Amaleq13

Tying a rewrite of an original story into an existing genre doesn't change the genre of the original story. What applies to Mark applies to all rewrites of Mark no matter what else is added.

Based on your responses below, the alleged tool is entirely inadequate for the task.

As far as I know, there is no established reliable methodology for identifying any "history" in Mark's story except external confirmation.

The Jews were really wrong to disbelieve the resurrection which is symbolized by their disbelief for the empty tomb. Again, what makes you think Matthew "really" believed in an empty tomb when he feels free to tell the story of it with obvious fictions? There simply is no reason to think an empty tomb existed until Mark's story was written.

It seems to me that both of the above would also be true of an author rewriting a work of fiction. However we characterize the story, it isn't anything like what we call "history". So it is misleading to use it as though they did. IOW, even if they would have called it "history", we have no way to know what, if anything, in the story actually happened.

What is it, then, about "contemporary treatment" that suggest to you the authors of Luke and Matthew thought Mark's story "really happened"?

Ben C Smith

You are tripping over that word genre, I think. I tried to reword it in my last post to something like intent. I allege that if Luke was trying to write history (ancient history, mind you, not modern) and used Mark as a principal source, then he either (A) thought that there was history to be had in Mark or (B) was trying to deceive his readership into thinking there was history there when he knew there was none.

You have already made your position on that pretty clear; you think it is well nigh futile to ask how contemporaries treated the work in question. I want to know what method you would use instead in order to assess how to treat a work.

Since on another thread you defined history as what really happened, it appears we are not on the same page. The question is not about identifying what really happened in Mark; the question is about how Mark intended his work to be read. Did he intend to write history? Or did he intend to write fiction?

Yes, I misworded my statement. Let me try again. On another thread I put it this way:

Michael Turton had a thoughtful response to this:

That is how Matthew has treated the Marcan empty tomb... as if it were history.

Again this misses the question entirely. The question is not whether there really was an historical empty tomb; rather, the question is whether Mark intended what he wrote about the tomb as (ancient) history. History can be mistaken, and that does not make it fiction by genre.

(Just for the record, I tend to think there really was an empty tomb, but I am not certain about that yet, and that is not the question at hand.)

My point exactly. Making stuff up and rewriting sources is not a very sound criterion between ancient history and ancient fiction. I often think it is not a very sound criterion between modern history and modern fiction, either.

Telling a story with obviously added fictions is characteristic of much ancient history. How do we know Matthew really believed in the empty tomb? Because his defense of the disciples against the charge of graverobbing that he tells us is circulating in his own day presupposes it. John has a similar moment in his last (appended?) chapter. His defense of a saying of the risen Lord at the lake Tiberius against possible misunderstanding presupposes that he really thought Jesus spoke it. (There are several such moment in John.)

And if you think that his apologetic is in itself a clever front, I ask you for an analogy from another sphere of history (Roman, Greek, Celtic, something other than NT for the sake of clarity), one that does not leave us with the familiar options of genuine historical attempt or clever fraud.

I think we are driving at the heart of it now, my friend. When I speak of Mark in terms of writing history I am not thinking of history as we would now conceive of that word. I am thinking precisely of ancient history. I am asking whether Mark belongs with Plutarch or with Petronius, not whether either Mark or Plutarch reaches our standards of historiography.

Ah, the ahistorical shrug of the shoulders. But that is what happens when one throws away the best tools of the trade. I refuse to give up so easily; thankfully, most historians also refuse to give up so easily. There are tools to be used; I am all for using them.

For Matthew, being so much like Mark in scope and style, there are only occasional glimpses, one of which I gave above in that he appears to really be defending the disciples against graverobbing charges. It looks like he really believed Mark.

For Luke there is his clear attempt to link his work to the historical, not fictional, conventions of his day. His use of Mark as a source for that attempt constitutes either deception on his part or some measure of trust in Mark as a source (that is, he thought there was history to be had there).

I am looking into using Celsus as an example too, though he is not quite contemporary. He criticizes the gospels and seems to think they are shot through with legend, but when he occasionally tries to reconstruct what Jesus must have really been like he uses, you guessed it, the gospels as his sources.

Ben.

