Freethought & Rationalism Archive

davidstarlingm · 07-15-2011, 02:06 PM

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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

The Messianic "secret" is Mark's invention, not something that actually came from Jesus. Mark was trying to contrive an explanation for why nobody knew Jesus was the Messiah while he was alive. Anything any of the Gospels say Jesus said "in secret" is stuff that was made up by that author (or by that author's source).

Mark just didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He thought claiming to be the Messiah was blasphemous under Jewish law. John makes a distnictly different claim than mere messiahship for Jesus. The synoptics do not.

Once again, Mark didn't know what he was talking about. He needed to invent a reason to shift blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews, so he made up the trial before the Sanhedrin and the blasphemy conviction. This does not mean that mark thought Jesus was God.

So your argument depends on the author(s) of Mark being unfamiliar with Jewish law or customs? All right, that's fair enough.

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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

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What would we expect from a gospel written as the experiences of a particular disciple?

We would expect it to be a first person, eyewitness account. A memoir, by definition, is an account written from personal memory. Nothing in John comes from anybody's personal memory, nor does it claim to.

A memoir certainly need not be written in the first person. I'm not thinking of the modern definition of a memoir as much as an ancient analogue. To quote the all-knowing Wikipedia:

The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to old age as found in an autobiography.

Historically, memoirs have dealt with public matters, rather than personal. Many older memoirs contain little or no information about the writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Modern expectations have changed this, even for heads of government.

Would you agree that the text and style of John is significantly different (content issues aside) from the synoptic gospels? This is what I'm trying to get at.

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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Jesus says that "the sabbath was made for man," and that "the son of man" is Lord of the sabbath. That means that Mark is either saying the Messiah is the Lord of the sabbath or that human beings are.

If, as you suggest is one possibility, Mark is saying that the Messiah is the Lord of the Sabbath, then isn't this an attribution of divinity to the Messiah?

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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

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Keep in mind the supposed preexistence of Jesus in this passage from Matthew:

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Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet’?

If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”

How does this imply pre-existence?

What do you think the author of Matthew is implying here?

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Originally Posted by mrsonic

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The vast majority of the "I am" statements were made in private, to the apostles alone (see John 16). There is no reason, then, to suppose that the authors of Luke or Mark would have had access to those, as they would not have been publicly attested.

but mark has jesus explain things to the deciples in a house in private.

This is correct. However, I don't think it's very far-fetched to suggest that different authors at different times might have had access to some eyewitness accounts but not to others.

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-15-2011, 02:35 PM

None of them had access to eyewitness accounts (if they did, they wouldn't have had to rely so heavily on the LXX and on sheer fabrication) and, in point of fact, there WERE no possible eyewitnesses to the trial of the Sanhedrin other than Jesus and the high priests themselves.

JonA · 07-15-2011, 03:37 PM

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Originally Posted by davidstarlingm

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Originally Posted by JonA

....the apostle John was not only not the most recent editor, but there is no evidence whatsoever that he was even a source for the material in the gospel.

I don't see how this is relevant. Even if the entire book is completely fabricated, it can still be written in the form of a memoir. This is a question of textual and stylistic criticism, not content or authorship. I listed a variety of stylistic attributes that are consistent with John being cast as a memoir; I am simply wondering whether this is an accurate approach or not. Can you give feedback on that?

I don't read memoirs, and could care less about arbitrary classification systems. I can tell you that the gospel of John is neither claimed to have been written by a disciple nor claimed to have been sourced from John.

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Originally Posted by JonA

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Can you address the argument?

Did that; twice now. It's time you addressed my counter argument.

The only way I can address your "counter argument" is to point out that it has nothing to do with the validity of my own. Of course calling oneself "son of God" does not automatically constitute a claim to divinity. My argument has been that Jesus must have meant something different than "son of God just like any human being" because he told his disciples not to tell other people, and because people reacted....poorly....whenever they heard him say this.

There are other ways to commit blasphemy besides making claims to divinity. You have not given evidence of claims to divinity, much less claims of Jesus being god.

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Originally Posted by JonA

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Which of the following do you think more likely: that this account was fabricated by the author of Mark early in the mid first century and thus was duplicated into everything that used Mark as a source, or that "Pauline Christians" a century or so later added careful variations of this account into all the existing copies of all three synoptic gospels? I'm genuinely curious to know what you think.

Why? It is entirely unrelated to anything.

Indulge me. I don't think that either of those scenarios are particularly likely, which means that our last remaining alternative is that the account wasn't fabricated.

Not even close. There are loads of other options; for example, Mark could have been writing a story based on accounts fabricated decades before his time.

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Originally Posted by JonA

There is no evidence that Jesus said that the Son of Man has eclipsed God in the power of forgiveness or invalidated God's power. I think an 'also' is implied, and had the Jews understood it differently their reaction would not have been what it was.

The passage does not record the reaction of the scribes, only the reaction of the crowd that saw the man healed.

Yes it does; it records the thoughts of the scribes (Mk 2:6).

