John vs Mark Late Easter Article

[triadboy]

[Warning: unqualified opinion, ahead]:
I think people should tap the brake a bit when they want to classify everything in the NT as wrong.

But what if it is wrong. What if the metamorphosis from a gnostic Jewish dying-God-man myth (50 AD) to the factual account of a god born on Earth to a virgin (350 AD) layered so many redactions and alterings that anything remotely "real" was lost.

This is a god whose lineage and birthplace were foretold hundreds of years before. A god whose miracles - walking on water, raising the dead, turning water into wine, healing the blind, dying on a tree and resurrecting - were all performed by other gnostic dying god-man myths in nearby lands.

It could be wrong.

 

[ReasonableDoubt]

If I remember right Sepphoris is very close to Nazareth. (Kilometers if I remember, but when you start fartin' dust the memory goes.) Surely - giving the great man who emerged - Nazareth was the better known of the two cities.

Perhaps when you grow up you will learn to distinguish between the question of historicity and the question of divinity. There are more than a few competent scholars that rejects the miracles and embellishments of the New Testament but, nevertheless, allow for an historical Yeshua.

Furthermore, even if one posits a fully mythical Jesus, it's difficult to understand why Mark would find it useful to fabricate a village name, which just happens to find itself referenced in a Caesarea synagogue inscription. Clearly, asserting a mythical Jesus is, in and of itself, insufficient warrant for a mythical Nazareth.

Perhaps you should spend less time "fartin' dust".

But if Josephus is the great revealer of the historic Jesus - as Christians love to claim ...

This is nothing but a pathetic strawman argument. Two claims were maid:

• that the ahistoricity of a 1st century CE Nazareth is "common knowledge", and
• that Biblical references to Nazareth are "generally assumed" to be a "mistake".

The claims have yet to be substantiated, and none of the comments questioning those claims relied upon "Josephus is the great revealer of the historic Jesus". Once again, fart less.

 

[triadboy]

Perhaps when you grow up you will learn to distinguish between the question of historicity and the question of divinity. There are more than a few competent scholars that rejects the miracles and embellishments of the New Testament but, nevertheless, allow for an historical Yeshua.

And so what good is he?

BTW, I'm 49, and you're being quite assholy. It must be cold up there.

Furthermore, even if one posits a fully mythical Jesus, it's difficult to understand why Mark would find it useful to fabricate a village name, which just happens to find itself referenced in a Caesarea synagogue inscription.

I said, "Jesus was a Nazarene - not from Nazereth - Mark bungled it....again" What year is that inscription?

 

[ReasonableDoubt]

I said, "Jesus was a Nazarene - not from Nazereth - Mark bungled it....again" What year is that inscription?

Speaking of bungling things ... again, could you show us where Mark used the term "Nazarene"?

 

[Vinnie]

RDoubt doesn't like wickpedi. Fine. Read Helms "Who Wrote the Gospels" or read Mack. Crossan's "Birth of Xianity" is a great (if long) read.

Though not addressed to me, FYI, I've read all three.

Vinnie, branching out from his infidels home, continues to post his bi-polar brand of neo-Xianity

I've never posted any defenses of Christianity or a brand of it. I am a panentheist. Christian fact claims are unsubstantiated//false. I challenge anyone to show otherwise:

http://www.after-hourz.net/christianchallenge.html

- accepting certain gospel items, rejecting others, and

I do so on the basis of a strict methodology.

frequently presenting good summaries of existing scholarship and other times championing 'unusual' personal causes (ref: the 'embarrasment' argument).

The former yes, the latter is also a view of "existing scholarship". The embarassment criterion is used by almost every scholar and skeptics USE IT ALL THE TIME. Embarrassment means "against the grain". Skeptics often use material that is "with the grain" to cast doubt on it. Aka: this datum goes too much with the views of the post easter church to be accepted as historical. This is the opposite side of the coin. We have "with the grain" and "against the grain". You cannot use one and deny the other.

Have we sufficiently buried the point yet?

Skeptics who deny the validity of the EC engage in double standards, so no. Determing what is actually "embarrassing" is not altogether easy, however.

