chrisrkline

So who is now making categorical assertions without proof?

The notion that Mark was written first, with Luke and Matthew to follow is not controversal, even if they are just 'scholars' who are prejudiced.

Anyway, assuming Acts or the gospels are reliable history, or are more reliable than the clear reading of Mark, which came first, is the really unproven position.

Clouseau

Form criticism = the making of mountains out of molehills by people who do not understand theology, or don't want to.

Clouseau

It's not categorical. Just very difficult to disprove.

chrisrkline

What does form criticism have to do with theology (other than the historical process of understanding what people in NT times believed)?

You are free to derive whatever theology from the texts that you wish. But why should that restrict the study of the Bible?

chrisrkline

What is? That Mark did not come first? Or that scholars are not mostly prejudiced?

Roger Pearse

It is right to distinguish between theory and data.

The data is that Luke and Matthew use sections of material which is word-for-word identical with material in Mark, while using additional material not found in it. The data transmitted from antiquity also tells us that Mark was completed around or soon after the death of Peter in 64. The same data tells us that Matthew composed his work originally in 'Hebrew', but not how we get a Greek Matthew. It is also data that Luke-Acts finishes in 61 AD, but does not record Paul being released, the rearrest and execution of Peter and Paul, the persecution of 64 AD, or the destruction of the Jewish state.

From these pieces of data various theories may be composed in modern times. That Matthew and Luke had access to some version of Mark is shown by the parallel versions. But since Mark and Luke were in Rome together in 61, that would hardly be a surprise.

Scholars in the humanities, on any topic of controversy of religion or politics, tend to reflect the views of those who do the appointments. Scholarship does not have the controls of science, unfortunately. This is why, on such matters, where interpretation is involved, we need to be wary, and particularly to distinguish between data and deduction.

In my humble opinion, at least.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

This is somewhat a strange dichotomy that Roger makes. Data? Does history rest on unprocessed data? Obviously much data is useless in doing history. Unless the "data" can be contextualised it is surely useless. It seems though with the following that Roger is already shaping data into something more useful...

I wonder what this "data" actually is. Roger is not forthcoming with sources.

Surely Mark was completed some time after the fall of the temple. After all the curtain of the temple was rent in two, opening the holy of holies and nullifying Judaism. Who wants to read this as a symbolic overthrow of Judaism rather than a "veiled" reference to a temple already destroyed?

Mark was written within a Jewish context, while the other gospels were written outside a Jewish context, having two layers of conflict with "Jews" and with "Pharisees"

This should of course make Roger wary of being too slavish to the data. One needs to validate the data rather than praying that it is valid.

We have a text written in Greek working from another text written in Greek. There is no "Hebrew" source to the text we currently have, just a tradition which claims this.

It's strange, isn't it, that 2 Maccabees which is so big on Judas Maccabaeus, but obviously written after the death of Judas, does not record his death. I guess it wasn't to the writer's use to record the death of Judas.

Roger doesn't seem to be doing any validation on his data.

Sloppy work, this. Mark and Luke were in Rome in 61! These naturally were the people who wrote the texts, weren't they? Who else could have written them? After all they were the names of the writers and here we have them together. Perhaps Luke could have helped Mark write his gospels so that Luke wouldn't have had to rewrite it, changing much of it. The names that we have attached to the gospels are traditional. We don't know when the current gospels were written or when the names were attached to them.

Let me go back to Roger's first statement:

It is right to distinguish between theory and data.

It sure is right to distinguish theory from evidence. He restates it:

It seems it's not an easy task.


spin

spin

It would seem that the writer of this last comment believes himself to be one of those who "understand theology", ie he is one of the knowers, while those who indulge in form criticism are not knowers. This seems to have been spoken in pure ontological naivety. How does Clouseau know what he knows? Is it that he -- god forbid -- read it? or did he just accept stuff that someone imposed upon him when he was too young to know better? If he read it, perhaps from (translations of) the original texts, how did he deal with the text without any critical methodology for confronting the text and the evidence it evinced?

Rather than making supercilious comments about form criticism without showing either justification for the comments or any real knowledge of the subject, it might be useful for Clouseau to get his hands dirty by giving some depth to his comments.


spin

JoeWallack

JW:
"Mark" and "Luke" seem to rely heavily on Josephus' description of the End of The War which I personally have Faith was not written until the End of The War. This is Good News and Bad News for Roger. The Good News is the Gospels are based on History. The Bad News is it's not Jesus' History.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Clouseau

True, but there is precious little data, and therefore much theory that is actually almost pure speculation.

Not very much that is verbatim. Even that which exists does not mean that Lk and Mt copied Mk, even if Mk was pre-existent, which we do not really have sound evidence for either. What we actually know about the gospels, from primary evidence, is extremely small. The only real evidence is internal, and that is very little.

Never a truer word written. In fact it puts the word 'scholarship' in question, imv.