Freethought & Rationalism Archive

JoeWallack · 05-29-2013, 09:51 AM

Which came first, the Christken or the Easter Egg? Relationship between level of religious belief and conclusions. Test case = Authorship of "Mark" ("Mark" me words).

JW:
Skeptics have long concluded (for about 2,000 years I think) that there may be a relationship between a person's level of religious belief and conclusions they hold regarding the religion they have. Skeptics also believe that corporeal people who are considered Bible scholars are also persons.

The purpose of this Thread will be:

1) To identify Bible Scholars who have positions as to the author of "Mark".

2) To measure the extent of these Bible Scholar's belief in Christianity.

3) To measure these Bible Scholars level of conclusion as to a likely known author of "Mark".

4) To analyze the relationship between 2) and 3).

To the extent there is a demonstrated relationship that would suggest that conclusions on the subject are that much influenced by religious belief. At an extreme, if there is a strong relationship, that may mean that the primary reason for a conclusion is religious belief rather than evidence.

So what is the evidence here? For starters I'll throw out (so to speak) R.T. France's The Gospel of Mark from NIGTC, which I think Traditional Christian Bible scholarship would consider one of the best commentaries on "Mark" ever. I disagree of course but would still consider it a great book, based on details and evidence presented. Conclusions though are a different story (again, so to speak):

1) To identify Bible Scholars who have positions as to the author of "Mark".

R. T. France

2) To measure the extent of these Bible Scholar's belief in Christianity.

R.T. France

Quote:

The Reverend Dr Richard Thomas France (1938–10 February 2012) was a New Testament scholar and Anglican cleric. [1] He was Principal of Wycliffe Hall Oxford from 1989 to 1995. He also worked for the London School of Theology.

I would describe as Clergy with Traditional religious beliefs

3) To measure these Bible Scholars level of conclusion as to a likely known author of "Mark".

Page 41:

Quote:

While it will be clear from the above that I believe Hengel's positive evaluation of early church tradition represents the more responsible critical option, I do not think that this belief has significantly coloured the exegesis offered here.

Translation = he thinks John Mark wrote "Mark".

4) To analyze the relationship between 2) and 3).

Too early to do that until we get more data.

So, let the inventory begin. Of the Bible Scholars inhabiting these unholy Boards, spin, Professor Jeffrey Gibson etc., what are their levels of belief in Christianity and John Mark being the author of "Mark"?

Joseph

SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based

ErrancyWiki

Toto · 05-29-2013, 06:52 PM

When Peter Kirby was active here, he seemed to think that the author of Mark might very well have been named "Mark." I think that the commentary on earlychristianwritings.com reflects his thinking:

Gospel of Mark

Quote:

Irenaeus wrote (Against Heresies 3.1.1): "After their departure [of Peter and Paul from earth], Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter." Note that Irenaeus had read Papias, and thus Irenaeus doesn't provide any independent confirmation of the statement made by the earlier author.

However, there are two other pieces of external evidence that may confirm that the author of the Gospel of Mark was a disciple of Peter. Justin Martyr quotes from Mark as being the memoirs of Peter (Dial. 106.3). In Acts 10:34-40, Peter's speech serves as a good summary of the Gospel of Mark, "beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached." Finally, there was not an extremely strong motivation for the early church to attribute the second gospel to one obscure Mark, the disciple of Peter, instead of directly to an apostle. Thus, the tradition of Markan authorship is to be taken seriously.

Chili · 05-30-2013, 04:12 AM

I think it was John actually who made all these mark's as forshadow for his own Gospel to make the opposites known that I would call the difference between heaven and hell.

To me gMark is just loaded with anti-christ lines that makes it pigfeed at best, but good nonetheless.

JoeWallack · 05-31-2013, 08:29 AM

JW:
Let's go to the other side of religious beliefs from Rector R.T. France to Dr. Richard Carrier who has none:

The Formation of the New Testament Canon (2000)

Quote:

The Gospels cannot really be dated, nor are the real authors known. Their names were assigned early, but not early enough for us to be confident they were accurately known. It is based on speculation that Mark was the first, written between 60 and 70 A.D., Matthew second, between 70 and 80 A.D., Luke (and Acts) third, between 80 and 90 A.D., and John last, between 90 and 100 A.D. Scholars advance various other dates for each work, and the total range of possible dates runs from the 50's to the early 100's, but all dates are conjectural. It is supposed that the Gospels did not exist before 58 simply because neither Paul nor any other epistle writer mentions or quotes them, and this is a reasonable argument as far as things go. On the other hand, Mark is presumed earlier, and the others later, because Mark is simpler, and at least Matthew and Luke appear to borrow material from him (material that is likely his own invention, cf. my review of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark).

