WVIncagold

go to Vegas and look how many are putting money into the one arm bandit with one hand and wringing their crucifix with the other.

WVIncagold

to bad you wouldnt know the truth if it ran over you with a chariot...i mean suv....i mean tank....

Amaleq13

As you show, one can make an argument for a pre-Gospel tradition of the expectation but not, as far as I can see, that it was something Jesus introduced since Paul never suggests it.

An early deduction/assumption from the appearances?

Ben C Smith

I used to think that Jesus did introduce the expectation, but I no longer think I can present an argument good enough to push it beyond a mere possibility. (I used to rely too much on the unlikelihood of assigning an incorrect prediction to Jesus; I still regard such an assignment as highly unlikely, but this prediction could have been assigned to him by virtually any tradent early enough not to have outlived that first generation.) Instead, I simply regard the expectation as evidence of tradition that began within the first generation.

Could be. And once the notion came into being that the messiah had arrived, even in humility or in whatever form, I think talk of the final generation would naturally start to set in. Texts from Qumran, for example, speak of what is to come to pass in the final generation (sorry, no references right to hand, but I think the Habakkuk scrolls talk about it). So I think the idea was current that special things (not all good) were to happen both during and to a particular generation of humans.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I would like to add what I consider to be another instance of the last generation motif in early Christianity. Richard Bauckham argues brilliantly that the genealogy of Jesus in Luke is structured on the 70 generations from Enoch (or from his son Methuselah, counting inclusively) to the great day of judgment in the book of 1 Enoch. If this is correct, and it does explain an awful lot, then the Lucan genealogy implies that, for its compiler, Jesus belonged to the last generation (which is basically the same thing as saying that this generation, the generation of his contemporaries, would not completely pass away before the parousia). I have a bit more detail on my genealogy page.

Ben.

DrewDiggler

It would seem that hitman is saying that the little boy witnesses a vision of the wolf before he passed away.

Here's an interesting definition
American Heritage Dictionary - paranoia
1. A psychotic disorder characterized by delusions of persecution with or without grandeur, often strenuously defended with apparent logic and reason.
2. Extreme, irrational distrust of others.

Doug Shaver

I don't assume that they contain any traditions. I think that notion is forced by an assumption of Jesus' historicity. When it became obvious that the gospels were written too late to be eyewitness accounts, scholars had to assume an oral tradition, or several oral traditions, about Jesus in order to bridge the gap between his lifetime and the time of the gospels' composition.

andrewcriddle

Hi Doug

The problem with this is that 1 Clement certainly seems to know a tradition of Jesus' words http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...t-roberts.html
My (tentative) belief that the written Gospels were not widely known until a little after Clement wrote this letter involves the (tentative) belief that Clement knew this material through oral tradition not written sources.

If, however, (as you suggest) such oral tradition did not predate the written Gospels then I would think it likely that Clement knew at least some of the written Gospels probably Matthew and hence I would put their wide circulation earlier than I do at present.

Andrew Criddle

Doug Shaver

Perhaps I should find a different way to express my view on this particular point.

What I had in mind was the conventional view of traditions that originated as stories about Jesus told by people who had known him or at least witnessed his preaching or whatever else he did.

I have not gotten around to doing any serious research into the evidence from which it is inferred that Clement was likely written before the end of the first century. Assuming that it's as good as everyone seems to think it is, then I would suppose that some early version of the gospels was circulating by that time, and that he was among the first to hear the stories, if not to actually read them.

Sheshonq

Let's talk about that stupid claim for a moment.

1. Fundies used to say that a generation was 40 years; after all, God condemned the Israelites to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all those who had disobeyed God were gone and a new generation came. That worked well in the 1960s and 1970s, because the fundies dated the generation from 1948, the founding of the modern apartheid state of Israel. Then 40 years went by, to 1988, and nothing happened - no Rapture or Antichrist.

2. So fundies went back to the drawing board and said, "Well, Israel took all of Jerusalem in the 1967 War. So maybe the 40 years is supposed to start from that time." That worked in the 1980s and 1990s, but then 2007 came and went without any Rapture or Antichrist.

3. Now the fundies are back, ready to jettison their former claims about how long a generation is, and are getting creative again. Now a generation is 120 years.

Just like the date-setting idiots of the 1800s who sold their homes and gathered on a hillside waiting for a non-existent Rapture, the modern fundies are likewise getting wrapped around the axle by the contradictions of their own making.
ROFLMAO :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: