aa5874

Now tell me in which century was the acknowledgement made and actually by whom?

The NT, as found today, is a compilation written for the sole purpose to deceive. The information about the NT is completely bogus, written to mis-lead.

In the book called "according to Mark", the author did not identify himself. Also in the book called "according to Luke", no author was identified, yet this author named other persons like Theophilus.

It was the church writers who claimed to have information about the authors called Mark and Luke, but it should be noted that the church writers claimed gMatthew was written before gMark and that Paul was aware of gLuke. And further the church writers claimed that the Synoptics was written before the death of Nero, now all this has been deduced to be false.

As I have stated before, gMark appears to have been written as though the reader would have had some prior knowledge of Jesus. The origin of Jesus Christ is missing.

And, all the Gospels as found in the NT were written after the supposed death of Jesus, including gMark.

There is no chronological advantage for the writing of gMark, it therefore cannot be proven that gMark preceeded gMatthew.

But one thing is certain, and it is that with gMatthew as found today the reader does not require to have any previous knowledge or awareness of Jesus Christ. The origin of gMatthew's Jesus was included in his story.

Now was Mark's Jesus originally or originated as Matthew's Jesus, Q's Jesus or some other Jesus?

Not even Mark cannot answer that question.

Only the original readers can answer that question and they are all dead.

bacht

I would guess 2nd C, when gentiles dominated Christianity. As you say, the authors of the gospels are anonymous. Luke gives the impression of writing before the revolt of the '60s but he also says that these events happened "some time past", which could mean anytime after Paul's career until clear attestation of Luke/Acts in the church fathers.

Do you know of markers in Luke that suggest its vintage (vocabulary, geography etc)?

aa5874

But there are indications that the Pauline letters are after Acts of the Apostles, after the gospels or memoirs of the apostles, and after Justin Martyr.

There cannot be found any copying of any passages peculiar to the Pauline letters at all in the writings of Justin Martyr but we can find at least one passage found only in todays gMark in his writings. We can find passages peculiar only to todays gLuke and gMatthew in Justin's writings.

The writer Paul appears to correct the author of Acts when he stated the chronology of events after his supposed conversion in Damascus.

The later interpolated ending of gMark is consistent with the Pauline letters.

It must be taken into consideration that all information supplied by the church writers about Jesus, the disciples and Paul is bogus, written for the sole purpose to mis-lead and deceive.


There is no evidence external of apologetics that anyone named Mark, Matthew, Luke or Paul existed but much of what they wrote has been confirmed to be fiction or implausible.

Tigers!

Acts 15:36-41
36Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing." 37Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. 41He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Tigers,

The fact that no explanation of the dispute is given would suggest that censorship is at work. Apparently the original explanation would have put either Barnabus or Paul outside the orthodoxy of the editor of Acts, so the explanation was deleted.

It is perhaps more than a coincidence that we have the gospels of John and Mark and we have John turning into Mark in this text. We may deduce that the most likely explanation is that the author/editor of Acts is trying to explain the relationship of two different gospels. He is trying to suggest that they were written by the same person, but the person was known by two different names, first John, then Mark.

We may suppose that the phrase "also called Mark" was inserted into the text and that it was originally "John" whom Barnabas left with. This would be a way for the earlier author to be establishing a relationship between the Epistle of Barnabas to the two gospels of John and Mark.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Solo

One thing is for sure, the church dads and gospellers were not a co-ordinated bunch. According to Eusebius, Papias said that Mark was an interpreter of Peter. But according to the Acts, Peter spoke Greek as he lectured to the brethern on the meaning of the name 'Akeldama', calling Aramaic spoken in Jerusalem, 'their language' (1:19).

I think the obscurity of Mark is easily explained. He wrote a clever and intense polemic against the Petrine Authority, having no idea how important his allegorical model of discourse would become. It is quite possible he wrote the gospel for the audience of his own community to settle tehological disputes with a faction of Nazarene exile who were, after Peter & Co. the deniers of the cross. He may have underestimated his opponents. They took up his challenge, copied his work and sent it around to smart scribes of their own to write a reply. The substantive reply came finally from 'Matthew' who spoke for a Jewish faction but one which accepted Paul's cross theology. He decided the Markan narrative did not need to be re-done with respect to Peter's cowardly denial, only reassigned as a feature of an ordinary human fallibility. Peter and the disciples would be rehabilitated. Jesus meets them in Galilee and commissions them to spread the gospel. It was evidently a very succesful counter-coup. Importantly, the 'dead man walking' of Matthew was visually more accessible resurrectional ikon than the Markan empty tomb riddle. It assured a larger believer base, an orthodoxy of which Chesterton famously quipped that it was a superior faith as it allowed all kinds of beliefs, even the respectable ones.

I read the expansions of Mark (I see two in 16:9-20) as an attempt to stem the tide of Matthean popularity. But evidently it did not work.

Jiri

Tigers!

I am a little puzzled that you say that no explanation of the dispute is given when the text clearly states that Paul was obviously very upset when Mark abandoned them earlier. Granted we don't know the reason for Mark's desertion, only its occurence. Why is that evidence of censorship?
Perhaps they were different people all along?
Yes you may suppose that but do we have any evidence for such a supposition? If you had a copy of Acts that did not have the phrase "also called Mark" in it then you might be on to something. Otherwise its just speculation.
Also
Warmly,
Tigers!

Ben C Smith

I do not at all agree with the reasons Jay gave for why there must be censorship here, nor am I wild about using the term censorship of what looks like part of the editing process that went into creating the book of Acts, but I myself am tempted to think that Luke is suppressing information here. Paul gives an account of his falling out with Barnabas in Galatians 2.13. The falling out in Acts is over a completely different matter, the issue of John Mark. For my money, either Luke invented the John Mark incident as a substitute for the real conflict (the observation so often being made that Luke seems bent on portraying the early church as a unified whole in all doctrinal matters) or Luke is giving the John Mark incident more importance than it really had in order to evade the more substantial, doctrinal reason.

Ben.

spin

(As a parenthesis, I really don't know why you're droning on about "Luke", Ben. You seem to be relying on a minimal piece of redactional work stuck on the front of both Acts and the anonymous gospel called "Luke". Which redactional layer or narrative section do you think should be attributed to your Luke? Is your Luke the good doctor? If so how come events in his text clashed with Paul's writings?

I don't really understand the apparently unjustified commitment to the notion.


spin)

Ben C Smith

Luke in this context equals the author (or redactor, if you prefer), whether anonymous or eponymous, of the third canonical gospel and the Acts. It is a convenience, nothing more. I use the same convenience when writing of the gospels of Thomas and Peter (I really dislike cumbersome camelcased constructions such as gLuke and gThomas).

Currently I lean toward the view that both the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were redacted (as a set) by someone who was not a companion of Paul and certainly not the Luke who appears with Paul in various sources.

Ben.