neilgodfrey

I don't know. The transfiguration would seem to relate the resurrection question to the identity of Jesus. The scene was climaxed by the voice from heaven, "This is my Son", and then when the cloud passed the witnesses saw Jesus alone. Norman Petersen has a chapter in For A Later Generation where these snippets are tied back to the baptism: the human Jesus was possessed or entered by the Son of God at his baptism. Not understanding the resurrection of the dead may have something to do with understanding exactly who or what the actual resurrected Jesus was. He was not just Jesus (whom as a Son of Man they could recognize as their Christ), but the actual Son of God. The Son of God possessed the human Jesus and was resurrected in the body of the Son of Man, Jesus. Throughout the gospel it is only the demons and God (and the reader) who know that Jesus is inhabited by the Son of God, and hence is effectively really the Son of God in all he is doing.

This is veering away from relating Mark to what Paul and others may have thought of the resurrection, but may do more justice to all the parts of the text of Mark.

So what we read in later gospels is often an attempt to remove some of Mark's "unorthodox" teachings like this about the identity and nature of Jesus, I think. I don't know how this might relate to Paul.

Mark is so damn ambiguous about everything. Why does he not make it plain as black and white that Jairus' daughter really was dead? Like John does in his Lazarus story. Ditto with Peter's mother in law. Was she raised up after having a lie-down with a bit of a sniffle or was she at the point of death? I don't think Mark's agenda is what we want it to be: it does not provide suitable material to answer some of our questions.

You raise an interesting question, though. I need more time to think and read around it to know what to think. If any of the passages you cited as hints of a non-physical resurrection (am I understanding you correctly?) I would like to compare that interpretation with whether those images sit as well with the wider literary scope and theology of each of the gospels.

Neil

aa5874

As soon as the author of gMark claimed Jesus transfigured and that Moses and Elijah appeared from the dead, he crossed the line of reality. This author now is clearly writing about mythical events.

These are the words of Jesus after the transfiguration in gMark.

Mr 9:9 - Mark's Jesus is SUPERNATURAL.

Jane H

A fascinating sentence that raises new questions as fast as they are answered. In a work that is so openly apologetic, why make such a statement at all?

I tentatively work with the following. The resurrection of an individual before the general resurrection was completely out of the blue (remember, we are now after the event). The disciples were as aware as we are that people don't simply come back from the dead. There were also substantial differences between the resurrection Jesus and the lifetime Jesus, which would have raised all sorts of questions in their minds.

The doubters were simply asking themselves the same sorts of questions you and I would ask. Are we having a hallucination here? Going mad? Has the ECREE standard finally been met? Is this a Derren Brown trick, and where's the camera?

So it's entirely natural that they would have questioned themselves deeply. To my mind, Matthew's “some doubted” comment simply adds to the historical seriousness with which we should take his account.

That they resolved their doubts is indicated by (for instance) the use of “The Twelve” throughout Matthew (and the other gospels, Acts and 1 Corinthians). It achieved the status of a technical term within the early church; and a simple tracking of its usage clearly shows the doubters came back on board. Personally I would think that the subsequent actions of the Holy Spirit blew away any sceptical concerns they may have had.

Solo

Yes, the spirit possession (Stevan Davies, Jesus the Healer (or via: amazon.co.uk)) is very much at the core of Mark's gospel. (Not as much in Matthew, and even less in Luke). The spirit enters Jesus at the baptism and leaves in excruciating torment on the cross. Those are Mark's starting and finishing points in the journey of the spirit in Jesus, and [shockingly ?] of the sipirit as Jesus. IOW, it helps seeing Mark's Jesus as the personification of the experience of the spirit. The post-baptismal "adoption" replayed as the transfiguration, would be the "peak" of the spirit.

I have been advancing here a theory about that for a while: Jesus in his non-historical dimensons was the personification of the spirit experienced mostly by people we call today 'bi-polars'. This disorder is common and does not impair one's cognitive capacity, except during episodes of psychosis. Some ancients who went through the cycle of empowerment by righteous grandeur, enlightment and euphoric phantasmagoria, and then - inexplicably - sinking into quagmire of psychotic self-torture and terrifying visions of the end, reflected on their experiences and interpreted them as communication of the supernatural.

They observed eg. that some people (like themselves) were coming out of the psychotic hell with their selves relatively unscathed, unlike many who remained hopelessly mad (see e.g. Hbr 11:35-39) and figured they were God's elect in whom, through this round trip to heaven and hell, God (or Jesus) via spirit deposited gnosis of his great plans for humanity. This would be the milieu in which apocalyptism (with emphasis on the objective validity of the revelatory consciousness) and gnosticism (which focused on internal self-affirming process) took roots likely first among the urban near-literate intellectuals with a creative flair.


Now, the cynic's response to that would be : tell me what's really happening, Neil !

