Malachi151

Can you elaborate?

yalla

Briefly:
1. The allegory of the vineyard 12.1-9
Which has the Romans destroying the vineyard in v9a and giving it to the christians in v9b.
2."Legion" 5.9 as a reference to the Roman legion X Fretensis with its symbol of the boar. X Fretensis was the legion involved in the temple destruction.
3. JC referred to as "rabbi", 10.51, 11.21. This title is anachronistic according to the Jewish Encyclopaedia [see 'rabbi'].
4. '' ALL Jews wash their hands" 7.3, a custom NOT relevant until the 2C ["It is agreed by everyone, that about 100AD, or a little later, ritual washing did begin to become obligatory on all.....D.Nineham "Saint Mark" p.193].
5. JC teaching in and out of synagogues, which did not exist as religious oriented structures in Palestine until during, in some special cases, the War and generally not until after, well after.
There were no first century [religious oriented] synagogues in Palestine.
[Thats not a statement to be set in concrete however.]
6.The ''you will be beaten in synagogues etc''.
It is asserted by some that this is a very late 1c phenomena. That is the split between Christianity and Judaism only started in the late 1C, often dated after the birkhat ha-minim excoration by the Jews of the [christian] heretics.
This addition to the benedictions is dated c 85-95 after Jamnia.
Perhaps even later.


That should do for now.
Of course all of these are debatable and I keep trying to find out more about each.
But at least they are indicators of a post 70 to early 2c dating for the writing of g "Mark" and should be part and parcel of the debate.
cheers
yalla

jeffevnz

yalla -

Muchas gracias. I wasn't aware of evidence other than the temple postdiction. Interesting stuff, and considered together, I'd say it paints a compelling picture.

yalla

I missed one out.

In g"Luke" at the end of "Luke"'s version of "Mark"'s ch 13 apocalypse he has the line, 11.37 :

"Where the body is, there the eagles [vultures] will be gathered together".

I've seen that as taken to be a reference to the eagle standards of the Roman legions at the corpse of temple/Jerusalem/Judea [ie post 70].
If so, then the author of "Luke" was of the opinion that the relevant section in g"Mark" refers to the destruction of the temple etc..
FWIW
Similarly g''Matthew" has that line similarly placed so he appears to be of the same opinion.
Of course one of them could be just copying the other [that's a dig at the Q hypothesis].

There may be more "indicators".
Those I listed are probably each worth a detailed consideration, there is a lot of detail and debate and potential contraversy.
I'm not sold on any one of them, I'd just like to see them explored fully.
cheers
yalla

Koyaanisqatsi

I think it was absolutely "prophetic" as only a team of Roman "black psy-ops" propagandists in charge of destabilizing Judaism in the years prior to an ultimate Roman genocide attempt would be ordered to disseminate in a progressively "troubled/insurgent" region and its less sympathetic surrounds since the occupation.



It's exactly what we tried to do to the Native American Indian "problem" just before the "final solution" was inevitably arrived at.

Indeed, one wonders where else our Roman Christian influenced/motivated/persecuted early "founders" got the idea of destroying the indigent population's religion as a "necessary" step in subduing them, and when that fails, slaughtering them en masse?

:huh:

rlogan

hi Roger.

This is a straw man characterization compartmentalizing this down to one single passage, as if we weren't swimming in a sea of additional evidence. True that the OP set it up that way - but the correct thing to do is direct the attention of the OP to all the other evidence and bring it to bear on the question.

Well you can hypothetical all you want to divert attention away from what Mark actually wrote, but let's maybe address the evidence instead.

Mark's geography tales required a star-trek type transporter. So let's just drop the baseless "intelligent human being in Jerusalem" business. Some of the anachronisms have been spoken to, but there are additional errors as well as the whole thrust of the piece.

This is an anonymous book about a God-man of miracles that has moreover been subsequently tampered with. Now on any particular question, how does all of the other material in Mark come to bear on the matter of the Temple?

