Adam

Thanks, Jiri,
For your good critique in Post #17. I'll reply to it. Meantime, I don't get the connection between I Corin. 6:19 and Mark 2:19-21. Should I go to Vorkosigan's Commentary on Mark?

Kapyong

Gday,

So, you failed to provide "proof" (no-one here expects "proof", it's about evidence, not proof) and argumentation.

And when this lack is pointed out, you pretend THEY have it wrong because "this has the drawback of not revealing what should be deleted or changed" ?

But not the slightest hint that YOUR lack of evidence is a problem?
YOUR lack of evidence is not your problem?


K.

Solo

You are welcome: In 1 Cor 6:19-20 Paul teaches his flock: Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

John 2:19-21 : Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he spoke of the temple of his body.

The poetic parallel of temple and the body of the believers makes its first appearance in Paul's first letter to Corinthians. It is a very powerful metaphor which Paul himself seems to have authored. Note that his dictum of spiritual hygiene is followed by a reminder that the "experiences" of Christ were bought with a price, alluding to the death of Christ on the cross. Paul does not indicate that this is a dominical saying.

The parallel of body as temple, and Paul's calling the group of his congregations, "body of Christ" (1 Cr 6:15, 1 Cr 12:27) strongly suggest themselves as major elements of the original Mark's plot of the empty tomb. The women run away and the disciples (or those who champion the traditions of the disciples) are invited to repent the denial of the cross and join "the body of Christ" which is now in Galilee.

Mark's allegorical puns assume Greek as the language of narration. When Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate to ask for the soma of Jesus, the subtext is that he searches for the 'ecstatic body' that heralds the coming of the kingdom. But Pilate understands Joseph came to claim Jesus 'ptoma', or his corpse. To my mind it is highly unlikely that such complex parallels with Paul's metaphoric language and play on them would occur by accident.

Best,
Jiri

Steven Carr

ADAM
I have ignored the blanket dismissals, no problem there.

CARR
As Christopher Hitches says 'What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.'

Adam

Regarding Posts #22 and #24 above, here's from my OP to my other thread, Gospel Eyewitnesses:
"I will not consider myself obligated to reply to any post that merely asserts that there is no evidence, that I am outside consensus scholarship, or that I am a troll etc." To that I should add that I did not expect, and will generally ignore, statements that my beliefs are inadmissable, i. e. that I must not bring in evidence that Atheists would reject as impossible.
To clarify, I do appreciate and attempt to respond to specific points about insufficient evidence, argumentation, or documentation, particularly if they include indications of what is false or what improvements could be made.

Adam

Thanks, Jiri,
For your many excellent posts, this #8 excerpt above and also #17 1n #23.
Scholars take positions and then support them to the nth degree, and no one wins--not immediately, anyway. I'll present here some more general case:

Solo in #8, 17, and 23 continues the critique started by Toto in #5 about the importance of puns. All this is good scholarly argument and likely will remain so. I would like to introduce some larger historical perspective, however.
We know that there are wider theological issues than Jewish ideas from the Old Testament. The New Testament introduces magi from the east into the Matthean account of the Infancy. Zoroastrianism seems to have creeped into even the OT itself. The Persian language of the Zoroastrians in Indo-European, as is Greek, which was still dominant culturally in spite of the conquest by the more barbarian Romans. Concepts of a soul separate from the body are more common in these latter than among Jewish thought. Among the latter the soul in Nephesh, needing a body to be present in. Theological discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus would likely have needed use of foreign terminology. All the more reason Nicodemus would not have readily understood Jesus. As a second language, knowing one Greek word would not at all imply knowing a second meaning for the same or similar word.
Pushed farther (too far, obviously), the case could be made that the punning supports the bulk of the conversation having been in Aramaic and written in Aramaic.

andrewcriddle

From the account itself some interpreted the sound as thunder some as a supernatural sign.

I don't see anything particularly unlikely in a loud unexpected sound which a minority of those present perceived as a voice from heave. Therer is a parallel in the Martyrdom of Polycarp.

NB I think it unlikely that the passage here is basically an eyewitness (earwitness ?) account, but I don't think the 'voice from heaven' is good evidence against it being such an account.

Andrew Criddle

Sheshbazzar

If 'Nicodemus' had recorded thunder, it would read something more like; 'rumble-rumble boom-boom' Not 'I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.'

Bye the bye, wonder which of the languages this thunder was speaking in?

