Toto

I have been reading Jude and the Relatives on Google books. He appears to assume that the gospel stories are based on some tradition which is based on fact, and that he can discover the underlying facts if he works hard enough. I haven't found any justification for this idea, which is why I perhaps have a hard time following it.

Ben C Smith

Bauckham most certainly assumes that there is some historical basis behind many of the traditions (but not all of them). Most biblical scholars do.

What you have to do, if you do not assume this, is to read behind the surface arguments; there is much in his argumentation that he does not explicitly use as an argument for his own base assumption(s), but which could in fact be so used.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

Sometimes, in the midst of overloaded arguments over things like this, with every conceivable nitty-gritty piece of analysis being applied to it, it may be useful to step back and consider that the answer is so simple and obvious, that it's easy to overlook. I think this is such a case.

Considering that no reference to Mary the mother of Jesus is made anywhere in the epistles or in non-canonical documents outside the Gospels before Ignatius in the 2nd century, and that Paul's "James, brother of the Lord" enjoys other, quite reasonable explanations, I offer this brief comment by Frank Zindler, from his The Jesus The Jews Never Knew, p.243:

In other words, Mark has simply invented all these 'family members' (perhaps borrowing James from cultic Christ traditions) in order to introduce his point about the prophet not enjoying honor among his own people.

Clean and simple, what?

Earl Doherty

gstafleu

IOW we have to see gMark as a literary work, not a historical documentary, and hence come to an explanation where these people are used as a literary device (as opposed to their constituting a historical reference). I remarked earlier in this thread (post #45) that this might be the case, asking what it was meant to accomplish. Earl has now, via Zindler, provided the answer for this occurrence. All in all, as Earl points out, this literary explanation works quite well, better than the rather forced-looking historical attempts. I'd say this pleads for the literary explanation.

As to the question of why a person is identified by his/her children rather than by his/her parents, consider the following. As DCH pointed out, the gospel authors lived a few (generational) steps removed from the narrational times of their stories. As a result, first hand witness was not to be had, everything was second or greater-hand. Identification via children then accomplishes an identification via "sources" that are at least closer to the narrator then the farthest-removed putative eye witnesses.

Gerard Stafleu

the_cave

And yet the OP was not about whether Mary was the mother of Jesus; it was about whether all the Marys and Jameses and Joseses and Judes were the same people. (Actually if I am to understand Ben correctly, he was asking specifically about Jude.)

If Mark 6:3 was invented, then where do Mark 15.40, 15:47, and 16.1 come from? Why do they only mention James and Joses (and even then only inconsistently) if Mark 6:3 also mentioned Judas and Simon?

It depends, in part, on what you mean by "invented". Do you mean that the names he used in Mark 6:3 had no intended real-world referents? Do you mean that even if they had no intended real-world referents, that they also had no intended textual referents? Or do you mean simply that their family relationship to Jesus was invented?

Ben C Smith

Let us run with this for a moment. Viewing Mark as a literary work but not as an historical document,* are the James and Joses and Mary in Mark 6.3 the same as the James and Joses and Mary in Mark 15 and 16? As far as I can tell, your post did not answer this question.

* BTW, histories and biographies and such are literary works. To treat them as opposing categories is just wrong.

If they are merely closer to the narrator, but not close enough for the readers to actually know, what has been accomplished? And, if the readers did actually know them, well, that is pretty much my position.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Jude was of interest, to be sure, but I was interested in all of the people on that list, not just Jude.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

Why do you see a problem here? If Mark is inventing his entire story of Jesus of Nazareth, he has to people it with characters. The odd one is historical (Pilate, Caiaphas), the odd one may be borrowed from some earlier phase of the cultic faith (Paul’s James and almost certainly Peter/Cephas), the rest are probably fictional (e.g., Jesus’ mother and family members, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, Judas, the people whom Jesus cures, etc.) But there could also be another category…

The fictional characters would have had no real-world referents, of course. I’m not sure what you mean by “textual referents”. But there is another possibility for some of the Markan characters. Ben regularly raises the specificity of 15:21: “A man called Simon, from Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by…” He thinks this kind of nitty-gritty would be more than we would expect from a fictional creation. First of all, I’m not sure that it is any more ‘specific’ than other references to people, such as those various women who prowl around the edges. But I wonder if Mark has simply introduced another feature into his allegorical tale, a tale designed for his community’s edification in symbolizing the underlying truth of the sect’s faith. He may introduce some people by names that correspond to people in his community: for color, effect, for the hell of it. Perhaps “Simon” was a man in Mark’s congregation well known for helping people (he would not only give you the robe off his back, he’d even put your cross on it), and he had two sons named Alexander and Rufus. He may originally have been from Cyrene. The congregation would get a kick out of that, and the point would be even more dramatically brought home. Perhaps Bartimaeus son of Timaeus had been a local beggar who was reputed to have been cured of his blindness by one of the community’s prophets. Mark might have thought it clever (and it would be) to make his Jesus responsible for that healing, again a link with a piece of reality the congregation was familiar with.

As Gerard says, once you look upon Mark’s gospel as a literary creation, not meant to be history, all sorts of possibilities open up for understanding things which otherwise have presented a puzzle. (And especially for solving the ultimate Puzzle.)

Earl Doherty

gstafleu

My guess would be that, given the correspondences in names and relations, these are the same fictional people as introduced in 6:3 (this is what I think cave means by "textual referents"). If we see Hermione, a red-heaired classmate of Harry, introduced in book 1, then a similar figure in book 2 is probably the same person. (Of course our current example is much weaker then that.)
Correct, but I think everyone got what I meant. I could have called it "fictional works" instead, but then other complaints about genre would be raised .
I don't think it is necessary for the audience to actually know the characters, although what Earl said is certainly a good possibility. It could be that Mark wanted to establish a bridge between now and then, and pieces between now and then work better for that then pieces at the other side of then , if you see what I mean.

Gerard

Ben C Smith

If Mary the mother of James and Joses in Mark 15.40 is the same as the Mary the mother of James, Joses, Simon, and Judas in 6.3, then this Mary happens to be the mother of Jesus, correct?

If so, why (from a purely literary point of view) does Mark identify her as the mother of James and Joses rather than as the mother of Jesus?

Yes, much weaker. Almost bafflingly weaker.

And rightly so. What is the genre, then, IYO?

Not really. What good is that bridge if the readers cannot cross it? What good is using sons as identifiers if the readers have no more idea who the sons are than they would have the fathers? Closer in time does not necessarily net out to closer in any other respect.

Ben.

ETA:

I am not sure what you are referring to. What is the possibility you see?