Rick Sumner

I think he simply gazed at his audience and said "THIS GENERATION."

That means his audience was the generation in question. That means it was written while that generation was still alive. There wouldn't be much point to him saying it otherwise.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Amaleq13

You missed the point that it was not a problem "a few generations later" because the author's audience was in church not a history class. They were listening to a sermon, not a lecture on The Life and Times of Jesus Christ.

Because "one generation" is the author's target audience (ie his own).

Exactly and his audience didn't say to themselves "Hey, how could Jesus have been talking about us when we weren't there when he said it?". That is retrojecting much later literalism where it doesn't belong. What the author read to them was theologically true and historicity was ultimately irrelevant.

This is correct but you still seem to be missing the point. "His" audience and generation is the one including the author of Matthew. Whether Jesus actually lived 50 years previously or 150 years or was a mythical construct is entirely irrelevant to author's purpose of having Jesus address the current generation. It only becomes a problem if you insist on reading the story as though it were history rather than a theoligical narrative. It is a story that brings to life a specific theology. The fact that the author of Matthew felt free to change the original version of the story, including adding information, should be sufficient to disabuse one of that notion.

The fundamentalists are wrong to interpret this story literally and critics, myself included, are wrong to question it on that basis as well.

Rick Sumner

You've missed my point. He adds exactly one generation consistently--not Jesus' generation, but the one after.

I agree. The one generation is his audience. His own. The one generation consistently added to the generation contemporary with Pilate and Caiaphas.

Of course they didn't. They didn't need to, the quote being used *was* about them.

Here's the dillemma--later Christians had to adapt to it because they followed Matthew, but Matthew wrote the story--who is he following?

He's not following Mark--he adds one more generation. "Not this generation, the next one."

So who is he following? And why?

You're missing the point. He doesn't say "A generation," he doesn't say "this generation." Matthean redaction is identified by "the next generation." The children of the people contemporary with Pilate and Caiaphas. He employs this consistently--"his blood be on us and our children," for the most obvious example.

I'm afraid they're not wrong to do so at all. Matthew wrote that it would be one generation after the generation contemporary with Pilate. If he was writing this for his audience, and his audience wasn't one generation after Pilate, then we have no recourse but to presume Matthew was an utter fool.

He's the ground zero for his gospel. The audience--the generation named in it--has to be his contemporaries, as you yourself has noted repeatedly.

He tells us when that generation lived, quite clearly, emphatically, and repeatedly. You would have it that he made up a verse that runs to the effect that "You won't do X, your children will," when their children were already dead, their children's children likewise dead. That makes no sense. Again, why would Matthew make that up?

You don't just get to say "Oh, well, it wasn't important to him," and think that suffices. You don't get to point to people who follow Matthew and think that suffices either. Again, Matthew is ground zero for the story, you need to explain why he wrote it, not why later people interpreted it.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

rlogan

Perhaps this word "primarily" is a sticking point. Paul wrote no books. His legacy is these letters. It is a notable distinction for the time.

Josephus, Pliny the Younger or whomever wrote tracts as well as letters. They are more so acknowledged for their greater works.

Again, in that time literacy alone is grounds for distinction. As a religious leader writing across regions - all the more so.


By this time of course literacy was much more common. A comparison between the 1st and 18th century on this score is preposterous. Likewise, a discovery of literacy in the Neanderthal would be an explosive event.

Of course it matters who they were, yes.


Heinous?

Oh shucks - the "Christian" tradition of fabrication, for example, extends far back into the old testament with concoction of the Exodus and Moses as author of the pentateuch & etc.

Taking whatever they write as history or governed by strict adherence to logic is silly. We have thousands of years of evidence to the contrary.


Oh, from a political or marketing perspective I can see the diminishing returns aspect to adding more than one generation. Beyond that, there isn't much point.

Well, I think I made it pretty clear that all of the other evidence must be brought to bear on the question, and this is definitely not my argument.

The "therefore it is late" conclusion is based on a complete lack of contemporary attestation to any gospels whatsoever, a lack of fragments, and etc.

The business of "invention" also depends on a lot of other things I have discussed elsewhere. Certainly the slaughter of the innocents, the miracles, and much other material is fiction. The mining of the Hebrew Bible for construction of the Jesus myth is so obvious as to beg the question what is left of Jesus after we take out the HB mining.


Well, yes external evidence would be awesome.

A fragment dated to 70 A.D. would be sufficient.

regards to you too...

Rick Sumner

Is anyone else noted for their letters from the time? Uniformly, of course, because if there are exceptions it's a specious methodology.

