption about there being a tomb has to be demonstrated.

This is anachronistic as well. Christians today might want to visit those holy places but we also wear crosses regularly on our necks--not realizing the harsh cruelty behind them. Since crucifixions were purposefully public acts I think its fair to assume that there would have been some knowledge of where Jesus was crucified. Of course, this itself is still not axiomatic. It depends how much of the passion you accept. The text does say his discples fled when they captured him.

Maybe the place which resulted in Jesus' body becaming food for dogs would not want to be visited? At any rate, historically speaking, the crucifixion must have been very harsh and surprising to Jesus' followers. "Resurrection experiences" might have been initiated because of this.

I am not sure why Paul would want to visit the spot of the crucifixion assuming he knew where it was. I am also not sure that Paul didn't do so. His failure to mention it is hardly indicative of the fact that he did or did not do so. Its a simple lack of evidence.

For example, Paul walked (presumably) on the very same soil as Jesus at one time or another. Today Christians Christians may go to Galilee and say wow, Jesus lived and walked here. To Paul it may have been simply Galilee. This thinking could be entirely anachronistic.

Dwelling on the spot where Jesus was purposefully and pointlessly killed would have been irrelevant. Thats why Jesus' death was given purpose. It must have been so pointless and shocking (his followers were not crucified --see Paula Fredriksen's book Jesus of Nazareth) that it led to some of them having "Rez experiences."

Who knows. I don't. But I do know that building an argument off of Paul's failure to visit a possibly non-existent tomb and the place where Jesus was brutally exocuted does not hold.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Why must Crossan be labeled a Christian scholar? Aren't most scholars Christian by default? Needless to say he does nopt believe starting with Pau lwill get you to Jesus or that starting with Jesus will get you to Paul. There was a 20 year gap. Things were happening in this period--like the Gentile movement

Vinnie

One that lived outside of Palestine of course. At any rate, that Mark gets Jewish practices wrong (hand washing) indicates to me that he was not Jewish.

Vinnie

Toto

I thought the point of the hand-washing example was that this was a Jewish practice, but was only a requirement after 70 CE. This shows that Mark was probably written after 70 CE, not necessarily that he was not Jewish in some sense.

NOGO

If it were mere silence then I would agree with you.

But it is not mere silence.

Paul knows nothing of the Synoptic Gospel Jesus.

He repeatedly fails to

a) quote his words when they are an obvious choice.
b) give his life as an example.when it is most appropriate.
c) acount for his own faith as derived from the HJ.
d) give an sense of an apostolic tradition traceable to an HJ

Paul tells us that his faith is derived from scriptures.
He has no need of an HJ.

Now look at the entity which inhabits the human Jesus in GJohn.
The one refered to as the "Word".

This entity is exactly what Paul is talking about.

Vinnie

Possible. Its also possible that it would be written by a Gentile ca 70 a.d. who knew Jews to obey this custom in his local area. That it became more uniform ca 70 ad onward does not mean selct areas/groups did not strictly follow the custom.

It probably could not have been written by a Jew around this time because a Jew should have known it was not a universal custom. If we assume this development the author of mark, writing in 70 or 80 (how far are you willingto go?) would have known about practices growing up as a child.

Pardon my ignorance, but didn't Jews go to Jerusalem for passover as well throughout the course of their life? Maybe not every year but if they had the oppurtunity they would go correct? Did Jews outside palestine regularly do this? Is it not likely that a Jew "would" have had better knowledge of the geography and of the custom of Jews if he made such trips--or any trips for that matter?

At any rate, it is possbile--though in my opinion--less likely that Mark was written by a very pro-Gentile Jewish Christian living in a Gentile Christian enviroment. Mark's stance is still clearly pro-Gentile either way though and this would not alter the force of my arguments in any damging ways. Mark written by a Gentile--whcih seems more likely to me-- is icing on the cake.

At any rate, I do not find this attempt at redating Mark very plausible. I suppose you could also cite the rolling stone though? Anything else aside from this?

Vinnie

rlogan

Vinnie - the gospel accounts name the owner of the tomb, don't they? It's Joseph in Mathew 27, for example. Did Joseph forget where his property was? If we can't trust the Gospels on such a point, where else is it that we should have doubts?

Your second paragraph is somewhat confusing. It's what gave Jesus' death purpose, but it would be irrelevant to pay homage? It's the entire point of Jesus - dying for your sins.

I think this is one of the most troubling questions. Why no homage.

Vinnie

""""""Vinnie - the gospel accounts name the owner of the tomb, don't they? It's Joseph in Mathew 27, for example. Did Joseph forget where his property was? If we can't trust the Gospels on such a point, where else is it that we should have doubts?"""""""

