Ben C Smith

Your analogy to faith as a genre constraint: Hebrew scripture.

I accept the analogy of the gospels to certain parts of the Hebrew scriptures. However, I was not asking for the name of a text. I was asking for some justification for this statement:

You are arguing here that there was a certain attitude struck between the authors of these texts and their readership. What I am seeking from you is evidence of this attitude in antiquity.

Deep religious convictions? Probably not. Strong emotional connection? Of course. But now you are talking about bias, not about genre. Bias can affect any and every genre.

Emotional investment? At this point the topic of genre has become a distant memory.

I nowhere stated that I believed the story of the guards. I stated that I was not sure if Matthew himself came up with the story. The rest of your post looks like an attempt to discredit the story of the guards. You are preaching to the choir.

Matthew is first-hand evidence of a Jewish response to the empty tomb story sometime in the second half of the first century. And it is no more impervious to rational criticism than any other first-hand evidence from antiquity. It may even be false; but it is a first-hand claim that we must deal with, not just dismiss. And, to get back to the issue at hand, it is that detail in Matthew that makes it seem like the author believed there really was an empty tomb; he goes out of his way to disarm a misinterpretation of it which in and of itself presumes an empty tomb.

BTW, can you explain to me what you think is the difference between Plutarch (the Lives) and Petronius (the Satyricon)?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I am strongly inclined to accept their authenticity. And no, I am not kidding you.

I am aware that most NT scholars doubt the traditional ascriptions. Was that an appeal to authority on your part?

Tacitean authorship of the Annals is, to the best of my knowledge, slightly more poorly attested than Marcan authorship of our second canonical gospel.

I was unaware that making impossible assertions had anything to do with authorship. Please explain.

Ben.

Amaleq13

It is my understanding that the ancient Jews did not necessarily consider the stories in their Scripture to be literally "what actually happened" but, nevertheless, believed them to be entirely "true". Before you ask, I have no specific references for this. It is simply a general impression I've obtained from various discussions here.

You indicated you were equating "genre" with "intent" and bias is certainly integral to the latter.

By what reasoning does the emotional investment for the subject of a story not relate to the intent of the author in telling the story?

The story of the guards is the story of a Jewish response to the empty tomb but I see no reason to consider any of it as indicating the author considered the empty tomb to be something that "actually happened" as opposed to being something that was "true".

I have dealt with it by showing that it can only be considered a fictional creation of the author since it makes no sense whatsoever as a credible response to an actual accusation.

That only holds up if we first assume that the misinterpretation is genuine and there appears to be no good reason to accept that assumption since the effort to "disarm" it is so blatantly ridiculous. It appears to be a straw man created by the author only to knock it down (possibly by way of a Scriptural reference). No other Gospel author repeats this story and neither does Paul.

Not really. My knowledge of them is fairly superficial.

Ben C Smith

My best judgment is that virtually the opposite can be the case. For example, it looks to me like the author of Chronicles thought Samuel and Kings to contain what really happened for the most part but did not think of them as true in your metaphysical sense; hence his desire to alter them.

Such impressions will be of only limited use to me as I try to piece together the history of the early Christian movement.

So when the author tells us there is in his day a story circulating about the disciples stealing the body, there actually is no such story circulating, yet he is telling us the truth.

I suppose, then, that when Justin Martyr spoke of the Jews in his day claiming that the disciples had stolen the body (Dialogue 108) he, too, was just making up the claim, yet also telling the truth. And, when Tertullian wrote of the Jewish claim in his day that a gardener had removed the body (On the Shows 30.6), no such Jewish claim really existed, yet he was telling the truth. And later, when the Jews themselves made that very same claim in their own Toledoth Yeshu, they were just kindly obliging those earlier Christians who had been making up such claims on their behalf all along.

I just reread your explanation to make sure I had not missed something, and I still see no evidence in your explanation that Matthew himself composed the guard story as opposed to getting it from the tradition. IIRC the venerable G. A. Wells himself thought that the guard story evolved over the years before getting to Matthew.

Your talk of a credible defense for the accusation offers no evidence that Matthew was the first to offer the defense. Your discussion of that ridiculous story standing no chance as a reasonable counter-argument to the possibility of body-theft gives me no information on whether it was Matthew or someone else before him who composed the tale.