...

Quote:

Papias's account of Mark is stranger still. He says Mark was Peter's secretary (perhaps getting the idea from 1 Peter 5.13), and though he had never known Jesus, he followed Peter around and recorded everything he said, leaving nothing out and changing no details (M 54-5). However, he did not "set in order" the sayings of Jesus. It is hard to tell what he means, but scholars see in his account a growing apologetic in defense of Mark: Mark was regarded as unreliable because he did not know Jesus, and he was attacked for being incomplete and disorderly, and so on, so Papias defends him by putting him in the entourage of Peter and asserting that he faithfully recorded what Peter said, and so on. What is evident is that this, the first historical thinking about Christian literary traditions, shows a possible corruption of reliability by oral transmission and a readiness to engage in apologetic distortions.[5] This does not create much confidence in later reports, and raises the real possibility that other claims to authority are rhetorical rather than genuine (such as that made in the closing paragraphs of the Gospel of John). But at least we now discover (perhaps), between 110 to 140 A.D., the first definite name of a Gospel author: Mark. There is one outstanding problem for these references to Mark and Matthew in Papias: they appear only in Eusebius, who is notorious for reporting (if not creating) forgeries.[6] We cannot establish whether this has happened in this case, but there must always remain a pall of suspicion. Even if accurate, there is another side of the story: the situation evident in Papias is that there is little regard for any written Gospels, in contrast with nearly complete faith in oral tradition, with little critical thought being applied.[7] More importantly, the context seems to be one where there were perhaps no set written Gospels in his day, but an array of variously-worked texts. And this picture is somewhat confirmed by the remarkable discovery of fragments dated c. 130-180 A.D. from a lost synoptic Gospel, the composition of which has been dated "not later than A.D. 110-30" (M 167). In this text, there are echoes from all four Gospels, but also miracles and sayings of Jesus found nowhere else, and it appears the author was working not from textual sources but from memory, and composing freely in his own style (M 168). It is likely that this, in part, is how all the Gospels were written. Moreover, it is possible that the canonical Gospels did not achieve their final (near-present) form until during or shortly after the time of Papias.

JW:
Since this article was written Dr. Carrier has graduated (so to speak) to MJ. Since Dr. Carrier now believes there was no Jesus, he would also believe that there were no Disciples of Jesus. And if there were no Disciples of Jesus, than there were no "traveling companions" of Disciples of Jesus. So we can safely mark Dr. Carrier as a No John Mark here. [irony] I find it interesting that Bart Ehrman, the greatest Textual Critic of all time, started out Fundamentalist, and than turned Agnostic as a result of his study of Textual Criticism. Likewise, Dr. Carrier, the greatest Bible Historian of all time, turned MJ as a result of his study of Biblical Historical Criticism.[/irony]

So, one Bible Scholar who is a clergy/Traditional Christian who concludes John Mark wrote "Mark" and one Bible Historian Atheist who concludes John Mark did not write "Mark". Are there any other Bible Scholars who have an opinion as to whether John Mark wrote "Mark"?

Joseph

ErrancyWiki

andrewcriddle · 06-01-2013, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

JW:
Let's go to the other side of religious beliefs from Rector R.T. France to Dr. Richard Carrier who has none:

The Formation of the New Testament Canon (2000)

Quote:

The Gospels cannot really be dated, nor are the real authors known. Their names were assigned early, but not early enough for us to be confident they were accurately known. It is based on speculation that Mark was the first, written between 60 and 70 A.D., Matthew second, between 70 and 80 A.D., Luke (and Acts) third, between 80 and 90 A.D., and John last, between 90 and 100 A.D. Scholars advance various other dates for each work, and the total range of possible dates runs from the 50's to the early 100's, but all dates are conjectural. It is supposed that the Gospels did not exist before 58 simply because neither Paul nor any other epistle writer mentions or quotes them, and this is a reasonable argument as far as things go. On the other hand, Mark is presumed earlier, and the others later, because Mark is simpler, and at least Matthew and Luke appear to borrow material from him (material that is likely his own invention, cf. my review of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark).

...

