Toto

There is one partial, possible source - Crossan sees the Passion Narrative in the Gospel of Peter as predating Mark and a source for Mark.

Peter Kirby

I am not sure that "independence" is a well-defined concept. Indeed, if there were a historical Jesus, then all true stories about what Jesus said and did are dependent on a few witnesses, who are themselves dependent on the actual events. What would independence mean then? Does independence require that each document goes back to a different eyewitness? I don't see anyway to prove that concept true or false, given that the names of the eyewitnesses (if any) are not given in the four gospels.

So, instead of saying that the gospels are independent or not, we should be looking at which used what as best as we can determine. You seem to have claimed that Mark did not use Egerton, in proposing (b). Why?

Also, you seem to have claimed that Mark and Egerton do not have at their origins a dependence on the life of a HJ, in claiming (a). You state, "A narrative gospel cannot be inferred from the world; it has to be invented out of whole cloth." What makes you say that a book with stories about Jesus cannot be derived from observations about real events?

You state, "Can you identify anything in Mark that looks like it came from a written source, that Mark has apparently reworked? Or identify a source?"

If I respond to this, I need to make it clear that I am not assuming a burden of proof. It is (apparently) your claim that the Gospel of Mark was not dependent on any written sources. I do not believe that. It is possible that the Gospel of Mark has incorporated a passion narrative, and it is possible that the Gospel of Mark has incorporated a signs source (such as for the miracle cycle that has doublets, e.g., the feeding of 4000/5000). I am not claiming that this is known to be true. Why are you claiming that this is known to be false?

You write, after pointing out that the gospels including Egerton have pericopes leading up to a passion narrative, "Why is there no variety in the format of the narrative story, if they have independent origins?"

Acts 10:36-41 reflects the basic teaching as it was told in the author's time, if not before: "You know the word [that] he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all, what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." If this was basically the story of Jesus as it was told in oral preaching early on, it would not be surprising that several books attempting to give an account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth would touch upon the main points, including crucifixion.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Cool.

The problem is that, sometimes, we don't really have an argument at all. Part of the problem is that non-canonical documents are often fragmentary, and part of the problem is that these documents could have developed over a period of time. And a part of the problem is simply that the documents give no clear indicator of date. This is the thrust of Andrew Bernard's essay here.

Often the dating of a gospel is made for political, theological, or polemical reasons. Witness the range of opinion on the Gospel of Thomas, with some making it dependent on the Diatessaron (Perrin, presumably post-170), some making it a compilation of the Gnostic heyday (circa 140), some making it contemporary with the alleged date of the canonicals (circa 80), some making it contemporary with Paul (circa 50), and one professor who e-mailed me making it the memoir of Jesus himself (circa 30)! How much do you want to guess this has to do with pro-canonical or anti-canonical bias and a prediliction or dislike of the contents of GThomas? I would say the greater part!

Well, modern scholarship has its own traditions. For example, several textbooks and web sites give a firm dating of 1 Clement as being 95 CE. I had seen this so often that I assumed it was based on a clear internal indication. In fact, it was based on nothing other than a statement that there was some recent trouble in Rome, presumably on account of Domitian. And there is a rather clear claim of the document itself for a dating, which is that the Temple was still in operation. If the writer is honest, the document is pre-70. If the writer is dishonest, we have no clue when it was written, except that it was used by Irenaeus. Nonetheless the tradition is strong of placing it at 95. Such certitude and exactness founded on a puff of air!

But 1 Clement is a relatively unusual case in the early Christian writings in that it does have an indication of date in the form of the reference to temple practice. Other documents don't have such internal evidence at all. So, if I am calling for a "revamp" of our datings, it would mostly be an expansion of our ranges: an earlier terminus a quo (earliest possible date) and a later terminus ad quem (latest possible date). In this spirit, I suggest that the Gospel of Thomas can be firmly dated between 30 and 230 CE. Can anyone narrow this range for us?

This sounds like you've made the mention of details about Jesus a criterion of dating early Christian writings. I will repeat what I said above: "And you can't say that it's because no Jesus stories existed in the first century, as that would beg the question. We need an independent basis for dating documents from which we can later theorize about the development of Christian literature and the origin of the Jesus stories."

I'm glad that you got the point--the exactitude of 'spring of 63' was to indicate that we really do not know when the Gospel of Egerton was written (except that it was before the manuscript's copying).

What would this probability curve be based on? There is a theoretical basis of carbon dating. What's the equivalent of radioactive decay in the case of the Egerton Gospel?

What evidence indicates that the Egerton Gospel is post-70?

Also, you say below that stories about Jesus were "unknown until early 2nd century." If the Egerton Gospel was written in the late first century, as you say is plausible, then wouldn't this statement be false? Stories about Jesus would then be known sometime earlier than the year 100 CE. For your claim to stand, you would have to mount an argument that the Egerton Gospel was originally written in the second century.

