spamandham

...an interesting speculation. This seems to presume the pre-existence of Christianity?

Doug Shaver

There could have been, but I see no reason to assume so. Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.

That looks pretty plausible to me. Also, at least some Christians at the time Mark was writing might have had some notion that their movement had originated just one or two generations prior to their own. So that would have given him a ballpark timeframe, and within that ballpark, Pilate would have been the obvious choice. And then, everybody who worked on the story after Mark just followed his lead on that particular detail.

show_no_mercy

I always thought that the gospel writers wanted to play down the cruelty of Pilate so that Jesus' death could be blamed more on the Jews and not Roman rule, since the gospel writers were trying to convert gentile Romans and not Jews.

bacht

Right, that's why the charge was supposedly blasphemy rather than sedition. Pilate is portrayed as being forced by the Jewish mob to proceed with the execution without Jesus having broken Roman law.

spamandham

Possibly. I tend to think the writing of Mark was sanctioned by Rome, and that this is the reason it comes across as so pro-Roman and anti-semitic.

"Pay your taxes, carry a soldiers pack twice as far as he asks, that wicked generation of jews killed their own messiah in spite of Romes attempts to stop them (Pilate)..."

ksen

[derail] You guys really need to stop using the abbreviation "HJ" for Historical Jesus. Everytime I read a thread title with that in it I have to do a double-take. [/derail]

Ben C Smith

Assuming that no HJ existed, but also that the author of Mark knew the epistles of Paul, a time roughly coinciding with the twenties or thirties may well have suggested itself from a very close, very careful reading of those epistles.

For example, thinking like Mark, Jesus must have lived after Adam (since Paul calls him the latter Adam in 1 Corinthians 15.22, 45), after Abraham (since Paul calls him the descendant of Abraham in Galatians 3.16), after Moses (since Paul says that he was the end or goal of the law of Moses in Romans 10.4-5), and after David (since Paul calls him the descendant of David in Romans 1.4).

Paul claims to have had dealings with the brother of the Lord, James (Galatians 1.19; 1 Corinthians 9.5), and Mark may have interpreted this expression as referring to a brother by blood, thus implying that Jesus was basically contemporary with Paul.

Paul expects that he might see the general resurrection in his own lifetime (1 Corinthians 15.51). He also calls Jesus the firstfruits of that resurrection. Since the firstfruits of the harvest precede the main harvest itself by only a short time, perhaps Mark felt that the metaphor works better with a short time between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the rest of the dead, implying that the resurrection of Jesus was recent for Paul.

Paul claims that Jesus was the end of the law for those who have faith (Romans 10.4), that he was raised from the dead in order to justify humans (Romans 4.25), and that this justification comes by faith (Romans 5.1) in Jesus (Romans 3.22). Paul also claims that no one can have faith unless he first hears the gospel from a preacher (Romans 10.14) who is sent (Romans 10.15). Finally, Paul acknowledges that it was at the present time (Romans 3.26) that God showed forth his justice apart from the law (Romans 3.21), and that the sent ones, the apostles, were to come last of all (1 Corinthians 4.9); he also implies that the resurrection appearances were the occasion of the sending out of apostles (1 Corinthians 9.1; 15.7, 9; Galatians 1.15-16). Mark may have had trouble presuming that, for Paul, Jesus was raised in the distant past but only recently revealed to the apostles, since now he would have to take pains to account for this gap; why, for Paul, did Jesus die in order to end the law and justify humans but then wait indefinitely before making this justification available to humans? If, however, Mark presumed that, for Paul, Jesus was raised recently, shortly before appearing to all the apostles, all is explained. That was the right time (Romans 5.6).

Similarly, Paul writes that God sent forth his son to redeem those under the law in the fullness of time (Galatians 4.4). It may have been easier for Mark to suppose that the fullness of time had some direct correspondence to the end of the ages (1 Corinthians 10.11) than to imagine that the fullness of time came, Jesus died, and then everybody had to wait another long expanse of time for the death to actually apply to humanity.

Or Mark could have been looking for a precedent for Christian baptism. Paul describes the institution of the other great Christian ritual, the eucharist, in 1 Corinthians 11.23-25, but does not in his extant epistles describe the institution of baptism, even though, despite not having been sent to baptize (1 Corinthians 1.17), he baptizes anyway (1 Corinthians 1.16!). Mark could have lit upon John the baptist as the perfect rationale for Christian baptism; if the movement began within baptist circles, then Christian baptism stands explained. If not, he would have to seek another source for Christian baptism.

Likewise, Mark could have been looking for a good timeframe for the dominical words in 1 Corinthians 7.10-11, in which the Lord, not Paul, prohibits both partners in a marriage, husband and wife, from divorcing. Mark could have noticed that such a command makes more sense to a gentile readership (like the Corinthians) than to a Jewish audience (virtually necessary if he is going to put these words on the lips of a Jewish Jesus in Palestine), since only men could customarily initiate a divorce in Jewish society. So did Mark have to drop the female half of the command? No, he did not (Mark 10.11-12). He found the perfect time for such a saying, to wit, not long after Herodias had flouted Jewish custom and initiated the divorce from her husband in order to marry Herod Antipas (Josephus, Antiquities 18.5.4 §136), who in turn had John the baptist killed for his criticism of their marriage (Mark 6.17-18).

Ben.

gstafleu

Mark was pretty good at irony. If Pilate was known to be a bully, Mark framed the story such that even a bully would be (or was) more sympathetic towards the Messiah than the Messiah's intended audience.

Gerard Stafleu

Clivedurdle

Are the birth stories mentioning the Emperor and Herod and the story of Jesus as a child in the Temple logical additions to fill in the story?

What of the astrology of the new age? Did other religions pick up on this?

As we have stripped away the miraculous, what else should be stripped away?

aa5874

The explanations for your assumptions are so unrealistic. For your assumptions to work the author of Mark would have to operate in a vacuum, since if Jesus did not exist and the Epistles were written within 20-30 years of his assumed death, then everyone in the region would have known or could have found out that Paul wrote fiction about the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

If it is assumed Jesus did not exist, then the author of Mark obviously have no information about an historical Jesus and there would have been virtually nothing for the author to believe in the Epistles.

This would mean the author of gMark would still have to fabricate or manufacture many many events about Jesus. For example, the Epistles do not have any detailed information about the miracles of Jesus, the transfiguration, the parables or the trial of Jesus. The author of Mark manufactured these events without the help of the Epistles.

If it is assumed that the author of gMark was between 40-50 years of age when he wrote, assuming he wrote at 70 CE, then the author would be born somewhere around 20-30 CE, and if Jesus did not exist, the author of Mark would have known that Paul wrote fiction, since there would have been no-one who could confirm Paul's crucifixion, resurrection or ascension of Jesus.

If Jesus did not exist, Paul's epistles is not necessary for the author of gMark.

However if Jesus did not exist and the authors called Paul knew of gMark, after it was written, and believed it was true, the Pauls could have used the information in gMark to claim that he had revelations and was converted by Jesus after he had RISEN.