Maybe layman can answer your question from a pro-empty tomb perspective. I think he'll say Paul's account presupposes it.

t any rate, fro mthe flip-side:

JofA may very well be Mark's own creation. We know Mt and Lk got JofA from him and John may have as well (directly or indirectly). Crossan presents some pretty strong arguments on pp. 533-555 of The Birth of Christianity. or maybe John and Mark took it from a source slightly earlier than Mark. At any rate, its not cut and dry. There are problems and defenses with the account.

""""Your second paragraph is somewhat confusing. It's what gave Jesus' death purpose, but it would be irrelevant to pay homage? It's the entire point of Jesus - dying for your sins. """"

Since Paul lacks HJ details one might infer that he just didn't care about the place. The importance is not where the event occured, its the event itself. Of course we still haven't defined what the "event" itself was to Paul!

Taking another route:

At any rate, you have a double speculation brewing:

1) You are reading something into Paul's mind. (He would have done x and it is surely guided by anachronism at this point--whether accurate or not! Maybe you can provide good reason for this but thus far I have not seen any)

2) Paul would have visited the site (spec 1 above) and Paul would have at least written about it somewhere in his letters. You are saying Paul didn't based upon silence in the Pauline corpus on this issue.

From Raymond Brown “The NT writers certainly knew more of the Christian tradition than they were able or chose to convey in their writings; John 21:25 is specific about that. Therefore we should maintain a certain distrust of negative arguments from silence, as if the failure to write meant the failure to know. . . . On the level of the literal sense, exegesis that embraces what the evangelist did not actually convey in writing becomes very speculative.”

Brown again---note text in bold--: "Thus in the 50s of the 1st century Paul produced the earliest surviving Christian documents: 1 Thess, Gal, Phil, Phlm, I and II Cor, and Rom. There is a somewhat different tone and emphasis to each, corresponding to what Paul perceived as the needs of the respective community at a particular time. This fact should make us cautious about generalizations in reference to Pauline theology. Paul was not a systematic theologian but an evangelizing preacher, giving strong emphasis at a certain moment to one aspect of faith in Jesus, at another moment to another aspect—indeed to a degree that may seem to us inconsistent. On the grounds that Paul does not mention an idea or practice, very adventurous assumptions are sometimes made about his views. For example, the Eucharist is mentioned in only one Pauline writing and there largely because of abuses at the Eucharistic meal at Corinth. Except for that situation scholars might be misled to assume that there was no Eucharist in the Pauline churches, reasoning that Paul could scarcely written so much without mentioning such an important aspect of Christian life.

Finally, it is my belief that purpose to Jesus' death was retrojected back into his life. I take it for granted that Jesus' death was unexpected and probably shocking to his followers--merely for the reasons pointed out by Fredriksen: if the Jesus was a threat then we cannot explain why he alone was crucified and not any of his followers or their leizure afterwards (settling in Jerusalem after the event without official impediments!) Why was Jesus crucified but not his followers? When you follow Fredriksen's logic the crucifixion must have been a surprise.

I am inclined to think that the fact of crucifixion was so embarrassing to Christians that it was turned into an all important event. Maybe Jesus followers had some sort of "Rez experiences" or maybe they just read the OT and loved Jesus very much and still believed in his teaching and ministry//mission//saw God through him and made sense of a righteous one suffering needlessly as best they could by using their sacred scripture (OT). or maybe it was a combo of both.

The fact remains that the cross must have been a shocking embarrassment at first. This gives me some reason to be slightly skeptical that Paul would have wanted to go venerate the spot where Jesus was killed as modern Christians do. The story is double sided: "Hey look kids, Jesus had nails banged into him right over there" and also "hey kids, look this is where God saved all humanity." Modern exegetes sometimes don't realize the harshness of the crucifixion and this leads to anachronistic thinking.

As N.T. Wright said:

You are building a LOT off of a very flimsy foundation and you are only doubling the amount of skepticism one should have towards your thesis//argument given that both points of it which are dependent upon one another are highly speculative, based on silence and are far from demonstrated.

More generally on silence, some might argue that Paul believed Jesus' death Marked the ushering of a new era. It was part of Paul's vocation to bring about this new era. Paul's ministry continued from Jesus' ministry but since Jesus's death ushered in a new era the goals were slightly modified. As I showed, Jesus went to Jews and Paul was bringing the Gospel to the world. Paul was trying to continue the work of the "Christ" not be a new "Christ" himself. What one might be looking for is an appropriate continuation between Jesus and a follower like Paul, not necessarily exact parallels.

Vinnie