Toto

Well, I didn't want to discuss it, but let's not get diverted by dating the gospels. You notice that the timeline that was cited does not even include the gospels.

The author of that table has a Gospel timeline here which makes a case for a late dating of the gospels, to the second century. But make that a separate thread if you want to argue it.

Would it be fair to say that there is no attestation of miracles from any document before 70 CE? Does this make the case for the invention of miracles any less probable?

Layman

Yes, let's stick to the miracle traditions.

[edited to add SHIT! I deleted your post. I hit the effing EDIT button. My apologies, Layman. I will wear a hair shirt for the next 6 weeks]

Vorkosigan

This paragraph is full of the typical unsupported assumptions, faulty logic, and disingenuous claims that permeate Meier's work. There is no reason to assume prior sources; all evidence points to creation by the author of Mark, or perhaps a written source. Indeed, Meier, in his usual fashion, adduces no evidence for this claim that these factors indicate transmission; rather, he is arguing, based on multiple attestation (p619 and forward) in John and Josephus, that Jesus was said to have performed miracles. Josephus has been worked over by Christians and is worthless as independent attestation, and John is dependent on Mark. Meier is simply substituting assurance for critical interaction with the text and its context.

1. To dispose of one silliness right away, Meier's reference to the early Church: "constitutes a fair refutation of the idea that the miracle traditions were totally the creation of the early church after Jesus' death." is nonsense as there was no such thing as "the Church" when Mark was writing around or just after 70. There was a series of communities with many different beliefs. To call it a "Church" is to retroject a later situation into an earlier one. That is a vintage bit of Meieran disingenuousness.

2. The miracle stories are creations out of the OT by either Mark or his source, but more probably Mark. Mark's story of Jesus has a threefold skeleton; until Mark 14 he's paralleling the Elijah-Elisha Cycle; In Mark 14 he's tracking David, and in Mark 15 the framework is the story of Daniel. This overall construction is clearly literary. At the next level, for individual pericopes, Mark usually borrows the miracle frame from the Septaugint OT, and then, at the lowest level, that of details, Mark also borrows a cite or quote from the Septaugint. Although there may be individual units that are borrowed from external sources (there seem to be a couple that can be traced back to Josephus) on the whole the Septaugint OT permeates the work at every level. I'll use an example of this in discussing the quote eblow.

Bock is misreading of Mark. The Aramaisms are not indicating of a source, but simple preservation of esoteric language to lend the pericope mystery. The story of Jairus' is an excellent example of OT fiction construction by Mark, so let's take a look at it.

In the overall frame of the story, the writer of Mark is busy paralleling Elijah-Elisha in the book of Kings. The miracle itself is part of a dual paired sequence of 5 miracles that Achtemeier documented many years ago; obviously the structure is literary and textual, since orality would wiped this out. The intermediate structure for the story is that of the raising of the son of the widow in 2 Kings 4:8-37. Here are some of the parallels.



As Crossan famously points out in Birth, there is no way that an oral source can preserve this neat parallelism, because each retelling of an oral story changes it. Ruth Finnegan (Oral Literature in Africa) drives home this same point, listing, for example, a story familiar from the Arabian Nights which appears in many forms in many African cultures. Naming magic items that appear, she writes (p337): "in various versions these include, for instance, a casket of dreams, a mirror, a telescope to see her danger from afar, a magic arrow, a skin, or a hammock to travel instantly to her side, and a snuffbo, switch, or magic medicine to bring her back to life." Basic plots often resemble each other (for example, stories in which the hero "trades up" gradually acquiring more power by exchanging a mouse for a chicken, and then a chicken for a cow, etc) but the details are always mutated. Based on the actual experience of oral literature as humans use it, it is highly unlike that any oral form would continue to preserve the parallels presented. It is far more likely that they would mutate. Hence, we are looking at literary creation.

There are other signs of literary creation. Jairus, whose name means "he will awaken" or "he will enlighten" is clearly a fictional construction. Names that mean roles are a common Markan trait -- Bethany (house of figs) and Joseph of Aramathea (Joseph from the town of Best Doctrine (Carrier)) are two examples. Finally, the writer of this story, probably Mark, quotes the language of the LXX in 4 Kings (see last parallel). The direct use of language, coupled with the other parallels, are again indicative of literary creation, not oral transmission. As far as I can see or can be demonstrated with evidence and argument, there was no pool of miracle stories, until Mark invented it.

