Ben C Smith

(Ted, I hope you do not mind my butting in for a moment.)

Vorkosigan, you appear to regard pericope construction by paralleling (the OT, for one) as a clear indicator of fictitiousness:

What of the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24 = Mark 13 = Luke 21? There a firmly historical event (the fall of the holy city in 70) is painted up in brilliant OT colors. Few passages in the synoptics carry more OT parallelism than these.

C. H. Dodd even thought he could demonstrate that Luke was written before 70, on the assumption that, if the author knew of the actual fall of Jerusalem, he would have described it in more concretely historical terms (like Josephus, I suppose) instead of leaning so heavily on the LXX. You appear to be making this same assumption (quote taken from Doherty and the 2nd Century Apologists):

I could reformulate the Dodd argument along these same lines: The question is why, if Luke (or Matthew, or Mark) knew of the historical fall of Jerusalem, he chose to overwrite it completely with OT parallels and the language of the LXX.

Thinking out loud.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Do you think it is relevant that they aren't describing the historical event but creating a prophecy to be placed in the mouth of Jesus?

S.C.Carlson

Well, Josephus described another Jesus (ben Ananias) predicting the fall of Jerusalem prior to its destruction. Of course, I have not been able to decide whether that's fact or fiction (e.g. a parody of one of the gospels?), so perhaps that doesn't move the ball down the field very much.

yalla

If the person who wrote "Mark" had described the temple destruction etc as a historical event that would had completely blown the ''cover story'' that his gospel was allegedly an eyewitness [verbatim speeches of JC etc] account set 40 years prior, that the "prophecy'' was the result of after the event knowledge not supernatural power, and the whole thing was a-historical.
By using the Tanakh, this unknown person could claim the validity and authority of Judaism for his story- the "it's all predicted in the scriptures/typology" concept.

The references to the temple c70 are pretty specific in "Mark" and was clearly recognized as such by his successor "Luke" who added some corroborating detail [19.41 for example] so I think it's ''dead parrot'' [Monty Python speak for bleeding obvious] that author"Mark" IS referring to 70ce.

Now to go along with this blows some pretty major holes in the Christian apologetic line re the identity of the author, the date of authorship, and the whole question of credibility. So we get strained arguments to attempt to build the case that the author was not clearly referring to 70ce. Examples include..the desolating sacrilege is the Caligula statue [that was never built]..it was the bloke whose name I forget that desecrated the temple a 100plus years prior and the C.h.Dodd defence mentioned above.

I am currently reading Dodd's "The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel" first published in 1953. It's interesting, but when I skipped to his appendix where he adresses "The Historical Aspect" he reveals his preconceptions. In his words "John" describes.."the eternal reality conclusively revealed and embodied in an historical Person, who actually lived, worked, taught suffered and died..."p444.
Such a preconception makes it extremely difficult for a believer like Dodd to admit that the first gospel was written at least 40 years after the events allegedly described.

Ben C Smith

It may be. I am interested to see whether Vork thinks it is.

It seems, however, that from our point of view it might be a very good move to place an historically detailed and accurate prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem on the lips of Jesus, much like Daniel 11.2-39 places an historically detailed and accurate prophecy of Hellenistic history on the lips of Daniel, or like 1 Kings 1.1-3 places a detailed and accurate prophecy of the reforms under Josiah on the lips of an anonymous prophet. (Note that it does not matter in this case whether we take the fulfillment in 2 Kings 23.15-18 as genuine history; what matters is that it is narrated as such.) Yet Luke et alii, if they wrote after 70 (as I think at least two of them did), passed by such an opportunity (especially if any of them knew the Jewish Wars of Josephus!) in favor of echoing the LXX. Why?

If echoing the scriptures was that important to them, then what does that do to any presumption that they should have described historical events purely as historical events, minimizing the connections to the OT?

I would like to use gospel material that is not predictive prophecy as an example that would eliminate the potential interference that you point out, Amaleq, but unfortunately the candidates that come to mind (the crucifixion of Jesus, for instance, which I myself take to be a brute fact of history, yet painted in OT colors as usual) might not be above suspicion as history in a discussion on this board (we might get sidetracked by arguments that the Testimonium is a total fabrication, the note in Tacitus is either fabricated or based on faulty information, Mar Saba is referring to somebody else, and so forth; I have not yet seen, on the other hand, any attempt to deny that Jerusalem fell in 70).