My Fundy kinfolk seem to think every time it thunders it is their Gob talking to them. (They have the most amazing amusing 'witnessing' tales!)

So take away the thunder, voice, the mass delusion, or whatever the hell it was, and just what do you have left? Only a group of religious lunatics observing an unknown nobody getting dunked. Nothing at all to make it remarkable, and as his imagined 'ministry' had not even yet began, no one in the crowd had any inkling of who he was, or what he was supposed to some day do.
This anonymous stranger as yet had performed no known miracles, had gathered no followers, disciples, or apostles. So just who was it that thought at the moment to write down verbatim what the thunder or voice was saying?

Adam of course wishes to present Nicodemus as being this first hand eyewitness.

But Jn 1:32 tells us that it was John the Baptist that had a vision of a dove descending upon Jebus.
And Jn 1:31 tells us that to John the Baptist this guy was a total stranger "I knew him not"_____and he reiterates again in 1:33 "I knew him not:"
(which is really strange when we consider that according to the tale as told in Luke, John the Baptist was Jebus's second cousin, and Elisabeth and Mary had been cousins and bosom friends whom had shacked up together for most of their joint pregnancies. And that each had such incredible and amazing visions and tales to tell! (See Luke 1)
Yet nether Jebus nor John seem to have any awayness of their mothers friendship or of the miraculous events surrounding their births!
Now that is really an amazing miracle! :-)

But back to John's account, in Jn I:34 it is John the Baptist that "saw, and bare record that; "this is the Son of God." What TF??? NO thunder? NO loud voice speaking from heaven? just Jebus's utterly weird and ecstatic second cousin making a visionary religious pronouncement ?



.

aa5874

What a load of BS. You know the difference between a "sign" and "hearing a Voice"

Why are you constantly repeating some of the very worst arguments?

Adam

Well, no, I don't present Nicodemus as the eyewitness. In Post #13 in this thread I named Nicodemus as the author of the Discourses, none of which start before John 3. Over on my first thread, Gospel Eyewitnesses, I stated in Post #38:

The raw text from Nicodemus, my modification of Teeple’s G, runs as follows:
3 (in the main); 4:20-24; most of 5:17-47; 6:26-51, 58-65; most of 7:5-52; 8:12-57; most of 9 & 10, but not 9:1-2, 6-7, 13-17, 24-28; 11:1, 9-10, 16; 12:23-59; 13:16-17, 21-22; Ch. 14-17.
To which in posts, 184 and #186 there, I have suggested it continues into chapter 18, such as verses 31-40.
We should continue talking about Nicodemus, but to forestall the impression that no others are involved in the writing of John. let me present below the fourth in my series from (mostly) my article (preceeded by #1, #2, and #13), in which I start developing Andrew as the author of the Signs Gospel. (But it's complicated. I don't necessarily come up with Andrew as the source for the key John 1:31-37 verses that conclude stating two disciples saw this. One was certainly Andrew, the other is conventionally thought to be John, but more careful study shows the other is Philip.)
II. Separation of Narrative Strands
A tendency has arisen to regard to regard the narratives in John as all of one piece through John 12, or even through the Passion Narrative (except for editorial additions). Fortna’s Gospel of Signs has even gone so far as to include the Resurrection appearance in John 21 within the source. (Fortna, p. 87-98, 237) Only marginal attempts have been made to find sources within the source. Nevertheless, such sub-sources can easily be identified.
The Synoptic materials within John are certainly a sub-source. Older scholarship regarded these passages as direct borrowing from the Synoptics in their final form. This borrowing actually was from sources underlying the Synoptics, because there is too little word-for-word agreement. The Johannine Synoptic passages exemplify perfectly the style of the source found by Fortna and confirmed by Freed. (Freed, p. 567) Therefore, the Synoptic overlap is a source within a source. We will see later that two sources are involved.

Few scholars have suggested any further sources-within-the-source. Several acknowledge the possibility, but they despair of any way of differentiating it. However, Temple has confidently identified numerous small sub-sources. Let us explore Temple’s insights.
Temple finds that the prime starting point for a Signs Source is actually a separate sub-source. The only two numbered signs in John are called the Cana-Source by Temple. He stops with identifying John 2:1-11 and 4:46-54 as the Cana-Source. (Temple, p. 37, 43, 90, 120) Why stop there, however? Most scholars continue on to develop a complete Signs Source of seven signs.

