Clivedurdle

Is there an earliest possible date? If we strip out references to xyz historical people or events and for argument say they are later additions, do we have anything like camel trains happening before they were invented?


Might it be a BCE document?

show_no_mercy

Well, considering that he quotes from the LXX, it can't be earlier than that :/

jon-eli

Negative. The LXX quotes from Mark.

/edit
I've changed my mind. Mark and the LXX share a common source... We'll call it "Q."

Toto

Please elaborate.

jon-eli

It was a lame attempt at humor.

/edit
Mainstream scholarship is even lamer than my attempt at humor, so I think the attempt was justified.

Toto

You can add a </sarcasm> tag if you need to. We get enough wild stuff here that is posted in earnest (at least seemingly.)

jon-eli

Then why does Tacitus use them?

Truth isn't a popularity contest.

This assumes that there were people with the ability and desire to investigate the event's truthfulness.

How is this a problem?

It takes time for people to become familiar with a work. It's prudent to assume that a work originated some time prior to its first blip on the historical radar.

Obviously. And the OCD didn't preserve some dozen or so of Tertullian's works. Obviously they disapproved of them in total. This also explains the missing fragments of Juvenal's 16th satire. And why we have nothing written by Socrates. And why marshmellows are pink or white, but never green.

This is assumptive, and a generalization. Christians aren't a monolith, and even if they were, it can't really be deduced what was or was not the most important thing to them.

We don't know where Mark was written, or by whom. And even if we did, maybe it was like an art-house film, and simply didn't travel in the correct circles to be noticed by anyone important.

More to the point, who's to say that it didn't sit quietly on John Mark's desk for decades, until someone came across it and decided to disseminate it? The writer may simply have died before showing it to anyone. Existence does not imply circulation.

And by a process of unjustified extrapolation and generalization, extend this to the case of Mark?

Can someone shine some light here? Most of the Josephan parralells with Mark don't seem to suggest a direction of dependence. It could go either way. And besides, many of the parallels, such as Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the temple, are clearly constructions based directly (and I mean directly) off the Old Testament.

Are you referring to the parenthetical remark: "let the reader understand"? How do we know this isn't marginal gloss?

maryhelena

bacht wrote:
Hi, bacht

Welcome to the camp! I’ve been sitting in the mythicist camp a good 25 years now. First got started on this road with John Hick’s ‘The Myth of God Incarnate’. Since then I’ve not read anything nor heard any argument to change my mind.....

My main point in the above post is:

The date 29/30CE was a historical date, i.e. the 14th year of Tiberius. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that because this date relates to the gospel’ mythological Jesus, that this year also relates to a historical reconstruction of Christian history. Particularly, when it is evident, from the gospels, that they are endeavoring to tell their story in relationship to OT prophecy.

The gospel writers found 29/30 CE to be significant in regard to a prophetic interpretation of the OT. However, it does not follow that what they 'saw', what they inferred, as happening in that year is in anyway a historical, a real, happening. What they 'saw', or inferred, is not simply about a mythological man who they sat down in 29/30 CE - it is about a much longer time frame in Jewish history - a much longer time frame that has been given a prophetic interpretation.

Indeed, as you wrote, 29/30 CE can be viewed as a counting backwards 40 years from 70 CE. Indicating, of course, a backdating element in the gospel story. (Mark 13:1,2.) This in itself, does not work negatively for the historical Jesus position. But, if we can see in the gospels a backward dating element from 70 CE - why stop there? Why not also view 29/30 CE in a similar fashion? As a date from which to work backwards - in this case Luke' 70 years backward dating to Lysanias of Abilene.

From this perspective one can, even using the gospel accounts themselves, widen out the time frame in which to look for the early beginnings of Christianity. Confining the search to the few very years around 29/30 CE is, in my view, one that is too confining.

In regard to the dating of the gospel of Mark: Indeed, most likely it was written after 70 AD i.e. that is complied into some sort of finished product. However, the early 'sayings' can well have a history going back way beyond 29/30CE - way back in fact, as a reading of Luke can indicate, to 40 BC - and even beyond that. And surely, at the end of the day, does it not make more sense to have a wider canvas upon which to draw?


In my view, the mythicist camp is selling itself short here i.e. by playing the historical Jesus 'game' in relationship to the gospel story time line - and not speaking out of the box, so to speak, and look at the very real possibility that the earlier ‘saying’, Mark for example, could be dated far earlier than the consensus, Jesus historical, position, of 29/30 CE.

Such an approach could well remove the popular Jesus historical position i.e. the one that removes the mythological clothes but keeps the normal, historical, human man functioning during the gospel time frame. The wider the gospel canvas can be stretched - the notion of a historical human Jesus begins to collapse under the strain.

gurugeorge

This is really interesting. One does get the impression that there's some "fuzziness" in early Christianity as to when, precisely the Messiah was supposed to have lived, and this seems to be an example of it.

Sometimes it seems as if they didn't really care much - "oh, some time in the recent-ish past" seems to be about the size of it. I wonder if we can find any evidence of any more "punts" by early Christian writers into their relative past, as to when their Messiah lived? When did a consensus about 0-30 CE evolve, and how?

jon-eli

I don't see how Mark can be dated earlier than Pilate's prefectship. If you'd like to date it to 26AD and insist that Mark wrote his gospel the day after the crucifixion, well go for it. But if any earlier than that, then I probably won't be the only one asking for an explanation.

/edit
And by "crucifixion," I mean "alleged crucifixion," or "allegorical crucifixion," or whatever your preference might be.