And, even if Matthew did compose the guard story from scratch, why did he do so? He tells us why; to counter a story current in his own time that the body was stolen from the tomb. Even if there was no Jesus and there was no tomb and there were no disciples to steal the body that was not there, Matthew is claiming that such a story was going around in his time.

The gospel of Peter has a version of the story.

All right, then, please name two ancient authors of your own choosing, one classified as a novelist (or some other kind of fictionalist) and the other as an historian. What do you think are the differences between them? And what do you think a reader would expect from one but not from the other?

Ben.

Amaleq13

Fortunately for me, being of use to you is not an obligation I feel compelled to fulfill.

That said, I'll see if any of the "usual suspects" can either point me in the right direction or inform me that I am way off the map. I did find a post by GDon where he indicated Karen Armstrong mentioned something along those lines. I have her book but I haven't found the specific reference.

I requoted myself so it is clear that you have changed the subject of my comment. I was talking about your claim that the author considered the empty tomb to be something that "actually happened" but your response pretends I was talking about the accusation.

Even if I assume the accusation had actually been made, how does the author's ridiculous and wholly inadequate "defense" require or even suggest that he considered the empty tomb to be something that "actually happened"? It seems to me to suggest he considered this to be a legitimate hole in the story and he did his best to plug it up for the sake of the story and those who read it with faith but I don't know how you go beyond that.

Would you expect him to explain to the Jewish critics that the empty tomb was simply a literary symbol of the resurrection? Of course not. He responds to a criticism of the story with a fabrication that only "works" for those with faith in the story to begin with. Faith in the story and taking it as history are two different things.

I don't particularly care if the scene was fabricated by Matthew's author or by an unknown source and I don't see how it is relevant to the point that a clearly fictional scene embellishing the empty tomb story doesn't require or suggest that the author considered the empty tomb to be historical.

He was filling a hole in the original story. Filling it with "dirt" that requires faith to be accepted but filling it nonetheless.

And, since the guard story is only credible to Christians reading the story with faith, it seems reasonable that it was for them and their faith in the story that he added this embellishment.

I think you have me confused with someone taking a class from you and to whom you can assign homework. You are mistaken.

Ben C Smith

I see. I have been confused on your position on that all along, since I was always talking about the veracity of Matthew in reporting a story in his own time, not the veracity of the story itself from several decades before.

I have known from square one that you did not regard Matthew as competent to report on events several decades before; I was hoping you would at least regard him as competent to report on events contemporary to him, at least so far as judging his own attitude to his work is concerned. Guess I was mistaken.

The problem is that I do not even really know what that last statement means in light of his reporting a story circulating in his own time.

Filling in the hole requires only the guards at the tomb or some similar account. It does not require notice that the story is still circulating.

That would help. Like when Paul explains in Galatians that the two women are only an allegory.

He responds to what he knows is an allegory by treating it as if it were... what? As if it were history?

Not an impression I wish to convey. Sorry. I am just interested in how you would distinguish between ancient history and ancient fiction. If you in fact do not or can not distinguish between those, then discussing Matthew in terms of those categories is of course meaningless.

Let us turn from Matthew to the easier Luke for a moment. It is apparent that Luke planned his gospel and his acts as volumes of a set, the first about Jesus, the second about Peter and Paul (mainly). I think that his treatment of Paul offers us direct insight into how he regarded Jesus. We know from the Pauline epistles that his general outline of Paul is accurate (please do not get hung up on the details for now), that there was indeed a man named Paul who was converted in or around Damascus and who preached to the gentiles and suffered persecution (albeit possibly exaggerated at times in both Paul and Luke). I think that tells us that, for Luke, there really was a man named Jesus who really preached to Jews and was executed in Jerusalem and so forth. Which means he must have taken at least the broad strokes of Mark seriously, even if he disagreed with some of the details (and at least one nondetail, IMHO, the location of the resurrection appearances). This means he was treating Mark as something other than the Satyricon.

Ben.

Amaleq13

I think it is less a question of competence than the nature and reliability of his sources as well as his active agenda as a participant in the religion represented by the story.

I perfectly willing to assume that the author is accurately relating an accusation in existence at the time he wrote. That certainly suggests certain Jewish opponents of Christianity were taking the story as a literal description of "what actually happened" but I question whether the author's defense against the accusation requires the same to be true of both himself and his readers.