Vinnie

 

[Vinnie]

triadboy, you have not shown any evidence why my proposed provenance for Mark is wrong.

You went on to mention Mack: "The area of Tyre and Sidon are thought by Mack to be where Mark was written. But none of this matters within my understanding of how the gospels came about"

Does Mack hold scholarly authority for you? Do you still dispute my comment?

The datings of the gospels are as follows:

Mark to ca 70 c.e.
MT to ca 90 c.e.
Lk to ca 95 c.e.
John to ca 95 c.e.

Thats the best dating of the Gospels a fair assessment of the evidence yeilds. Not the forties and fifties as ultra-conservatives argue, and not sometime in the second century as ultra-skeptics argue. All stem from the second half of the first century//turn of the first century.

Also, does your reconstruction presuppose the non-historicity of Jesus? If so, why?

Vinnie

 

[ReasonableDoubt]

triadboy, you have not shown any evidence why my proposed provenance for Mark is wrong.

Actually, Vinnie, when you wrote

• "Not to mention Mark may have been written just North of Galile, not in Rome."

I read the sentence as an observation rather than a proposal. If you are, indeed, claiming North Galilee as the place of composition, should you not, in all fairness, accompany the claim with supporting argumentation?

 

[Vinnie]

Ted Weeden just posted a draft of a paper on this as I mentioned. He argues for Caesarea Philippi.

(1)The rural ambience of the Markan narrative suggests that the Markan community is located in a rural village (so Howard Kee, Community of the New Age, 103; Richard Rohrbaugh, “The Social
Location of Mark's Audience,” INT, 1993, 380-384); and Gerd Theissen (The Gospels in Context,

(2) Mark’s identification of Lake Gennesaret as a “sea” (the “Sea of Galilee”), rather than a “lake,”suggests that he is so far removed from a real sea that he does not know the difference between a body of water legitimately identified as a “sea” and a body of water that can only legitimately be identified as a “lake” (so Theissen, 105-108).

(3) With all his infamous geographical errors, Mark appears to know well the “lay of the land” in two longitudinally opposite geographical areas of Palestine, as Dean Chapman has pointed out.1 Those two areas are: (2) places on the upper rim of the Sea of Galilee, which include Capernaum, Gennersaret, Bethsaida and Dalmanutha, and the route northward from Bethsaida to Caesarea-Philippi.2 It stands to reason that if Mark writes from somewhere in the Palestinian region, then his provenance is most likely to be in or nearby one of the two areas which narratively Mark appears to be most familiar with and demonstrates accurate mapping of its geography. Of the two geographical areas which Mark seems to know best, the northern rim of the Sea of Galilee and northward, and Jerusalem and its surrounds, Chapman (34) opts for Jerusalem as the location of the Markan community. He explains Mark’s knowledge of the area on the northern rim of the Sea of Galilee and northward toward Caesarea Philippi as the result of information Mark has derived “through repeated contact with Galilean natives” (35). I opt for just the opposite explanation. Íamely, Mark’s home community is in the area north of the Sea of Galilee, the village region of Caesarea Philippi. Mark likely knows the accurate geographical lay of the land in the Jerusalem area from either having visited the area himself or from former Judeans who settled in the Jewish section of Caesarea Philippi. I can hardly imagine Mark being a product of the Christian community in Jerusalem given the fact that Mark’s theology and christology so radically differ from the Jerusalem Church.

Weeden lists 14 such arguments in total. I reprint no more for copyright issues and sinsce this is only a first draft of sorts. I've also omitted the footnotes.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/

I think you have to be a member to view the file though and its a highly moderated list which requires knowledge of critical scholarship

But I didn't intend to fully support this. Its one possibility. Mack has suggested Tyre-Sidon, others Rome, some Jerusalem-Area.

My point is that the geography errors appealed to by triadboy show 1) he has not studied the geography errors in Mark enough or the map of the land to see where good and bad geography actually occurs and 2) fails to note that even natives can make geography mistakes. There were no cars, maps or globes. Coming up with acccurate geography was much more difficult at that time than it is today.

