Vorkosigan

From my Mark site on Mark 5:

Cliff Carrington in his Flavian Testament has also pointed out some parallels between this and a passage in Josephus, where Jewish rebels, led by a rebel named Jesus (son of Shaphat), are chased into the nearby lake and killed by Titus' army. Carrington has pointed out other affinities between Jos and the Gospels, though I don't think any of them are convincing in the case of Mark.

rlogan

The Cave -

Here's over a thousand catalogued prophecy fulfillments (by book, not subject)

http://biblia.com/jesusbible/types.htm

Some other sites are by subject.

I've done this thread already on prophesy fulfillments, and don't really care to go item by item again.

To refer to this thousand (and more) prophecy fulfillments as "handwaving" is disengenuous. This isn't vague bullshit, but everything from the virgin birth through casting lots for his clothes. A to Z.


On the Josephus' reference to various Jesus' - I would have to search to find that specific reference to the Jesus who led the fisherman. Not sure what motivation I have for it given the curt response.

I don't appreciate the coy gamesmanship with my posts. I've been pretty clear, and don't have the patience to do a line-by line "see how you've distorted what I've said" set of responses.

No animposity here. Just no patience for that kind of posting contest.

Bringing in the general observation of Jesus being constructed out of HB passages is relevant to this discussion. That is an exceedlingly simple point.

spin

There's your dilemma. We only have written traditions and written traditions can be derived from

1) new efforts
2) oral traditions
3) other written traditions

Talking about the necessity of oral traditions from formal written traditions is a waste of time. You can rarely get beyond the written tradition. We plainly see written tradition behind the synoptics.

So what you have in total for a possible historical figure is a name in a kinglist. Do you see the problem here? How did the name get there?

On the Latin cradle for the writing of Mark:
While both centres were famous for Greek traditions, what would make you possibly think that there was a sizable Latin speaking community in which the Greek community found itself and that the writers in that Greek community felt the necessity to cater for the Latin speaking community?

Talking for example about oral traditions without any indicators in the text itself certainly shows your willingness to go beyond the literature.

It did depend on what you were talking about exactly. You do have a penchant not to express yourself concretely. Everything is different, but does each specimen have a particular distinguishing feature? Get your ruler out.

This is by no means necessary in that such traditions could be drawn together over a long period of time, merging mulling together, churning up different ideas, not yielding one specific time in which everything was drawn together. As pointed out in the study "From Ritual to Romance" (already mentioned) you'll see that that "some point in time" needn't have existed, unless you simply mean the final flowering of the evolution which yields the recognizable phenomenon.

On the founder of the Ebionite "sect" whose history expanded through time:
Just fertile imagination.

Yes, I think it does. It shows that there need not be a historical reality behind a tradition for it to be productive. A figure can be created and get a life story and literature without the necessity of anything directly behind it. This of course is a clear possibility when dealing with the gospel and related literature.

There is no question that there are communities behind gospel literature. What is the functional value of this fact?

Presuppositions in your questioning.

That's fair enough. It's what's under discussion.

What is your contribution?


Not the notion, but the lack of any suggested methodology.

Especially when you break the discourse up and not get how the sentence you've separated from what follows relates to what follows, namely: "one is attempting to form structures based on what is being analysed in order to understand it better." Looking for methodologies. All your skepticism, what has it achieved? what is it doing? where is it going? Is it not an a priori belief that there is something real behind the traditions? Why would you believe that, if we only have a literary tradition?

Well, get to it.

I would never have claimed such a thing. In fact, I was waiting for the evidence of something critical.

In this discussion?

Wrong? I wouldn't say that. It is your hedging and unstated content that requests unforthcoming elucidation which disturbs.


Definitely not. Dialectics involves the statement of differing views and in their analysis, you are supposed to arrive at some synthesis. That is not the semi-oracular situation of you asking questions and me answering them.

You haven't entered a plea on the subject, no submission of innocence, just unsupported claims.

No it's not. You have shown no evidence whatsoever of "actual history behind the gospels"? How do you think you have enuciated this supposed evidence?

What, by asking me questions that suggest that you have an unstated a priori position? It's one thing to think that there may be some actual history behind the gospels, but your singular persistence without any evidence seems to undercut your claims.


spin

the_cave

Don't worry, I'm not asking you to. However, I'm unable to find the thread--mods, do you know where it is?

