mountainman

What did you think of the possibility that some
of these non canonical acts
exhibit clear, consistent and identifiable anti-christian
polemic and/or parody, and that this thus dates these
texts to a time at which authors were reacting against
the authority of the canonical "Acts of the Apostles".

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

neilgodfrey

I couldn't comment without having some specific examples of "identifiable anti-christian polemic and/or parody" pinpointed.

mountainman

Try "The Acts of Philip" (Syriac; short narrative)

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

neilgodfrey

The link you give me takes me to a page that my print-preview tells me is 36 pages long. Can you be a bit more specific, or at least explain to me what you want me to look for in those 36 pages?

JoeWallack

JW:
Kelber is Christian so he thinks there is some Minimum of history in "Mark". He's not Explicit here like Weeden but I would assume like Weeden he actually sees an advantage for Christianity in that "Mark's" discrediting of Peter and "The 12" is polemic and not history, thereby rehabilitating Peter in his own way as witness for Gospel Jesus.

Kelber sees "Mark's" "The 12" as Figurative for Israel while "7", representing "Completeness" is figurative for the Gentiles. He does a great job showing why there are two related "Feeding" stories. The first, with 12s, for the Jews and than on "the other side", the second, with 7s, for the Gentiles. Therefore, Kelber would not see "Mark" as polemic against either a historical 12 or promotion of a historical 12. Just polemic against specifically the historical leaders of witness to HJ, Peter, James and John(?) and generally the historical witnesses to HJ.

I doubt if "Mark" was the first to refer to "the 12" but I think his Gospel was the first to popularize the term since the Patristic writings show little/no knowledge of the term before "Mark".

I think "Mark's" theology follows Paul. Paul thinks more in term of a Partnership rather than a Replacement. The Gentiles and Jews are combined in Jesus. "Mark" fleshes out a narrative with this Theme. Regarding "a new Israel" or Replacement, I think that is subsequent to "Mark". Gradually the Church Fathers changed the Theme to Ironically a Separation of Gentile and Jew, just like it was before, but flipped of course with Gentile Good and Jew Evil.

The Irony is everywhere in "Mark" and directly proportional to where it should not be. Here we have God's son, the Messiah, who's primary job is to convince Everyone that he was resurrected. He is given an audience to start that is looking for him and the Kingdom of God and at the end is abandoned by Everyone, including God, and convinces no one that he was resurrected. Neil, GT is nothing like this. This is what makes me think "Mark" is primarily literature and is supported by no interest from the Church until the Forged ending and Edited versions of "Matthew" and "Luke".



Joseph

STORY, n.
A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Amaleq13

How does the gentiles=dogs imagery from 7:27-29 work with this?

mountainman

Sure. This might be a little off your topic here, but some
of it does relate, so bear with me. You mentioned that
certain commentators identify polemic in the author of
Mark against the "Twelve Apostles". I had never heard
of this before. However independently I have spent a
reasonable amount of days investigating a series of the
non canonical Acts for the same thing, and have tried
to engender discussion about my findings, but without
success.

In the following non canonical acts I have at each page
explicated verse by verse a common polemic of the authors
of these texts against the Apostles appearing in the stories:

Syriac Acts of Philip: Is Philip annoying?
TAOPATTA: The Acts of Peter and the (11, 12 or was it 13?) Apostles
The Acts of Andrew and Matthew: Casting lots for world dominion.
The Acts of Peter and Andrew - Aggressive wizards, camels, needles.
The Acts of Thomas: refuses Jesus' commands; Jesus sells him into slavery
The Act of Peter: Peter forgets to heal his own daughter.

The polemic appears to be anti-christian polemic which appears
to verge on a parody of the aptitude and capacity for the
apostles in regard to any "spiritual ministry" since the polemic
appears to be consistent throughout each of the above.

Perhaps the clearest example is the Nag Hammadi text TAOPATTA,
"The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles", since from the
subject alone we are entitled to presume 13 apostles not 12.
In the text however, the author explicitly tells us there are
in fact 11 apostles in total - and not either 12 or 13. Why
the blatant numeracy problem?

Unfortunately, one cannot summarise all this - since it requires
the source texts to be examined one by one. The simplest and
most straightforward (IMO) parody-like polemic is explicated
in the first on the list. The thread which I referenced first above
was a presentation of this some time back.

This may or may not have direct relevance to your mention of
polemic from Mark against the twelve, since the canonical text
of Mark and the non-canonical texts in general, are severely bound
off and are usually considered to be "separate genre".

If I had identified such anti-apostle polemic in only one or two
of these texts, then this may not be remarkable, but the fact
that six of these texts bear a very similar theme seems to me
to be quite remarkable. However, noone here has chosen to
comment on this to date, hence my question to you.

So essentially there are two issues here:

1) Is there indeed an anti-apostle polemic in these 6 texts?
2) If there is, what might it imply?

The second question relates to my earlier issues mentioned
about the chronology of these 6 non canonical Acts. At present
they are scattered by estimates all across the 2nd and 3rd
century, with a few claims into the fourth.

However IMO, one possibility that these texts bear the anti-apostle
polemic is that they were written in opposition to the canonical..
That is, they were written after the canon was published,
and after it was established as "authoritative" by the Constantine
Bible of the year c.331 CE. The Nag Hammadi text is C14 dated
to c.348 CE for example, which is quite consistent with this explanation.

I understand that not everyone here is interested in everything
about the entire spectrum of related BC&H christian literature,
but your mention of identifying polemic against the Twelve
seemed to be related to this minor research project that I have
conducted in regard to these 6 non canonical acts.

Thanks for any feedback.
Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Toto

This is Pete's mistake.

He prefers to write
just a few words
on each line
as if writing blank verse.

So those 36 pages have actually very little content.

At least he does not put waving gif's on each of his posts, for which we are all grateful.

But I have read what Pete writes about, and I do not see any anti-Christian polemic or parody. Pete uses other words in a way that doesn't make sense to me, such as "fractal." So we may have some basic communication problem.

mountainman

You dont find it strange that Jesus sells Thomas
to an Indian merchant as a slave and signs a bill
of sale. You dont find it strange that the christian
angel assigned to Philip slays 40 Jewish priests,
with the result that many confess and convert?



FRACTAL: Coined by Benoit Mandelbrot.

There are a number of naturally occuring fractal forms:

1) Stars in the sky inder increasing magnification,
2) The "length" of the edge of any island.
3) Groundwater networks.
4) aside from the mandelbrot set.

Do you object to my use of the term with respect
to ascetic practices?


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Casper

This may be too tangental, but it occurs to me that Marcion's Jesus is condescending and treats his followers as if they are too thick to realize simple truths. This may be my own bias, and it is based primarily of what Marcion I can gather on the interweb, but I mention it to bring up the possibility that the beginnings of what you are referring to as gMark may be later interpolations.

That would explain the change of tone. It may beg more than it answers of course.