Adam

To: JW:
Your Post #49 runs afoul of the rule I set in bold in my OP, so I will return to consideration of your other post, #45.
"I will not consider myself obligated to reply to any post that merely asserts that there is no evidence, that I am outside consensus scholarship, or that I am a troll etc."
Yes.I'm not getting any indication that you have yet read as of #49 any of my posts beyond #1. (I apologize if my unconventional ideas have given you an attitude that hinders calm discussion.) Nor have I yet presented all my evidence. You should have read by now my major posts #1, #18, and #38, my first three eyewitnesses, and #23 that previews my fourth. (Plus I have eight other short posts.) I do rely extensively on the authority of Howard M. Teeple in his Literary Origin of the Gospel of John (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1974), but he is an Atheist who believes the gospels come from the 2nd Century. He just seems to be far the best on source criticism of John. I'm cynical enough to believe there is never more than one great Bible critic per generation, so I don't feel myself obligated to accept the majority vote of scholars who publish just to get tenure or promotion.

Thus I don't rely very much on authority, and my views on eyewitness information from John Mark, Nicodemus, and Simon are highly original. Sorry for the lack of footnotes in this thread, but I can present later my source-critical research paper, "The Significance of John". It's a hard read and is not as vulnerable to criticism as the bold claims I make in this current thread. I'm leading with my chin, but this obviously gets more attention.

I don't believe bold generalizations can be made about the gospels. I don't know who was the final editor of any of them except Luke. Thus I focus on the parts I can work with.
As i stated in my Post #17 I see John Mark's Passion Narrative as primarily revealed in gJohn as separated out by Teeple. There are enough occurrences of the name "Peter" in Ur-Marcus to support Peter as source without relying on Church authority.

Adam

Moving on to eyewitness #4, somewhat duplicating what I previewed in Post #23 from my article in Noesis:
Continuing my focus on eyewitness testimony I will consider later the editions of John that brought the sources together and turn to where we left off in tracing the two narrative sources in John that got worked in to the Synoptics. I have already explained in that long second ("Yet little else...")paragraph in Post #18 how the Passion Narrative in John got expanded into the Ur-Marcus found still in many of the passages where Mark overlaps Luke. Aware that the early state of John had placed Signs Source in front of the Passion Narrative and incorporated Nicodemus’s Discourses, all set primarily in Jerusalem, next John Mark sought to write a gospel set primarily in Galilee and adding events in the middle of Jesus’s ministry instead of just the earliest and latest. To do this he got biographical information from Peter and used Matthew’s Q. The date of 44 AD for this seems early, and sets the 1st edition of John as even earlier. In that process the eyewitness testimony of Peter came in. Up to this point we already have four eyewitnesses, John Mark, Andrew, Nicodemus, and Peter. The verses attributable to Peter(including verses in Mark 14 and 15 already written by John Mark) are these:

Mark 1:16-28,x. 2:18-3:5,xv. 5:1-43,lx. 8:27-9:13,xlv. 9:30-31,v. 9:38-42,v. 10:13-34,xxv. 11:27-33,vi. 12:18-23,iii. 12:35-13:17,xv. 13:28-31,v. ,14: 28-42,xx. 14:48-52,v. 62-72;xv. 15:3-27,xxx., 33-40,xii. and continuing in Luke 24:1-3,iv.,11-12,v; and Acts 1:6-4:31, 5:17-42, 9:32-11:18, 12:1-17.
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying

In Addition I suggest that the rest of the verses in Acts 1:6-12:25 and perhaps up to 15:35 be considered additional testimony by John Mark. As the primary Petrine sections conclude at Acts 12:17, it is most likely that all this eyewitness testimony of Peter (as well as the earlier eyewitness testimony of John Mark in John 18-20 as initially stated) was written down in 44 A. D.
Note that these are the verses specified in my article, “Underlying Sources of the Gospels”, less the verses therein from John Mark or Andrew as seen initially above. However, I have added in Mark 14:62-72 as from Peter (or John Mark) even though in my article I followed my stylistic rules and listed it as from Q. (I’ll make an exception now by pleading that the word-use in Mark and Luke is dissimilar only because John Mark and Peter were both involved here, but as eyewitnesses from slightly different vantage points.)

