patcleaver

Also, Mark 13:14 talks about the "abomination and desolation standing in the holy place", but the desolation did not occur until after the Bar Kochba rebellion was put down in135 CE when Hadrian banished all Jews from Jerusalem and Judea forever and Judea was renamed Syria Palestina. Also, The original abomination of Daniel 9:27, 11:31, 12:11 and 1 Maccabees 1:54. was the construction of an alter to Zues in the Jewish temple in 167 BC, and nothing like that happened until 135 CE when Hadrian constructed a temple dedicated to Jupiter at the former location of the holy of holies (the holy place) of the Jewish temple.

There are lots of Christian apologetic web sites that claim that the prophesy of Mark 13:14 was fulfilled in 135 CE, because the description in the gospel fits the events of 135 better then it fits the events of 70 CE, but obviously Mark's mention of the "abomination and desolation standing in the holy place" just proves that Mark 13:14 could not have been written until after 135 CE. Some bible scholars, such as Hermann Detering, insist that Mark 13:14 describes the events of 135 because the description more closely fits the events, but most Bible scholars claim that it was written about the events of 70, but that probably just reflects their bias that the gospels were written earlier than 135.

How could Mark be historicaly reliable if it was written over 100 years after the alleged events after all the records were probably destroyed in 70 and/or 135?

andrewcriddle

There is an interesting old thread about this issue. Was Detering Right about the Dating of Mark ?

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

What sites are those? Thanks.

Ben.

bacht

Very interesting! thanks Andrew. I take it that the 135 date is problematic mainly because of its impact on dating other documents, like the other Gospels?

patcleaver

Thanks, Andrew - lots of good stuff there for me to read.

patcleaver

sorry, I was searching for:

135 Hadrian "abomination of desolation" Mark

I glanced at lots of sites that turned out to be Christian apologetics, but I did not think were reliable, so I did not write any notes on them.

I think Mark is original fiction that was heavily redacted over the centuries, so I do not really think it matters when it was written.

Many Bible Scholars originally insisted on 70 because P52 was dated 125 +-25 years, but now that the date of P52 is better dated between 100 and 300, the objection against 135 should not be so important to those Bible Scholars.

I think conservative apologetics prefers the 135 date because then its more likely to be fulfillment of prophesy rather then current events. Liberal apologetics assumes its current events, and wants the 70 date so they can still argue that the gospels were written early. Its all spin.

Johnny Skeptic

But are the Gospels credible history? What criteria do you use to judge the historicity of ancient documents?

Ben C Smith

You were probably right about apologetics sites being less than reliable.

But are you certain that those apologetics sites tended to claim that Hadrian fulfilled the prophecy in 135, over and against Titus in 70? Performing the same search on Google, I find that the first three results are either neutral (Wikipedia) or skeptical (Acupuncture Coyote, by Michael Turton, and Jesus Never Existed).

The fourth site is apologetic, I think, but it rather clearly states:

A.D. 70 Armies of Rome led by Titus, destroy the city of Jerusalem and the Temple as foretold by Jesus and Daniel, after the death of Messiah. Over 1-million Jews are killed by Romans. Daniel 9:26, Matthew 23:38-39, 24:1-2

A.D. 135 Hadrian installs Temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, causing Jews to revolt, in the Bar Kochba rebellion. Rabbi Akiva proclaims Bar Kochba the Messiah, Hadrian crushes rebellion, 580,000 Jews die. Jerusalem leveled and rebuilt a Roman city named Aelia Capitolina, Jew are forbidden to enter.

The fifth site is a JSTOR article from the JBL.

The sixth site favors the Hadrian connection, but it is decidedly not Christian.

The seventh site is Christian, but does not connect the abomination of desolation with Hadrian; rather, Hadrian appears in connection with disintegrating relations between Jews and Christians, while the abomination of desolation prophecy from Daniel is cited immediately before the description of the events of 66-70, which timeframe the transcript calls an obvious intersection of history and prophecy.

The eighth site is hard to place without further investigation (which I have no desire to do), but its only references to the abomination of desolation come from references to the C. H. Dodd article, The Fall of Jerusalem and the 'Abomination of Desolation'.

The ninth site is Christian, but places the abomination of desolation in our future, not in the time of Hadrian, of whom the only thing it says is:

Alexandrian Gnostics...were the spiritual heirs of the Essenes after Hadrian had suppressed the Order in 132 A.D.

The tenth site is a discussion, but one in which the only person who even mentions Hadrian is a Muslim, and even he seems to prefer 70 as the jumping off point for his strange calculation.

I am pursuing this for a reason; I find it hard to imagine a lot of Christian apologists wishing to identify the Hadrianic events with the abomination of desolation. For futurists and historicists (in the eschatological sense, not in the HJ sense), the abomination is still future. For preterists, the abomination occurred in 70. There may be some out there who do not fall in line behind these major viewpoints, but who?

Which scholars, exactly, insisted on 70 as a date for Mark because a papyrus containing a sliver of John was dated to 125 (give or take)?

Who dates P52 as late as 300? (Even Brent Nongbri gives 90-220.)

Ben.

andrewcriddle

The Gospels were IMO written within 35-80 years of the death of Jesus and are intended to inform their readership about Jesus as the writer understood him.

However, Jesus as the Gospel writer understood him, is Jesus in the light of Christian interpretation of Old Testament prophecies and Christian belief in the continued presence of the risen Christ.

This is rather different from a picture of Jesus based on critical historical investigation.

Andrew Criddle

Johnny Skeptic

But can common sense, logic, and reason be used to determine whether or not the events that the Gospels say happened actually happened.

Must a man shelve his intellect in order to become a Christian?

What makes Christianity more appealing to you than deism or agnosticism?