Other signs of Markan invention -- the story is shot through with Markan redaction: "immediately" and "amazement" in v42, the command to silence in v43, Jesus takes in only three disciples in v37 (Jesus often interacts with only three disciples in Mark), and so on. It is clearly a construction of the author of Mark. Another sign is that the miracle stories all contain common motifs, laid out in Theissen and Merz (p593-4). A final clue to the inventedness of the story is that it has no "ending." It stops with Jesus' command to silence. If you simply create the rest of the story in your mind -- Jesus going out the door to meet a crowd of mourners, who will almost certainly say "Well?", or the parents trying to pretend that their girl is still dead......you can see how inherently absurd it is.

Even Gundry (Mark: Commentary, 1993), whom no one would ever mistake for a liberal scholar, remarks numerous times on the many comparisons between Jesus' miracles/behavior and that of other Hellenistic God-men (see, for example, comparison to Pythagoras on p240). Price (2001, 2003), of course, comes up with many. The remark is in any case irrelevant, since Jesus' miracles are usually based on OT models, though they may have assimilated features common to other godmen. However, that could simply be by way of Jesus being an archetypal hero, and not direct copying.

Vorkosigan

Layman

Great.

If you don't my asking, what were you editing? I thought the post was entirely benign. Basically saying that people should feel free to challenge the assumptions and explain how a failed assumption would affect the analysis, but should realize that I don't intend on rehasing all of those assumptions.

Steven Carr

Very amusing. Presumably that must mean that the Gospels claim that Lazarus was a miracle worker.

Only be apologists who prefer non sequitors to real logical arguments.

I know. You just did not cite any actual evidence :-)

Steven Carr

Quite right. Presumably every time the 20th century magician Tommy Cooper was reported as saying 'Abracadabra' , that was clearly an early miracle report :-)

The use of magic , exotic words , just as the use of spittle in Mark 8:23 when Jesus spat on somebody's eyes, marks the stories out as voodoo - typical ancient stories of magic.

Presumably the miracle workings in Harry Potter go back to a pre-Rowling source, we can tell by the Latinisms used in them.

Vorkosigan

Nothing! @(*#$&@(#*$& I was just responding to your last comment, hoping we could stay on topic. Which I was also going to express a fervent wish for, and remind other posters not to drift onto problems of dating and so forth. I just hit 'edit' instead of "quote', an occupational hazard for moderators.

Once again, sorry.

Vorkosigan

andrewcriddle

There are IMO three options

a/ We can determine by historical research that Jesus was probably regarded during his lifetime as performing miracles
b/ We can determine by historical research that Jesus was probably not regarded during his lifetime as performing miracles and that the idea that he was a miracle worker is probably a later addition to the tradition.
c/ The data are not good enough to make it possible to reconstruct anything much about the historical Jesus.

There would be dispute on this forum as to whether a/ or c/ is most likely, what I think is clear is that b/ is the least likely of the three.

If the references in the various different types of material about Jesus to miracle working are all later additions then the traditions have been so modified as to become of very limited use for reconstructing the historical Jesus.

(It is true that Paul does not claim that Jesus performed miracles but neither does he say Jesus told parables and the sayings tradition about Jesus has probably suffered alteration at least as much as the deeds tradition.)

What I'm saying is that the type of reconstruction found in some of the members of the 'Jesus Seminar' in which Jesus was not regarded as a miracle worker during his lifetime but did say most of the sayings in the Thomas-Q overlap is IMO very flimsy. If the deeds tradition plus the references in Q to Jesus claiming to work miracles are that problematical , then so is much of what a 'Jesus Seminar' type reconstruction would accept.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

I think a) is perfectly possible, and indeed quite likely.

I don't think a) helps to show in the least that the specific miracles found in the New Testament (Jesus glowing in the dark, spitting on eyes, walking on water) are historical.

Indeed the fact that much stuff was taken from the LXX counts against the historicity of the miracle stories.