JoeWallack

JW:
Time to go on the offensive. The heart of the argument for LE is early Patristic support, some of which is questionable. I am going to introduce a radically new concept to my opponent for purposes of evaluating questionable Patristic reference to the LE. Criteria. Applicable ones ranked in order of importance are:

1. Similarity in language. The obvious one.

2. Applicability. Direct versus indirect.

3. Scope. The extent of the support.

4. Similarity in context.

5. Consistency. Coordination with other evidence.

The first Patristic witness my opponent presents for the LE whole-heartedly is Justin:

We will rate the criteria on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the strongest:

1. Similarity in language.

http://www.textexcavation.com/marcanendings.html#justin

vs.

The exact same 3 words but in a different order. Three sub-categories:

1 - Unusual. Are the words unique or common?

The words are "having gone out everywhere they preached". These words are in between, not common or unusual.

2 - Popular. Are the words likely to be used by the author in general due to popularity?

Yes, as these words would describe Justin's understanding of the ending of every Gospel as well as supposed Christian history.

3 - Complete phrase. is the usage a complete phrase from the original or a partial?

Here it is a partial as the complete original phrase includes "Jerusalem".

I rate this a "2" as there is no strong sub-criteria and the weaknesses of changed order, popular phrase and partial phrase.

2. Applicability.

Justin can not directly attribute to "Mark" since he is unaware of "Mark". His usage does not even explicitly identify any Gospel as a source.

A well deserved "1".

3. Scope.

3 words out of 12 verses. Another "1".

4. Similarity in context.

The context of Justin's quote is suffering for Jesus:

"And though death is decreed against those who teach or at all confess the name of Christ, we everywhere both embrace and teach it. And if you also read these words in a hostile spirit, you can do no more, as I said before, than kill us; which indeed does no harm to us,"

The context of the LE is being protected from suffering by Jesus:

"And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues;
they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

So the context is the opposite. Another "1". Seems unfair not to have negative rating here.

5. Consistency.

All authors before Justin show no quality evidence for the LE. Another "1".

So the ratings from Justin as evidence for the LE (scale = 1-5) are:

1. Similarity in language = 2

2. Applicability = 1

3. Scope = 1

4. Similarity in context = 1

5. Consistency = 1

We can simply leave this fly on the scale for the next weigh-in. Note that these criteria can and should be used to evaluate all potential Patristic witness. The objective scholar should consider whether we can go beyond simply dismissing Justin as evidence for LE and convert him into evidence against LE. The question is to what extent does Justin otherwise provide clear references to the Gospels in general and specifically the resurrection sightings? I have faith that Justin has the potential to be a witness against the LE.

Wieland Willker:

http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-Mark-Ends.pdf

also notes the following Patristic silence regarding the LE:

More candidates against.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack The heart of the argument for LE is early Patristic support,

Nope. The "heart" of the resurrection account of the Gospel of Mark being scripture is the manuscript evidence:

99% plus of :

Greek MSS
Aramaic MSS
Latin Vulgate MSS
Old Latin MSS
Coptic Armenian Ethiopic Slavonic Gothic etc

The early church writer (patristic is a dubious term, even 'church' in my phrase can be omitted) and lectionary support is a very powerful auxiliary support, an additional circulation to the heart.

And internal consistency is next, and the one of the three that is most pre-sup conditioned. The church and Reformation recognition would be another, plus the imperative for preservation of scripture, understandably those are more vital for discussions within the community of faith.

It is simply wrong to say that the patristic support is the heart. If less than 1% of manuscripts in all those languages had the resurrection account, we would not be having the discussion. On the other hand, even if not a single writer before 500 AD mentioned the ending, the manuscript evidence along with historical inclusion would still be ultra-compelling.

================================

I will mention one thing. The discussion of the unbeliever will vary from that of the community of faith. The term scripture in the NT has no meaning to the unbeliever anyway. If the argument is whether Mark himself specifically wrote the long ending, then James and Joe agree (no) while I would strongly disagree (ie. yes). If the argument is simply whether the ending of Mark circulated by the 1st century and would have represented a Markan view and be accepted by the early Christian community, then there is a (cumbersome) debate possible about the ending. If the debate is about scripture, that is impossible, since JW sees no scripture in the NT anywhere.

So there is some puzzle as to what is actually being debated. I will try to review the thread and see if this is addressed.

Ok, no mention here, on a quick check.

Looking at CARM, the title of the discussion is :

Mark 16:9-20: Authentic or Not?

Authentic is defined by James Snapp as:

"Mark 16:9-20 was part of the text of the Gospel of Mark when the Gospel of Mark was initially disseminated for church-use."

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Quote:

Originally Posted by CARM Debate Mark 16:9-20: Authentic or Not? Authentic is defined by James Snapp as: "Mark 16:9-20 was part of the text of the Gospel of Mark when the Gospel of Mark was initially disseminated for church-use."

