Adam

The Religion Bulletin blog has an excellent 7-part review of Maurice Casey's 2010 book, on the sub-topic Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? amazon link (or via: amazon.co.uk) I intersplice my accounts on a large selection from this part 4. (Starting a new thread instead of the hapless
Passion Narrative by Kirby Proves HJ)

http://www.equinoxpub.com/blog/2011/...consistencies/
Posted on April 20, 2011 by Deane Galbraith
Review of “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” in Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching. 2010
Of all the episodes in the four Gospels which are recorded in parallel, none are more radically at odds than the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.

[Agreed]

First, and Casey also makes the point (p. 464), the resulting harmonization looks nothing like any of the individual accounts. In order to incorporate the details of each of the different stories, the resulting harmonization almost inevitably ends up in tension with the overall picture offered by each individual Gospel. Second, the “independent witness” analogy simply does not apply here, because none of the Synoptic Gospels are independent from the others; unlike the scenario of independent witnesses, neither Matthew nor Luke provide a witness which is “independent” of their common source, Mark. According to the most widely accepted account of the evident literary dependence between the Synoptic Gospels, Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and it was used extensively as a source by Matthew, and almost as extensively by Luke. While John records independent traditions, the problem with the Fourth Gospel is precisely the opposite: the traditions are so developed and expanded and bear so little relationship with the traditions in the three Synoptic Gospels that they cannot begin to corroborate the detail in the other Gospels; in fact, it looks as if John did not even know the other traditions. These points provide caution against the naive, uncritical approach of harmonizing the Gospel accounts.

[Falsely assumes that Mark was available in its present form for use in the other gospels. Scholars largely agree there were sources in all of them. (Goodacre is getting pounded trying to strangle Q where Farrer and Goulder have already failed.]

Casey makes one further and decisive argument against attempting to harmonize the Gospels: when we compare the parallel accounts in the Gospels, it is clear that Matthew and Luke not only produce inconsistent accounts, but they deliberately change what Mark wrote.
Maurice Casey: "the Resurrection narratives in our Gospels are not reports of real facts"
One example of these deliberate changes concerns Mark’s conception that Jesus was going ahead of the disciples, to meet them in Galilee (Mark 14.28; 16.7). For Mark, the first appearance of Jesus was not in Jerusalem, outside of which Jesus was crucified, but in the region that Jesus commenced his movement: Galilee (p. 461).

[Not if the sources available to each were less specific about places especially “Galilee”.]

Matthew agrees with Mark that the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to his disciples was to occur in Galilee (Matthew 28.7; cf. Mark 16.7), and Matthew consequently narrates Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples as occurring in Galilee (28.16-20). Yet in Matthew we find that two facts have been deliberately changed. First, instead of ”saying nothing to anyone” (Mark 1.8), Matthew narrates the women as leaving Jesus’ tomb with the express intention of telling the disciples what the angel had commanded them to tell. Secondly, Matthew includes a single post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, in Jerusalem, to the women. In this appearance, Jesus repeats what the angel had said to the women, instructing the women to inform his disciples that the disciples will see him in Galilee. As Casey notes, Matthew inserted this post-resurrection appearance into the narrative received from Mark only so that Jesus could tell them to tell other people to get to Galilee for the most important appearance. He was not anticipating the later tradition of appearances in Jerusalem. (p. 463). So, as Casey observes, the two earliest Gospels are unanimous in placing the major post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, to his disciples, in Galilee. But Luke has deliberately rewritten the tradition “to put all the appearances in Jerusalem” (p. 463). Maurice Casey: Luke has deliberately rewritten the Galilean post-resurrection appearances "to put all the appearances in Jerusalem"

In Luke’s account, Jesus no longer goes ahead of the disciples to Galilee in order to appear to them there. Instead, Jesus appears to the disciples in Jerusalem. Casey carefully explains how Luke has deliberately changed the Markan tradition in order to effect this change of locations. Whereas the angel in Mark says to the women at the tomb,

"But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you" (Mark 16.7), the angel in Luke, at precisely the same point of his address to the women at the tomb, says, “Remember how he [Jesus] told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again” (Luke 24.6-7).

Luke has deliberately changed the significance of “Galilee” in the angel’s speech about Jesus’ earlier prediction of his death! In Mark, the point of Jesus’ mention of “Galilee”, according to the angel, is to let the disciples know where they should meet him after the resurrection. But in Luke, by contrast, the angel only mentions “Galilee” as the location at which Jesus’ made the prediction of his death. While Luke has retained Mark’s mention of Galilee, he has changed it to prepare for his subsequent narrative, in which Jesus innovatively appears to his disciples in Jerusalem, not in Galilee! Therefore, between the writing of Mark and Luke, a whole series of post-resurrection appearances have been created which centre on Jerusalem, rather than at Galilee (as in the earliest tradition). As Casey notes, Matthew may have been aware of a tradition of appearances at Jerusalem when he created an appearance of Jesus there to the women. But Matthew reserved the major post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, that is, to the disciples, to Galilee. As Casey summarises, with Luke, we have the “deliberate replacement of one tradition with another” (p. 463). Not only that, but Luke proceeds to narrate every one of the appearances of Jesus in Jerusalem, followed by Jesus’ ascension to Heaven (Jesus’ “resurrection-after-resurrection-after-death”). As Casey notes, this leaves “no room for any appearance in Galilee” (p. 463).

