ynquirer

I do agree.

Enrique

ynquirer

The finding of an ass tied up just where Jesus said it would be is clairvoyance, a minor type of prophecy. Both clairvoyance and prophecy – even grand prophecy, as in the little Apocalypse – are second to miracle working IMHO.

The curse and subsequent withering of the fig-tree is interesting. If we look at it through the lens of Matthew, it seems that the curse has withered the tree, since it happens at once; one might here speak of a “negative� miracle. Things are different in Mark, though. The withering of the tree is detected only on the next day, and a relation of cause-effect may either be or be not presumed; the disciples do presume it, and Jesus neither affirms nor denies their claim. He just takes profit from the opportunity to teach something.

Resurrection is in the long ending of Mark, which is amply reputed to be apocryphal.

I guess both comments deal with the same point. I’d love to learn more about it.

Enrique

JoeWallack

JW:
Disagree. "Cross" is a mistranslation for "stauros" (even Brown confesses this to us in his classic "The Death Of The Messiah"). BDAG has an anachronistic special usage of "cross" fpr Christians. You also have evidence that Jesus was hung.

I'm afraid you need to Retreat to a position that the securest thing we know about Jesus is that his name was "Jesus". But did he have an original Aramaic or Hebrew name and what exactly was it?


Joseph

ynquirer

Oh, I see – the good old claim that Jesus was not crucified by the Romans but hung according to the Jewish law. Interesting conjecture, as it would propel the conspiracy theory up to a climatic point: not only would Constantine have kidnapped the Christian faith so as to invigorate the aging Roman Empire but also have changed at one stroke both the icon and the essence of the religion by substituting a cross for a stake, so Romanizing the whole of it.

There is only one problem with this theory, and a rather big one. Why did Pilate break the Roman law by handing Jesus over to the Jews for these to execute a capital punishment that for them was forbidden, according to that law? Didn’t this damage the imperium, whose enforcement was the major commitment of the Roman chief officer?

IMHO the question about the names in the gospels is a difficult one to answer. Bartholomew, for instance, is mentioned by the Synoptics as one of the twelve, while the gospel of John mentions one Nathanael who seems to be the same person – but it is far from sure.

When asked in Mark by the high priest whether he is the Son of the Blessed, the Messiah, Jesus – in the Greek language of the gospel – answers ego eimi. This is a rather emphatic way to say “I am.� Actually, both Matthew and Luke seem to have thought that it was too strong an affirmative reply, and they substituted “You have said that� and “You say that I am� for Mark’s shorter statement. The reason why they were so circumspect is rendered evident in John 8:58, where Jesus says: “… before Abraham was, I am.� Again, the Greek language for “I am� is ego eimi.

Jesus’ revelation here that he is before Abraham was confirms that the emphatic ego eimi is nothing but a shortened form for ego eimi ho ôn, which appears for the first time in the Septuagint, – Greek Old Testament, – Exodus 3:14. And Greek-language ego eimi ho ôn as well as English “I am that I am� or “I am who I am� both are proxy translations for the Tetragrammaton (Y-H-W-H) of the Hebrew Bible.

According to the gospel of John, very clearly, and possibly the gospel of Mark too, but not necessarily the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the name of Jesus therefore is Yahweh or Jehovah.

Enrique

Ben C Smith

If Luke is an historical monograph and Mark is an historical biography, then we have two texts purporting to give history. If Luke is a fictional hagiography and Mark is a fictional novel, then we have two texts purporting to give fiction.

So let us set aside the precise genre for a moment and look at the much broader issue of some kind of fiction versus some kind of history.
Luke follows (many of) the usual conventions of history. Luke appears to positively affirm that he intends to write an accurate account. Setting aside the question of how well he achieved that goal, let us also consider that Luke, at least for the purposes of this thread, used Mark as his principal source.

Does that not indicate that Luke regarded Mark as some kind of history? There is always the chance that he is simply being deceptive, or that they all are, but prima facie is it not evident that Luke thought of Mark and his own gospel as falling on the same side of the divide between history and fiction?

This is what I am driving at. It looks to me like Matthew thought Mark was history, Luke thought Mark was history, John thought Mark was history, and any church father who ever tipped his hand on the topic thought Mark was history. If Mark is actually fiction and never meant to fool anybody, what is it that explains how his immediate successors so badly misunderstood his genre?

Ben.

Vorkosigan

Yes, but it seems to me that Luke understood Mark's account to be fiction, from the way he edited it. I agree that Luke's introduction is prima facie evidence that Luke intended the account to be seen as history, but it tells nothing about what Luke thought. That can only be derived from Luke's use of Mark.

Here we disagree. Luke understood perfectly well that Mark was fiction created off of the OT, and using the conventions of Hellenistic fiction in his presentation, for Luke went out and did the exact same thing in Luke/Acts. There are several places in Luke where the writer combines the OT with Markan fictions to produce even more elaborate fictions. A good example, as Randel Helms points out in Gospel Fictions, is the healing of the ten lepers in Luke 17, which combines the healing of the leper from Mk 1 with the biblical account of the healing of Naaman by Elisha. That to my mind indicates that Luke knew that Mark was an invented tale. Matthew's use of Mark similarly indicates that he knew Mark had invented his tale from the OT.

As for the Church fathers, the gospels provided them with legitimation for the proto-orthodox faction. Of course they seized upon them as history! There was no indication anywhere that they were not, and anyway, they were extremely useful. But it is indicative that the least favorite gospel in antiquity was Mark, which practically vanished relative to matthew. Surely some in the second and third century must have looked around at the flood of Greek Romances with crucifixions, sea journeys, trials, city entrances, divine-like beings, empty tombs, and risen heroes, and judged accordingly.

Michael

Diogenes the Cynic

How so? It's all equally impossible. It's just as easy to walk on water as it is to predict the future. All magic is equal, is it not?

Amaleq13

Not necessarily since it may only indicate that the author thought Mark's story could be better understood or more easily accepted if it was presented in this familiar fashion.

What is Christian tradition regarding Theophilus and the author's need to clarify his beliefs for him?

Ben C Smith

This is interesting. As far as the church fathers were concerned, at least, the gospels nowhere bore any genre markers to indicate that they were not intended as history.

Where would you have in mind to look? Celsus? Porphyry? Some of the more offbeat church fathers?

I myself find it interesting that Celsus does what he does. According to Origen, he did not try to remove all the miracles of Jesus from his reconstruction, but rather only those that were incompatible with his hypothesis that Jesus learned magic in Egypt. In other words, Celsus treats the gospels as history (and subjects them to an historical hypothesis)... bad or incomplete history, perhaps, but certainly not as outright fiction from start to finish. It would appear that the gospels lacked any fictional genre markers for Celsus, too.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Then Luke intended to deceive, right? He framed what he knew to be a fictional narrative with what he knew to be the contemporary conventions of history.

I am not aware of any early Christian tradition as to the identity, nature, or personality of Theophilus. But, then again, I am not familiar with texts on gospel origins beyond about the fifth century.

Ben.