aa5874

Completely bogus.

Assumptions without evidence are all circular reasonning.

Look, the arrows are unidirectional because you began with assumptions and ended on assumptions.

Ben C Smith

Which gospel passages are assumed to contain oral traditions prior to (and leading to) the reading of specific statements about oral tradition?

Ben.

dog-on

That's just it. There seems to be an a priori assumption that certain "small units" of text come from oral tradition since the various evangelists treat them differently, ie. placement.

Where I get confused is that perhaps for Matthew and Luke there were additional materials that had evolved in the interim, but why the assumption for Mark?

Ben C Smith

There may be such an assumption, although if it is based on something (divergent placement, in this case) then I am not sure it still qualifies as an assumption in an absolute sense (only in a relative sense, in contexts in which the argument is not actually being made). But surely these small units are not identified as oral tradition as part of a platform for reading Papias, the Lucan preface, and the Johannine hyperbole. At least in my case, I read those explicit passages before moving on to the more implicit. If Theissen does not, please let me know.

Various reasons, one of which is that we know (using the standard chronologies and even most of the alternative ones) that Mark did not invent everything wholesale; there are traditions in Paul, writing before Mark, that we also find in Mark (the divorce saying, the last supper tradition, the crucifixion, the mission saying, the apocalyptic discourse, miscellaneous untagged sayings).

Ben.

dog-on

I will.

That Mark may have used Paul as a source for some sayings/events doesn't seem to necessitate an oral tradition, in fact it would seem to argue against such an assumption, at least as far as I view it.

Unless we assume that Paul has actual historical knowledge of Mark's Jesus, I think.

Ben C Smith

I do not think Mark used Paul as a source. (That is not to say I doubt that Mark is Pauline in some sense.) Galatians and 1 Corinthians confirm that there was some development of tradition about Jesus before Paul, and Matthew and Luke (et alii) confirm that there was some development of tradition about Jesus after Mark. Do you think there was no development of tradition about Jesus between Paul and Mark?

We do not have to assume that Paul has actual historical knowledge of Jesus. All we have to do is to take Paul seriously when he asserts that his preaching of Christ overlaps with the preaching of Christ being done by the Judean apostles.

But let us imagine that this assertion is not convincing to you. Let us take the approach that Paul made up everything he says about Jesus; every saying he mentions he either invented or got in a dream or vision; the crucifixion is of his own derivation; his only source, besides his own fertile imagination, is the Hebrew scriptures.

Let us take the approach that Mark too made stuff up; he too scoured the scriptures for the biographical details of his Jesus. But did Mark eschew everything that came before him? No! He kept details derived from Paul, right? He did not completely forge his own path, did he? Rather, he took what was given him and developed it further. Same with Matthew and Luke after him. Not even John or Thomas or Peter forge their own paths from scratch.

Now, what do you think happened between Paul and Mark? Do you think nobody invented new sayings for Jesus? Do you think nobody found even more scriptures to apply to him? Do you think all those people in churches founded by Paul just sat there and did not develop anything that Paul had given them? That is certainly not what happened after Mark. And I do not think that is what happened before Mark, either.

Ben.

dog-on

If your contention is that between Paul and Mark that a community may have begun to create some "sayings tradition" for itself, I can accept that.

I have a problem assuming a "sayings tradition" prior to Paul without some substantial evidence.