Likewise Paul. Why would Luke, with his flagrant theological motivations, be more concerned with Paul the letter writer than Paul the convert who founded churches?

Excellent. Then you should have no trouble finding a parallel.


Excellent. Then you should have no trouble finding a parallel. Indeed, everyone who wrote letters should get a mention.

Who was it who Paul had write for him when he dictated?

Maybe not so distinguishable after all?

Did Christians come up with that?

You can't look at the behavior of a sect that's been in existence for some time as evidence of the behavior at the origin. That's an anachronism.


Why wouldn't there be much point? Shouldn't we expect Matthew to bring it up to the present?

Excellent. So bring some evidence to bear on this that doesn't begin with the presupposition that the gospels are fiction.

I could care less if they're fiction. We should still expect Matthew to bring it up to the present. I'd suggest that's exactly what he does.

You know of anyone who mentions the Teacher of Righteousness?

It's also so overstated as to beg the question of why anyone bothers anymore. If a verse has a rough parallel anywhere in Hebrew scripture, the cry of midrash goes up at once. A ridiculous state of affairs that certainly isn't relegated to the Jesus-Myth. On another board I cited Brown's mammoth 1000+ page commentary on the Passion Narrative alone as probably the best attestation of this tendency.

One dated later would be dandy too, if it could be identified as the first copy. Apparently neither of us will get our wish.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Ted Hoffman

Habakkuk 2:3 says the one who was to come has delayed and exhorts people to just wait a little longer. Habakkuk is dated between 609 and 598 BCE.

Ponder the implications of that.

Amaleq13

Where does he identify his generation as the one after that of Jesus?

You're still pretending the story is a history book.

You have this in quotes as though it comes from Matthew but not the specific location. As far as I can tell, he does follow Mark as far as the temporal setting of the story.

The phrase "our children" can hardly be assumed to be limited to the immediately subsequent generation. That is simply continuing the error of reading the story too literally. I see no reason why it cannot be understood to refer to all subsequent generations.

There is no obvious reason to interpret this passage so literally. Just as there is no obvious reason to interpret any of it literally.

On the contrary, we need only assume he was not so literally minded. He seems to me to be a bit more imaginative than that.

Where is this verse? The only one you have explicitly referenced is one where he portrays the Jews contemporary with Jesus and all subsequent generations as accepting the blame for the death of the Messiah. This does not appear to correspond to what you have here.

Ted Hoffman

Rick,
'Paul was a skilled letter-writer. Apparently, he was more powerful as a letter-writer than he was as a speaker. In 2 Cor. 10.10, we read that Paul’s opponents have made the charge, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.� '

Its my belief that the communities or churches in Corinthians, Thessalonica etc. received his letters and preserved them. The 'churches' who received the letters shared copies with each other. And gradually, the epistles became circulated within the mainline Christian movement, and were often read during services, at churches throughout the known world.

The letters can be considered to be the main 'product' of Paul and would justly be credited to him. His messages probably formed part of their liturgy - as in they read out his letters to the congregations. I would expect anyone who know about him to have known about his contribution to the christian communities in terms of letter writing. Besides, not everyone else was writing letters to the christian communities. Any art or craftmanship one engaged in became part of their identifying quality.

In a world where a number of people were identified with their strongest attributes (e.g. James the Just) or their 'occupation' e.g. John the Baptist, its reasonable to expect one writing about Paul to note that he was a letter writer. It was his legacy.

Your chosen position on this is polemical at best.

No.
See above. It was common practice. They didn't have computer programmers and sex therapists then - professions werent there in abundance. So being "something" earned recognition especially given his letters became distributed and brought the communities together to create a stream of consciousness.

It never took place and Paul did not talk about it. The author of Acts is fictionalizing the life of Paul. I expected you to know better than this.

By the way, which one among the ones below do you think actually took place?

1. Acts 9:7 says they "stood speechless, hearing the voice..."

2. Acts 22:9 says they "did not hear the voice..."

3. Acts 26:14 says "when we had all fallen to the ground..."

He was better at letter writing than preaching.

The very fact.

Wake me up whan you dare to make that argument.

No.
False analogies. You really should read something about cross-cultural anthropology.

Amaleq,
Or bothered about the stink of 2000 pigs drowning in the sea of Galilee...

Vorkosigan

Here are all the cites of the word "generation" in the YLT. Jesus is apparently the only person who uses it. As for adding one generation as you claim, Rick, I don't see that anywhere. Where else does it show up?


