Didymus

It means no such thing.

The "anachronism" is the use of an antiquated dating system that serves only to confuse the unitiated and remind us how uncool we are.

Seems to me that Common Era dating ought to be the standard.

Didymus

Chris Weimer

Why should CE be standard? It's an obvious ripoff of Christians BC/AD, thus it retains somewhat its raison d'etre as Jesus Christ's supposed birth.

However, using auc brings up another slew of problems, like which auc? I think for the time being using Varro's accepted date as standard works just fine.

S.C.Carlson

Well, if you really wanted to be authentic, you'd be reckoning dates by the Roman consulships or the regnal years of the Emperors. AUC was rarely used.

Stephen

Chris Weimer

Hey! That's a really good idea. This way, there can be no confusion. However, it does become quite tedious, and for an Historia it might work exceptionally well, for forums I guess we'll just stick with auc.

hatsoff

Is that a problem? BC/AD AKA BCE/CE is the most common dating system in the Western World. Should we cease using it because it conflicts with your desire for religious ambiguousness?

Chris Weimer

I never said you had to abandon it.:huh: You are free to use whatever system you want.

Ebonmuse

"And the presbyter said this. Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings."
--http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html

Papias states explicitly that what this "Mark" wrote was not a unified, narrative gospel, but an unorganized collection of sayings and anecdotes - probably something similar to the Gospel of Thomas. Toto is absolutely correct in saying that this could not have been the Gospel of Mark as we know it.

hatsoff

No, you only inferred that. Papias states only that what Mark wrote was not in "exact order." And the Gospel of Thomas was a sayings Gospel, which did not in any way record the "deeds of Christ."

Amaleq13

Given your complete failure to support the opposite claim in Was Mark Jewish?, I consider this statement to be more than a little disingenuous.

Papias tells us two things about the text he attributes to "Mark" and you were unable to support either as true of canonical Mark. IOW, you were unable to show that Papias' description bore any resemblance to Mark's Gospel.

You admitted that canonical Mark appears to be in chronological order and you admitted that "Peter's prominence" does nothing to make Papias' claim that the author was Peter's secretary more likely.

It is certainly not Toto making the silly statements here.

Ebonmuse

Yes, exactly. Papias states that what Mark wrote was not in chronological order, because it was transcribed from what Peter said, and Peter had "no intention of giving a regular narrative". The canonical Gospel of Mark is in chronological order and is a regular narrative. Therefore, the document that Papias testifies to is not the canonical Mark.

Now really, this is just clutching at straws. The document Papias testifies to was, as he tells us, an unorganized collection of sayings and deeds. In that respect, it was more like the unorganized Gospel of Thomas than the organized Gospel of Mark. The addition of anecdotes about Jesus' deeds, in addition to sayings, does not transform a document from a jumble of unorganized pieces into a unified, organized narrative.