Does it support astute political prognostication by a resident sage in Jerusalem or a tale of convenience for an agenda by an author removed in place and time?

This is precisely the wrong kind of analogy and an example where working by analogy has the intent of removing us from the question rather than illuminating anything.

So lets get back to Mark. How do you see the rest of Mark supporting an early dating? I mean from the material written, not hypothetical stories.

Cheers.

God Fearing Atheist

Crossley (2003) has argued that Mark assumes what Luke and Matt, written later, could not: namely, that certain passages (e.g. Mark 7.1-23) represent inter-Jewish halakic disputes and not Jesus preaching against the Law. This, he says, presupposes that Mark was written at a time before the split of observant and non-observant Christians (occuring in the late 40s with the growth of the gentile mission).

rlogan

I'm trying to grasp what I'm being told here, Because I see it as baffling. So let me try to state it myself:

First, this tale in Mark is ostensibly about an event where Jesus insists it is what comes out of a man that is more important than what "goes in". Moral conduct is better than blind obedience to "law" (halakhik). That's Mark 7:1-23

The argument is that Jesus isn't really preaching against the law here. Instead, one group of Jews disagrees with the law (Halakhik) and another is observant. The passage with Jesus speaking merely "represents" this disagreement that is alleged to have happened in the 40's.

What the heck is meant by "represent"? That Jesus is merely allegorical? First of all, that throws the credibility (as if there were any to begin with) of relying on Mark for much of anything into question.

But second of all, I do not see how using Jesus as allegory for an alleged argument over the law between Jews as meaningful to dating. So what if the split was alleged to have happened in the 40's. That does not date the writing any more than it dates this post I am writing to you now.

Moreover, any theory of the time this is written needs to be comprehensive in taking into account Mark's numerous errors and why any dating theory explains better than his being removed in time and place.

I have stated before that this much is clear to me: If you are going to claim that superman came through Jerusalem, appearing before multitudes performing miracles and such - then you can't very well be saying that to people who are from Jerusalem and were alive at the time of these alleged astonishments. You need to be at least a full generation removed from the alleged events or you have nobody who can back you up and everyone else who can correctly label you a crackpot.

God Fearing Atheist

His argument is this:

1) Mark 7.1-23 is about Jesus and the Pharisees et al. bickering over proper interpretation of Jewish law, not Jesus advocating his followers fail to observe it.

2) Decades later, Matt and Luke redact the dispute in a way that minimizes the potential for misunderstanding it as Jesus violating/preaching against the Law.

3) Matt and Luke do this because they were writing at time when Christians were increasingly non-observant, i.e. at a time when the words in 18-23 might look to a Christian like Jesus was saying you can eat whatever you want.

4) Christian non-observance is a consequence of the growth of the gentile mission. Together, these begin in the mid-late 40s.

5) Mark takes for granted that the passage will not be misunderstood in the way Luke and Matt think it might. He is, therefore, writing before the growth of the gentile mission and Christian non-observance, in the 40s.

ETA: I am not, BTW, saying this argument is correct. I'm just throwing it out for consideration.

Roger Pearse

Indeed. Pardon me, but were you here offering to pay me to write an essay on "how to date ancient texts"? If not, pardon me if I write in response to the OP, and not a general essay.

I think the whole approach misconceived, and I would think that keeping my own prejudices out of it is the first principle of any respectable investigation into what happened in the past. The main barrier to me understanding something is *me*; the things that I know and take for granted and don't even consider. It's the way that (e.g.) I unconsciously expect books to be published in an edition, without considering that there need be no one 'edition' of a text that is hand-copied. (This is not a comment on Mark, just an example of something that would trip us up).

I merely hoped to shed a little light on a particularly unfortunate example of the way that people can end up arguing themselves into their own prejudices, and genuinely imagine that they have not.

All the best,

Roger Pearse