[Luke at Acts 1:3 states that Jesus “had shown himself alive after his Passion by many demonstrations for forty days.” That leaves enough time to be in Galilee for the mountaintop Mt. 28:16-20 (if it was indeed separate from Lk. 24:44f) and the lakeside John 21 and return to Jerusalem.]

Luke has deliberately changed the narrative of post-resurrection appearances in his major source, Mark, and he does this so as to include a series of traditions in which Jesus appears to the women and to his disciples in Jerusalem rather than Galilee (p. 464). The stories of post-resurrection appearances in Luke are creative inventions which have little to do with the earlier tradition (noted in Mark, recorded in Matthew), in which Jesus’ disciples first imagine they have seen Jesus at some stage after fleeing Jerusalem and returning to their homes in Galilee.
Luke rewrote the early tradition of appearances in Galilee, and replaced it with his own tradition of appearances in Jerusalem… Consequently, we cannot expect much early history in Luke’s tradition of appearances. (p. 481). Apart from the location, the stories in Matthew and Luke do not contradict each other so much as give an impression of total disassociation, as if neither of them knew the traditions to which the other had access (apart from the story of the empty tomb, which both of them took from Mark. (p. 463)

[Even Casey himself does not assume that Mark had an original ending with a Resurrection appearance of Jesus in Galilee, though I would concede that Matthew 28:16-20 is probably what that original ending was. However, by getting into Matthew as the “real deal”, please note that in Mt. 28:10 Jesus tells the women, “Go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; there they will see me.” BROTHERS. Commentaries variously interpret this as spiritual brothers and just a synonym for disciples, or just disregard the difference altogether. Also note that nowhere are the “apostles” (a rare term appearing only nine times in the gospels) or “the Twelve” specified wherever Jesus predicts or directs going to Galilee. Thus the use of “disciples” at Mt 28:7 and the absence of any specification at Mt. 26:32 and Mk. 14:28 leave open the meaning that a wider circle of followers of Jesus is meant. I would suggest that the text underlying Mt. 28:7 would not need to imply to Luke that he would he would be contradicting an earlier story by ignoring any Galilean appearances in his Luke. Indeed the original text may not have mentioned Galilee or mentioned in a way that could be mistranslated from Aramaic to say to go to Galilee.]

The question remains: why was Luke determined to deliberately change the Galilee appearances to Jerusalem appearances? One probable reason is that Luke had uncovered many of these stories about Jesus’ appearances in Jerusalem, during his “careful investigations” (Luke 1.3). That is, Luke encountered the testimonies of certain Christian faithful who claimed that they had personally ”witnessed” (Luke 1.2) the resurrected Jesus in visions, and Luke then assessed which of these accounts were true and real, and his assessment resulted in ”eyewitness” stories we now have recorded in Luke’s Gospel. For if Luke’s reference to “careful investigations” of the reports of “eyewitnesses” means anything, it probably does not refer to his copying of two-thirds of Mark, a Gospel not claimed to be written by an eyewitness, and indeed already forming a secondary stage of the transmission of the tradition. It may possibly refer to some of the oral or written material shared with Matthew and not Mark (i.e. Q), if these traditions were associated with eyewitnesses, and some of the special Lukan material - but in most cases we would have no way of telling which of these sources might be considered to derive from “eyewitnesses”.

[It is my argument that the first eyewitness Passion Narrative was written by John Mark, and the text for it I extract mostly from John and Luke as detailed at the conclusion of my thread
Early Aramaic Gospels post #49

Running through Jn. 20:17 and Lk. 24:11 there is no mention of Galilee needing to be suppressed. Even assuming (as I do) that Luke had access to the Q-like text underlying Matthew, I explain that text as probably not saying that the apostles were to go to Galilee to see Jesus—see my thread
Gospel Eyewitness Sources (conclusion not yet posted @ 12/23/12)

None of the texts Luke saw necessarily had Galilean appearances or directions for the apostles to go to Galilee. The Q-like source may have included something like Matthew 28:16-20 but without identifying the place as Galilee. An appearance by the risen Jesus in Luke 24:44-47 or even on a mountain (as in the Galilean account) is placed however outside Jerusalem (Acts 1:6-12).]

…. Richard Bauckham then (in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006) only tells half the story when he tries to argue that some of Luke’s traditions go back to traditions of eyewitnesses. Sure some of them probably do go back to eyewitnesses - but at least some of this “eyewitnessing” was ”seen” during a visionary experience that had nothing to do with reality!

[That’s Galbraith’s opinion, but it does include acknowledgment of “eyewitnessing”. I don’t find anyone anymore arguing against eyewitnesses, just assuming there aren’t.]