Joe, do you indicate your view as to when the resurrection account of Jesus Christ in the 12 verses in the Gospel of Mark was originally disseminated for church-use ?

And the date when the rest of the Gospel of Mark was first circulated for church use ?

Thanks.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

And, what is your operative theory for the authorship, as well as the timing, of the two sections.

When do you put the authorship of Mark up to 16:8

And when do you put the first authorship of the resurrection account, the LE.

With the date of authorship, it would be appropiate to put your view of the identity .. eg. "Mark who knew Peter" .. "a writer in a Christian community in Rome" or whatever you think is most likely and accurate for the two sections.

Thanks

Shalom,
Steven

PS.
Note: these are clearly fundamental points to understanding the two opposing positions in the debate, so I hope the answers will be given clearly. On the TC-Alternate forum James Snapp gave his answers (somewhat unsatisfactorily, imho) and to get the overall perspective and understanding of this debate, and even to make sure whether the debate makes any logical sense, Joe's responses will be necessary.

JoeWallack

JW:
Continuing with my assault on the value of supposed early Patristic witness for the LE I have just nebulized (verb for nebulous) the proffered witness of Justin and determined criteria to deal with other questionable references. I now revisit Irenaeus, the first to explicitly refer to the LE (sometime after 181), in detail. The question here is not simply what exactly Irenaeus' source was but the broader question of what exactly Irenaeus' evidence was. We have reason to think that Irenaeus simply preferred the LE over the AE and that his selection was conclusion driven and not evidence driven based on the following:

In this post I originally looked at Irenaeus:

http://www.freeratio.org//showpost.p...0&postcount=93

and noted that we have the following reasons to think that Irenaeus' significance here is limited to witnessing that the LE existed in his time rather than that it is original:

1) Irenaeus in general is conclusion driven rather than evidence driven. He is simply an advocate for what he considers orthodox and does not grant any supporting evidence to other conclusions.

Going through his works, he is always on the offensive. He never weighs or even acknowledges contradictory evidence. This attitude is well illustrated in Against Heresies where he concludes based on god-awful spiritual reasons that there can be only 4 Gospels and than lets his argument fit this conclusion:

There's a lot more but you get the point. Compare Irenaeus to Eusebius who is selective about what he presents but does at least deal with problems and at times tries to consider evidence. Not well known is that Eusebius wrote a book on the subject, On the Inconsistencies of the Gospels, which sadly Christianity choose not to preserve.

2) Relative to other Fathers he often gives quotes/references found nowhere in extant Greek text.

The friendly Christian commentator has this to say about Irenaeus:

Going through the commentary for Against Heresies I find 16 quotes of Irenaeus not supported by any extant manuscript.

3) Relative to other Fathers his scholarship is poor.

I count 10 examples given by the friendly Christian commentator of embarrassing comments made by Irenaeus. In his lesser known work, The Demonstration Of The Apostolic Preaching, his scholarship is even worse, so much so that I wonder if they had the same authors. Irenaeus has a reMarkably long list of discoveries of critical Christian assertions, all of which are wrong or at least seriously disputed and deserving of at least some discussion of the evidence by Irenaeus rather than mere assertion:

1 - "Mark" was written by an associate of Peter. Based on Papias but what Papias wrote probably did not refer to the Gospel.

2 - "Matthew" was written by a disciple. Based on Papias but what Papias wrote probably did not refer to the Gospel.

3 - "Luke" was written by an associate of Paul. The external evidence indicates "Luke" was written long after Paul.

4 - "John" was written by a disciple. The external evidence indicates "John" was written long after Jesus.

5 - "Acts" was written by an associate of Paul. The external and internal evidence indicates "Acts" was written long after Paul.

6 - Paul wrote the Pastoral Epistles. Modern Bible scholarship says uh-uh.

7 - There has been a continuous succession of Bishops in Rome starting with Peter. Clement contradicts his list near the start.

There are more historical first assertions but you get the point.

4) We can tie Irenaeus to a questionable/inferior manuscript tradition. His quotes tend to agree with Codex Bezae

5) We have reasonable explanations as to why Irenaeus would have favored a change from the AE to LE.

Codex Bezae has the Western order of "Matthew", "John", "Luke" and "Mark". Irenaeus is the first known champion of the four-fold tradition. Having "Mark" at the end would give added incentive to have a resurrection sighting for the final Gospel. as opposed to no resurrection sighting. Also, Irenaeus tells us that the specific issue of his time with "Mark" was Separationism. The LE contradicts the Separationists by showing the same Jesus Christ before and after the resurrection.

JW:
Thus Irenaeus is evidence for second century LE but relatively weak evidence for its originality.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

JoeWallack

JW:
The key here is defining Ehrman's use of "textual analysts". What had previously been implicit for Ehrman he makes explicit on Page 2 of Jesus, Interrupted:

Generally those who argue for the LE would not meet Ehrman's definition.

