Vorkosigan

Yesterday's discussion of Nazareth got me thinking about Galilee. I was wondering if there had been any proposals that Jesus' origin in Galilee was the result of Mark reading Isa 9:1:

(complete Isa 9)

Isa 9:1 (NIV) Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan-

Isa 9 crops up elsewhere in Mark so the writer definitely drew on it. But it seems here is our thumbnail of three ideas in Mark -- Galilee, Gentiles, and the Sea ("by way of the sea")....

spin

Umm, Vork, check Matt 4:15-16.


spin

Vorkosigan

LOL. One of these days I have to get around to reading Matt. Thanks, spin.

LOL.

rlogan

The whole twisted mess - Bethlehem, "out of Egypt", Galilee, Nazareth, and etc. are from the HB.

Bethlehem is from Micah 5:2 -

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

(And therefore the fabrication of the census story).


Out of Egypt is from Hosea 11:1 -

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son

(and, you have the slaughter of the innocents pasted in there with Jeremiah 31:15 in order to get him into Egypt, so he can come out of there)


When you have Prophecies saying he is from four places, then obviously the solution is that he is from all four of them.



Bailing wire. Hose clamps. Duct tape.

Junkyard Jesus.

the_cave

The first two are from Matthew--so the possibility of myth-making is granted.

But Nazareth and Galilee--well, ignore Nazareth for now, since there's a separate thread on that (or maybe you can show me the relevant prophecy!) Which leaves Galilee.

Are you saying there were no events relevant to Christianity in Galilee?

Are you a proponent of Q? Q2 contains condemnations of Galilean towns, so something must have been going on there at some point. What do you think the date of Q2 is? Or do you think it was always one document? If so, what was its date?

Or perhaps you are not a proponent of Q...in which case, what are the condemnations doing in Matthew? Do you think they are from a late date? Who wrote them and why?

But where did the bailing wire and hose clamps come from?

spin

Matt 2:23

Do there need to be? We have stories about all sorts of locations, Jesus and Thomas (separately) in India for example. Imagination is a sufficient driver of such things. Add to that a real (Jewish) messianic movement coming out of Galilee, which will stimulate hagiography.

Q is too distant here, and far Q2. A lot of people don't accept the Q theory/ies. We should be rationally playing it safer and looking at the earliest gospel, Mark. It has people running around Galilee, but no condemnations. Does it matter that it was Galilee in any sense? It may have been that an itinerant preacher, hearing about the Galilean messianic movement, used the location for his version of the Jesus story. How ever we got Galilee, it comes with a built-in prophecy to link it to the nexus. That makes it food for re-elaboration.

That's the beauty of Bailing wire and hose clamps: it doesn't matter. It didn't even need to be bailing wire or hose clamps. It could have been bobbing pins and hair nets. Where did the infancy gospels come from, or the Acts of Pilate, or the letters of Abgar, or those between Paul and Seneca, the Clementine Recognitions, or any of the other myriad of flights of imagination?

Once you have a core religious concept, it feeds spin-offs. Think of Moses leading an Egyptian army against Ethiopia or the story of Joseph and his Egyptian bride. I don't think we will be able to chart where everything comes from.


spin

the_cave

But that is due to the presence of Christians in India. And Jesus in India is certainly a recent idea! Jesus (and all the disciples) in Galilee at least appears to be a very early idea!

So...you're saying there was a good reason...

I know, I'm asking you your opinion. Are you saying the mentions of Galilean towns in Matthew were created later than Mark?

Well, yes...why were they running around Galilee?

Is that what you think? If you say "I don't know/we can't know," that's fine, I'm just asking.

So are you saying that that Mark could have set his gospel in Galilee based purely on the prophecy? And that the Matthean references to Galilee could be later additions to Mark? And that there is no good reason to assume that there was any sort of Galilean movement?

They came from the kernel of the gospel story. I'm asking about the origins of the kernel.

Right, I'm asking where the core religious concept came from.

So, are you saying we don't/can't know what the kernel really was?

the_cave

Somehow I left this out--anyway, where do you think this prophecy comes from? What do you think it has to do with Nazareth? This is mostly being dealt with in the other thread...

Vorkosigan

That depends on how you date the Gospels. In the NT Galilee first occurs in the gospel of Mark, the first gospel written. It occurs only in the gospels and Acts and never in an NT epistle or in letters like 1 Clem or Barnabas. So where did the connection to Galilee come from? It arose in two ways. One is creation off Isa 9:1. The second is at the higher level of plot -- Mark filed the serial numbers off the Elijah-Elisha cycle, and then used that for his Jesus story. That cycle begins in northern Israel and moves south, climaxing in Jerusalem. Note that in Mark Jesus never mentions Galilee except in 14:28. As a supernatural prediction, that is obviously a creation from the hand of Mark. Otherwise Galilee occurs only in verses that are redaction from the hand of Mark. Nowhere does it look like Mark is creating off of a prior source that contains Galilee.

Suppose you, like me, date the gospels into the second century. When does Galilee enter the tradition? Second century. It appears to be a later accretion to the tradition.

Yes, that's right. Matthew incorporated, corrected, and expanded Mark's gospel. I am not a Q adherent since reading Goodacre and re-reading Tuckett. Plus, I think it can be demonstrated that the Mark-Q overlaps contain typical signals of Markan style.

It's the old testament.

The presence of Galilee isn't a religious concept, but a historical one. The writer of Mark invented it when he constructed his story.

Vorkosigan

rlogan

heh. like the imagery...



yeah baby.