jlowder

I could be wrong, but it seems to me the point you bring up is not strictly relevant to assessing the probability of a Sanhedrist burying Jesus. At a very simple level, we are comparing two hypotheses. According to the first, Jesus really was buried in some sense (either honorably or dishonorably). According to the second, Jesus was not buried (and therefore all accounts of his burial are legends). Suppose the second hypothesis is true (and the stories of Jesus' burial are Christian inventions), then the author of Mark also could have written the story in such a way that at least one of the disciples had not abandoned Jesus at his arrest. The point is that if we are going to say that the gospel authors felt free to just invent whatever stories they felt like, then the very point you bring up loses its evidential force -- at least, that is the way it seems to me.

Regards,

Jeffery Jay Lowder

jlowder

I agree, but I don't understand the relevance of this point to the hypothesis that Joseph dishonorably buried Jesus in the graveyard of the condemned. I think it is far from obvious that Joseph would have risked his career by burying Jesus dishonorably, since he would be acting in accordance with Jewish burial customs for condemned criminals. As far as the Romans are concerned, if Jesus was buried at all, it was because the Romans authorized Joseph to do so. As I state in my paper, while rare, there are documented instances in non-Christian writings of the Romans allowing crucifixion victims to be buried.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

Vorkosigan

McCane's position depends on accepting the Gospels as containing this kernel. Unfortunately he advances no arguments, except a version of the embarrassment criterion, which is only valid if there is history there.

http://members.tripod.com/enoch2112/ByronBurial.htm

• "In view of this clear tendency, one characteristic of the burial narratives stands out as strikingly significant: the canonical Gospels depict Jesus' burial as shameful. Even though they take obvious steps to dignify the burial of Jesus, these documents still depict a burial which a Jew in Roman Palestine would have recognized as dishonorable. For in every Gospel up to the Gospel of Peter, Jesus is not buried in a family tomb, and he is not mourned."

Of course, if the writer is (a) unaware of Jewish customs -- as the writer of Mark probably is; or (b) the writer is producing fiction and really does not give a flying f*** in a rolling donut about Jewish customs, or (c) the writer has omitted mourning deliberately because, in Mark, death is a metaphor for baptism and no mourning is necessary, then McCane's arguments do not apply. The embarrassment criterion won't work unless you assume that it is true. In which case you merely discover your own axioms.

McCane even undercuts his case by noting that mourning is depicted elsewhere in Mark. Since there is no mourning and yet the author knows what it is, the author must have omitted it on purpose. McCane's strategy of leaning on the embarrassment criterion is invalidated again, if the depiction of a "shameful" death is one of the narrative strategies of the author.

Vorkosigan

jlowder

FYI to all -- I will probably be away from this thread for a few days. I've enjoyed the conversation immensely!

Diogenes the Cynic

Jesus being buried in a common grave by the Romans is also consistent with the statement that "Jesus was buried" (a statement I assume you're taking from Paul). Why is it necessary to presume any historicity for J of A at all? How would Joseph as a Markan invention be inconsistent with anything Paul said or with any pre-Markan literature at all?
Let me clarify. Neither Joseph of Arimathea or the empty tomb story is found in any Christian literature before Mark. There is no independent attestation for either of those claims. They're not in the Pauline corpus, they're not in Q and (if you believe in early authorship), they're not in Thomas. When you ask me to prove my assertion, you're asking me to prove a negative. All I can do is turn this back around and ask you: can you demonstrate that there was any Christian belief for either an empty tomb or for Jospeph of Arimathea befor Mark's Gospel? If we can't find any prior or independent attestation for the empty tomb or for Joseph of Arimathea, then why should Markan invention not be preferred as the the most likely explanation? That is really the crux of all my questioning to you. To put it another way, how would the non-existence of Joseph or the lack of an empty tomb conflict with any (known) pre-Markan Christian claims?
I understand what you're saying but I don't think it's that simple. If we hypothesize an unknown or ignoble disposal of Jesus' remains then it is not problematic to explain why Mark would invent a proper burial in a rich man's tomb. The fact that he did not choose a disciple can be explained (I would argue) by the fact that GMark is anti-apostolic. The author is hostile to the disciples, repeatedly depicts them as not understanding Jesus, paints them as cowards who not only betray Jesus to the Romans (at least one of them does) but who also run away and deny knowing him when he's arrested. Most significantly, Mark does not allow any of the disciples to bear witness to, or even be made aware of the empty tomb, nor are they given any redemption. They abandon Jesus and that's it. The only witnesses to the empty tomb are the women, who Mark says were too afraid to tell the disciples.

