Toto

Well, I'm not sure that it helps -

I find this answer contrived and unsatisfactory. Bigg has assumed what he is trying to prove, and added some language that is not there to force his meaning onto the text.

No risk of ambiguity? Is this not rather breathtaking? Is Bauckham assuming that all the different James are the same guy?

The Church Fathers have been known to make stuff up, including traditions. Their testimony might be evidence, but not evidence that is worth very much.

The simplest explanation is that Jude was the brother of James, that both were Messianists of some sort, and neither were blood relations of any Jesus.

Toto

The OP is rather spare, but I assumed that the Jude the brother of James must refer to the James of Jerusalem. Sorry if this got off on a tangent you didn't intend.

Christians through the entire recorded history of the church have assumed that the Mary who witnessed the crucifixion was the mother of Jesus, but you are correct that Mark's references are rather indirect.

You can accept the contrived explanations from the Church Fathers, or you can consult Jay Raskin's book on the Evolution of Christs and Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk), where he identifies Mary as the author of the original gospel.

Amaleq13

Is my impression anachronistic that it is weird for an author to refer to a mother by different sons throughout the same narrative?

Ben C Smith

It might be a bit weird, except that Mark seems to have created a pattern of it. Mark 6.3 has all four sons, of course, besides Jesus, who is mentioned separately as the topic of discussion.

The references in Mark 15 and 16 are three in number. The first is the fullest, mentioning both James and Joses; the second mentions only one son, the third the other. Perhaps Mark is just taking a shortcut; he has to distinguish this Mary from the Magdalene Mary each time, so he gives us a fuller designation at first, followed by briefer designations after that.

(Crossan says somewhere that he has given up on trying to figure out why Mark lists the women as he does!)

What is more unexpected is the referencing of a person by his or her progeny rather than by siblings or parents. This instance with Mary is paralleled in Mark by the instance with Simon of Cyrene. I think by far the best explanation is the obvious one, to wit, that the Marcan readership knew who James and Joses were, and knew who Alexander and Rufus were. But unfortunately their knowledge does not much help us.

For example, did the Marcan readership know that this James and Joses was the same as the James and Joses in Mark 6.3? I dunno. Did the Marcan readership know that this Rufus was the same as the Rufus in Romans 16? I dunno.

In The Gospels in Context, Gerd Theissen points out that, in the Greek, Mark 15.40 can be translated in six different ways (some less likely than others), each yielding a different list of women. It seems less likely that Mark is being deliberately vague than that he is being accidentally opaque (to us, not necessarily to his original readers).

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Intentionally so. It consists of the basic question (in the thread title) and the NT references to supply the antecedents to these people.

Jeffrey quoted Bauckham about the James named in the opening of Jude:

The second phrase, which distinguishes this Judas from others of the same name, does so by mentioning his relationship to the only man in the primitive church who could be called simply “James” with no risk of ambiguity....

You answered:

I think you may have misinterpreted Bauckham. He is not saying (here, at least) that all these men named James are the same James; he is saying that the James in Jude [1.]1 is the only one among them who could be called James without qualification (such as the lesser or of Zebedee). You appear to agree with this, since you, too, assumed that the James in Jude [1.]1 was the James, the one who led the Jerusalem church:

No problem.

That they are.

Are you overriding one set of contrived explanations with another explanation even more contrived?

Ben.

Toto

Jay Raskin's explanations derive from a methodology. You may object that the methodology is one that he invented himself (!), but at least he explains his method and sees where it will take him, rather than starting with his results and justifying them.

the_cave

Or, we can do a little source-criticism:

Mark 15.40 and 16.1 seem linked--we see the repeated pattern Mary Magadlene--Mary the mother of James--Salome.

15.47 looks like a separate tradition--Mary the mother, not of James, but of Joses, saw where Jesus was laid.

Someone combined these two traditions, and modified 15.40 to conflate Mary the mother of James with Mary the mother of Joses--either for harmonization, or because he knew that it was the same Mary.

If you look at Vorkosigan's chiasm for the end of Mark 15, it looks a bit messy--he has to resort to using a dependent clause for the B bracket, and the Magdalene/mother of James/Salome list isn't duplicated in matching brackets. However, it looks like "mother of Joses" is in a bracket that matches the mention of Joseph of Arimathea ("Joses" being a nickname for "Joseph", providing the thematic link between the brackets), so I wonder if that was present in the original version of Mark. It looks to me like someone's tampered with the original chiasm, suggesting that there are interpolations here. (Or else Vorkosigan is completely wrong about Markan chiasms, which I admit is possible.)


So, Magdalene and "mother of Joses" was in the original version of Mark. Someone added the "mother of James" tradition, as well as Salome. He(/she?) made Mary the mother both of James and Joses in 15.40 so that 15.47 wouldn't appear incongruous, but left 15.47 as he found it, perhaps due to fatigue or just for traditions' sake. Then the same author wrote 16.1--and since his tradition was about a mother of James, not Joses, that is the appellation he used there.


As for Mark 6.3 and Jude 1.1, it's possible they are linked. I don't know if Mark 6.3 and 15.40/16.1 are by the same author--they might be, but I do think it a bit odd that the author would identify Mary as the mother of not only James and Joses, but Jesus as well, in 6.3, but fail to do so later in 15.40/.47/16.1. "Jude" could appear on the list due to Jude 1.1, or else because the author was aware of a tradition that called Jude a "brother of the Lord". FWIW, I think Jude could be fairly early ("early" meaning "the 90s"), and my sense is that it is "authentic" in that it is by someone named Jude who is a brother of someone named James. The authenticity question only arises when you make the assumption that this James is James "the brother of the Lord". But why should we make this assumption?

aa5874

This is really odd, the evidence clearly shows that it is more likely to be deliberately, rather than accidentally, vague.

A person named Mary is looking from a distance at Jesus, this person may be the mother of Jesus, yet the author proceeds to give a list of the woman's sons, James, Joses and perhaps daughter called Salome.


And the same list with James, Joses and Salome is used with this Mary when at the tomb and observing the burial.

The author could have simply written Mary the mother of Jesus, it is very likely he did not know who was at the tomb or did not want to make a false claim about the person called Mary.

And what is even more interesting is that the authors of the other Synoptics also did not claim directly that Mary the mother of Jesus was at the tomb.

The author of gMatthew claimed Mary Magdalene and the other Mary was at the tomb.

The author of Mark appear to be deliberately vague, even the authors of Matthew or Luke, it would appear, did say not that the mother of Jesus, Mary was at the tomb.

Amaleq13

But why keep changing the designation? Avoiding the appearance of favoritism?

thentian

The gospel of Peter only mentions Mary Magdalene and "some friends of her", if that is of interest.

While reading that I noticed that the centurion responsible for guarding the grave was identified by name: Petronius. I thought that was a little curious, so I decided to search for Petroniuses in that general area and time. A general here, a governor there and... a writer. The latter had evidently written something called "Satyricon"! A quick reading of that, and I realize I have read it before. Sort of!

Cheers!