Malachi151

Yes. That's one issue. Papias says that Mark is out of order because he considers Matthew the correct order, as he considers Matthew more important because it has the virgin birth story, and a more complete ending, etc. It also has the Sermon on the Mount, etc.

This is one of the interesting things. Even the first commentators on the gospels were clearly clueless.

Toto

This is not just a "skeptical" position. It is universally acknowledged that Mark's Greek is not very grammatical. Just google "Bad Greek" and Mark to see come comments. Some Christians (notably CS Lewis) have used Mark's bad Greek as evidence that he was too unsophisticated and simple-minded to do anything but write the truth.

Steven Avery

Toto, you roll eyes when you simply are oblivious as to what is being shared in the thread ? Amazing. Typical IIDB.

If Mark is translation Greek (from Latin or a Graeco-Latin dialect) then that has a ton of influence on the grammar. Translators can radically overhaul the grammatical structure or they can be more literal. A literal translation is subject to be critiqued in the target language on a grammatical basis even if technically more faithful and accurate to the source text.

To what extent does C. S. Lewis mention a possible Latin or Graeco-Latin original ?

Shalom,
Steven

Amedeo

Does the fact that the Gospels were written in Greek look bizarre? You answered:

The content of your answer is correct. I would even add that, according to a Gospel, the inscription on the cross was in 3 languages [Hebrew, Latin, and Greek]. However, is this fact the reason why they were written in Greek?

To begin with, we must realize that we are talking about the "official" or canonical [Church accepted] gospels. These Gospels were written down by Christians of the Greek church. There are some gospels, called apocryphal, which were in other languages. If I remember well, at least one was written in Coptic. (I remember reading this "Egyptian" story which has child Jesus making birds out of clay and making them fly. By such miracles, he was very popular with other children.) There is no memory of any gospel being written in Hebrew. I doubt that one would have been so written, since the sect of indigenous Christians came to an end around the year 70 and, until then, there was not much reason for writing one down. Saul/Paul wrote letters to various churches. He also wrote to the Hebrews, but apparently he wrote everything in Greek, the language he has learned well before becoming a Christian himself. It seems that all communications between the localized churches were in Greek.

The Greek church was the great theological center of Christianity and the place where the catholic church (the new People of God, comprising or open to all men) was established, even though the church of Rome, with Peter and the subsequent bishops, was the formal see of the church.

Those remarks in the Greek-written gospels which makes Jesus at the last supper proclaim the NEW COVENANT [as if he had renounced the Abrahamic covenant], and which make Jesus found a new church {PEOPLE of God} on Peter... were written by Greek theologians, not by Roman theologians. So, what I am saying is that there is an early recognition of the Greek theologians that the representative of Christ was Peter, and that the see of the papacy was in Rome. But the doctrine of the new church or new People is an entirely Greek one.

The gospels are biographies of Jesus the King, Messiah, and founder of a new Church... now that the Israelitic one was dissolved around the year 70. I feel absolutely certain that the Gospels were written down AFTER the year 70, by Greek Christians and theologians, who collected and edited all possible anecdotes of the life of Jesus.

There are many clear reasons that the John Gospel was written rather late, maybe around the year 200. The others, the synoptic Gospels are for the most part identical texts. As you know, the scholars of yesterday posited a Proto-Gospel, from which the three evangelists extracted whatever they liked. I agree that there must have be one original written down gospel because I found some rather meaningless short passages in one Gospels which could be clarified by the addition of a sentence or two present in another Gospel. The 3 Gospels in question are almost copies of a large part of the Proto-Gospels. They reflect the personalities and special interests of the evangelists, as one can see by comparing, for instance, Matthew and Luke.

Once the Temple was destroyed, the Christians ended their connection with Israel. (Remember that all the Gentile Christians were inductees into Judaism through the apostles of Jesus, as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles.) The Catholic Church was in effect the establishment of an independent Church (People of God), and this Greek-made Church established its own "Bible", namely The [proto-]Gospel of Jesus the Christ [*Euaggelion Iesou Christou], which became the source book of the Gospels we have, its own rites [the Mass, the re-enactments of the life of Jesus, etc.], and its own theology... which continues into the early part of John's Gospel.

The collection of the anecdotes which were then edited and compiled included anecdotes in Aramaic and Hebrew, as it is evident from the occasional quotations of the original language(s) and from linguistic mannerisms which are not Greek. The making of the Proto-Gospel, somewhere in Greece (between 70 and 100 or so): Collection of anecdotes, translations into Greek, editing, compiling, and interpolations. [[A point I have to explore further: I have had the impression that Mark is the oldest Gospel, in the sense of being closest to the draft of the Proto-Gospel. A learned Greek like Luke could wax poetical in his own rendition of the Proto-Gospel.]] (As I noted elsewhere, there is very little left in the scriptures of the biography of Jesus of Nazareth king of the Judaeans. His royalty was practically irrelevant to the New Church... and Paul had already re-interpreted the crucifixion of the would-be king as a divine atonment for the sins of men, not of the children of Israel! Hence the crucifixion of the Man-God, like an ancient Greek hero or like a Dionysus or like the suffering Prometheus -- not of a human king -- was of paramount importance in the Greek Catholic Church.)

Toto

praxeus: If Mark was translated from another language, why would the translator not use good Greek grammar? A translation might be clumsy or inartful or use strange constructions, but would not need to be ungrammatical. A person writing in his second language might do that.

I don't know that CS Lewis mentioned or cared about a possible Latin original. He had studied classical Greek, he picked up Mark and read it and noted the "bad Greek" by classical standards, and jumped to the assumption that it was written by a simple fisherman and this was evidence of its truth.

Perhaps you have inferred that I do not think that a Latin original for Mark is very likely, or solves any questions. It seems more likely that gMark was written in Rome by someone familiar with Latin.

Clivedurdle

Which three languages?

Clivedurdle

Why would fishermen be able to read and write?

Roger Pearse

Correct.

I'm sorry if I was unclear, but I was trying not to use the jargon term 'autograph'.

I once had the good fortune to be allowed to use a 5th century ms of Jerome's Chronicle, written about 20 years after Jerome died. (I wanted to note down the colour-coding, not recorded in any printed text).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ben C Smith

Wow, that is great.

The earliest manuscript I have ever handled was from century XII. And that was just recently.

Ben.

judge

Hi Prax, I think you will find these are not peshitta but peshitto, from Edessa. You might try this reference. (Clement of Alexandria; Hypotyposes; referred to by Eusebius in Eccl.
Hist. 6:14:2)

Spin must be of the opinion mark has two substratums. Here he think it has a semitic substratum. Was Mark written in Aramaic?