Several scholars of the 1970’s have presented research which, put together, leads to firm conclusions. From Temple let us turn to Nicol, then to Freed, then to von Wahlde.
Nicol has carried on the stylistic research of Ruckstuhl, Schweizer, and his opponents, such as Fortna. Nicol studied the relative proportion of Johannine stylistic characteristics in various passages. The specific passages which are stylistically neutral (Synoptic style, we might say) include Temples’s Cana-Source. The additional passages with phenomenally low (1.0 or less) Johannine style include John 1:35-51;4:1-9, 16-19, 27-30, 40, 43-45; 5:1-9; 6:16-25; 9:1-2, 6-7; 11:1-6, 11-17, 33-44;12:1-8, 12-15. (Nicol, p. 25-26) Subtracting the Synoptic section (6:16-25) included herein, the expanded tentative Cana-Source becomes almost a full Signs Source.

Freed’s criticism of Fortna’s Gospel of Signs confirms the above. Freed discovered that the signs Source used rare words not found elsewhere in the Bible. Starting with these hapax legomena found in the Cana-Source, antlein leads into John 4 (though not to just the verses picked by Nicol); John 2:8, 9; 4:7, 11, 15. Likewise, hydria links them: John 2:6, 7; 4:28. John 5 and 9 are linked by kolymbethra: 5:7; 9:7. Other rare words occurring twice are krithinos (6:9, 13), epichriein (9:6, 11), and litra (12:3, 19:39). Other rare words occur only once in the Bible in this proposed source at John 2:6; 4:9, 35, 52; 5:2, 13; 9:1, 6, 8; 11:11, 13, 35, 39(2), 44. Twenty-one out of Freed’s 73 rare words occur in a proposed strand (much smaller than Fortna’s source) barely 10% of the entire gospel. (Freed, p. 570-72) Careful study of Freed’s table compared with Nicol’s dictates slight modification of the Signs Source at this point, however.

What of the remainder of narrative usually included by critics in the Signs Source? Perhaps more mixture of Johannine editing exists in these sections. Is there a style which characterizes specifically the Source narrative which is not in the Signs Source?
Urban von Wahlde provides the key for identifying “Source” narrative outside the Signs Source. He separates “earlier” “P-Material” from ”J-material,” based upon the use of the words “Pharisee” or “Jew”. Von Wahlde’s results do not coincide with Fortna’s. The term “Pharisee,” if recovering a source, distinguishes a source separate from the Signs Source. None of the Nicol Source passages contain the word “Pharisees.” Nevertheless, there is overlap with Fortna’s Signs Gospel. The P-Material extends, however, into the discourse sections. The parts of the discourse chapters where “Pharisee” occurs are not in the discourses proper. Whereas Jesus is quoted in these chapters saying “Jews” quite often, he never says “Pharisee.” This accompanying narrative to the discourses is identified by Howard Teeple as being in the Source to be recognized. (Teeple, Ch. 12) Von Wahlde and Teeple are basically compatible. Putting their work together, we obtain a narrative “source” which is interwoven with discourses and with Nicol’s Signs Source narrative. But if the Signs Source is removed from Teeple’s and von Wahlde’s larger suggested Source, the remainder [exclusive of the Passion Narrative] looks like the work of an editor. Not to pre-judge the case, let us call it the “P-Strand.”

What are the “P-Strand” sections and what is their nature? The world “Pharisee” occurs first at John 1:24, and it recurs at 3:1 and 4:1, but in the latter more as editorial introductions. “Pharisee” comes into intense use in John 7, and then again in small parts of John 9, 11, and 12. The word ochlos for “crowd” or “people” is often associated, though also coming from source dialogues not included below. A preliminary rendering of the “P-Strand” is thus John 1:19-31; 3:1a; 4:1a; 7:25-27, 31-32, 43-49; 8:13a; 9:1, 13-16, 24-28, 40a, 11:46-50, 55-57; 12:12, 17-22, 42-43. (Von Wahlde discourages attempts to differentiate P-Material beyond John 18:15.) Other than John 1, this is obviously the work of an editor.

The P-Strand per above apparently includes the names Andrew and Philip at John 12:20-22 repetitively. The word use in these verses is strikingly similar, however, to the pattern of John 4:11, 31, 33, 40, 42, 47b; 11:21. These verses more readily identify with the Signs Source. Let us remove these verses from the P-Strand and explore whether the names Andrew and Philip can be related to the Signs Source.