Vinnie

 

[triadboy]

The datings of the gospels are as follows:

Mark to ca 70 c.e.
MT to ca 90 c.e.
Lk to ca 95 c.e.
John to ca 95 c.e.

I totally agree with these dates. (I've seen John pushed out a little more)

Also, does your reconstruction presuppose the non-historicity of Jesus? If so, why?

Yes it does. Instead of constantly assuming the historicity of Jesus and searching for evidence. I assume he didn't exist and look at the metamorphosis of the story. From Paul's gnostic mystery god - to The Council of Nicea's historical Father-Son-Ghost entity.

If one looks at it this way - we see the life of a story - not the birth of a Messiah.

Now it makes sense that the church fathers were freaking out. They believed in the historicity of Jesus, but had no evidence, because Jesus was just a Jewish Mithra to Paul.

Since this same story developed in other countries at other times - I see no reason to assume the historicity of a myth.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm

 

[triadboy]

Speaking of bungling things ... again, could you show us where Mark used the term "Nazarene"?

I didn't say he did. He refers to him as "Jesus of Nazareth".

Matthew and Luke HAD to correct this mistake - Jesus HAD to be born in Bethleham - so they both - through convoluted methods - make Mary/Joseph either leave Nazareth, go to Bethleham, then return to Nazareth or give birth in Bethleham and settle in Nazareth.

It's just too much of a story to me.

 

[triadboy]

Actually, Vinnie, when you wrote

• "Not to mention Mark may have been written just North of Galile, not in Rome."

I read the sentence as an observation rather than a proposal. If you are, indeed, claiming North Galilee as the place of composition, should you not, in all fairness, accompany the claim with supporting argumentation?

Burton Mack does say Tyre and Sidon would be perfect locations for the writing of Mark. That's North of Galilee.

 

[ReasonableDoubt]

Thanks, Vinnie.

Are you in support of Mr. Weeden? To be honest, I'm a bit out of my depth here, so perhaps you could help me with a few things.

(1) I haven't a clue as to what constitutes the "rural ambiance" of some narrative, and I certainly do not understand how "rural ambiance" positions Mark in Galilee rather than, say, Antioch.

(2) It is unclear to me why reference to "the Sea of Galilee" could not reflect the fact that, as you said, "even natives can make geography mistakes. ... [since] ... Coming up with acccurate geography was much more difficult at that time than it is today."

 

[triadboy]

The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Jesous o Nazoraios'. More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name.

Found this at the site below:

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

 

[ReasonableDoubt]

Found this at the site below: ...

You're absolutely correct. I stand corrected.

 

[Vinnie]

"Such highly competant semitists an exegetes as Albight, Moore, and Schaeder, in their articles . . . argue on purely philological grounds that the form Nazoraios is quite defensible as a derivation from Nazareth, if one takes into account dialetical phonology in Galilean Aramaic." R. Brown, Birth of the Messiah p. 210.

Vinnie

 

[ceo_esq]

So, ceo cites a conservative Xian scholar who in conjunction with other conservative Xian scholars elects to interpret Mark as pre-70. I could site a dozen scholars who disagree and date it to after 70 CE.

I wasn't aware that Harrington was a conservative (whatever that term means among professional historians). But you raise an interesting prospect. Cite us those scholars (as well as any other ones you can come up with) and let's see if we can begin to determine where the preponderance of academic opinion seems to fall.

 

[ceo_esq]

And ceo's ad hominems notwithstanding, if you bother to read Olson's arguments, they're pretty thought provoting. If you bother to address the TF issue, rather than making gross generalizations (that I don't believe are supported by the cite reference), the post would be worth reading.

Are you suggesting that I made ad hominem criticisms of Olson? If so, I beg to disagree. The only comments I offered regarding Olson's article were that it was written by a graduate student (if I recall correctly) and that it advocated an unusual thesis at odds with the majority of professional scholarship. You know as well as I do that assessment of an academic authority's credentials and experience, as well as where such authority's assertions are situated in the spectrum of other expert opinions, is relevant in the context of an argument from authority, which is the context in which Olson's name was brought up.