Malachi151

See my post on Matthew here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...03#post3961003

Since Matthew is largely copied from Mark, most of this applies to Mark as well.

No Robots

Why should we exclude the oral antecedents to the written Gospels? Birger Gerhardsson makes a compelling case for their recoverability. It is the fault of the Jesus Seminar that the recoverability of the oral antecedents has been dismissed. In this area, mythicists have just followed the false assumptions of the Jesus Seminar.

Toto

Does he make a case for their recoverability?

From The Reliability of Gospel Tradition - excerpt from the forward on Amazon

"We can be sure" ?? I don't think so. He assumes what he is trying to prove - that there were teachings that the disciples memorized. Just because some rabbis required their students to memorize the master's teaching, gives me no confidence that Jesus did, or that the sayings ascribed to him came from Jesus.

Besides - the gospels do not portray a rabbi who instructs students and has them memorize teachings. They portray a zen master who issues cryptic sayings and parables which often leave his disciples befuddled. How can you say that these gospels have some authentic core in that case?

Is there more to Gerhardsson's work than this?

No Robots

Here you will find reviews, plus links to the TOC, Introduction and the complete first essay. This essay is a must-read.

yalla

Why not?
Exclude that is.
We need positive evidence and argument to include something integral into an alleged historical scenario.
Not just assertion and assumption that conveniently allows other presumptions to stand.
A positive case must be made for oral tradition as the conveyor of alleged scenes and alleged verbatim and near verbatim conversations.
Particularly when the writer in question, Brown, admits:
the evangelists were not eye witnesses
they used the Tanakh for inspiration for at least some of their stories and dialogue.
I doubted the mechanism of oral tradition, because I never saw any justification other than a hypothetical plausible speculation that served an apologetic function, well before I ever heard of the Jesus Seminar.

There is also the case of the author whose work on oral tradition in Africa has been cited as validating the use of such in the gospels.
Unfortunately that author's work has been criticised severely recently including an allegation that he tells...."fibs".
It will take me a while to dredge up the names concerned in this episode, the exposer is Ted Weedon IIRC.
Anyway I'm off to read this essay of Gerhardsson.
Sounds like it could be interesting.

Just to repeat:
If the evangelists, "Mark" and his later editors, were not there
and
the Tanakh is the frequent source of their stories
[both of which Brown, and others, admit]
then how important does that make alleged oral tradition to the concept of historicity of JC's adventures and sayings?
Indispensable, I would suggest.
cheers
yalla

Gamera

The Pauline texts refer to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection over and over again. Those are rather central aspects to the gospel narrative as it comes down to us.

The Pauline texts refer to the author's knowledge of Christ (which he claims came through revelation), in juxtaposition to other people's knowledge of Christ (i.e., an oral tradition), which Paul doesn't indicate he's at odds with. Indeed, he claims that his gospel and theirs (i.e., the Jesus narrative) was the same.

Gal 2: As for those who seemed to be important—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance—those men added nothing to my message. 7On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles,[a] just as Peter had been to the Jews.[b] 8For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles.

A reasonable conclusion from this is that there was an oral tradition and Paul's writings are more or less in accord with them as to the life and death of Jesus.

No Robots

Investigation into oral antecedents of the written Gospels is the most exciting area of NT studies. Birger Gerhardsson is the leader in this field of inquiry. I have linked above to the full text of one his essays. This essay gives a good run down of his position. He writes in a clear and enjoyable style. In short, there is little for me to say on this topic to anyone who has not familiarized himself somewhat with Gerhardsson's work.

Didymus

Things aren't always what they seem. I'll acknowledge that a free-standing rejection can be helpful in getting to the truth of the matter. But even if that's the case, I think we have that moral obligation. I just don't want to go down that road right now, partly because it's off topic, partly because I don't find the subject particularly interesting. (I hear gasps of shocked indignation from across the room.)

I see. While my words could have been taken to imply that Mark wrote from scratch, I didn't intend to suggest that. I do think he injected a lot of his own thinking into the tradition(s), but we seem to agree on that.

Re long gestation period for the gospel:

If by "source," you mean gospel, the long gestation is one reason among many to reject the possibility of historical accuracy.

Well, okay. By using the word "quotidian," I was simply emphasizing the down-to-earth setting of Mark's gospel, especially the first part.

Hmmm. Seems to me that the idea did arise long before Christianity. The idea of a god assuming the appearance (but not the substance) of a man had been around for several centuries.

What "difficulty" do you have in mind that needed clarification?

Well, if you accept the consensus datings, it seems that both the Pauline (Jerusalem) and gospel (Galilean) christianities came before docetism. We have no docetic writings until well after 70, the consensus date for Mark. In fact, we don't see docetism addressed at all before Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote at the very end of the century. That puts docetism in the thick of the "christianities" that emerged in the 2nd century, well after Mark's non-docetic gospel - and probably two other gospels - had been written.

It does? What evidence do you have for that proposition? There are no pre-Pauline docetist writings. As to the similarity of origins, I agree. Docetist and orthodox Christianity had much in common.

Fully in agreement, especially with that first sentence.

Didymus

yalla

Thanks for the link.
I did not find the essay very impressive.
For starters he presumes his thesis in the second paragraph of the introduction:
"for it is obvious that there was a period of oral tradition
which lay between Jesus’ ministry and the earliest written records."

It's "obvious" you see, asserted as fact, along with the presumption that there was a JC ministry, and we haven't even finished the second paragraph of 58 pages.
Not an auspicious opening.