Matthew 1:17
All the generations, therefore, from Abraham unto David [are] fourteen generations, and from David unto the Babylonian removal fourteen generations, and from the Babylonian removal unto the Christ, fourteen generations.
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 1 In context: Matthew 1:16-18)


Matthew 11:16
`And to what shall I liken this generation? it is like little children in market-places, sitting and calling to their comrades,
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 11 In context: Matthew 11:15-17)


Matthew 12:39
And he answering said to them, `A generation, evil and adulterous, doth seek a sign, and a sign shall not be given to it, except the sign of Jonah the prophet;
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 12 In context: Matthew 12:38-40)


Matthew 12:41
`Men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, for they reformed at the proclamation of Jonah, and lo, a greater than Jonah here!
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 12 In context: Matthew 12:40-42)


Matthew 12:42
`A queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and lo, a greater than Solomon here!
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 12 In context: Matthew 12:41-43)


Matthew 12:45
then doth it go, and take with itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and having gone in they dwell there, and the last of that man doth become worse than the first; so shall it be also to this evil generation.'
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 12 In context: Matthew 12:44-46)


Matthew 16:4
`A generation evil and adulterous doth seek a sign, and a sign shall not be given to it, except the sign of Jonah the prophet;' and having left them he went away.
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 16 In context: Matthew 16:3-5)


Matthew 17:17
And Jesus answering said, `O generation, unstedfast and perverse, till when shall I be with you? till when shall I bear you? bring him to me hither;'
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 17 In context: Matthew 17:16-18)


Matthew 19:28
And Jesus said to them, `Verily I say to you, that ye who did follow me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man may sit upon a throne of his glory, shall sit -- ye also -- upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel;
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 19 In context: Matthew 19:27-29)


Matthew 23:36
verily I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 23 In context: Matthew 23:35-37)


Matthew 24:34
Verily I say to you, this generation may not pass away till all these may come to pass.
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 24 In context: Matthew 24:33-35)
__________________

Vorkosigan

ichabod crane

I don't think that not knowing the day or the hour, and having to stay alert, is incompatible with a return in the hearer's lifetime. The warning to be alert, after all, was directed at them, not at some future generation of people. Given that it occurs together with strong indications that the return is imminent, I don't find the argument convincing.

I can't see how someone could think that Jesus was referring to their generation. I have only heard three different conservative interpretations of this passage. These are (a) that the Greek word genea can mean "race" rather than "generation" and hence Jesus was saying that the Jewish people would not pass away until all was fulfilled; (b) that genea means "race" but refers to the church, and hence says that the church will not pass away until all is fulfilled; or (c) that it is somehow connected to other eschatological events in the discourse (e.g. one popular interpretation was that the fig tree blossoming represented the emergence of Israel as a nation in 1948, and that the generation was therefore the generation that saw that event). None of these are convincing to me, but they are the standard ways to deal with the text.

Spot on. This is the problem that I am talking about (the reference is Mt. 16:28). It is possible that the placement of this verse before the transfiguration was an effort to explain away the imminent apocalyptic implications of this statement by making it refer to the transfiguration. However, it is questionable whether that was the intended meaning of the statement.

The other problem passage is 10:23. Jesus commissions the disciples, and ends by telling them, "When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes".

Yes, but modern conservatives have to explain these verses away, as I've noted above, because of their commitment to inerrancy. That's the only reason they don't disturb them. But someone who was creating a purportedly historical account of Jesus' life would have reason to avoid making that account contain evident falsehoods.

But what then does the statement mean? If it applies to every generation in an existential kind of way, then it loses all meaning. If I say, "The second coming will occur this year" and every year we can re-interpret the phrase "this year" to mean the current year instead of the year in which I said it, then the statement can never be false, but neither is it meaningful. It just doesn't assert anything about when the second coming will occur. It doesn't encourage alertness or anything else.

See above; Mt. 10:23 and 16:28.

It means that Habakkuk thought that the end was about to come, and he was wrong also. So what? Christians took the passage and re-interpreted it in a novel manner quite unlike anything intended by Habbakkuk. But they did that with heaps of Old Testament scriptures. Nothing new there.

Well, what do you know, a fourth method to try and evade the verse! The YLT is just wrong here. The Greek does not say "this generation may not pass away until" but "this generation will not pass away until" - although the verb is subjunctive, the double negative "ou me" is emphatic - in fact it could be translated "this generation will absolutely not pass away until". And why would Jesus say "may" when making a prediction? Anyone could do that! Yet another attempt to evade the meaning of the verse. Get yourself a better translation, Vork!

The amusing thing about all of this is that the committed Jesus-Mythers have to resort to the same kind of explanations as conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, to avoid the problem of Jesus' prediction of the imminent end of the world. Another example of opposite extremes meeting up!