I think Ehrman has mainstream scholars like Brown and Metzger in mind as "serious" and "critical". Even the god-awful Bauckham is against the LE. On the other side, I think there are plenty of popular authors who are for the LE but would not meet Ehrman's definition. So for Ehrman whatever debate there still is is with the non-serious and non-critical (Steve, look out!).

I offered Ehrman the LE article for ErrancyWiki but he said it would be too boring since it has already been clearly demonstrated to be unoriginal. Richard Carrier is currently writing the article for ErrancyWiki (he's doing the Internal evidence first) and when he's done I'll create a Thread here at FRDB to discuss it.

The scholarly battle over LE is over but the popular battle is just beginning and that is the point of Jesus, Interrupted. The average Christian has never heard that the LE is not original. Now they will hear what has never been told.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

I pointed out that this was factually incorrect here.

How many scholars have 'studied the topic'
http://www.freeratio.org/showpost.ph...&postcount=118

As I pointed out in the posts, and as James Snapp has pointed out vis-a-vis the resurrection account of Mark, the "critical scholars" like Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace are oft fact-challenged. It seems to go with the club.

Much as I do agree (from the others side) that Richard Bauckham's textual and dating views are a mess, I would request a more appropriate adjective.

Would an Edward Hills make it through the walls of the Textual Academy in 2009 ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

The comment you are replying to was about notes in translations. Why have you gone off on a tangent about many scholars??

My NIV says, "The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20."

My NRSV is ostensibly more cautious but adds an interesting rider, "in some of these authorities the passage is marked as being doubtful."

My KJV says "The two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some other authorities, omit from verse 9 to the end. Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel."

(NA27 indicates with double brackets that the material is "known not to be a part of the original text".)


spin

JoeWallack

JW:
The last time I checked at Bible Gateway a majority of English Bibles presented the LE without any qualifications. Since the LE has been demonstrated to be likely unoriginal I have inventoried this issue as a Transmission error at ErrancyWiki:

Mark 16:9

The NRSV is probably the best Christian translation available (not saying that much) and as a result, properly qualifies the LE:

NRSV

Note the double brackets indicating it is not original and the inclusion of The Short Ending. Comically, Bible Gateway does not even have the NRSV!

NIV has the more common (albeit inferior) qualification:

I think this is an acceptable qualification which would avoid my claim of Transmission error if it was used by the majority.

At the other end, the KJV, easily the worst translation available (this exercise is illustrative), has no qualification:

Mark 16:9-20



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Now I think it is important to return to the Alice in Wonderland aspects of this "debate". I asked Joe a few questions about his position on Mark's Gospel above and he simply ignored the questions, which were clearly relevant to this debate.

Cutting to the chase, we know the view of James Snapp, a bit strained but clear enough. The Gospel of Mark was circulated to the church as authentic in the 1st century, complete, with the long ending, the resurrection account.

Now James hurts his own cause, tremendously in my view, by waffling about whether the long ending is specifically written by Mark, or a compatriot, or something. Since James does an effective job dismantling the supposed sytlistic and other arguments, and of course is a true expert on early references to the ending, I have never understood why he waffles on this basic point. Our discussion on this was on a textcrit thread.

The true, full position defending the authorship of the ending would be simply that the full Gospel is from Mark. I think it is safe to say that this is the position of Dean John Burgon, Professor Maurice Robinson, Edward Hllls, D. A. Waite and many others, although often the question does not really arise so you have to go with what is implied. The ending is authentic, Mark is the author. And that is my belief, simple and clean.

Yet what position does Joe Wallack take in this debate ? Well, ok, he says the resurrection account is not authentic. But what does that mean to JW ? Nothing. There is not a single verse in Mark that Joe would call authentic. There is not a single verse in the Gospel of Mark that Joe would ascribe to Mark, the friend of Peter. There is not a single verse in the Gospel of Mark that Joe would definitely date in the 1st century. (Joe is welcome to correct my understanding of his position, which is drawn from his general views about all the New Testament writings.)

So what in the world is Joe supposedly debating with James ? Nobody has the faintest idea. Is he arguing that the resurrection account was written in the 4th century, that Irenaeus and 5-10 other church writers really don't mean much. Doubtful.

What it comes down to is something like this, as far as I can discern the position of JW on the 12 verses.

=======================

The Gospel of Mark thru 16:8 was written in the second century by nobody knows who, an individual or a group of collaborators -- and this book has no authority whatsoever.

The 12 verses were written in the second century, a bit later than the above, by nobody knows who, an individual or a group of collaborators -- and this ending has no authority whatsoever.

========================

Thats it.

A big nothing. There is no position, no debate actually going on, it is simply a little opportunity for show. The positions of James Snapp and JW have nothing in common, there is no agreed upon actual point to prove, there really is no debate and the trains whiz by in the night.

Shalom,
Steven Avery