Amaleq13

Nope, still looks to me like Koester is offering a dating that conforms with Llyricist's statement. I am aware that some (theologically motivated IMHO) scholars like to try to push the date prior to 70CE but you were talking about the "consensus" and that is shortly after 70CE. Even my old buddy the Catholic Study Bible concedes this as the estimate of most modern scholars. You drop it.

Tradition holds that he was Peter's secretary and was writing his memoirs. I agree that this does not appear to describe the text of our Gospel. This tradition appears to be no more reliable than the one Papias received regarding the death of Judas due to squishing by chariot after swelling up too much to let it pass him by.

Thereby falls the reliability of the "apostolic tradition" begun by Papias. Where were you when Layman and GakuseiDon were insisting otherwise?

Now that we have resolved/dropped the dating and author-identity issues, maybe you'll get around to substantiating your many earlier assertions on the topic of the "embarrassment criterion".


PS "Sleep is for tortoises." -- Dr. Who

Amaleq13

Where does Paul make any unambiguous references?

It is probably more accurate to suggest that Paul found his inspiration for Christ's death in Jewish Wisdom literature rather than "Scripture". There we find "the wise man" persecuted and rejected on earth but, after his death, obtaining vindication. That death is typically shameful in nature.

"Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, that we may know his meekness, and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with a shameful death: for by his own saying he shall be respected." (Wisdom of Solomon 2:19-20)

I think it is G.A. Wells who originally suggests that Paul has taken the above concept from the Wisdom literature and, under the influence of the mass crucifixions of Jewish holy men over the previous two centuries, concluded that this was the way Christ had been executed.

Clutch

Well, that's not a corollary. It's the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent.

A corollary would be: If it is false it is not embarrassing.

That might seem bad enough, though.

Vinnie

Projection was the norm.

Quote:

Jesus did not foretell of his own crucifixion.

This one is sort of double edged. If its demonstrated that Jesus told of his own crucifixion then this kind of assumes it happened. It can't serve in an argument either way.

But no, Jesus did not come to the earth with a supernatural vision that he must die for the sins of the world. At some point in his ministry did Jesus get a feeling he would die? Thats possible. Could Jesus at some point have thought of himself as the suffering servant?. It is possible but we simply have no way of providing positive historical evidence that he did. That which the Gospel authors claim is too much with the grain. Could Jesus have started the "reinerpretation" and his followers continued it? Sure but this doesn't mean the messiah had to die and there was motive for creating this.

A crucified messiah must have been scandalously offensive to non-Christian Jews.

From the historicists side we have to explain several things about crucifixion:

Why was Jesus crucified? Why specificically crucifixion as opposed to a private murder? There must be a reason for him being put on the cross by Pilate as opposed to a private murder?

Why weren't his followers crucified? They settled shortly after in Jerusalem and there are no reports of Rome coming after them in Acts and so forth. Why crucify Jesus but not his band of close immediate followers who basically "gave up everything to follow this movement starter day and night"?

Finding the answer to these two simple questions will tell us a lot. It is what Fredriksen does in Jesus of Nazareth. That book was brilliantly written at times.

Quote:

the moment, I concede that I cannot find in the early Pauline corpus a reference unambiguously indicating that the crucifixion was fulfilling HB prophesy. let me mull those over for a while.

Weren't "big events" always recast in light of the sacred scripture of the time? Christians still due it today. "Its the end, the Bible predicts it, look at vague prophecy X. "

When the Jews were not as responsive as the Gentiles to Jesus' message Paul attributed it to 9-1OT (see Rom 1). This was --in Paul's mind--obviously foreordained by God or something.

Even Jo did it. Flavius Josephus tied his discussion of the Jewish War and Vespasian's ending it into OT prophecy. See Jewish War 6.312-313. The "oracle" Josephus mentions is a reference to Numbers 24.17-19.

Basically, they were able to adapt things to their sacred scripture, even very embarrassing and problematic ones like a crucified messiah which is what I can't get Amaleq to understand.

We know Jesus spoke in parables and the synoptic authors took the liberty of telling us why in light of the OT. (e.g. Mk 4:12). But notice Mark seems to be correcting misinterpretation. He is basicallyu saying Jesus taught what the author of Mark thought all along. He's doing a bit of projection.

There are only faint traces of the suffering messiah to come in the OT,. The usual verses cited are passages in Psalm 89, Zech 9 & 13 and the four servant songs of Isaiah.

Tom Wright: It seems very unlikely...that there was a well known pre-Christian Jewish belief, based on Isaiah 53, in a coming redeemer who would die for the sins of Israel and/or the world. (Climax Covenant).

Though some think pre-Christian Judaism is said to have given a messianic interpreation to the servant songs (Hegermann) but this however must have been a minority view given the lack of serious evidence for things like the bringing together of the davidic messiah and the suffering servant before the Christian era. And as noted, Paul thought of himself as the servant in a sense. He must have gone for a collective interpretation of it.



Vinnie

Clutch

This sort of thing is hugely tempting, Vinnie, I agree. But everything I've learned about the social psychology of (i) confabulation and (ii) skewing narrative through transmission tells me that it's at best unclear.

The things that I repeatedly encounter when lurking through debates of this sort remind me of the apriorism that informed social work in the 1980's. The plausibility of (e.g.) children's narratives in legal contexts was assessed via over-rationalized lemmas like, A child would never claim to have been abused if it had not happened. Why not? Well, heck, it just wouldn't make sense for them to do it!

