GakuseiDon

Not related to this topic, but this took me by surprise: Really? Is it the view of modern scholarship that the GMark author wasn't Jewish? I've read that it was thought he wrote in Rome, but not that he wasn't Jewish.

Vorkosigan

He's usually seen as a "Greek-speaking gentile Christian" to quote Udo Schnelle. I tend to imagine him as a God Fearer who was evangelized originally by Jews and then became Christian.

Vorkosigan

GakuseiDon

Thanks, Vork.

stephan huller

But the traditional view is that Mark was Jewish. The Coptic tradition makes this explicit. How a non-Jew became so influential at the earliest days of a Jewish sect is incredible. The whole story of Christian origins is so muddled it is impossible to say anything definitively but the inherent Jewish and Samaritan mistrust and even loathing of outsiders makes the contention that Mark was Gentile in the purest sense unlikely. Yes the white people have a story that Christianity took interest and love for white people from the beginning. But really. I hate a black girlfriend who used to have a black Jesus icon hanging on her wall. Maybe she also believed Mark was black. I will ask her the next time I see her.

These opinions about Gentiles among the earliest apostles have about as much weight.

spin

They are not.

First when you put it into the singular you disguise what seems to have happened. Why does the gospel of Mark say that Jesus had his home in Capernaum in one instance and in his unnamed homeland in another? These are two separate traditions yoked together in Mark.

Second, there is no need that any oral traditions go back to any reality. The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke point to a common tradition, but it was not a detailed written account. The two narratives are derived from the same few basic notions that have developed separately by accretion. The two feedings are from the same original oral tradition but through separation developed separately. The link between Jesus and Naziritism is plainly in the synoptic gospels but they share no common written source, ie there was an oral tradition on the subject, one that survived long after the gospels were written, as it was manifested separately and diversely by Tertullian and Eusebius.

Where did "Nazarene" and "Nazorean" come from, if it weren't two dips into a similar unwritten logic? Did a Marcan written invent the first and a Matthean writer invent the second? Why would the latter bother if he already had "Nazarene" in his principal source?

The gospels were not simply written texts re-elaborated. Why does Q share a few elements with Mark if they were simply separate written sources? Perhaps there was a single written source behind them both??

Various processes are visible in the development of the gospels: growth and diversification of aphoristic and anecdotal traditions (how else do you get from Pauline christianity to that of the earliest written gospel narrative?), collection and arrangement of traditions, redacting them, honing and correcting them for narrative, stylistic and theological purposes, adding newly received traditions (as brought by those busy little bees, the itinerant preachers, arrived in your community with new tidbits to tell you in order to earn their keep).

Oral traditions do not imply anything more than the development and repetition of christian stories. There were oral traditions behind Arthur and Robin Hood, minstrels and troubadors passing on their wears, though what we see in these two examples was much slower than with christianity, for there was a very different impetus behind them. One set of traditions developed as a means of income for a small group, the entertainers of pre-renaissance England and France; the other for a voracious group spreading around the Mediterranean who wanted to know more about their own beliefs. Demand stimulates supply.

Vorkosigan

There is no methodology that can turn these statements into separate traditions. How do you know that "his own country" in Mk 6 is not Capernaum? The idea that he returned to his home region was simply created by the writer of Mark to justify the saying in 6:4 as a number of exegetes have argued, including Bultmann. There is no reason to suppose the whole thing is anything other than a literary construct.

Of course by the time of Tertullian and Eusebius a body of oral stories had no doubt grown up.

One feeding is from aMark, the other from a redactor. They do not represent separate traditions but separate creations. There is no reason to suppose that doubling and confusion of terms represents an oral tradition.

aMark is clearly not a Jew for his understanding of Jewish law and practice is at best, garbled, as Matthew's corrections of him make clear.

Vorkosigan

avi

The evidence does not point, at least not obviously, according to my eyes, from Paul to the Gospels, but rather from the Gospels to Paul.

Does the second century author Justin Martyr reference Paul? In my opinion, he does not. How could there be no reference to this all important "apostle"?

