Chili

Both were an illusion, a figment of the imagination that we call mask or persona . . . and never sons of God.

Chili

Understand here that man is not Adam, but Adam was assigned to the second identity formed when his eyes were opened and saw for himself that he was naked, and so no longer naked to wit as he was in Gen. 2:25 where the no-shame image was presented to make this second identity known. I.e. we look with our eyes but see with our mind.

. . . .this also means that there is no clay about Adam as that belongs only to the naked animal man to which now the earthly or human identity is added as 'condition' only.

The second Adam is the same persona as the first except now hell bent to get back into Eden again.

JoeWallack

JW:
Here you are only addressing one or two elements of Internal evidence:

1) Vocabulary

2) Usage

Everyone would agree that "son of God" is in "Mark's" vocabulary. The Masses would accept the 1:1 usage as Markan but I would not. "Mark", based on Paul, uses Revelation to discover Jesus, not supposed historical witness. That Jesus is the son of God is "Mark's" most important assertian, but contra 1:1 "Mark" always uses narrative to show, never editorial comment.

What you have left out of your Internal Evidence category is whether the addition/omission is likely intentional or unintentional. The significance of the phrase all by itself makes it likely intentional and here is where scholarship parts ways with Apologists. Ehrman/Metzger accept intentional and since orthodox, who controlled the evidence, want "son of God", The Difficult Reading Principle yields addition. Ehrman's basic argument here is a minimum of quality evidence combined with a clear Difficult Reading Principle = likely answer. Almost everyone would agree here that if the change was intentional, than addition is more likely than omission.

Apologists are than forced to argue that the change was likely unintentional, and that is what Wasserman/Wallace/Them do. Really, if someone thinks that "son of God" was more likely unintentional than intentional on the part of the orthodox, that says more about them than 1:1.


Joseph

ErrancyWiki

JoeWallack

JW:
Next up is the Patristic category which I will rightly divide between Greek and Latin. The earliest known Greek Patristic reference here is Irenaeus of Lyons (yes, "Lyons"):

Irenaeus c. 190

Irenaeus 3.11.8

Compare to the Text:

Mark 1:1-2

The only significant difference being "the son of God". Irenaeus explicitly says "son of God" twice in his related discussion and a major theme is the generation of Jesus. It seems reMarkable to me that he would invoke the offending phrase in his discussion but not in his quote.

Tommy Wasserman, whom I've indicated is probably the most extant defender of "son of God" as original, points out that there is no extant Greek copy of Against Heresies, it has to be pieced together like Frankenstein's Monster with Greek Patristic quotes, references, non-Greek references and speculation. The underlying references to Irenaeus' quote above are unclear as to whether Irenaeus had "Jesus Christ" in his reference. Wasserman assumes that he did not (a bad assumption I think) and than postures that the missing "Jesus Christ, the Son of God" is evidence that Irenaeus was abbreviating (and as a bonus, that subsequent Patristic who also omitted the offending "son of God", were likewise abbreviating).

Ironically, Wasserman is left with the position that because Irenaeus did not quote "son of God" it is evidence that it was in his source.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

JoeWallack

What a nightmare...

JW:
The next Patristic witness is Origen (Origen's credibility by Patristic standards is very high):

Origen c. 240

Origen Commentary on John Book I.14

followed by:

Compare to the Text:

Mark 1:1-3

The only significant difference being "the son of God" in 3 verses.

The same is true of Origen at:

Origen Commentary on John Book 6.14

and at:

Origen Contra Celsus BOOK II. CHAP. IV

the same is true for the first two verses.

Every commentator I'm aware of agrees that Origen is a solid witness for Short.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

Onias

It's an addition as the original Jesus character is progressively embellished over each new edition of the redacted gospels. If we could find the first edition of the gospels, we would find that Jesus was human, performed no miracles and his name was not even Jesus.
Onias

JoeWallack

JW:
This relates to the key Internal evidence question:

Is the change to/from "son of God" more likely intentional or unintentional?

On one side we have Bart Ehrman thinking it so obvious that it is more likely intentional, that the issue does not require a dedicated discussion. On the other side, Wasserman's unintentional argument is the key to his conclusion. It should be clear to the serious student that as "son of God" is one of the most important assertions to o Christianity, intentional change here is exponentially more likely.

Wasserman's related conclusion:

Note that most of Wasserman's conclusions here are wrong/misleading:

We will see that the external evidence contradicts this statement as the early Patristic is overwhelmingly for Short.