Oops. People who are almost certainly innocent remain in prison today as victims of such a priori psychology. Such antecedent convictions about what people would and wouldn't, could and couldn't do when confabulating events and when transmitting them, are simply worthless -- there's no other word -- in the absence of empirical investigation of how such things actually happen.

Fact is, I can't tell my wife about a hockey game without engaging in "levelling and sharpening", or even confusing and confabulating altogether. Even without especially powerful motivations to rationalize, entertain, or mythologize, these phenomena are everywhere in normal conversational contexts. The mystery is not how such fictionalizing can occur, and occur astonishingly quickly -- the real mystery is how we manage to create forms of discourse that prevent it, or at least slow it down.

I don't say your argument is unsustainable, of course, only that both you and your critics have everything to gain from investigating the fascinating literature on the biasing effects that operate on memory, on perception, and on the preservation of narratives through communication. What seems "obvious" is, I've found, more often than not just false.

Vinnie

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Amaleq13
[B]Nope, still looks to me like Koester is offering a dating that conforms with Llyricist's statement.

No. Lyricists says everyone knows Mark dates later than 70 C.E. Koester says the latest possible dating is 70 - 80. Elsewhere he says "If the Jewish catastrophe was a catalyst..." meanign there is some uncertainty on this issue and that directly impacts the Terminus a Quo and Terminus ad Quem.

We also know Koester dats Mt and Lk to ca 100 C.E. Given TIME needed for Mark to become popular enough and known to these two sperate evangelists to use means Mark must be dated rather earlier. There are connections to events surrounding ca. 70 C.E stamped in Mark.

Here you make ad hominem arguments again not even knowing what scholars believe.

"and in Mark 13 at least the thretening nearness of the Jewish war can probably be perceive. But inasmuch as there is no clear reference to the destruction of of Jerusalem in the year 70, most scholars date Mark in the years 64-70. Certai nscholars, however, regard composition after 70 as more probable . . . Since no effective argument for a year before or after 70 can be cited, we must be satisfied with the conclusion that Mark was written around 70." Kummel Intro p. 71

Though this text is slightly dated so heres Brown:

Brown's Intro puts the date at 60-75. He goes on to note the msot likely is 68-73. (p. 127)

Again around 70. The NJBC says that Mark 13 doies not presuppose the destruction of the temple and pre-dates 70.

As E.P. Sanders writes, [the sayign in Mark 13] seems rather to show that they did not update their material. The temple was destroyed by fire and many of the stones remained standing--some can be seen to this day. Here we probably have a genuine prediction, not a fake one written after the fact, since it did not come true in a precise sense. There is no material in Mark which must be dated after 70 C.E. Though Sanders says its possible Mark didn't know how the temple was destroyed and this would make it possible for him to have spun a false prophecy after the fact. In the end he goes with 65-70 as the dating (Studying Synoptic Gospels, p. 21 Sanders and Davies)

Hengel thought Mark 13 reflected the the year of the four emperors in 69 C.E., not te destruction of the temple.

All traditional authorship is bogus save possible Luke which is a longshot.

I believe the thread between Peter and myself is still here and my article on the dennigration of the disciples is always online:

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/markmary1.html

Its resolved now that I corrected you again. Not "everyone knows Mark dates After 70. C.E. Everyone (except maybe one or two) knows Mark dates to ca 70 C.E. as I stated. Don't tell spin though.

1. The text of Mark shows a nearness to events around 70 as virtually every scholar agrees. Could come before or after depending on your interpretation. Some suggested people outside Palestine might not have heard of details of the revolt and whther the fall of Jerusalem warranted symboplic mention but the attention Josephus and Jewish apocalypes give to it "lead others to object that Christians with Jewish roots could scarcely have ignored the symbolism of these events after thet had occured."
2. Mark has a prophecy of Jesus. It does appear to be precisely fulfilled as we would expect for after the fact creation. It could come from before or after 70. Possibilities include Jesus having actually said it or Mark could have made it up after the fact not knowing details of the temple destruction as he wrote outside Palestine.
3. It has nothing in it which must be dated later than this. The rule is against authors supressing knowledge of recent events unless an explantion can be provided for why.
3. Two Gospels both made extensive use of Mark no later than ca. 100 (my dating is a range of 80 - 105 for both).
4. Sanders says that given internal statements Mark was written near the end of the first generation of Jesus' followers. Some must have still been alive.

Everything points to 70. C.E. Koester notes that the latest possible date for Mark is 70-80. 80 is a bit late as the conseunsus goes but given its the upper limit over a decade period he is still in the ballpark. Not to mention his dating of ca 100 is a little later than most scholars who date each work a decade or so earlier. That is stil lballpark as well though.

Everyone knows Mark most likely dates to ca 70 C.E. and the reasons are also well known why. Who was the smart chap that said that earlier?

Vinnie

Amaleq13

That there are scholars willing to offer specific speculations for the dating of Mark does not change the speculative nature of the guess. The fact remains that most favor a date after 70CE though the word "shortly" shows up quite frequently.

Gosh, all this talk about the speculative dates attributed to Mark's authorship almost made me forget the numerous unsubstantiated assertions you've made in this thread.

Spenser

This thread was about Paul and the Gospels so the time including them...

Link to time table

rlogan

Clutch- always grateful for help, thank you.

edited to add: at least I should be, anyway.

Peter Kirby

rlogan, I will start a new thread this weekend.

best,
Peter Kirby