Quote:

Papias's account of Mark is stranger still. He says Mark was Peter's secretary (perhaps getting the idea from 1 Peter 5.13), and though he had never known Jesus, he followed Peter around and recorded everything he said, leaving nothing out and changing no details (M 54-5). However, he did not "set in order" the sayings of Jesus. It is hard to tell what he means, but scholars see in his account a growing apologetic in defense of Mark: Mark was regarded as unreliable because he did not know Jesus, and he was attacked for being incomplete and disorderly, and so on, so Papias defends him by putting him in the entourage of Peter and asserting that he faithfully recorded what Peter said, and so on. What is evident is that this, the first historical thinking about Christian literary traditions, shows a possible corruption of reliability by oral transmission and a readiness to engage in apologetic distortions.[5] This does not create much confidence in later reports, and raises the real possibility that other claims to authority are rhetorical rather than genuine (such as that made in the closing paragraphs of the Gospel of John). But at least we now discover (perhaps), between 110 to 140 A.D., the first definite name of a Gospel author: Mark. There is one outstanding problem for these references to Mark and Matthew in Papias: they appear only in Eusebius, who is notorious for reporting (if not creating) forgeries.[6] We cannot establish whether this has happened in this case, but there must always remain a pall of suspicion. Even if accurate, there is another side of the story: the situation evident in Papias is that there is little regard for any written Gospels, in contrast with nearly complete faith in oral tradition, with little critical thought being applied.[7] More importantly, the context seems to be one where there were perhaps no set written Gospels in his day, but an array of variously-worked texts. And this picture is somewhat confirmed by the remarkable discovery of fragments dated c. 130-180 A.D. from a lost synoptic Gospel, the composition of which has been dated "not later than A.D. 110-30" (M 167). In this text, there are echoes from all four Gospels, but also miracles and sayings of Jesus found nowhere else, and it appears the author was working not from textual sources but from memory, and composing freely in his own style (M 168). It is likely that this, in part, is how all the Gospels were written. Moreover, it is possible that the canonical Gospels did not achieve their final (near-present) form until during or shortly after the time of Papias.

JW:
Since this article was written Dr. Carrier has graduated (so to speak) to MJ. Since Dr. Carrier now believes there was no Jesus, he would also believe that there were no Disciples of Jesus. And if there were no Disciples of Jesus, than there were no "traveling companions" of Disciples of Jesus. So we can safely mark Dr. Carrier as a No John Mark here. [irony] I find it interesting that Bart Ehrman, the greatest Textual Critic of all time, started out Fundamentalist, and than turned Agnostic as a result of his study of Textual Criticism. Likewise, Dr. Carrier, the greatest Bible Historian of all time, turned MJ as a result of his study of Biblical Historical Criticism.[/irony]

So, one Bible Scholar who is a clergy/Traditional Christian who concludes John Mark wrote "Mark" and one Bible Historian Atheist who concludes John Mark did not write "Mark". Are there any other Bible Scholars who have an opinion as to whether John Mark wrote "Mark"?

Joseph

ErrancyWiki

I think it is mistaken to regard the passage in Papias about Mark, (and the one about Matthew which raise similar issues), as 'apologetic' attempts to defend the Gospels from criticism.

Papias writes from the position of someone preferring oral tradition to written sources. The idea that Mark is an unauthorised version of Peter's teaching and Matthew an unauthorised version of an Aramaic original are probably intended to justify Papias' preference for oral tradition.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874 · 06-01-2013, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

I think it is mistaken to regard the passage in Papias about Mark, (and the one about Matthew which raise similar issues), as 'apologetic' attempts to defend the Gospels from criticism.

Papias writes from the position of someone preferring oral tradition to written sources. The idea that Mark is an unauthorised version of Peter's teaching and Matthew an unauthorised version of an Aramaic original are probably intended to justify Papias' preference for oral tradition.

Andrew Criddle

Please, Andrew!!!

You seem completely unaware that Scholars have rejected the claims of Papias.

There was probably no such character called Mark who wrote any Gospel.

All the Gospels are really from anonymous sources and were not referenced until "Against Heresies" by Irenaeus who publicly declared Jesus was crucified c 48-50 [about 20 years after the 15th year of Tiberius] which was stated by John and the other Apostles.

Irenaeus contradicted Papias.

[Against Heresies 2.22]

Quote:

.......but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in
Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information.(2) And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan. (3) Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the very same account from them, and bear testimony as to the [validity of] the statement.

There was an oral tradition from the Apostles of Jesus that he died at about 50 years which would contradict Papias.

JoeWallack · 06-01-2013, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

JW:
Let's go to the other side of religious beliefs from Rector R.T. France to Dr. Richard Carrier who has none:

The Formation of the New Testament Canon (2000)

Quote:

Papias's account of Mark is stranger still. He says Mark was Peter's secretary (perhaps getting the idea from 1 Peter 5.13), and though he had never known Jesus, he followed Peter around and recorded everything he said, leaving nothing out and changing no details (M 54-5). However, he did not "set in order" the sayings of Jesus. It is hard to tell what he means, but scholars see in his account a growing apologetic in defense of Mark:

I think it is mistaken to regard the passage in Papias about Mark, (and the one about Matthew which raise similar issues), as 'apologetic' attempts to defend the Gospels from criticism.