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And of course Jesus didn't say that the Son of Man had invalidated God's power -- where did you get that?

You said I was thinking imaginatively in assuming an 'also'. Either Jesus implies an also or he implies an eclipse. Good to see you agree with the 'also', now.

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Originally Posted by Vorkosigan

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We can take any single statement and find a way that it might not have been a declaration of divinity. But there is no escaping the conclusion that everyone around Jesus thought he declared himself to be God. My only question is: why?

Both are completely fictional. The crowd is fictional, the statements are fictional, and the Jesus of each is fictional. The author of gMark had one take, of gMatt, a more expanded one. If you wish to read Jesus as saying he was god, go ahead, I'll give you His answer in Mark 15.2: that's what you say.

Even if both accounts are completely fictional (which is a separate question entirely), we can still evaluate the accounts to attempt to determine what the author was trying to convey. I think it is significant that both authors repeatedly insist that everyone thought Jesus was declaring himself to be divine. Don't you?

But not all the authors insist this! You keep making this claim without offering any evidence of it.

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The vast majority of the "I am" statements were made in private, to the apostles alone (see John 16). There is no reason, then, to suppose that the authors of Luke or Mark would have had access to those, as they would not have been publicly attested.

Absolutely not true. The two biggest declarations of being God in John are made in public (Jn 8:57–59; 10:19–30).

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The classic interpretation of Mark as adoptionistic isn't particularly consistent with passages like Mark 2:28, where Jesus declares himself to be "lord of the Sabbath", a title that necessitates coexistence/preexistence with YHWH.

The title 'lord of the Sabbath' necessitates no such thing.

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You may have misunderstood my initial claim; there was nothing that revolutionary about Jesus' claim to be "son of man" -- this title was also taken by Ezekiel, so there's nothing divine about that. Nor is there anything necessarily divine about the title "son of God", except that the way Jesus uses it leads us to the conclusion that it means something more. And that's the basis of my question.

The blasphemy doesn't come from claiming the title; it comes from claiming certain authority. Not all of the things described as blasphemy in the gospels actually was blasphemous.

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As you pointed out, merely claiming to be the Messiah does not constitute blasphemy; the fact that the Sanhedrin condemns Jesus for blasphemy on the basis of his claim to be "the Christ, the Son of God" means that he's claiming something more than Messiahship. Even if these accounts were fictional (which, again, is a separate question), the authors clearly intended "the Christ, the Son of God" to mean something more than Messiahship (otherwise they would have had him condemned on some other count).

Alternatively, the gospel writers weren't aware of what actually constituted blasphemy in first century Judaism.

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The Jews' attitude toward Jesus's claim of "son of God" in the synoptics is the same as that reflected in John 5:18 and John 10:33.

Tried to kill him and stone him? That's not what happens in Mark 2:5–12.

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As far as concerns your assertion that the OT did not predict a divine Messiah, I think it is evident that the Jews did not expect a divine Messiah. However, whether the OT predicts a divine Messiah is a different question. Keep in mind the supposed preexistence of Jesus in this passage from Matthew:

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Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet’?

If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”

This has nothing to do with preexistence. Why does someone have to preexist someone else in order not to be their son?

Jon

Vorkosigan · 07-15-2011, 05:30 PM

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Even if both accounts are completely fictional (which is a separate question entirely), we can still evaluate the accounts to attempt to determine what the author was trying to convey. I think it is significant that both authors repeatedly insist that everyone thought Jesus was declaring himself to be divine. Don't you?

No, because the Jesus of Mark doesn't declare himself divine.

Vorkosigan

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-15-2011, 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidstarlingm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

The Messianic "secret" is Mark's invention, not something that actually came from Jesus. Mark was trying to contrive an explanation for why nobody knew Jesus was the Messiah while he was alive. Anything any of the Gospels say Jesus said "in secret" is stuff that was made up by that author (or by that author's source).

Mark just didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He thought claiming to be the Messiah was blasphemous under Jewish law. John makes a distnictly different claim than mere messiahship for Jesus. The synoptics do not.

Once again, Mark didn't know what he was talking about. He needed to invent a reason to shift blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews, so he made up the trial before the Sanhedrin and the blasphemy conviction. This does not mean that mark thought Jesus was God.

So your argument depends on the author(s) of Mark being unfamiliar with Jewish law or customs? All right, that's fair enough.

I'm saying that your own argument is based on a premise that Mark thought a claim to be the Messiah was identical to a claim to personal divinity. This is not a premise supported either internally by Mark or by 1st century (or 21st Century) Jewish belief.

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A memoir certainly need not be written in the first person.

Name one that isn't.

While you're at it, name a single element in the Gospel of John that meets any criterion for the designation of its genre as a memoir.

I will remind you that the single most essential requirement for a work to be called a memoir is that it be based on an actual memory. John is based on nobody's memory, nor does it claim to be.

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I'm not thinking of the modern definition of a memoir as much as an ancient analogue. To quote the all-knowing Wikipedia:

The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to old age as found in an autobiography.