Having a disciple do the burying would have been more problematic from Mark's persepective than having a rich "counsellor" do it.

By the way, do you find Paul's statement that Jesus was "buried" to be historically meaningful or useful? For one thing Paul claims to have received that knowledge by "revelation." For another thing, that would not conflict with any assumption (or even knowledge) by Paul that Jesus had been buried in a criminals' grave by the Romans.

Amaleq13

I think you are. My point directly follows from your description of your reasoning:

"...if the gospel authors were going to fabricate a story about Jesus' burial, one would expect them to have one of the disciples do the burial, not Joseph."

As I've already pointed out, the established plot precludes the option of burial-by-disciple. I was mistaken before and Mark's author is as explicit as subsequent authors in asserting the scriptural basis for the need for abandonment. This establishes it as an external restriction on the author's creativity.

That isn't my understanding of the second hypothesis. I think it is better stated as: the fate of Jesus' body was unknown to anyone friendly to the disciples.

No, this is where you go wrong. The author couldn't make this change because he apparently believed that Zechariah 13:7 was a messianic prophecy in need of fulfillment.

My point is that the author was not free to "just invent whatever stories they felt like" so that eliminates your point.

The author had to depict the Messiah being abandoned.

The author had to establish a known and respectable location for Jesus' body despite the above abandonment.

I don't see how the author could do anything except introduce an unprecedented character to provide a tomb. The character appears out of nowhere, obtains the body, entombs the body, then disappears entirely from the story. It is, admittedly, a rather lame plot device but there is certainly no good reason to think it is historical and every reason to think it is a deliberate fiction intended to rescue the author from a scripturally-created plot problem.

Ted Hoffman

For starters, you use the expression: "embarrassing to the Christian church". Meier defines sayings that meet the EC as those that would have "created difficulty for the early Church." Well, the Christian church did not write the gospels: they appropriated them.
Thus the EC is disconnected from texts it is supposed to help evaluate. It is like determining historical fact using opinion polls. It is therefore a flawed criterion from the get go.

Secondly, there is no objective methodology for determining what was or was not embarrasing to the Christian Church: typically, modern Christians project what they find embarrassing back to the unknown authors of the gospels in a retrograde fashion. The baptism of Jesus by JBap for example, which they claim is embarrassing, fitted Mark's adoptionist Christology perfectly.

As has been alluded by others, J of Arimathea was a kind of deus ex machina that was employed by the author of Mark to move the plot further. In some ancient Greek dramas, apparently insoluble crises were solved by the intervention of a god. We are not told much about J of Arimathea and he is gone as soon as he is introduced. And he is introduced to take away the body of Jesus.

J of Arimathea also serves the Markan theme of faith because it shows that even if one is a member of a benighted group like the Sanhedrin, they can still be part of "the way" of God, or find God - who we are told, J of Arimathea was seeking.

In addition, J of Arimathea's introduction ensures, as Vork has noted, that the craven and disloyal disciples dont get to know where Jesus was buried, hence serving another Markan theme.

Using names with theological significance is a Markan style of writing (see Capernaum etc). Joseph of Arimathea, as Carrier has argued, can be translated to mean "Joseph of Bestdoctrine". This is further proof that the scene (Joseph, Jesus and Joseph taking Jesus body) is fictional.

ynquirer

This is interesting: Joseph of Arimathea = Jairus the synagogue ruler. This time I have checked your web site on Mark, and found nothing in reference to this. It looks like an entirely new idea. Just two questions:

1) Can you elaborate a little further? and

2) Have you found other instances in which Mark changes the name of a character from one chapter to another?

Steven Avery

Well, either you have never dialogued with skeptics or you live in the land of naive myopia.

Here is a related question. Josephus mentions the fortified town of Caphareccho in Galilee. What is the indication that Caphareccho is an actual city or location ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic[/QUOTE]

Diogenes the Cynic

You mean this place?

The "indication" would be that Josephus mentioned it. Josephus was both a historian and a Galilean. Mark was neither.