How did Paul become equated with Peter, as the two most influential "apostles", according to Irenaeus? How could Paul declare himself to be an apostle, having acknowledged never having met JC?

All one can do, regarding the supposed influence of oral tradition, in the evolution of earliest Christianity, is offer suppositions. There is little hard data to support the idea that the gospel writers were significantly influenced by oral tradition.

avi

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

Good points.

I have a hard time knowing what marks an oral tradition from a literary tradition. What is a mark of an oral tradition seems to vary from writer to writer. Ultimately any kind of simple writing and sometimes even complex writing can be called an oral tradition.

What I would like to point out is that there is not a shred of real evidence that any words or actions of Jesus were ever memorized or transmitted. Certainly other cultures transmitted words and actions, but we cannot substitute their oral transmissions as proof that there were oral transmissions of Jesus words and actions.

The evidence should be there, but it is not.

Take for example Paul's wonderful description of a typical early church meeting in 1 Corinthians, where is the oral transmission of Jesus' words and actions?

He says that people recite psalms, have a teaching, give a revelation, speak in tongues, and interpret. There is no mention of repeating or reciting anything to do with Jesus. Those who recite psalms are reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, those who teach are probably reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. The revelations, tongues and interpretations are just coming from people's own minds and spirits.

Women are forbidden to participate in any oral activity in Church. There is plenty of oral activity for the men, but none of it involves anybody named Jesus and none of it can be linked to an historical Jesus who presumably lived before Paul.

In the next chapter Paul relates what he has preached. Note that he is reciting it, not live, but in a letter. Apparently, they have already forgotten what he preached, so now he says, "I make known to you." This indicates that whatever he orally transmitted, if it was an oral transmission, was lost.


Since this is pre-gospel, there is no indication that we are talking about the Jesus of Nazareth character. In fact Paul quickly identifies the Christ as the Second Adam, a character from Hebrew Scriptures completely different from Jesus of Nazareth.

The Second Adam is a character talked about by Philo. The main point is that it is a written character from Hebrew Scriptures.

So, Paul writes all he knows about Christ and all he knows comes from an interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures and expounded by the Philosopher Philo in his works. At this early stage of Paul, we don't find any oral tradition about Jesus of Nazareth, only a Philonic written tradition being transmitted through writing by Paul to different Churches.

Just as Paul is really a witness against the Historical Jesus Christ (or the character called Jesus of Nazareth developed in later Jesus literature), he is a witness against oral tradition growing out of the historical actions of any Jesus of Nazareth.

Search Act, Mark, the Gnostics, and Justin Martyr and you won't find any evidence there either.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

aa5874

It is so obvious that the Jesus stories of gMatthew and gMark predate the Pauline writings.

Even Jesus in gMatthew and gMark did NOT even say that he would die as a sacrifice for the Sins of the Jews and ALL mankind and that without his resurrection there would be NO Remission of Sins as stated in the PAULINE writings.

The authors of gMatthew and gMark show NO influecne of any Pauline teachings or writings.

The criteria used to develop the theory that gMatthew copied gMark DENIES that gMark used the Pauline writings.

There is NOT a single verse in gMark that is found in the Pauline writings and even more SIGNIFICANT the Pauline writers and gMark did NOT use or hardly ever use the same passages from Hebrew Scripture.

If gMark did NOT invent his Jesus story then it may mean that gMatthew and gMark essentially used a similar source and that source was NOT the Pauline writiings

spin

I thought I had given a number of specific examples of materials that indicate a dependence not written.

You need to interact with what you are ostensibly reponding to rather than be oblivious to it. I said nothing of Jesus's words. This is of your importation. I talked of information from comparative sources that show similarities which don't suggest written dependence. We frequently see written dependence: that's how the synoptic relationship came to be understood. But when texts contain ideas that show no literary dependence, but show some notional similarity, this is one method to individuate oral traditions.

Do you actually believe that the collection of individual bits that make up Mark were written all at once by one writer? How do you imagine the gospel came into being?