I will say that at least some of the fulfilled prophecies on the site you cited seem to come from Revelations. I'm not here to argue with that; I'm specifically talking about the gospel of Mark. And those sorts of reading of the Bible tend to exaggerate. But in my next point I will admit:

Well, the virgin birth is in Matthew, not Mark, but sure, I agree there is a great deal of prophecy-fulfilling in Mark. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I just mean that doesn't mean everything is necessarily invented by prophecy-fulfillment. John the Baptist appears in Josephus, for example, but is used in Mark as an Elijah figure.

Sorry if it sounded curt--did not mean it that way.

Understood. And agreed: so we'll cut to the chase--

And to reiterate, my response is: yes, there may be historicized HB passages in the gospel of Mark. That does not mean all of it is historicized HB passages. I have given some examples.

the_cave

Yes, there may be written tradition. I agree there is written tradition (though we might disagree about what that tradition is. Some people see Q where other people just see Matthew, for example.) This does not preclude the use of oral traditions. It just means we may not be able to determine whether or not oral traditions were involved. I think we can kind of guess that oral traditions must have been used in some way, since people do talk to each other, and don't communicate merely by means of scrolls and codexes. In the absence of either positive or negative evidence, we can't rule it out--we just have to leave it open as a hypothesis.

Sure, it could have been put there after the fact. Or not. Why is it on the list at all? Why isn't it at the beginning of the list? Why doesn't it say more about Gilgamesh if it was based off the myth? We don't know--all we can say is, maybe it was inspired by the myth, or maybe the myth was inspired by the history. Both are more or less equal hypotheses.

Well, they were administrative centers for Rome. Presumably there would have been a lot of traders there who spoke Latin, as well. I myself don't know how big these communities would have been. I'm sure there are ways of figuring it out, but I don't see how it's impossible in principle.

I'm not specifically claiming oral tradition as a basis for anything; just leaving open the possibility that it's present.

If you feel that way, I'll try harder to be more specific.

Well, yes, if they're different.

Can you give me an example of a group that was identical to the early Christians? I mean, sure, there are groups that are similar. But what's important is what distinguished the Christians from other groups. (And I fully realize they were not originally called by that name.) However, this is off-topic.

Yes, that's basically what I mean. Or else I simply mean the point in time at which most people would be able to point and say "Yes, that is Christianity."

I don't disagree with this.

As I said, it's what sort of communities they were that's interesting. I know that you agree with this!

Spin, my contribution is, I'm skeptical of the OP! I've given several reasons why. They're in my previous posts.

No no no, you suggested that by using the word "just" I had some mysterious hidden agenda.

Right, ok, I guess here is the issue. I'm not claiming my skepticism has achieved anything. I really am trying to keep an open mind about the whole thing. I have not arrived at any conclusions yet. Yes, undoubtedly, I have an a priori belief that there is something real behind the traditions! I have stated this! I have said I am skeptical of the OP. What else would that mean, besides I think there is something real behind the traditions? I have suggested explicitly that there was something real happening in Galilee at an early stage. Again, I'm not sure what I somehow haven't done right.

Spin, please see my comments above about Mk 14:28 and 16:7. I really don't know where this is coming from.

As I was saying...so you don't think I've been critical?

Yes, again, please see my comments above about Mk 14:28 and 16:7.

Hedging...yes, I am hedging. I see no definitive answer here. Once again, I am trying to approach things with an open mind. Why is that disturbing? As for unstated content, I still don't know what you're talking about.

Ultimately, yes. What can I say? I'm not there yet. Hence the need for further discussion, at least on my end.

It would only be oracular if I took your answers as gospel truth And as you can see, I am doing a great deal of answering.

Spin, yes I have, and I have supported them. If you wish to address one of my previous posts, please feel free.

Once again, please read my posts. I can specifically reiterate a) the "brothers" of Jesus b) John the Baptist, and c) the suggestion of a post-resurrection appearance in Galilee at the end of the gospel.

Once again, what is this unstated a priori position? I have stated I am skeptical of the OP. What else is there to state?

If you wish to address the specific passages I have cited in my previous posts, you are welcome to do so.

rlogan

This guy is in Book III of Jewish Wars. It is a pretty lengthy discussion, and has a naval battle as well as land skirmishes. Josephus gives a total of Jewish killed at 6,500 for all battles, land and sea.

Not a good model for the gospel Jesus, no.

Josephus characterizes him as a leader of robbers, and their sea vessels as outfitted for piracy.

Amaleq13

I agree that the author of Luke wrote his version later and to a different audience but there is no harmonizing of events here. There is only one author rewriting a scene written by another.