Wrong, Short has the earliest support

Wrong regarding Patristic.

The intrinsic observation has support (as some have noted here). "son of God" is not only within "Mark's" vocabulary, it is a key thematic phrase. However, it is this intrinsic observation that needs to be balanced within "Mark" as "Mark" has a key theme of the timing of Jesus as "son of God" and the offending usage here is before the Christological moment (baptism) in "Mark". Therefore, it is the intrinsic evidence itself that is ambiguous and not in combination with the transcriptional evidence.

Here Prof. W goes straight to Apologetics giving possibilities on each side, it's possible that the change was unintentional and it's possible that the change was intentional. And because both are possible the Internal evidence is a draw. Fortunately Jewdie mind tricks only work on weak-minded fools. The test, as always, is which is more likely:

1) That "Mark" preferred "son of God" at 1:1 or orthodox Christianity did?

2) That a change regarding "son of God" was intentional or unintentional?

3) That unintentional change is less or more likely at the beginning of a Gospel?

Every answer goes against W when you properly consider likely as opposed to possible. This helps flip the conclusion to the opposite of Dubya, it is the External evidence that is mixed and the Internal that clearly favors Short.

At this time I'll also ask the Faithless if it is possible that the relationship between Evidence and Conclusion for someone like Dubstep is actually backwards. In general, the pattern here is the same for other famous Textual Criticism questions such as the Ending of Mark where Apologists claim the Internal evidence is ambiguous and the overwhelming quantity of External favors the orthodox reading. If we reverse what the relationship should be based on proper scholarship, can Textual Criticism conclusions be an indicator of level of belief?

Specifically here, we have:

andrewcriddle

outhouse

thief of fire

Will Wiley

concluding Long. Are they more likely to have Christian beliefs than the average poster here?


Joseph

ErrancyWiki

Chili

bolding mine

Good punch-line Joe, and the answer here to set Son of God apart as the anti-christ of Christians who I identifiy as "self proclaimed so called Christians" in their deprivation of the privation that they see and as a result must worship this ideal, now called an idol in their own mind, clan and tribe.

So the fire here is fed by the same source as 'seer' in the distance far from them that so becomes a deprivation that now makes them lukewarm. For Plato it was similar to seeing land from the crowsnest that never comes near as the city of God on the other side of the great divide that kept them from taking up residence in it . . . and so the upper room will never be their home.*

And the problem here is the camelhair coat of John that should have been a Hebrew coat to bear witness to tradition that made Joseph 'upright' as a Jew = sinner while remaining true to his own self who never sold his soul to dunking evangelist like John was here (think Billy style here now). . . . and let's never forget the manger in Luke that was missing in Matthew to nurse the new Jesus identity as second Adam in his/it's own infancy so that Herod (reason here) does not get the best of him. ((Think Christ-mass here with New-Year arriving to confirm Epiphany)).

*The tragedy here is that we are talking about the upper room of the human mind where this event takes place to celebrate Jesus but who is not the better wine himself (the woman is from behind the scene [again]).

mountainman

Which Emperor's divinity sponsored the manufacture of Vaticanus, Sinaticus and other Greek bible codices? You don't have too many names to choose from.

At any rate we all know about short and long Mark.
Mark was originally short and suddenly got added to.
Everything about Mark has addition written all over it.

The fabrication of the Christians is an insidious and commissioned invention.

But it did the job it was designed for, and that's all that mattered.

The scribes tidied up what they thought were loose ends.

But the Emperor now had a centralised monotheistic state religious cult.

A very useful business enterprise for the ruler.


I am going to vote for it being an addition on the basis of the addition of Long Mark, in addition to the evidence that the funnier Colombo like JW has collated above, particularly its absence in the earliest (4th century) Greek bible codices.

And its absence in Origen the Christian (not the other one), student of Ammonius the Christian (not the other one).


Score atm: 11 to 5 in favour of addition over original.




Keep asking questions Colombo like JW.

If you run out of them, I have a few spare.






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Stuart

You are wrong, the original lacked τοῦ Θεοῦ. The UBS brackets the words because they are missing from א* Θ 28-corr, which combined with internal evidence argues for their absence as well. There is no good reason to remove them, no possible argument for fatigue with the very first sentence. But there would be strong reason for scribes to add the words to clarify that Jesus Christ is the son of God, consistent with creed throughout the NT. That the omission barely survived in any manuscripts speaks to the power of the creed in orthodoxy.

