spamandham

If I read Talbert correctly, that isn't necessarily true. There were multiple aspects to these biographies. One of those aspects was in the mythical realm of the foundation of the cult, and it's doubful the audience would expect historicity of any character or event from the mythical realm. They did not distinguish between fact and fantasy the way we do.

So are the characters mentioned in the mythical realm? They are followers of the founder, so I think there's a argument to be made that they are.

Is there really any reason to date Mark to 70? If Mark was written in 70, then I think we would need to question the genre again. The 'type B' biography examples Talbert gave were written for long established cults, not new ones written by contemporaries.

I'll look it up when I get home. It was somewhere in the last few pages of the book, where he's summarizing his analysis.

...I'm guessing you would not argue that Bugs Bunny is a biography.

spamandham

In regard to the reference from "What is a Gospel", the summary showing Mark as a 'type B' biography is on page 134 of the 1977 hardback edition.

The purpose of a 'type B' (p. 94) was to "dispel a false image of the teacher and to provide a true model to follow". The examples Talbert uses to categorize Mark are Xenophon's Memorabilia (~700 years after the fact), Philodemus' Life of Epicurus (200 years after the fact), Philostratus' Life of Appolonius of Tyana (~100 years after the fact), and Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras (800 years after the fact).

Ben C Smith

Thanks for that reference. That is not one of the pages I have a copy of.

Looks like Mark sits at least as close to the alleged events as Philostratus sits to Apollonius, probably quite a bit closer. But other bioi are pretty close, too. Suetonius comes not too long after Domitian and Titus, and Tacitus knew Agricola personally (they were in-laws). I think it would be a mistake to create a rule that ordinary biographies can be written almost immediately while heroic biographies have to wait longer.

I am not certain what you mean by the mythical realm.

Arguments have been advanced that the Greeks and Romans viewed the time before the Trojan War as the time of myth, as it were, and that this mythical time had a different feel to it than time subsequent to that war, but many of the heroic biographies still extant do not place their main characters (such as Empedocles, Alexander, and Augustus) in the time of myth; rather, these characters are part of ordinary history. Jesus is not thrust into some mythical time in Mark; he is placed into ordinary history (in second temple Judea, under Pilate and Roman rule, before the fall of the temple), just like Augustus or Alexander.

So I think you should define what you mean by the realm of myth, so that I can understand what you are trying to say.

True, but they did distinguish between fact and fantasy in some way. They did have genres dedicated to sheer fiction, for example. They did at times talk about what really happened and what was only rumor or legend.

That date was just an example. It is one I am comfortable with (since yes, I do think there are some reasons to date Mark to somewhere around 70), but I am open to later dates, too.

(Martin Hengel argues for 69; Randall Helms argues for sometime in 71-74, IIRC. Just two examples of specific arguments that have been mounted.)

Ben.

spamandham

But of these, only The Life of Apollonius is used by Talbert to categorize Mark, and in that case, the author - though relatively close to Apollonius - is still on the order of 3 generations removed. I'm not sure how Talbert's system would categorize these others you mention.

I'm not saying that Mark's categorization as a 'type B' biography precludes the author from knowing Jesus or some of his followers. But I am saying that 'type B' biographies do not imply that, and there are no case that Talbert mentions in which that is true, other than possibly Mark itself - which would make Mark unqiue in that regard.

It seems to imply a time that is treated differently conceptually. I'm just relaying my understanding of what Talbert said on that in regards to foundational myths. I may have misunderstood though, so I'll try to look it up again when I get a chance.

I imagine they did distinguish between fact and fantasy to some degree, but even Josephus records obvious fantasy and legend as if it were historical, so I'm not sure of the degree to which they made such distinctions. I get a sense it was more like shades of gray.

Ben C Smith

Yes, but Burridge uses Suetonius and Tacitus to help categorize the gospels.

Surely as bioi. Just not necessarily as heroic bioi. Genre and subgenre.

Oh, I agree. I do not think any kind of bios implies (or precludes, for that matter) that the author knew the main character or anyone who knew him.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

It occurs to me that we ought to be clear about the backstory to Talbert writing of heroic biographies. That subgenre is not, to the best of my knowledge, a category discussed in antiquity; it is a convenience for Talbert, who is responding to Bultmann.

Bultmann had argued that the gospels are not biographies. He had employed several arguments, one of which was the presence of a mythical framework in the gospels. Talbert responded by identifying bioi that did use a mythical framework; hence his category of heroic bioi.

(This tactic is common in this area. For example, it used to be argued sometimes that Mark cannot be a biography because it lacks a birth narrative or childhood information. So both Talbert and Burridge trot out ancient bioi that lack birth narratives and childhood information. This could potentially create a class of bioi-that-focus-only-on-the-career, but that would be a convenience on our part, not an actual ancient distinction.)

