Amaleq13

Why do you keep arguing this "point" when NOBODY here from the mythicist position is asserting it? I've tried to explain this to you and so has Vork. Why won't you drop this straw man?

Within the BOTH views, the Resurrected Savior belief started out purely Jewish and was only later brought to Gentiles. This constitutes a very real and obvious constraint on any subsequent elaborations by Mark.

Again, this is true for both a mythicist and historical perspective. Gospel authors would have been restricted by this historical fact whether Jesus existed or not. Either way, the belief system started out purely Jewish and later came to the Gentiles.

Agreed but, once again, this is true for either view. None of this stands, in any way, as exclusive evidence for either side.

Agreed but to continue this line of reasoning to the secondary conclusion that his information must, therefore, be based on an historical Jesus has yet to be provided any credible support. Observations that are true regardless of the position one takes (i.e. no Gentile mission by Jesus) obviously cannot be considered supportive of one over the other.

To repeat: The mythicist position (at least the one I tend to favor<g>) is that Mark's portrait of the living Jesus is largely based on the activities of the prophets in Q and the evidence from the reconstructed text associated with that community suggests that they may have engaged in a Gentile mission or, at the very least, weren't necessarily opposed to such an idea.

That greatly overstates the evidence, IMHO. I don't consider the claim that Jesus had blood, took on the form of flesh, was born of a woman, and was killed to qualify as "details" about his life. All these "details" seem to be either logically required if one is going to talk about someone being executed or they are entirely derived from Scripture-based messianic expectations (e.g. of the house of David). In other words, Paul started with the assumption that the Resurrected Savior was the messiah, then looked to Scripture to see what had to be true of him. Note that all of these "details" are simply asserted and never grounded in any historical context to tell us exactly how Paul came to know these things.

Along those same lines, can you name any historical figure in the entire history of humanity where an author writing about him felt compelled to assert that he had been "born of a woman"?

"Me thinks thou doth protest too much." comes to mind for some reason.<BG>

What specific portion of that demonstration excludes an interpretation of this same evidence as the result of the original belief being entirely Jewish? That would certainly be consistent with all subsequent writings portraying the movement as originally Jewish. The Q community, on the other hand, does not appear to have been so ethno-centric. If not actually engaged in a Gentile mission, there is good reason to think they were not opposed to such a thing.

It would appear that it is largely from his use of the activities of the Q prophets that Mark is able to inject Gentile contact.

Amaleq13

In reply to my comment that Crossan acknowledges that Paul's silence is a puzzle requiring explanation, Vinnie replied:

Um, because he is a Christian and he is a scholar? When you attempt to dismiss Paul's silence, I get the impression you think it is only mythicists and/or atheists who consider it significant. I offer the example of a Christian scholar acknowledging the significance of Paul's silence in opposition to such an impression.

Are you kidding? Did you forget to include a "just joking" smiley? Have you really never heard of Jewish or atheist scholars?

What Crossan acknowledges is the existence of a "great divide" between our oldest evidence of Jesus-related beliefs (i.e. Q and Paul). He also acknowledges that this is not something one can simply ignore with glib comments like "Paul just wasn't interested".

Amaleq13

In reply to my suggestion that Paul would have been interested in actually visiting the location of the crucifixion, etc. Vinnie wrote:
Where is your evidence that 1st century people wouldn't have been just as interested in such things as everybody since? After all, we have evidence that 1st century people were so enchanted with the writings of Pliny that they sought after any shred of information about the man they could find.

How much more interested could we expect Christians to be in the life of Jesus?

Your assertion that this idea is anachronistic lacks sufficient supportive evidence, IMHO.

This is a fair assumption only within the context of an historical view. Even if we accept this assumption, you are left with the fact that there is no evidence of this knowledge until after Mark was written. That absence makes your assumption quite problematic.

This doubt seems to me to run contrary to all expectations based on psychology in general as well as my own personal experiences with people. In fact, assuming Jesus to have been historical, it seems virtually certain that Paul would have visited the site where his Savior made the most important sacrifice in the history of humanity.

The behavior of nearly all subsequent Christians (i.e. pilgrimages, shrines) is consistent with my understanding of how humans behave and I think any assertion that 1st century folks would have been significantly different requires substantial evidence.

Simply asserting that this "may be anachronistic" is not sufficient. You have to give good reasons to suspect that 1st century Christians would have behaved differently from normal expectations.

Paul's expressed beliefs in no way suggest he considered Jesus' death to have been pointless. Based on Paul's letters, he considered the crucifixion to be second only to the resurrection in importance.

The mythicist argument does not depend upon Paul's silence on this matter but on his utter failure to offer anything substantive in any historically relevant way is certainly fundamental to the mythicist position.

Paul's failure to locate the crucifixion in space or time is significant given the clearly reasonable expectation that he would a) visit the place and b) make even a vague reference that provided an historical context.