Amaleq13

What does "intent" mean when "history", in this context according to how you've described "ancient history" (ie "...just as all ancient historians worth their salt rewrote their sources...Ancient historians of all stripes routinely made stuff up, IMHO."), is a story that doesn't necessarily describe what actually happened? IOW, if nobody wrote to describe just what actually happened and nobody expected anyone to write just what actually happened, what the hell are you talking about when you argue that the Gospel authors intended for their stories to be taken as "history"? It seems to me that we agree (against all odds and expectations) that the Gospel authors were offering a story that didn't necessarily describe what actually happened.

I would add that, regardless of whether it described what actually happened, the faith of the author and his audience rendered it "true".

How can anyone be said to have been deceived if nobody expected to learn what actually happened from such a story?

I treat it as a story that doesn't necessarily describe what actually happened and, as I've already said, look for external support to identify the parts that probably did.

According to how you describe "history" for the Gospel authors, the questions seem nonsensical since "history" for them was apparently neither and both.

I take it by "history" here you mean "actually happened" but, with all due respect to my esteemed colleague in the Far East, I fail to see how the author's addition of guards who are magically put to sleep and subsequently paid to tell everybody that the disciples stole the body while they were asleep suggests that. Do you imagine that this ridiculous farce with the sleeping guards actually happened or that the ridiculous farce with the sleeping guards was created by the author to defend against actual claims that the disciples stole the body?

I don't know why the author chose to embellish the story with sleeping guards (Price suggests he was inspired by Daniel 3:20, 22) but it doesn't seem like a very credible defense against a genuine accusation and I know of no evidence that such an accusation was actually made.

Did Mark intend to write a story that didn't necessarily describe what actually happened? Yes.

Perhaps if Plutarch had written a story about Apollo interacting with known figures from history but, if Mr. Wallack is correct in his understanding of Mark's story, Petronius seems somewhat parallel.

Ben C Smith

You do not seem to agree with me that Mark operated under any kind of genre constraint proper to ancient historiography. Later in your post you appear to lump Mark more closely with Petronius than with Plutarch. On the other hand, I am not certain that you see any difference between Petronius and Plutarch.

Please offer an ancient analogy of this criterion of faith as a genre constraint.

They would expect to be able to find out what really happened from the story; they would also expect, if they disagreed with the viewpoint of the historian, to have to do some sifting to do so. The manner in which you describe the process seems far more appropriate to Petronius than to Plutarch.

Take the latter half of Acts, for example (since you brought it up earlier). It is my contention, under the (admittedly broad) constraints of ancient historiography, that anyone reading it would expect...:

1. ...there to be a real person named Paul....
2. ...who was really a traveller across the Mediterranean basin....
3. ...on a mission for Christ....
4. ...and who ran afoul of the Roman authorities....
5. ...and was therefore shipped off to Rome as a prisoner.

(This list is not at all exhaustive.)

Someone reading Petronius, on the other hand, would not even expect there to really be somebody named Trimalchio.

I frankly am not certain how an ancient reader would read some of the more legendary elements in Acts... or in Plutarch, for that matter. Did the ancients really believe Suetonius when he described the marvelous birth of Augustus? Maybe some did. Maybe some did not. That is an ongoing question for me.

Closer to B, though I am not certain that Matthew invented the guards himself.

Matthew is evidence: This story is still told to this day.

To really muddy the waters for you, did you know that Plutarch wrote a biography of Theseus? The difference, as he expressly states in his preface to that work, is time. The ancients knew their limitations as one went back too far into time.

And Mr. Wallack has some very good points at times, but I think most of his central understandings of Mark are figments of his imagination, and are often directly countered in the text itself.

Ben.

JoeWallack

DI:
Arise Lord VAmalek. Christianity is pleading Ignorance with regard to what "Matthew" did and claiming Evidence for Historicity based on what "Matthew" supposedly Believed.

However, What "Matthew" Did is much more important than what "Matthew" might have Believed. "Matthew" plagiarized a Story ("Mark") which makes clear that The Disciples were not Teaching Impossible Jesus and Changed it to a Story where The Disciples were Teaching Impossible Jesus. Therefore, where According to "Mark" The Disciples were not the Historical witness to Subsequent Christianity of Impossible Jesus, According to "Matthew" they were. Conclusion - "Matthew" had no evidence of Historical witness to Impossible Jesus except for "Mark's" The Disciples who are tortuously described as not witnesses to Impossible Jesus for Subsequent Christianity.