Note that what I call Petrine Ur-Marcus excludes not only that Marcan material not found in Luke, but also anything that I say derives from Q. It is distinguished from the latter by its style in which frequent consecutive words are exact in both Mark and Luke. This came about because Luke copied Petrine Ur-Marcus in Greek into the already existing Proto-Luke. (Peter is the fourth identifiable eyewitness.)

Vorkosigan

The gospel writers are eyewitnesses? The information is sourced from eyewitnesses???

Thanks, Adam. In the rarified air of this place, such rank silliness is a welcome relief.

The sources for the Passion Narrative are (1) conventions of historical romances (2) the old Testament (3) various other items used as literary and not historical sources.

Really, it is the 21st century. Just argue for the standard Historical Kernel. It is an unbeatable approach; irrefutable.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Adam, the pericopes you name are all literary creations in their various forms. Let's take a couple of your "from Peter" texts. Mark 1:16-20 is a creation off the Elijah story:

16: And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. 17: And Jesus
said to them, "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men."18: And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19: And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zeb'edee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20: And immediately he called them; and they left their father Zeb'edee in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him.

Brodie has shown that this passage is modeled on the Elijah story in 1 Kings 19:19-21:

19 And he goeth thence, and findeth Elisha son of Shaphat, and he is plowing; twelve yoke [are] before him, and he [is] with the twelfth; and Elijah passeth over unto him, and casteth his robe upon him,
20 and he forsaketh the oxen, and runneth after Elijah, and saith, `Let me give a kiss, I pray thee, to my father and to my mother, and I go after thee.' And he saith to him, `Go, turn back, for what have I done to thee?'
21 And he turneth back from after him, and taketh the yoke of oxen, and sacrificeth it, and with instruments of the oxen he hath boiled their flesh, and giveth to the people, and they eat, and he riseth, and goeth after Elijah, and serveth him.(YLT)

Note the parallels, listed in Brodie (2000, p91):

*the action begins with a caller...and with motion toward those to be called;
*those called are working (plowing/fishing);
*the call, whether by gesture (Elijah) or word (Jesus) is brief;
*later, the means of livelihood are variously destroyed or mended, the plow is destroyed, but the nets are mended -- a typical inversion of images...;
*after further movement, there is a leave-taking of home;
*there is also a leave-taking of other workers;
*finally, those who are called follow the caller.

We are not told why the passel of idiots follows Jesus, apparently they did so for no reason at all. Was he uber sexy? Was he persuasive? Did he offer a cash back guarantee? We don't know. If this information had actually come from Peter, surely he might have taken a line or two to offer an explanation.

But more importantly, not only are all the details account for by the story in Kings, the framework of the Markan tale follows the Elijah-Elisha cycle down to the temple tale in Chap 11. IN other words there are two levels of paralleling -- the structure of the Markan tale, in which Jesus tracks the E-E cycle, and then the details of the pericope. It's elephants all the way down, no bedrock of historicity. There is absolutely no reason to believe in historicity or a Petrine (or any other) source, none is needed.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Dale, this kind of stuff scares me:

Um, no. Most serious scholars compare Luke and Mark to see what Mark might have been originally and also to see how Luke used Mark, etc. I cannot think of a single scholar who "assumes" that Luke had almost all of Mark -- can you name some? In one of your posts you cite Mark 9:14-29 -- it's obviously a later expansion/redaction, since chunks of v25-29 are missing from Matt and Luke.

Also, you want to argue in your Noesis paper that Matt followed Mark's resurrection story. That's one solution. Another put forth by Evan Powell is that the current ending of John was originally the ending of Mark.

Vorkosigan

Adam

The "scholars" who assume all of gMark was available in writing gLuke do so implicitly, for the most part. Some may explicitly say that Luke omitted most of Mark chapters 6 to 8. Many others simply argue that Luke is later than Mark, because Luke used Mark. Yes he did, but did he use an earlier version that did not include those chapters. They even go so far as to claim that Luke could not have been written at the conclusion of the story in 62 A.D. because Mark was not written until 65 A.D. As I have shown, the most likely date for the earlier version of Mark is 44 A.D., so their implicit assumption does not hold.
You can look anywhere for encyclopedias and introductions that use this false assumption to date Luke to 80 A.D. if they date Mark to 65 A.D. A true scholar would not, but the popularizers do this more often than not. Here's Wikipedia, which further goes on to imply that only Christian conservatives do not make this assumption:
As for Mark 9:14-29, I view the Matthean and Lucan versions as abridgments. This was Q material in Aramaic, and in translating into Greek they succumbed to the temptation to omit details. Matthew abridged all the time.
Evan Powell's idea is appealing, but the last chapter in John 21 has style too much like the 20th chapter (and many earlier chapters).

Adam

I havn't seen you over on TWeb for a long time. I presented this stuff over there without getting worthwhile comment.
Naturally I understand that from your standpoint you must make such parallels to dismiss the gospels as lies or myth. There could be supernatural reasons why there are parallels. Or maybe the events just happened to get written up in such a way that similarities appear by chance.


Mark 1:16-20 does not include the preceeding contact with Jesus in John 1:35-51 which had already convinced these two sets of brothers that Jesus was the Messiah.
When we put aside the bombastic introductions to each of the four gospels, we see that the underlying sources start out about very ordinary men like Peter and Andrew, James and John. The historicity is very banal, about fishes and fig trees. But it was enough to get Peter to say in the parallel version that was preserved in Luke 5:1-11: " 'Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.' For he and all his companions were completely awestruck at the catch they had made."

Vorkosigan

I haven't been there in a long time. I grew disgusted with that place over the Iraq War run up. The bloodthirstiness, ignorance, and stupidity of most of the posters was too much to bear.

"There could be...." is not an argument, Dale. It actually concedes my point: the parallels exist (but the reason is supernatural/chance!).

The problem with your "written up by chance" position is that the writer of Mark parallel Elijah-Elisha all the way through the first half of the Gospel, until Jesus enters Jerusalem -- there are TWO levels of paralleling. In some places he quotes directly from the source in Kings, a signal generally used in literary paralleling. It's not coincidence; the writer tells us directly exactly what he is doing. He does that again and again with his different sources -- in 6:23 he cites the source of his tale of Herod's execution of JBap; in the Crucifixion he cites the Psalm he's using, etc. These are common and unremarkable modes of literary production. If this were any other text/story we wouldn't even be having this discussion....


John comes after Mark and is late and derivative, the product of multiple hands. Luke, who copied extensively from Mark, padded out the story with other invented details, as the did the writers of John. No evidence supports your contention that there is some historical story that these tales go back to.

Because of this evolutionary dependency, you can't go back and interleave the gospel tales with each other, it is rather like developing a chronology of the Hardy Boys over the 20th century by comparing the tales of the 1930s and 40s with those mass-produced today by different authors.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

No, Mark is much later. The writer of Mark probably knows Josephus War, writes from a time when Christians were persecuted, knows the temple has been destroyed, uses second century terminology in several cases, etc. My own view is that Mark dates from the 130s; the author apparently knows that there is a statue of Jupiter/Zeus in the Temple, the one Hadrian put there.

It's not an assumption but a logical deduction: If B uses A, it has to be later than A. Luke has to be later than Mark because its writer uses a version of Mark.

"When they add details, the details are history, when they subtract them, they are writing abridgements" -- can't you see how your "conclusions" are driven not by evidence but by your need to see the Gospels as early and historical? If it were any other text, everyone would say "O look, Luke's copy of Mark did not have X, Y, and Z".

Vorkosigan

Adam

I'm aware of the argument that Josephus was known to Luke, and that's why Burton L. Mack dates it to the 120's. But Mark? Even Mack dates Mark to the 80's. What's changed since Mack wrote The Lost Gospel...Q in 1993?

Do I understand you correctly? Now you're revealing yourself as another one who dates Luke later than Mark because of using Mark. That's what you challenged me in your #55 to find! Yes, if B uses A then it must be later than A, but the A here does not necessarily include the three chapters that are not in Luke! The case for Mark being later than the apparent 62 A.D. composition of Luke does not include any proof that said version of Mark included the three chapters missing in Luke.
Why do you put quote marks around "When they add details, the details are history, when they subtract them, they are writing abridgements", you imply that those are my words or a summary thereof. The first half is not like anything I have said. Wherever I say something is a source, I'm not adding details to something already extant. Where details are added to such a source, I tend to be as critical of them as you would be. That's my point about such verses in Mark as Mark 6:17-29; 6:53-8:26; 10:1-10; 11:12-14, 20-25; 14:55-58 (plus numerous individual verses or two)--the very ones you are now claiming were omitted by Luke from the full text of Mark that you say he had!
"If it were any other text, everyone would say "O look, Luke's copy of Mark did not have X, Y, and Z". Uh, V, I'm not a Fundamentalist, I do say that!