Papias writes from the position of someone preferring oral tradition to written sources. The idea that Mark is an unauthorised version of Peter's teaching and Matthew an unauthorised version of an Aramaic original are probably intended to justify Papias' preference for oral tradition.

Andrew Criddle

JW:
Like Dennis in the classic Sponge Bob Square Pants movie, perhaps Dr. Carrier has said too much. But critical scholarship in general, does see lots of "Nos" (nothing left out, no changes, not in order) as evidence of apology, yes? (disclaimer - Professor Gibson should be consulted as to specifics of the Biblical Greek here).

I'm intentionally trying to avoid discussion of whether John Mark was the author of "Mark" so as not to distract from this Thread's primary objective of measuring the relationship between a Bible Scholar's position on the issue and the Bible Scholar's level of religious belief. But that may prove too tempting to resist.

Anyway, you have complied with my primary objective and voted - that John Mark is the author of "Mark". On a scale of level of religious belief, I would guess you are Traditional/Mainstream?

Related to this I would think that if one is other than a Liberal Christian they would almost be required to think that not only did "Mark" have a source of eyewitness but that eyewitness can be identified. For those who need points sharply explained (like Adam), a Traditional, Conservative, Fundamental Christian would be required to have a conclusion that the original Gospel has a source of a known eyewitness. This baptizes the question, which comes first?

Joseph

ErrancyWiki

andrewcriddle · 06-02-2013, 05:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

Anyway, you have complied with my primary objective and voted - that John Mark is the author of "Mark". On a scale of level of religious belief, I would guess you are Traditional/Mainstream?

Yes agreed.

Can I just add that I voted John Mark because I think a/ that the Gospel of Mark was written by the Mark mentioned in the epistles and b/ that this Mark is the John Mark in Acts. However I think it possible but unlikely that the Mark in Acts is different from the Mark in the epistles.

Andrew Criddle

yalla · 06-02-2013, 06:14 AM

Coincidentally I recently read the essay by Carrier cited by Joe in #4.

And the thought passed through my mind whether he would write it differently today.

Not so much because he has changed to the 'dark side' or, as Joe puts it "Since this article was written Dr. Carrier has graduated (so to speak) to MJ." but as a result of his attempts to put a date on Ignatius and the insurmountable difficulties he encountered and which he detailed in a very interesting article some time ago [I can't find it on his blog site, its the one in which he reports to those who support his book writing and he explains the delay as arising from the the difficulties in getting solid facts on early Christianity - maybe someone can find it].

We really are treading heavily in quicksand.

Edit:
I found Carrier's article

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com.a...-vexation.html

Worth a read.

JoeWallack · 06-02-2013, 08:08 AM

JW:
Switching back to the "other" side, let those who have ayes hear from the late, great, downtond, Raymond Brown:

An Introduction To The New Testament p. 159 [bold mine]

Quote:

the internal evidence of the Gospel supplies little to support the Papias picture and much to call it into question...

That the author of this Greek Gospel was John Mark, a (presumably Aramaic-speaking) Jew of Jerusalem who had become a Christian, is hard to reconcile with the impression that it does not seem to be a translation from Aramaic,

that is seems to depend on traditions (and perhaps already shaped sources) received in Greek,

and that it seems confused about Palestinian geography.

I pray that Adam is reading this.

Brown is long on evidence and you have to beat conclusions out of him but I think he doubted that John Mark wrote "Mark". Religious wise, he was a Catholic Priest, and I would classify his level of belief as Traditional/Mainstream.

Joseph

ErrancyWiki

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05-30-2013, 04:12 AM	#3
Chili Banned Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Alberta Posts: 11,885	I think it was John actually who made all these mark's as forshadow for his own Gospel to make the opposites known that I would call the difference between heaven and hell. To me gMark is just loaded with anti-christ lines that makes it pigfeed at best, but good nonetheless.

06-02-2013, 06:14 AM	#9
yalla Veteran Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: oz Posts: 1,848	Coincidentally I recently read the essay by Carrier cited by Joe in #4. And the thought passed through my mind whether he would write it differently today. Not so much because he has changed to the 'dark side' or, as Joe puts it "Since this article was written Dr. Carrier has graduated (so to speak) to MJ." but as a result of his attempts to put a date on Ignatius and the insurmountable difficulties he encountered and which he detailed in a very interesting article some time ago [I can't find it on his blog site, its the one in which he reports to those who support his book writing and he explains the delay as arising from the the difficulties in getting solid facts on early Christianity - maybe someone can find it]. We really are treading heavily in quicksand. Edit: I found Carrier's article http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com.a...-vexation.html Worth a read.

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