Again, something tells my peasant brain, that the people in antiquity had brains just like ours, and a small number of those brains had a tendency to overheat (gThomas 82) and become ecstatic (gThomas 13). Their owners paid a price to recover, becoming psychotic (gThomas 69).

If they recovered, and learned to manage the process, they became fearless, self-confident sages, if not they were devoured by psychosis and lost their humanity (gThomas 7).

Thomas' Jesus was the guide through the spirit's journey. Mark's Jesus is the spirit's journey itself.

Well, yes, but there are also the mischievous characters in the gospel who too have uncanny access and a some strange goings on around Son of God who is also the spirit.
In 4:10 there are those who were with Jesus and the twelve, who apparently have access to him when he is alone. Interesting. How about those mysterious crowds who "know" the place where Jesus sends the apostles, and run there ahead of them (6:33) ? Are they the same ones who losing their appetite to be with Jesus, cause his family to doubt his sanity (3:20) ? Now of course, I get all sorts of backtalk here when I suggest that these are not just random silly things that Mark does but descriptions of the spiritual effects of the kingdom known to the elect. Bartimaeus is another example: why is he throwing off his shirt before coming to Jesus ? (10:50) Anyone in biblical studies heard of psychomotor agitation ? How about pressure of speech ? Would that not be the allusion in Mark 13:11 ? Is hypnagogic hallucination referenced in the story of the figs (11:13) ? This is a common effect of sleeplessness, or sudden waking. Is that why Matthew places the failed search of food in the morning rather than explain it as search for out-of-season produce, which immediately makes one question Jesus’ sanity ? But that may be exactly what Mark had in mind if you read the story in parallel with Hosea 9:7-10. And btw; has anyone noticed that all the nature miracles in Mark happen after dark and by early morning ? The only exception seems to be the second mass feeding (although Ben Smith disputed here the first feeding as well) in which Mark transparently sets the number of fed individuals by Jesus to way over what Elisha could produce. The hint was given by Mark in four different places (2:19, 3:20, 6:36, 8:2) – people around Jesus don’t feel the need to eat or forget about eating, or in the opposite extreme, they are feasting. Reduced need to sleep and eating dysregulation are common signs of manic exhilaration. When Jesus is abused after being denounced by the priests – some time in the middle of the night – he is asked to prophecy (i.e. foretell) and Matthew correctly reads that as mocking the evident lapse in cognitive sequencing (no need to blindfold Jesus), a kind of exacerbated sense of deja vu that pneumatics experience as they climb down from their highs and the returning cognitive functions begin to dismantle the unreality of the manic grandeur.
I would say, yes, very much so about Matthew and Luke retouching Mark and removing the rough, provocative edges from Jesus. This basically displaces Paul’s Lord as spirit in favour of the historical Jesus, except in Mark’s story it is all allegorical teachings of Paul presumably spiked by some historical events, again heavily allegorized . Since Matt and Luke take the core of Mark and the Pauline stuffing of Mark remains in place displacing real history from the gospels (except roughest outlines) which of course is the ultimate irony. You can make Mark’s Jesus out of Paul, but you can’t make him credibly behave as a historical figure. Mark’s Jesus was remade by the later gospels to become an idol, the very thing that Paul abhorred.

The ‘resurrection’ of those passages was not meant as resurrection of people who were actually dead. This was cultic speech which appears to be related to the metaphors of the Qumran ecstatics. See e.g. the Thanksgiving Hymns (1QH):

My spirit is imprisoned with the dead
for (my life) has reached the Pit;
my soul languishes (within me)
day and night without rest

Thou has raised me up to everlasting heights

I thank Thee, oh, Lord, for Thou hast redeemed my soul from the Pit, and the hell of Abaddon.

Jiri

kcdad

Not there to puff him up? They make this son of a carpenter into GOD. That's pretty puffed, if you ask me. They changes his political and economic revolution into a metaphysical one with absolutely no real world meaning. if that is what you mean by a theological construction I agree with you completely.

kcdad

History is a collection of myths. What do you think? History is the past?

aa5874

Well, tell me now, What is MYTHOLOGY? What do you think?

kcdad

Mythology is a genre of folklore that attempts to describe origins of the present human condition.
ok, your turn.

Julio

Of those “some” who doubted must have come some stories that were later included in the MANY accounts of Jesus’ life [Luke 1:1-3]. Luke gets it that the MANY he referred to had been eyewitnesses and MINISTERS of the word!
And since he shies away from naming even one of those MANY, I am led to wonder and guess whether they were not those “some who doubted”.
There must be a correlation between those few who doubted the resurrection theatrics and the MANY Luke mentions.
What do you think about this particular angle?

Solo

Where does Luke preamble speak of 'accounts Jesus' life' ? He speaks of eyewitnesses to the word ? Any ideas how that's done ?

Jiri