So it seems that this whole argument is predicated on a false dichotomy. That is, either non-Gospel Jesus documents were early and Gospel Jesus documents were late (what you claim), or Gospel Jesus documents were early and non-Gospel Jesus documents were late (what you discount). The alternative to this false dichotomy is that there is no correlation between the date of a document and the inclusion of Gospel Jesus details. This assumption, that the inclusion of detail about a HJ is a criterion of dating, is where you founder. As Doherty explains, non-Gospel Christian documents were written well into the second century; and as I would indicate, in the twentieth century as well. So there is nothing to say that a non-Gospel Christian document was written at an early date. And what of the assumption that all the documents mentioning a HJ are all late? That's the very thing that you need to demonstrate!

The recognition of a pattern depends on knowledge of the dates of the documents involved; without such knowledge, the thesis is not supported.

Further, if the claimed pattern is based on a dating criterion in which texts mentioning an earthly Jesus are ruled to be later, then it is entirely circular.

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

I am not sure that "independence" is a well-defined concept.

That's for sure.

Indeed, if there were a historical Jesus, then all true stories about what Jesus said and did are dependent on a few witnesses, who are themselves dependent on the actual events. What would independence mean then? Does independence require that each document goes back to a different eyewitness? I don't see anyway to prove that concept true or false, given that the names of the eyewitnesses (if any) are not given in the four gospels.

I was thinking about it in diffusionary terms. Are the gospels the result of direct diffusion -- one guy copying another? Stimulus diffusion -- one guy hearing/hearing about a gospel, and writing one of his own? That's how I was thinking of independence/dependence. Clearly I must think about it more.

So, instead of saying that the gospels are independent or not, we should be looking at which used what as best as we can determine. You seem to have claimed that Mark did not use Egerton, in proposing (b). Why?

In Mark Jesus predicts his Crucifixion, but not as an event with a fixed hour, but one with a fixed series of events that must transpire. But in Egerton, it seems more like John, where Jesus is simply fulfilling a fixed plot "And they could not take him because the hour of his arrest had not yet come." In the "render unto Caesar" sequence in Mark, Jesus is a "man of integrity" but in Egerton in the same context, "what you do testifies beyond all the prophets," certainly some inflation there! In Mark Jesus walks on water and feeds thousands, but these events are not interleaved with a parable. In the fragmented sequence where Jesus casts seed upon the water, the whole event is an illustration of a parable in miraculous terms; parable and miracle are inextricably bound up. Furthermore, Jesus claims Moses wrote about him, whereas Mark's Jesus simply makes modest references to Moses in the course of disputes. All of this strikes me as more developed than Mark. It could be earlier, but it doesn't feel that way. If Mark used Egerton, why didn't he retain any of the more developed material?

Also, you seem to have claimed that Mark and Egerton do not have at their origins a dependence on the life of a HJ, in claiming (a). You state, "A narrative gospel cannot be inferred from the world; it has to be invented out of whole cloth." What makes you say that a book with stories about Jesus cannot be derived from observations about real events?

My bad, I was not clear. I did not mean to imply a claim about historicity. What I meant was, a story may be constructed out of events in the world. Anyone could experience the HJ and then write a story about him. But the narrative gospels have particular formats, sayings + a passion narrative, and later, fanciful birth and infancy narratives. The foundation, SAYINGS + PN, is singular. Anyone could invent a story, but to argue that the writer of Egerton did not know Mark or any other gospel is to argue that she independently hit on the concept of writing a gospel that consisted of a sayings collection with an invented story frame capped with a passion narrative. That's straining the inventiveness of people. One would expect that with independent inventors, we'd have independent story formats, even when working with identical material.

If I respond to this, I need to make it clear that I am not assuming a burden of proof. It is (apparently) your claim that the Gospel of Mark was not dependent on any written sources. I do not believe that.

My bad. I do not mean that Mark was not dependent on sources. What I mean is that his gospel is the original one for that particular narrative format -- sayings sources capped with a passion narrative. I agree that he used sources.

Acts 10:36-41 reflects the basic teaching as it was told in the author's time, if not before: "You know the word [that] he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all, what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." If this was basically the story of Jesus as it was told in oral preaching early on, it would not be surprising that several books attempting to give an account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth would touch upon the main points, including crucifixion.

Yes, but it could touch on the main points in many different ways. There is a Greco-Roman biographical tradition whose formats are different. It could have been told in the format of a Jewish legendary tale like Tobit. But instead, it has this particular form, sayings plus passion narrative. That striking adherence to a particular format implies a single origin.

Vorkosigan

House of Games

Q.I.D.

:boohoo:

You all HAVE to realize what is was really like to live .....in those days!!

Humans were VERY superstisous!!(sp?)

The so called "Jesus" is fiction: PURE FICTION!!

Be well all........

NOGO

Hi Peter,

There are some items which are well established.

For expample we know that Paul's letter and the epistle to the Hebrew and Revelation predate the first Jewish war while the Synoptic Gosples do not.

Paul says that he received knowled of Jesus through no man and that the secret about Jesus was kept for ages and was finally revealed to him through scriptures.

We also know that Paul complains of teachings concerning Jesus which were different that his. This is expected when people interpret scriptures.

Sketchy but enough to cast a grave doubt on the existance of Jesus as a man.