Then follows several pages in which he describes how part of the process of rabbinic teaching was memorization of text and spoken word.
But failing to highlight that this was done in the presence of written texts, a situation he claims was not shared by early Christianity [see quote above].
He does note that some scholars doubt the role of memorization BEFORE the 2nd century CE [which sort of belies a comparison to early Christianity] but gives us little as to why they [Neusner and Smith] believe so.
Similarly he fails to inform us as to why :

".......particularly among American scholars. Some
even go so far as to deny that the Jesus tradition ever existed as a
purely oral tradition. How far one can carry this train of thought is
still an open question.''

Claiming that the Jews used oral teaching in certain ways in certain circumstances within the context of texts amassed for centuries prior is a long way away from establishing that oral tradition alone accounts for events and long monologues transmitted over decades to anonymous writers such as the gospellers.
Thus far the link is not apparent.
Which he admits:
"it is of course not possible to draw the simple conclusion that early Christianitypossessed a tradition of precisely the same kind as did the
Jews. Early Christianity was, as we well know, critical of the Jewish
tradition and revolted against it."

He then looks at Paul's writings and tries to establish that a tradition existed where key elements of teaching were transmitted and remembered in the Pauline community.
But again this is not related to the vast detail of the gospels' description about which Paul is largely [or entirely] ignorant.
He makes much of the 2 direct quotes of JC that Paul makes but fails to inform us [unless I missed it, in which case I'll retract] that Paul specifically claims he received no tradition from men.
Nor does he inform us that Paul possibly received his 'words of the lord' from revelation and/or scripture as Paul himself says.
The hypothesis of an oral tradition is not looking good.
And I do wish those who cite Paul's 1Cor 11.23ff would not presume that it is able to be equated with a gospels' Last Supper [complete with capitalization] scenario, including 12 disciples who are direct followers of a live JC, none of which is stated by Paul unless the reader imports the gospels into such willy-nilly.
By the time I got to p.29 and met up with:
"If one thinks about this, it becomes extremely difficult to imagine
that there ever was a time when Jesus’ followers were not interested
in preserving his teachings and in committing his deeds to
memory."
I was getting tired of unevidenced assumptions being treated as fact.
The above appeals to imagination and presumes the existence of JC, disciples and teachings etc.
More in the same vein:
p.30 "It is true...."
p.31 "...must have been present already in the community which gathered around the earthly Jesus."
p.32 "...we have every reason to believe that from the very first day of his public manifestationin Israel Jesus was addressed as “Lord”..."
p.33 "I find it hard to avoid the impression...."

This is not scholarly treatment of an issue despite the promise made in the introduction viz "I shall approach the problem as one would in secular historiography".
Hmmm.

By the time I got to page 40 or so my patience had worn thin so I skimmed the rest [ author "Luke" and author 'John" may have had eyewitness contact] and filed the article according to its merit.
cheers
yalla

Vorkosigan

ROFL. I just started reading it, and I couldn't help laughing. "At the beginning of our era monotheism was firmly established among the jews." Sure, unless you were on of the Jews who was into the two powers in heaven -- as Paul was.

Oh, and he makes good use of the Declarative Methodology ("it's true because I say it is"). He writes:

• Paul writes: “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord (en logÆ Kyriou), that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.” It seems probable here that Paul is referring directly to a transmitted saying of Jesus. But he does not quote this saying directly in this instance either; he is simply expressing in his own words the answer which he has extracted from the saying of Jesus regarding this question.

Be serious. "Probable" on what grounds? None are given, or even alluded to.

Never mind that his whole argument on Paul assumes that Mark does not know Paul. That is assumed, not demonstrated.

The arguments consist largely of the working out of Gerhardsson's assumptions, and do not consist of any kind of method one can get a hold of and discuss. Much of it is in fact arguments that support the mythicist case...

• We have now reviewed the three major titles used in the early Christian interpretation of Christ. In every case I find it hard to discover an original core clearly different in kind from the motif we see in the mature Christology.

"I find it hard to discover an original core clearly different....." which confirms, of course, the mythicist view that there is no "original core" -- and what we see in the gospels is late invention.

He also trundles out the "It must be historical because Mark was too dumb to invent it" argument. Note the argument from incredulity, so common in this essay, that begins this segment:

• [I find it very hard to believe that the collegium of the Twelve is secondary in the gospel tradition. One reason for this is the very role which these men play in the Gospels, for we quite clearly do not encounter here the mature, authoritative pillar figures who were looked up to in the early church. Here we meet twelve insignificant, immature disciples, lacking understanding and wisdom. If Mark had projected the Twelve backward to the time of Jesus, he must have been such a clever writer of history that he could at the same time bring these venerable spiritual leaders back to a strikingly youthful and immature stage

Poor benighted writers of antiquity! Quite unable to imagine a youthful and immature stage! Not, of course, that what is depicted in Mark is a "youthful and immature stage"!

And my favorite so far:

• My contention is thus that we have every reason to proceed on the assumption that Jesus’ closest disciples had an authoritative position in early Christianity as witnesses and bearers of the traditions of what Jesus had said and done. There is no reason to suppose that any believer in the early church could create traditions about Jesus and expect that his word would be accepted.

I won't even comment on that last sentence.

Look, this stuff is totally unsupported, No Robots. How can you take it seriously? It's just -- oooooh, I can't stop myself --- bog-standard apologetic nonsense. I'm sure Ben Smith will lash me 40 times with a sodden manuscript of Mark 7 for using that phrase.

Vorkosigan