No harmony is obtained even if we assume (for no apparent reason) that one of them is writing history. Either the women who discovered the empty tomb were told to tell the disciples that Jesus would appear to them in Galilee or they were reminded of a promise of resurrection that was made while in Galilee.

A true "harmony" would contain both claims.

the_cave

That's not what I mean; he is not harmonizing different accounts of the event. He is harmonizing the command to go to Galilee for a post-resurrection appearance with the parousia at the beginning of Acts.

spin

cavey old friend, I'm going to end my involvement here. I can't be bothered trying to make sense of splintered conversations where you don't try to give contexts to the statements that get separated in the responses. You'll note that I have to go back and insert the context to understand the flow of what had been said leading up to the comments on each. It takes too much effort for reduced returns.

I have established that there is no need for any direct historical sources behind traditions, which may stretch back hundreds of years, perhaps thousands in some cases, and that with a mere suggestion of an existence that suggestion can be given a complex tradition. I see that there is no hope of extracting history from a tradition that has no historical pegs to hang it on.

How one can get beyond a written tradition with only a written tradition as source material is extremely complex, perhaps too difficult.

Random points:

Q is a theory, the most convincing available in my mind, but nothing more. Whatever the situation there is some form of literary sourcesbehind the literature we have, distancing any possible oral tradition from the discussion..

Gilgamesh is a little too tangential to the OP to continue it. I personally can't see any history that we can do beyond noting a name in a list and reading the non-historical literature which uses the name.

Roman administrators who went east tended to use Greek as a lingua franca. It is highly improbable that there was any Latin speaking communities outside the central Italic peninsula. (In fact the speech community was even smaller.) I see no alternative to a Mark written in Rome.

I can't give you a group which is identical to the Christians, which I gather is the group which had an organization which spread throughout the Mediterranean. However, there were numerous messianic groups in the last century of the old era and the first of this era. We don't really know much about the forerunners of xianity as we perceive it developing in the middle of the 2nd century CE. We don't even know when the gospels were written, so the xianity in them is just as hard to pinpoint in time. What so important in distinguishing one lot of messianists from another? And what does it mean to be able to distinguish xians only at the end of the process of cultural development (which I would gather was the early 2nd century CE)? How can you know about "it's what sort of communities they were"? I don't really know other than to guess from what is written in the literature.

Sorry, I missed them all dealing with your quibbling questions.

Well, don't you?

Well, you've sure come a long way on this one point. Wouldn't the initial statement have been sufficient and we could have noted it and proceeded?

Oh.

Vork was wrong about 14:28 being the sole occasion Mk mentions Galilee. You'll find it four times in chapter 1. You were reacting to him. And it has no importance: Galilee is part of the tradition. And you are still wishfully tryingto go beyondthat tradition on nothing more than fresh air.

I think I've addressed numerous of your previous posts.

Does this have anything to do with the 500 brethren that the literature tells us Jesus appeared to?

John the Baptist has a literary validatory effect on the gospels. Nothing more.

What on earth does this really show? Luke excludes it completely as not happening -- its Jesus ascends from Bethany. Mark has no resurrection and leaves everything in the air for you to believe. You have no appearance (making Mark more appealing on a literary level). You just have a story which starts in Galilee and hinting at an ending there as well. So? It's ok, it was rhetorical.


spin

Amaleq13

The author of Luke has eliminated the command to go to Galilee and replaced it with a promise made while in Galilee. He (or she) has rewritten Mark's story without regard to any notion that the original was inviolable history.

If the original claimants to a resurrection experience had those experiences in Galilee, the author of Luke does not appear concerned that his readers will know this and take exception to his alteration of the "true" story.

Luke's treatment of Mark's suggestion that the initial appearances to the Disciples took place in Galilee does not suggest that either is recording history but it does suggest that both are creating scenes to serve their individual purposes. Specific explanations are necessarily speculative but it seems to me that, if Mark is using the Q prophets as his template for Jesus' ministry (whether because he was a leader of that movement or because that is how the author imagined a living Jesus would have behaved), a Galilean location for the initial appearances needs no other motivation. As you mentioned, Luke has other concerns and those include incorporating Paul into the story but Paul associates the "pillars" with Jerusalem rather than Galilee so an editorial decision had to be made.

If there is history anywhere in this, I don't see how it can be reliably identified except to say that it appears likely that three men by the names "James", "John", and "Peter" were important in the early formation of what came to be called Christianity. They may have been from Galilee and they may have been among the original followers of a living Jesus or they may have been from Jerusalem and they may have been the first claimants to experiencing/witnessing the resurrected messiah.