Historically, memoirs have dealt with public matters, rather than personal. Many older memoirs contain little or no information about the writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Modern expectations have changed this, even for heads of government.

I'm at a loss as to how you think this helps your case for arguing that John is a memoir.

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Would you agree that the text and style of John is significantly different (content issues aside) from the synoptic gospels? This is what I'm trying to get at.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "text" being different. Obviously the texts are different. All different texts are different, that's just a tautology. The writing style is certainly different, but then all four of the Gospels have distinct writing styles (apart from the material they share).

John is also theologically different, though. He sees Jesus as a coeval Logos, while the synoptics see Jesus as Daniel's "Son of Man." Those are different theological perspectives.

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If, as you suggest is one possibility, Mark is saying that the Messiah is the Lord of the Sabbath, then isn't this an attribution of divinity to the Messiah?

No, it's an attribution of authority to the "Son of Man" (be it the Messiah or just people). It's not a declaration that the Son of Man is God, but that the authority to forgive does not only belong to God.

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What do you think the author of Matthew is implying here?

That the Messiah is greater than David, not that the Messiah is God. That would be a completely un-Jewish belief. Matthew was trying to diss the Jews by saying that Jesus was greater than their greatest hero.

JonA · 07-15-2011, 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I will remind you that the single most essential requirement for a work to be called a memoir is that it be based on an actual memory. John is based on nobody's memory, nor does it claim to be.

Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that. There is the ending claim of the gospel:

[HR="1"]100[/HR]
John 21:24 (NRSV):

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

To me this sounds like a claim that the gospel is based on testimony (memory) of someone who was actually there.

Jon

aa5874 · 07-15-2011, 09:13 PM

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Originally Posted by JonA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I will remind you that the single most essential requirement for a work to be called a memoir is that it be based on an actual memory. John is based on nobody's memory, nor does it claim to be.

Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that. There is the ending claim of the gospel:

[HR="1"]100[/HR]
John 21:24 (NRSV):

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

To me this sounds like a claim that the gospel is based on testimony (memory) of someone who was actually there.

Jon

The ENTIRE John 21 appear to be an interpolation based on Tertullian's "Against Praxeas".

It would appear that up the 3rd century that gJohn ended at the 20th chapter.

All books attributed to Tertullian does NOT contain any reference to John 21.

"Against Praxeas" 25

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... Wherefore also does this Gospel, at its very termination, intimate that these things were ever written, if it be not, to use its own words, “that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?”...

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-15-2011, 09:17 PM

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Originally Posted by JonA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I will remind you that the single most essential requirement for a work to be called a memoir is that it be based on an actual memory. John is based on nobody's memory, nor does it claim to be.

Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that. There is the ending claim of the gospel:

[HR="1"]100[/HR]
John 21:24 (NRSV):

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

To me this sounds like a claim that the gospel is based on testimony (memory) of someone who was actually there.

Jon

Yes that's an emendation made by somebody else, not by the actual author. The actual author (really multiple authors) makes no such claim and both internal and external evidence exclude the possibility of the author being an eyewitness (with the possible exception of some anecdotal fragments from some prior oral tradition, but even that is dubious).

JonA · 07-15-2011, 11:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I will remind you that the single most essential requirement for a work to be called a memoir is that it be based on an actual memory. John is based on nobody's memory, nor does it claim to be.

Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that. There is the ending claim of the gospel:

[HR="1"]100[/HR]
John 21:24 (NRSV):

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

To me this sounds like a claim that the gospel is based on testimony (memory) of someone who was actually there.

Jon

Yes that's an emendation made by somebody else, not by the actual author. The actual author (really multiple authors) makes no such claim and both internal and external evidence exclude the possibility of the author being an eyewitness (with the possible exception of some anecdotal fragments from some prior oral tradition, but even that is dubious).

I was under the impression that we were putting aside the issue of historicity and interpolation, and simply taking the gospels as we have them.

I mean, if we want to exclude interpolated material, then we best get rid of the entire gospel of John.

Jon

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-15-2011, 11:42 PM

But we're not really talking about interpolation (it's not added into the text proper) it's an addendum after the text. It's a different kind of beast. It isn't meant to be deceptive. It isn't presenting itself as part of the text proper, it's just vouching for it. It's saying, "yeah, that shit was written by a disciple. We back it up."

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07-15-2011, 02:35 PM	#22
Diogenes the Cynic Moderator - Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota Posts: 4,639	None of them had access to eyewitness accounts (if they did, they wouldn't have had to rely so heavily on the LXX and on sheer fabrication) and, in point of fact, there WERE no possible eyewitnesses to the trial of the Sanhedrin other than Jesus and the high priests themselves.

07-15-2011, 11:42 PM	#30
Diogenes the Cynic Moderator - Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota Posts: 4,639	But we're not really talking about interpolation (it's not added into the text proper) it's an addendum after the text. It's a different kind of beast. It isn't meant to be deceptive. It isn't presenting itself as part of the text proper, it's just vouching for it. It's saying, "yeah, that shit was written by a disciple. We back it up."

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