It is Paul's consistent failure to provide an historical context when that is a reasonable expectation that serves as a fundamental building block of the mythicist position.

Amaleq13

Zindler (The Jesus the Jews Never Knew) makes an interesting (and, to my knowledge, new) argument based on the inclusion of a reference to the torn Temple curtain. He notes that, subsequent to the destruction of the Temple, the curtain was put on public display around 75CE. This curtain was either torn in two or the display included both (inner and outer) curtains that were normally guarding the inner Temple. He suggests that Mark's inclusion of this detail indicates the Gospel was written after this public display.

Yuri Kuchinsky

That's right, Vinnie.

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Now I've been rethinking Luke's lacking of the Bethsaida section (which is where these verses in Mark fall into!) in light of this. Luke may have had a copy without these things but I have to admit that there are also plausible reasons for Lucan omission here (mark's doubling here, the harshness of the dog saying, the deaf-mute healings could be interpreted as "magic", jesus never nullified the food laws and Luke knew it (see Acts and Peter's vision).

Well, I don't think that there are _any_ plausible reasons for the Lucan omission (what is known as "the Great Omission in Luke"). These above are not "plausible reasons", but more like rationalisations...

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I find it rather more difficult to tell either way right now. Did Luke not include it or did he just omit it altogether since he disagreed with it//didn't like it?

The simplest reason is that this whole section in Mk/Mt (the Bethsaida section) was late.

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At any rate, given Markan priority,

No way! I don't buy it!

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Matthew picks up the story of the Syrophoenician woman from Mark.

I'd say Mt picks it up from the common source that Mt shared with Mk.

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That means this Gentile related material occurs very ealy in Mark since its first and early attestation has it (Matthew includes the account). Luke doesn't, so assuming it wasn't in his argument for the sake of seeing where th argument goes, we have to posit that there was originally a version of Mark lacking--basically all of chapter 7 if you are correct. That chapter has the nullification of food laws, incorrect information on Jewish practives, the Syrophoenician woman, created Gentile tour and so on. This is basically what Koester and others argued regarding this bethsaida section and I wrote my own article on about the corrupt text of Mark.

Koester is right on this.

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In your view: So we have a version of Mark--mainly Jewish--lacking the clear Gentile expansion. Was this written for Jews or Gentiles? This is a valid question. Can we even answer this?

It was written for Jewish-Christians.

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Could two separate versions of Mark creep up so fast and become popular enough to be used by two different evangelists within 20 years of the Gospels cretion?

What 20 years? I see all these changes being made ca 135 CE, and even later!

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As a rule shouldn't we allow at least a generation for the Gospel for popularity of it to be a choice of redaction and for it to become popular enough for Matthew to use. I think the generation rule is pretty fair here. its a two part step here: Mark is written and needs to become popular enough for someone to redact it. This redaction needs to become popular enough for Matthew to use it. If Mark was written in the same general area as Mt this all makes more sense. How do we determine the provenance of an earlier version of Mark though? These texts could have presumably written further away than most now think couldn't they?

You really seem to be stuck on the Markan priority here... The solution to the Synoptic Problem is obvious -- all 3 Synoptics were ultimately based on a shared source! And there's absolutely no reason to call it "Mark"...

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I think your view pushes a version of Mark back, at least--in my estimation--to no later than 60 a.d. Its virtually a first stratum source now.

You should really read Loisy. Your chronology is all wrong...

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Since Mark is at least almost as early as a lot of the Q and Pauline corpus, this does not look like it sits too well with mythicism.

Forget about Q. Forget about Pauline corpus. Forget about mythicism. All these things are merely distractions in the present context...

This is the problem with this thread! Everyone is talking about 10 different things at once... :banghead:

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At any rate, I'm going to look at some more stuff on this later. Need to see what Matthew includes exactly from the Bethsaida section and so on.

Just about everything.

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At a same time, if we are positive a Gentile hacked Mark, isn't it just as possible that a judaizing Christian hacked the gentile expansion of chapter 7 out? Once we start speculating like this anything becomes possible. Are there other verses in Mark which would rule this out? In this case Mat's version of Mark was not redacted, Luke's was simply chopped down. Vinnie

There's no speculation in anything I say. You really have to read Loisy, because he explains all these things quite well.

The idea that a Judaizing Christian "hacked" the gentile Mark is just plain ridiculous. If you don't see just how ridiculous it is, I'll explain it to you later, but just think about it, and you'll see...

Best,

Yuri.

rlogan

Vinnie - about the "anachronism" argument.

People visited graves then, and they visit graves now. What you are arguing is ridiculous.

To say "anachronistic" is to assert paying homage was not a custom. Well, that's wrong. So you have to make a special pleading. It isn't Paul. Nobody anywhere makes any observation whatsoever about this. So I am not putting something in Paul's mind.