It means that the author has responded to the accusation not by researching the facts and obtaining a defense based on "what actually happened" but by embellishing the original story with a piece of fiction (his or an earlier source's). That this piece of fiction is only credible to someone with faith in the religion represented by the story suggests that the author was not actually concerned about silencing critics but focused on reassuring his readership that they need not listen to such criticisms.

As far as I can tell, the above would be true whether or not the author considered the empty tomb something that "actually happened" or something that served as a literary symbol of something that "actually happened" (ie the resurrection). An attack on the story of the empty tomb constituted an attack on faith in the resurrection. Defending the story is a defense of the faith.

Sure it would help us but how would it help the author?

One might argue that the author is concerned that at least some members of his readership considered the story to describe "what actually happened" and that their faith might be undermined as a result of the criticism but I don't know how you differentiate between that scenario and the possibility that the story, even as just a story with no assumptions about historicity on the part of any believer, was inextricably linked to their central faith in the resurrection of Jesus.

Or by treating it as a story sacred to the faith.

As far as I can tell, there was no clear distinction between the two.

With regard to the author of Luke/Acts I tend to agree that, by the time that author wrote (and I'm leaning toward Josephus as a source), the story either was already considered to be "ancient history" (as you've defined it) or that the author wanted it to be considered as such. IIUC, his fabricated census does not undermine the notion that he considered the story to be "history" in the way that was understood.

Ben C Smith

I think headway has been made, Amaleq.

This gives the game away, I believe. You admit that Jewish opponents of Christianity were in fact probably taking the empty tomb story literally, and were positing a literal theft. You and I agree that Matthew gives an apologetic defense against the accusation.

But look at the nature of the defense! If you, an opponent of Christianity, were to accuse Jesus of false prophesy for claiming he would build the temple in three days (John 2.19), a thousand apologists would jump all over you and say: That was not meant to be taken literally. He said that metaphorically, you silly man, you. See John 2.21.

What if, however, one benighted apologist gave a different answer? He said that, and it will indeed happen. The temple will be rebuilt when Israel finally reclaims Jerusalem from those heathen Muslims, and then it will be destroyed again, and then Jesus himself will build it up again within three days. Such an answer would indicate that our friendly ultra-dispensationalist has understood those words literally, would it not?

Likewise, in the case at hand, the Jewish opponents of Christianity have understood the empty tomb quite literally. If Matthew considered the empty tomb to be just a Marcan (or other) metaphor, Matthew could have scored big, easy points against them immediately. But his answer defies such an interpretation on his part. His literalistic answer (how could the disciples get past the guards?) implies that he himself took the story in Mark literally.

I agree. He was not concerned about silencing critics; he was reassuring his readers that they need not listen to such criticisms, which implies that he himself knew his readers were reading the story literally.

Whoa, there. I am far from having defined ancient history. I still have more questions than answers.

That says a lot. That says that, for you, discussing Mark in terms of the ancient genre categories is a meaningless exercise, since there was no clear distinction between the categories.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

We don't have any primary evidence about the alleged empty tomb. None of the gospels were written by eye witnesses.

What if you heard today that a dead man was placed in a tomb, in say 1906, that was later found empty? The logical, common sense answer is that someone moved the body. You would not need to know a single detail, or have any particular knowledge of a single event in 1906. In fact, the story could be entirely ficticious; the response would still be the same. In our common experience, dead bodies don't move themselves, someone else moves them.

In fact, the whole ridiculous tale could have been the result of a ten year old asking obvious questions at the reading of GMark.

The tomb was empty.
Q. Who stole the body?
A. Err, ... nobody. They had guards around the tomb.
Q. Why didn't the guards tell what really happened?
A. Err, uhmm, .. The Jews paid them off. That's the ticket! The Jews paid them to say the disciples stole the body while they slept!
Q. Wouldn't the soldiers get in big trouble for sleeping on duty? Like executed or something?
A. The Elders said they would fix it up with "the governor" if he ever heard about it.
Q. If the guards were supposed to be asleep, how could they claim to know the disciples did it?
A. Hush up now. I have to rewrite the gospel of Mark before I forget all the answers!

Jake Jones

Ben C Smith

Agreed.

Agreed. But only if I did not think the story was allegorical, or a parable.

You may be right.

Very amusing, and similar to the kind of conversations that Wells, IIRC, posited.

So, do you agree that Matthew himself believed in an empty tomb, or at least that he wished his readers to believe in an empty tomb?

Ben.