Toto

If you're going to play the "most scholars" card, most scholars date Mark to later than 66 CE.

The "early damage to the longer ending theory" is obviously ad hoc - there was an ending that mysteriously disappeared early on, before copies were made and propagated? A fired burned off the end of the scroll without destroying the beginning? Highly speculative, invented to force the facts into your hypothesis.

The bibleorg soapbox article that Peter cited (here says about the lost longer ending:

{The author then argues that Mark was written on a scroll, and the ending was the least likely part to be lost; Lupia seems to have an answer for that, although not for the first two arguments}

Layman

Not so sure of that. "Most" I have read place it between 65 CE to 70 CE, perhaps with a lean towards the latter part of that five year period.

And could you please respond to the substance? Do you think Matthew and/or Luke even used Mark? If so, do you suppose that they wrote within a few short years after he wrote? Or do you really accept the 10-20 year delay (or more) and are only being obstinate for its own sake?

There is nothing ad hoc about it. If the analysis of Mark's gospels suggests that verse 8 is not the original ending, then the loss of the original ending had to have been relatively early. Otherwise, it would be found in the textual tradition.

Since we don't know when Mark died, or whether he was imprisoned or embarked on some missionary journey, this counter argument is unpersuasive. Heck, Mark's own copy might have been fine, but perished with him at sea, in prison, or was lost to time. And the copy that survived at a particular church that serves as the foundation for our textual traditions was the one that was damaged. It seems doubtful to me that Matthew and Luke actually used the original autograph. This entire counter rests on Mark having a perfect level of knowledge about the textual tradition of his own gospel--no matter his cicrumstances or location. Such knowledge would have been almost impossible to have.

Toto

I believe that I have already said that Matthew and Luke used Mark, and used it in an argument against your position. I have no idea how long after Mark was written that Matthew and Luke wrote - it could very well have been within a few years. I think the 10-20 year delay is just a round number that appeals to our love of round numbers, but I've never seen any support for it.

Yuri thinks that the 4 gospels were all written more or less simultaneously, and that each was edited continuously. You might have missed his Evolutionary View of the Gospels.

The analysis of gMark does not rule out the possibility that verse 8 is the original ending. If you have to postulate a strange history for the manuscript to allow for this lost ending, it probably was the original ending.

We also don't know that Mark wrote the gospel according to Mark.

The counter argument only depends on someone - Mark or a Markan community - having some interest in preserving the text. Your theory seems to require that Mark wrote in a closet and no one cared about the manuscript until the authors of Matthew and Luke independently found copies in a flea market, and made that copy the centerpiece of their own gospels. Isn't this a bit improbable? If the authors of Luke and Matthew picked on Mark as the mostly definitive source for the life of their savior, wouldn't that indicate that this text had a certain prestige?

Layman

I haven't seen much in Yuri's comments that merited further attention. If you are proposing it as an alternative, then adopt it. If you are just throwing out yet another end of the line argument only 5 or 6 people on the planet find meritorious, then just fess up.



I disagree. The difference is that I have explained my reasons. You have only offered Doherty's lame "no resurrection in Mark" and "the resurrection = the parousia" arguments.

And I do not have to postulate a "strange" manuscript history. It is, in fact, not extraordinary at all for manuscript endings to be damaged.


Yet another throwaway read herring. Nothing in my writing requires that Mark wrote Mark. I've only been using the name as a convenience, not as a conclusion on actual authorship.

Inventing ridiculous strawmen that no one has suggested helps you not at all Toto. In fact, it reveals your own drive to avoid the obvious--there is nothing extraordianry or unreasonable about the idea that a manuscript was damaged.

Nothing in my theory requires that Mark wrote in a closet and did not care about the manuscript. In fact, I was quite clear that I doubt that the original manuscript was the one that was damaged. And, actually, I suspect that Matthew may have had access to the longer ending of Mark, though Luke may very well not have.

As I said before, it is ridiculous to believe that Mark had control or knowledge of the textual tradition of his gospel. If the manuscript ultimately used by Matthew and/or Luke was damaged, there is no reason to suppose that Mark would have learned of this (if he was even alive) and rushed out to rewrite the ending.

And, you have yet to address my earlier post showing that Paul believed that the soul of the believer went to be with Jesus immediately upon the death of the believer. Given that, how can the final resurrection--which Paul makes clear is a future event--be a merely "spiritual" event. What is happening that did not already happen immediately upon death?

Toto

I notice that you have not provided any reasons for the common belief that the gospels of Matthew and Luke were written 10-20 years after Mark.

You don't think it would be unusual for a text to be so important and well known that other gospels show evidence of borrowing, using it as the sole source for most of the life of Jesus, and yet so obscure that the ending could be damaged irretrievably? The more I think about this, the less sense it makes.

I'm going to pass on trying to make sense of Paul's ideas on resurrection. Have a nice weekend.

Unbeliever

Are any of you aware that, without the ending that was attached later, Mark's gospel has 666 verses? Of course, the verses weren't enumerated until much later, so I wouldn't think that was the reason why the ending was added, it's just an odd bit of trivia.

Layman

As usual, you engage in hypocritical grasping. You rely, on one hand, on Doherty who believes in such a time period and counts on it to explain the addition of resurrection appearances, but on the other hand also rely on Yuri who claims they were all written at the same time.

That Mark was written prior to Matthew and Luke by a decade or more is one of the most well accepted positions in New Testament scholarship, from almost all viewpoints, it's not worth hashing out with you--who sometimes accepts it when its convenient for you and other times flirts with rejecting it when its not.

If you think that Matthew and Luke wrote within a few months or a year or two of Mark, fine. I don't. Most other people don't.