I sense the Logic and Reason swelling up inside of you which has given you Focus and made you Strong. Strike down Ben('s argument). He is unarmed (with Logic). And his Journey to The Dahk Side will be Complete.



Darth Insidious

DS - Stop playing the Apologetic game of comparing the Gospel witness to other ancient witness until they come up with an example of the Original witness being plagiarized by Unknown people who didn't know the Unknown Original author and Change the Primary original theme From Insiders not knowing the Subject to Insiders knowing the subject.

Ben C Smith

At least two gospel authors are not any more unknown than most ancient historians, and what we would call plagiarism was not uncommon amongst the ancient historians (for example, 2 Maccabees plagiarized and condensed an earlier five-part work, and we have no idea to my knowledge who wrote 2 Maccabees).

Ben.

Diogenes the Cynic

Which two would those be?

Ben C Smith

Mark and Luke. The attribution is IMO as strong as that for, say, Tacitus for the Annals.

The attribution of the first gospel to Matthew seems weak to me; the earliest evidence has Matthew writing something in Hebrew, not Greek. And the attribution of the fourth gospel to John of Zebedee seems weak, as well, for various reasons.

Ben.

Amaleq13

I see no reason to make that assumption since I consider his effort to be primarily an expression of his faith and the only constraints I assume are those established by the details of that faith.

Did Plutarch have deep religious convictions or even a strong emotional connection to the men about whom he wrote?

I assume satire reflects some sort of emotional investment in the matters related and, to that extent, I consider Petronius more like Mark's author than Plutarch.

Hebrew Scripture

Given how you've described the efforts of ancient historians, I don't see how you can make that assumption except by fundamentally changing the meaning of "what really happened". Was the typical reader unaware that ancient historians were willing to change stories and invent details but still considered the result to describe "what really happened"?

They are only present in his version of the story and placement of them assumes that 1) it was known beforehand that Jesus foretold his resurrection and 2) the idea of his disciples claiming he was resurrected required the actual body to disappear and 3) there was some legitimate concern about them making this claim.

None of these seem like reasonable assumptions to me. I consider 1) denied by the conclusion that the predictions are a literary device placed in the mouth of Jesus to justify post-resurrection beliefs, 2) is denied by even a casual knowledge of the inability to accurately identify a dead body after several days, let alone a month, have passed and 3) is pure Christian apologetic with no connection to reality. We have no reason to think that such claims would be taken seriously by outsiders or present any sort of dilemma for authorities and ample evidence from the historical record that they were not (eg "pernicious superstition").

That aside, I don't see how you could possibly consider his efforts to be anything approaching a credible defense for the accusation. Who, except an already devout Christian, would buy that ridiculous story as a reasonable counter-argument to the possibility of body-theft?

Jews: "There was no resurrection. The disciples stole the body."

Matt: "Oh, yeah? You guys placed guards around the tomb but an angel magically made them fall asleep while Jesus was raised by God. Then you guys paid the guards to tell everyone that the disciples stole the body."

Jewish Columbo: "How would sleeping guards know what happened to the body?"

Matt: "Er...um...I didn't say that my fellow Christians were terribly bright?"

Jewish Columbo: "Why did we place guards around the tomb?"

Matt: "You either secretly feared Jesus would rise or you thought the disciples would steal the body so they could make the claim."

Jewish Columbo: "Why would we fear such a ridiculous claim? Regardless, wouldn't it have been easier for the disciples to just deny that whatever pile of rotting flesh we claimed was Jesus was somebody else? After all, your boys waited over a month before going public with the claim, right?"

Matt: "Er...um...Crap. Jesus Killers! God hates you!" <runs away laughing in righteous certainty>

Jewish Columbo: <turning to his fellow Jews> "Am I on acid?"

Jews: ""Feh. As long as the Romans don't think they are Jews why should we worry?"

Matthew's claim is evidence of Matthew's claim? Interesting circle. Almost impervious to rational criticism.

Diogenes the Cynic

You have to be kidding me. I know I don't have to run down the problems with the authorship traditions of Mark and Luke for you (and I know you're aware that these traditions are not accepted as authentic by most NT scholars), so I can't believe you'd actually be trying to make a case for their authenticity. Are you trying, instead, to make an argument that historians accept Tacitus as a historian in spite of the fact that he is (according to you) equally weakly attested?

If that's the case, then Tacitus at least has the advantage of not making utterly impossible assertions.