This event in particular is so special that it demands attention. The empty tomb is proof of the resurrection. That is one hell of a reason to keep coming back to it. It's "proof".

I must say that I agree with others in that lack of Gentile material does not lend support one way or the other to historical Jesus.

Vinnie

My understanding is that the outer curtain could have been seen from a distance. Ergo, knowledge of it--even for outsiders--is not a problem. Mark's audience knew somee things about Judaism. But we should not suppose the evangeliststhemselves even knew about the outer/inner veil distinctions and specifics.

I'm not sure as to the specifics of Zindler's arguments but I would recommend Brown's discussion of this issue Death Messiah VII 1097-1113.

Amaleq13, you hit one half of my problems with Paul//spot worshipping. How about the other half before I respond: the fact that its built purely from silence.

I am willing to grant veneration of the tombwould have occured. In fact, in this time period there was an increasing veneration of the tombs of martyrs and prophets! Its the spot of crucifixion in that time period that I am not willing to grant as a veneration spot--especially given my understanding of the utter shock, surpise, and pointlessness that Jesus' death originally had.

But even if Paul knew of a tomb (its my view he did not) you still are arguing from silence that he didn't venerate it. The claim that Paul scarcely could have written so much without mentioning x event doesn't wash. But I will grant that I know of no early Christian writing which speaks of going to the tomb/venerating it and so on.

When exactly did this process start? When did people start going to calvary? These are two valid questions?

"""It is Paul's consistent failure to provide an historical context when that is a reasonable expectation that serves as a fundamental building block of the mythicist position.""""

Maybe its your consistent failure to not assume Paul would have known the Gospel portraits (plural purposefully!) of Jesus? Paul shows awareness of certain details and limits on creation. Thats enough for me.

""""Um, because he is a Christian and he is a scholar? When you attempt to dismiss Paul's silence, I get the impression you think it is only mythicists and/or atheists who consider it significant. I offer the example of a Christian scholar acknowledging the significance of Paul's silence in opposition to such an impression.""""

But you framed it as if him being a Christian scholar is going to make the point stick better. If I misread you I apologize. If I did not, it won't make the point better. I consider Paul's silence curious myself. There is no total silence though and there are some explanations and rationalizations for it.

"""""Are you kidding? Did you forget to include a "just joking" smiley? Have you really never heard of Jewish or atheist scholars?""""""""

No. Most scholars who study Jesus, Paul & Christian origins are Christians. This does not mean there aren't any Jewish or none-theist scholars who do so. Becoming a professional in this field is a life long committment and its usually more "inviting" to Christians whos faith is a lifelong committment itself.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Pay attention: I said that Christians probably did not know what happened to the body of Jesus. There wasn't a known tomb of Jesus.

My anachronistic comments apply to the spot of the cruifixion and its brutal nature in the eyes of first century people. I am at least trying to take into account the historical nature of this phenomena.

Vinnie

Vinnie

This is my argument--again:

All four Gospels agree that Jesus conducted his minsitry to Jews, not Gentiles. This is very important. This is evidence. Thee-fold independent attestation -- even if John knew directly or indirectly--the Gospel of Mark.

No one here has attempted to touch this claiim. Paul himself shows that he coheres with this by his "first for the Jew" lines in Romans. I will be adding to the mix the Gospel of Q as well. it has a tradition where the authors of Q gave a non-Gentile pericope a Gentile setting--or rathher, it was possibly modified in a stage right before it hit Q. At any rate, John preserves its more original form and i will demonstrate this using Kloppenborg--Formation Q, Crossan--Historical Jesus and Meier- CV. II Marginal. I'm getting around to this. Just put a paper up on the problem of evil *EoG forum here). When I post the update I'll be sure to let you all know.

But as seen virtually the entire record is consistent on this fact. Then I looked at the synopic portraits we see that this was somewhat troubling. By their amplifications of material---and by the use of non-Gentile material being put in a Gentile context it shows they had no Jesus-Gentile material to work with and nay they did was "created". This confirms the early and widespread attestion of the fact that Jesus did not conduct a ministry to Gentiles. The mythicist position does not explain the positive three or possibly fourfold attestation of this fact. It can't really explain why no one in the early church didn't feel free to totally invent sustained contact between Jesus and Gentiles. This in turn is why the later canonical authors had little to work with! Edited to add: This in turn is why they had a lot of Jesus sustaining a mission to Jews material whic his important as well as the lack of Gentile mission data. The historical reality that it was widely known Jesus conducted a ministry to the Jews explains all the data perfectly.

It also shows that there were some limits on creation which no one disputes. Jesus material was modified and given new settings but it was largely existent material (this doesn't apply to things like the birth narratives and probably not the passion story which may have been strung together and include only a FEW hisorical actualiies).

Vinnie

Vinnie

Yuri, did Loisy write only one book? If not give me a suggestion. I'll dig around a bit.

Vinnie