Another observation. Luke tells us point-blank in the book of Acts that Christians were the sort of people who might see something happen and then turn around and describe it almost exclusively in terms of OT prophecy. Pentecost is a case in point. In the narrative, Peter sees the phenomenon of tongues of flame and a miracle involving language translation, but when he stands to speak about it, he quotes Joel at length about dreams and visions and signs in the heavens, none of which literally describes the scene before him. (Note again that it does not matter to the argument whether we think any such thing really happened at Pentecost circa 30; what matters is that Peter is presented as the kind of person who would refer to a concrete event in terms of OT prophecy.)

If the early Christians habitually pointed up events, whether fictional or nonfictional, in OT terms, then the utility of OT parallelism as a criterion for fictitiousness is greatly compromised.

Thanks for the insightful comment.

Ben.

TedM

I would find the inability of Jesus to perform miracles in his hometown, and the apparant defense of Jesus to his relationship to David and the fact that so many of the miracles were not witnessed by people as puzzling and unnecessary since the main figure of the story is presented as some kind of wonderful hero. I'm not as widely read as you--can you give examples of other hero's in fiction who are represented as diety but who have evidence that goes against that? These puzzles are solved by the idea that the book's author felt like he HAD to address them as a response to readers who knew the real history already.


The people, places, and events are taken from real history so I would at least wonder if they were made into a fictional story or not. How many examples in all of literature do we have of a work the size of Mark that places a diety/wonder-worker in specific historical places and interacting with known persons who lived just some 30-50 prior to the writing--possibly just 10 years after the deaths of prominent leaders in the faith who taught of the same figure as only a heavenly diety to thousands of followers? Since we have ZERO evidence that Mark's audience were 'in on' the farce and the ONLY evidence we have is that it was taken as a serious work of history/biography then I'd like a comparable piece in other literature that shows that Mark probably could have gotten away with fooling people who would have cared whether it was a historical truth or not.

ted

Amaleq13

I will offer the following prophecy:

Vorkosigan will state that the author's reliance upon Hebrew Scripture does not establish the story to be fiction so much as it denies that it can be asserted as history. So let it be written, so let it be done.

It seems to me that your point would be valid if the author was describing the fall of Jerusalem and chose to use Scripture but that isn't really what he is doing. What is being described is the prophecy allegedly uttered by Jesus and the only way your question works in that context is if we know that the prophecy is a historical fact. Do you see what I mean?

Perhaps there really was a guy named "Jesus" who spoke a prophecy about the destruction of the Temple but it seems just as possible that Mark's author might feel compelled to put such a prediction in the mouth of his Lord after the fact. Would a historical Jesus have phrased such a prophecy in Scriptural terms? Possibly. Would an author have continued to rely on Scripture to recreate a historical prophecy that nobody recorded verbatim? Probably. But it also seems probable that this same author would have continued to rely on Scripture to fabricate a prophecy that was never actually spoken.

I agree but I consider it to be a more effective as argument against any alleged historicity of the story than a confirmation of fiction.

Amaleq13

What evidence are you thinking of here?

I would suggest that the treatment of Mark by the authors of Matthew and Luke is evidence that it was not taken as a serious work of history/biography but as a story that could be modified to fit a given author's differing beliefs.

Peter Kirby

How can parallelism support non-historicity without supporting fiction? I'm not saying that historicity and fiction are the only options. But what is the theoretical basis for claiming non-historicity, or probable non-historicity, based on the parallels, without also (and priorly) claiming fiction? To get more to the point, how do you think that parallelism supports non-historicity?

Did Josephus take the Hebrew Bible as containing literal narrative or "history"?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

andrewcriddle

Jesus ben Ananias comes in the 'Jewish War' written c 80 CE.

IMO it is unlikely that Josephus was at that time sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to parody it. The 'Antiquities' in c 93 CE might be another matter.

Andrew Criddle