Ben.

aa5874

This clearly shows that it is still not certain that the author of Mark expected his readers to know anything about Joses, James or Mary, since Christian scholars cannot agree whether the Jesus stories are biographies.

neilgodfrey

Excuse delay in response. Work commitments have waylaid me for a while.

Audiences and composers of, at the very least, three of the synoptic gospels.

I was attempting to address your argument as favourably as possible -- unless they were part of the community of believers I would have thought your argument raises even more questions and improbabilities. I am sure you are not against such a proposition.

The whole reason for this discussion is the UNusualness of identifying a person by their progeny rather than their fathers. There HAS to be something especailly significant and obvious about the progeny to the audience in this case.

We are necessarily talking of probabilities that attend any hypothesis. One can argue in strict mathematical black and white logic that A does not necessarily imply B. No question. But this is not mathematics. It is a question of probability of human behaviour and interactions. Of course there is a mathematical possibility that the individuals were not known etc, but we are discussing questions of human behaviour and historical probabilities that are raised by this or that hypothesis. More below.

I have never suggested or ever contemplated (A).

Nor have I ever suggested your (B).

If this is your response to my case I am left thinking that you have mistakenly sidestepped my argument and attacked a bifurcated strawman instead.

This is an anachronism of risk. The question of Elvis is not a religious one. We can point to other extremely popular figures in ancient times without any need to resort to Elvis and keep the focus.

But more seriously, this intent at analogy fails from the first step. The discussion about one author's choice to identify the man who was dragooned into assisting with the execution of Jesus by the names of two of his sons bears no comparison whatever with the names of the children of anyone who "met" Elvis during his lifetime.

This question as you pose it also distorts the original question. The question is not whether the names of the children of a contact with a famous person are known to a particular community, but why a certain person was, in defiance of custom, identified by the names of two sons. That implies something of significance about the names of those children.

Neil

neilgodfrey

One should also understand that genre does not by itself indicate the historical or factual truth of its contents. Genre is a medium, not the content. Hopefully it happens no more often than the cases exposed, but we do have the case of the academic genre of the scholarly peer-reviewed publication turning out to be, on occasions, a perpetrator of fraud. The genre of biography, ditto. And there are histories that are known to have had no sounder basis than mythical tradition.

I work in the field of librarianship and metadata. No professional information archival/organizational manager would ever confuse veracity of content with genre of presentation -- in any period of cultural history.

Neil Godfrey

Ben C Smith

The three synoptic gospels do pass along this datum; but I think Matthew and Luke got it from Mark, just as they got much of their other information. I think they included Simon because he played a role in the passion proceedings; I think they excluded his children (A) because they did not or (B) because they did not know his children. They did not know Simon either, of course, but he was relevant to the narrative.

It may be easier to imagine them as members, but that they were not is not out of the question; I am trying to leave options open. They could have been local officials, for example, who were harassing the believing community. This is not my thesis; it is only an example.

I agree. This has been my contention all along.


I agree.

IIRC, you argued that, if Mark knew who Joses and James were, or who Alexander and Rufus were, then Matthew and Luke probably did, too. (If this was not your argument, then what was?)

How do you think Matthew and Luke knew who they were? What is the inevitable process that would lead to their knowledge of these children of people who played parts in the passion?

Here are the steps I am following:

1. Simon of Cyrene carried the cross; his sons were not present, perhaps not even born yet, so they played no part.
2. But Mark and his readers knew the sons, probably due to geographical proximity, perhaps even extending to them being members of the community.
3. Matthew and Luke and their readers did not know everything that Mark and his readers knew. In fact, Matthew and Luke used Mark for information that they would not otherwise have had. This is the very heart of the synoptic problem.
4. However, Matthew and Luke also frequently omit details from Mark that are apparently unnecessary; this has been shown abundantly in the past. Dropping Joses and James and Alexander and Rufus is natural, since they are not even involved in the narrative events.
5. The question, then, is why Mark included these sons and even chose to use them as identifiers, not why Matthew and Luke excluded them.
6. But, if Mark knew things that Matthew and Luke did not (see number 3 above), then it is plausible that he knew (who) these sons (were), whereas Matthew and Luke did not. The traditions floating around about Jesus did not normally include sons of actors in the story, let alone as identifiers; as you yourself said, we are looking for a reason why these particular sons were included as identifiers.

I was using a modern example because it is easier to test. I welcome you to use an ancient example, if you wish.

Why not? What is the difference that makes a difference? Are you saying that the people in question had to be involved specifically with the death of the person in order to be relevant? Are you saying that the word met is not strong enough? Change it to accompanied him to concerts or such. The point is that there are surely plenty of people who were intimately involved with Elvis on some level but whose children are not universally known by all Elvis fans everywhere. Take the Memphis Mafia, for example. Would even an Elvis biographer feel compelled to list their children, or even to find out who they were, without some really good reason?

I agree, and I think the something of significance is that they were known to the author and his readers; there may be more, but there does not have to be.

I completely agree.

Ben.