Metzger says: "... yet because of the antiquity of the shorter reading and the possibility of scribal expansion, it was decided to enclose the words within square brackets."

However, evidence is stronger for the shorter reading when considering Marcion.

When reconstructing the various Marcionite texts, frequently when examining the witnesses to the text, one discovers that τοῦ Θεοῦ or its equivalents are missing from Marcion. And this suggests that the words were added to clarify the relationship between Christ and God, to clarify in many instances a dependent status (ironically such readings buttressed the later position of orthodox "heretics" leading to the Arian controversies). Here is a partial list of such "omissions" in Marcion:

Galatians 1:1 καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς
(AM 5.1.3, Ipse se, inquit, apostolum est professus et quidem non ab hominibus nec per hominem, sed per Jesum Christum.)
Galatians 4:6 ὁ θεὸς and τοῦ υἱοῦ
(AM 5.4.4, misit spiritum suum in corda nostra, clamantem: Abba, pater.
note, I disagree with Calbeaux about Tertullian "being loose" with his quote)
1 Corinthians 2:14 τοῦ θεοῦ
(AM 2.2.6 Quodsi a primordio homo animalis, non recipiens quae sunt spiritus; reading – τοῦ θεοῦ with Clement Stromata V 25.5; VI 166.3; some mss support)
1 Corinthians 3:17 ὁ θεός
(Tertullian AM 5.6.12 Quodsi templum Dei quis vitiaverit, vitiabitur, utique a Deo templi. It’s hard to imagine Tertullian would pass up the chance to point out that Marcion’s God is the destroyer here, unless the words were not there to make the point.)
1 Corinthians 6:14 θεὸς καὶ
(AM 5.7.4 Qui dominum suscitavit, et nos suscitabit "
compare 2 Corinthians 4:14 εἰ δότες ὅτι ὁ ἐγείρας τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ ἡμᾶς σὺν Ἰησοῦν ἐγερεῖ
compare Marcion Galatians 1:1 ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτόν ἐκ νεκρῶν)
2 Corinthians 1:3 καὶ πατὴρ
(AM 5.11.1 benedictus tamen deus domini nostri Iesu Christi, reading – et Pater / καὶ πατὴρ)
2 Corinthians 2:15 – τῷ θεῷ
(DA 2.15 Reads – τῷ θεῷ with K.)
2 Corinthians 4:6 read αὐτοῦ for τοῦ θεοῦ
(Support: p46 C D* F G 326 1837
Evidence: DA 2.19 (Adamantius)
ὁ θεὸς, ὁ εἰπὼν ἐκ σκότους φῶς λάμψαι, ὃς ἔλαμψεν ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν πρὸς φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ Χριστοῦ
Deus, qui dixit de tenebris lucem fulgere, illuminauit in cordibus uestris lucem scientiae gloriae eius in persona Christi
Tertullian AM 5.11.11 Quoniam Deus, qui dixit ex tenebris lucem lucescere, reluxit in cordibus nostris ad illuminationem agnitionis suae in persona Christi)
Romans 1:18 θεοῦ
(AM 5.13.2 'Quoniam et iram dicit revelari de caelo super impietatem et iniustitiam hominum qui veritatem in iniustitia detineant')
Romans 3:19 τῷ θεῷ
(weak case AM 5.13.11 is paraphrasing)

Note, I am only up to 2 Corinthians 11:2 in my reconstruction, so there are undoubtedly other examples

There are two prevalent themes in the missing "God" or "Father" in the Marcionite text, which are clarified in the Catholic. First is the resurrection, the proto-Orthodox position is very clear that God the Father took action to raise Christ, while the Marcionite position appears to be he raised himself, there was no need for the Father to intervene. The Marcionites simply thought Chrisy could do that, they were not making a statement about the relationship of Jesus to God. The other prevalent theme has to do with judgement and wrath, here the Orthodox writer wanted to make it clear that God the father judged and meted punishments as well as rewards. Obviously the Marcionites held that the Jewish God (Angel) was the one who judged, the high God of Christ only loved and could never bring judgment.

The adjustment to Mark 1:1 seems to be early during the era when the Marcionite and Gnostic sects were still strong, so such an adjustment to clarify the relationship would be on scribes minds.