ible

Regarding the second coming prophecy made by Jesus, in say the Gospel of Matthew--context being Matthew 24, but more specifically verse 34--where Jesus says these things (major destruction, second coming) will happen before that generation passes away. (Parallel passages are found in Mark 13 and Luke 21.)

This verse is quoted as a contradiction between Biblical prophecy and real events. Clearly Jesus hasn't made his second coming yet, and that generation passed away, so Jesus (or the Gospel writer) was mistaken. We'll call that the Literal Objection in this thread; it is taking the text literally and seeing a contradiction with real world events. In response, literal Christians nowadays would argue that Jesus talked about the second coming while he was discussing the temple destruction, because both topics were brought up (see Matthew 24:3); the "generation passing" is applied only to the temple destruction. We'll call that the Christian View, short for the current Christian view, for the purposes of this thread.


After all that preliminary stuff, here's the big question:
Isn't the Scholarly View that Matthew was written after the "Jesus Generation" passed away? If so, why would the Gospel writer attribute to Jesus a false prophecy, and still consider him God-like? It would appear that either the writer of Matthew had the Christian View in mind (or something compatible with it), or he lived during the time of the Jesus Generation. If the former is true, the Literal Objection is moot. If the latter, the Scholarly View is wrong. (There's always a third option, that the writer of Matthew was playing a practical joke on people, but that seems unlikely.)

So it would appear to me that the Literal Objection makes sense only if the writer of Matthew was a part of the Jesus Generation; but this is contradictory to the Scholarly View, and thus should not be used as an argument against Bible coherency if one wishes to maintain the Scholarly view. Even if the writer of Matthew lived in the Jesus Generation, to me the Literal Objection isn't the most persuasive argument against the Bible's coherency, since the Christian View on the matter seems reasonable.


What are your thoughts on these issues? For now, let's keep the discussion related to this second coming stuff in the gospels, and not talk other prophecies.

(NOTE: Perhaps I am wrong about what the Scholarly viewpoint is; if so, I'd like to be corrected.)

Toto

The scholarly view is that Matthew was written after Mark, which was written after 70 CE. As to why Matthew preserved a false prophecy - all one can say, is that false prophecies about the end of the world have been part of apocalyptic sects and have never led to the demise of those sects when the prophecy didn't pan out. The prophecy is merely reinterpreted, and is always about to happen, any day now. . .

bacht

I think the mythicist position is that Christ's death and resurrection was revealed in scripture and revelation to the apostles and early believers, who awaited his advent into this world on the imminent Day of judgment.

Mark gave us a "real" Jesus who walked and talked in Palestine before being killed and resurrected, to return for a second advent. The other gospel writers took Mark's story and developed it, using the double advent framework.

sschlichter

I personally would be careful letting others define what is the scholarly view. A good blood letting was scholarly once. The "scholarly view" has been all over the board over the last 200 years on the dating of the gospels. Archeological evidence keeps interfering with the scholarly view.

I think your question is a good one. It does seem like the 2 methods of debunking are mutually exclusive.

~Steve

EarlDoherty

If the Gospels were written as allegorical representations of the community and its beliefs and practices, with Jesus a (non-existent) symbolic figure, then statements they make are meant to apply to the time of the writer and his initial audience. An evangelist could declare that such-and-such would happen because he meant before his own present generation would pass away. This was especially true of Mark and Matthew, who clearly believed that the Parousia (the arrival of Christ/Son of Man, not the return of some historical figure) would happen in their near future. Thus they were not repeating some past, now-failed prophecy.

(I consider Mark to have been written around 90, with the other three following over the next two to three decades.)

That the evangelists were not recording history, or recounting the life of an historical founder, is indicated by the complete freedom they assumed to change anything they found in their sources. And because the later evangelists clearly possessed no traditions about the events of that life before they encountered the Gospel of Mark, since no other version of this life story is in evidence in them that has not been based on Mark. Mark, of course, similarly had no life story to draw on, since the Gospel scenario cannot be found in the non-Gospel early record of Christianity. Q contains no narrative element, no death and resurrection, not even a soteriological role for its Jesus (a figure who was added as an imagined founder-teacher as the Q community evolved over several decades).

Earl Doherty

Toto

What archeological evidence?

Of course, scholars are supposed to revise their views when presented with new evidence.

ible

Of course. I am no biblical scholar, so I leave the definition of "Scholarly" up to those people. But I must ask, what evidence do you mean?


Thanks. I thought as much, but perhaps because that is because I am still in this historical Jesus framework. Let's see if I can think through one of these mystical posts from one of these other guys.



If the Son of Man/Christ was yet to come, why does Mark (or the author thereof) write about him as talking, debating, walking the earth, being questioned at trial, and then executed on a cross? You mean to say that this "first Christ" is symbolic of the Christian community, and that the "second Christ" (the one whose coming is prophesied) was yet to come in Mark's view--right? But why would Mark speak about a symbolic fellow in the first case, and make a switch to a real flesh and blood character in the second?

Your mythical view seems like mysticism to me, but I am not too familiar with it.

boneyard bill

I agree with the basic solution proposed here. Matthew was speaking through Jesus to Matthew's own generation. He isn't writing literal history. He is writing theology, and his readers apparently understand that as well. How that is to be reconciled with the letters of Paul is another story.

Paul, and even Matthew, could still believe in a historical Jesus. They just aren't concerned about the actual details of his life because only his death and resurrection are important to them. Paul even seems to think that the 'human' Jesus is unimportant until he was "raised" by the Lord to glory. Otherwise, the only important thing to show is that all of this happened, "according to scripture."

bacht

Why should we assume that Mark was writing straight history? He doesn't mention any historical events directly, including the fall of the temple. Do we know when he was writing, to whom, and why? Why can't we include the possibility of satire or parody? Maybe Mark saw early Christianity as finished, and was writing an allegorical post-mortem.

Jane H

There’s a simpler, more straightforward solution, which would explain why the gospellers seem keen to include an apparently failed prophecy. The question in Matt 24:1-3 was about the destruction of the Temple and the end of the age (i.e. Second Temple Judaism), and Matthew (+parr) continue the conversation with a collected range of related OT quotes and parables, until 26:1 when the end of the topic was clearly indicated. It’s all about the transition from Second Temple Judaism to the new Kingdom. Which was completed in AD70, within the generation.

Now as a poor, deluded Xian, I think that Jesus predicted it, and the NT writers were rightly making this prediction a feature. However a non-Xian equivalent, which doesn’t threaten those of more right thinking beliefs, would be that Matthew etc writing after the Temple destruction cobbled together a story about how Jesus predicted it. The siege engines, surrounding of Jerusalem, and removal of the Jews as slaves to all parts of the Empire, read in Luke much as history tells it.

To pick a verse as an example at random: Mk 13:23b "But in those days, after that time of distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will come falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken". This does not refer to some very nasty pre-apocalyptic weather as the Rapture fruitcakes would have us believe. A reading of chapters of OT such as Isaiah 13, 14, 34; Ezekiel 32; Joel 2, 3; Amos 8; Zephaniah 1; reveals that it is extensively used as a prophetic idiom for the destruction of a nation (such as Babylon). Jesus was alluding to these passages and giving Jerusalem and the Judaic system as the latest for a Babylon style destruction. "Punch your lights out" is sort of there as equivalent.

I could go on and argue similarly for each verse of the passages, but space...