Casey’s astute analysis demonstrates that the post-resurrection traditions were still developing some time after Jesus’ death, as a result of new visionary experiences and the different interests of later Gospel authors. The Gospels, far from constituting a harmony of different aspects of the appearances of Jesus, should be understood as deliberately contradicting each other.

[And I have argued that two traditions started from the first, with a clumsy attempt at blending them that wound up with contrasting (but not contradictory) accounts. (It makes it easier that I have never tried to be an inerrantist.)]

Sheshbazzar

Oh Adam you are so funny. :hysterical:

It doesn't really make any difference how the conflicting details of this old religious tale are told or explained, as the miraculous 'Resurrection' of a three days dead living-dead Zombie that magically teleports its holey carcass around appearing and disappearing here and there, finally levitating off into the clouds while 500 people watched, never happened no matter which way this silly old religious fantasy is told.

The 'testimony' of any imagined 'eyewitnesses' to these mythical non-events isn't worth the paper its printed on.

Adam

<edit> MJ is disproven.

Still I call for anyone to go to my Post #39 in
The Nature of Scholarship
with its challenge as found there and in the 3 links therein.

Sheshbazzar

Yeah we know that you like to devise horse-shit. But we aren't buying it.

outhouse

False


Even HJ contains mythology within the pages that describe him.

Even if we claim that there was a true HJ, MJ exist a long side him.

While mainstream scholarships all agree that a HJ existed, nothing is disproven.

Adam

I make no claim that I prove there is no myth in the gospels. I concede that by atheist principles any supernatural events cannot happen. That's what I mean that mythicism limits any truth in the gospels to what in untinged with supernaturalism. I can see the point in that view. But such a preconception cannot shelter mythicism from having to deal with sources within the gospels that have no unexplainable supernaturalism. In my Post #3 I renew my challenge to mythicists (and extreme minimalists) to deal with what seem to be eyewitness sources that contain little or none of the miraculous. No one here has. You can't prove they are not eyewitnesses who relate things that could not happen if (as is the case) they tell of things that could happen. There is a historical basis for Jesus unless you can explain it away, and no one here has tried.

Yes, people here have said it is fiction, but this seems to be an assumption based on the prior understanding that no discrete elements can be filtered out objectively that are free from supernaturalsim.

Toto

We don't have to. You can't prove that they are eyewitnesses.

This is getting tiresome. Do you really not get this point?

No, it is not based on that assumption.

Any ancient writing could be false, mistaken, fictional, allegorical, or many things other than truthy eyewitness testimony.

Sheshbazzar

That there is any truth in the Gospel's, beyond the names of a few cities, half a dozen mystically used foreign words, and names of historical kings and Governors, is the part that remains lacking in any contemporary external corroboration or evidence.
Lacking that there is no reason to presume that there is any actual historical truth in the tales even when gutted of all of these supernatural elements.

And there is no evidence that these Gospel tales have ever existed without all of those supernatural elements and claims.
They would have had little reason to survive, without the presence of those remarkable supernatural elements and claims.

No actual authentic early document lacking in these supernatural elements and claims has ever been found.

No actual authentic early document lacking these supernatural elements and claims was ever reported by any early source.

Thus it is an insupportable assumption that these Gospel tales have ever existed without the supernatural elements and claims.

These supernatural elements and claims are an integral part of these Jesus story plot line.
As far as is at all humanly determinable, these supernatural elements were always part of the Gospel stories.

The entire Jesus tale is fashioned around the premise that the supernatural elements, events, and claims really happened, and the surrounding plot-line deals with the various characters reactions to those supernatural events and attending claims.

It was an engaging religious tale for its time period, but it is certainly not history, and simply stripping out the supernatural parts will not make the 'plucked chicken' carcass that is left over into any valid account of history.

Diogenes the Cynic

Luke did not do any "personal investigation" or interview any witnesses. He couldn't have, they were dead. He was writing at least 60 years after the alleged crucifixion, and that's the most conservative estimate. There is a case to be made that he was writing well into the 2nd Century. He does not even claim to have spoken to any witnesses, but only that he has read sources that had been reputedly "handed down" from alleged witnesses. We don't have to guess what these witnesses were, we know what they were. They were Mark and Q and probably Josephus. Mark has no appearances, so nothing for Luke to contradict. Q doesn't even have a crucifixion.

aa5874

It is total propaganda and deliberately mis-leading that "mainstream scholarship all agree that a HJ existed.

It would seem to me that HJers, whether Christian or not, are posting here simply to promote erroneous information.

Why can't HJers tell people that there is a QUEST for HJ for over 250 years and still ongoing??

The Quest for HJ is NOT over because HJers don't know or cannot decide who they are looking for.

And , to make matters worse, in the Bible, after the supposed Jesus was buried, his body vanished.

Jesus of Nazareth came from NOTHING and after he was buried NOTHING of his body was found at the burial site.

People who believe in miracles like the resurrection have difficulty with mythology and history--they think both are the same.