You don't think about these issues, Toto. You look for whatever excuse you can find posted on the internet to disagree with them.
And you do all this while ignoring the arguments to the contrary. Which manuscripts survive for later generations is not something that Mark would have controlled. Moreoever, it's not likely something he ever really thought about. To say, with any degree of certaintiy, that Mark must have known when one of the copies of his manuscript was damaged so that the ending was lost, is--simply--ridiculous.

Ah yes, Toto PUNTS. Dodge. Cop-out. The usual Toto response to a point he has no response to.

The point is clear. Paul believed that the nonphysical part of the Christian would go to be with Jesus immediately upon the death of the believer. Yet he also believed in a future resurrection of the body ("soma") that was different then this intermediate state of being in the presense of Christ. What is the difference? The former state is spiritual, and the latter state is bodily.

Toto

Excuse me if I am not orthodox enough for your tastes, but I am a thorough agnostic about most of these issues, because 1) I have not based any life decisions on them, and 2) the evidence consists of unreliable ancient manuscripts which very well could be forgeries. The issues are interesting to play around with, that's all. I don't "rely" on Doherty, but I find that he often has something intelligent to say.

All of your name calling can not rescue your position. I gather that you cannot justify the 10 to 20 year priority for Mark and have to fall back on the "well accepted position" dodge.

Once again you misrepresent my position so you can mock it. Someone wrote the gospel according to Mark. What happened to it then? It was probably used as part of liturgy. It was most likely copied immediately and sent to neighboring communities (according to The Gospels for All Christians.) It was copied often enough that the authors of both Luke and Matthew had copies, and possibly also John. If one of those early copies had been damaged, a neighboring community could supply the missing page, or the next traveling missionary could supply the missing material. The idea that the ending was lost and not recoverable would indicate that Mark wrote privately and few copies were available - but two of those rare damaged copies ended up in the hands of two other gospel authors. I guess if you believe in miracles, you could swallow that.

I notice that most of the other posters on this board have also punted on this issue. Is there some rule that I have to respond to every issue you raise?

I don't think very much about Paul is clear. It's not clear who he was, when he wrote, what he wrote (versus what was added later to his letters), whether he believed everything he said or was only adopting the language of the people he was trying to convert.

If Paul really believed that Christians who died would go immediately to Jesus' bosom, only to be called back to earth to assume their transformed bodies (maybe a celestial plastic surgeon would use silicon to reconstruct them), then Paul is even more muddled than I thought.

I am going to get around to reading Elaine Pagels' Gnostic Paul sometime soon, and I might have more after that.

Layman

This issue has nothing to do with "orthodoxy." Just the opposite, in fact, could very well be true. It is largely fundamentalists who reject the idea that Mattew and Luke wrote after Mark. Many still insist on Marcan priority. So spare me your usual "I have no interest in this stuff, I just spend day after day here arguing about things I'm uninformed about for the heck of it" routine.

My position is not in need of rescue. If you accept Matthean and Lucan dependence on Mark, it's the only position on the table. My refusal to get dragged down in a tangential, rather insignificant point, is hardly a dodge. Now, your complete refusal to address Romans 8:11--a verse that completely demolishes your position--is quite an obvious dodge. If you open almost any introduction to the New Testament, you'll find probable dates placing Mattew and Luke 10 or more years after Mark. Surely you can find such an introduction?

I don't think you know what your position is. And I don't think you really know what "The Gospel for All Chrsitians" says. I own the book and have read it. I think Longenecker is a fine moderate-to-conservative scholar whose positions regularly boost the Christian faith. In other words, he's the kind of author you usually avoid like the plague.

It is hardly likely that every travelling missionary carried with him a copy of the Gospel of Mark. And it's far from established (care to submit any evidence other vaguely alluding to a book you have not read?) that every Christian community had a copy of the Gospel of Mark in the first century.

Nothing about the ending being lost requires that Mark wrote "privately." But we don't know how many copies there were. Reproducing such works was time consuming and expense, so very silly to assume--as you have done--that every community and every travelling missionary had a copy in his pocket. Nor do you seem to be reading my posts. I think it's probably, perhaps likely, that Matthew had access to the original Marcan ending. There is less evidence that Luke did, but Luke's entire Passion Narrative shows more independence from Mark than does Matthew's. So it is possible that he did.

There is nothing miraculous, or even extraodrinary, about the proposition that the manuscript tradition that has come down to modern times lost the original ending somewhere along the way. History is full of such manuscripts. And, given how quickly Luke, but mostly Matthew, reached prominence, we are lucky that any manuscripts of Mark were handed down at all. Matthew in many ways was THE preferred gospel of the early church.

None at all. Of course, when you continually ignore and refuse to address a fatal blow to your own position, no one is going to take your position seriously. Or at least, no one serious will.

I can tell you are really approaching your last legs here. Your arguments tend to follow a pattern. The last phase of which is historical nhilism--the "we can't really know anything about history" defense. We have a tremendous amount of primary, and valuable secondary, sources about Paul. More than for most any other Jewish figure of that time. That all of the evidence is against your position cannot be turned into an argument for your position.

There is nothing "muddled" about it. Since you think the ideas of God, spirits, angels, immortality, religion, etc., are all erroneous, of course you aren't going to accept his reasoning as valid. That's not the point. Paul is clear. Upon death, the spirit of the believer goes to be with Jesus. Later, at the judgment, the body is resurrected and is reunited with the Spirit in a bodily resurrection.

You actually reading anything would be an improvement I suppose.

joedad

No resurrection in Mark demonstrates that only later in the evolution of the Jesus legend were the passion and resurrection ideas melded into a single fiction.