Thanks for your respons jjramsey.
davefoc said:
The author of Mark was a skilled story teller of the highest order.
Um, actually Mark is not known for being that good a writer. Luke's the one with the polished Greek.
jjramsey, while I think your comment is interesting it doesn't really go to what I was talking about. I think the author of Mark was a great story teller in the sense that George Lucas is. Not that George Lucas is a great director or a great author of dialog, but that he has the ability to devise stories that resonate with people, stories that people find compelling.
jjramsey said:
Um, if Gentiles and Jews had mixed that easily in that day, there wouldn't have been all those skirmishes with foreign occupiers in Palestine. The gist of what messiahship was about was that he would overthrow the foreign oppressors and put the righteous Jews back on top. This was true whether one is talking about a military Messiah actively bringing about a revolt, or a Messiah for whom a sect of Jews might quietly await.
I am going to respond to this based on my current understanding without going back to articles or sources. This is probably not the best way but the alternate way seems like work right now and I'm feeling lazy.
The facts that my scenario attempts to explain are these:
1. The Gospels are written in Greek. Although many Jews of the time spoke Greek, Judaic religious documentatin of the time comes down to us in either Aramaic or Hebrew. So there early on seems to be evidence of a fusion between Jew and Gentile with respect to the early Christian writings.
2. Apparently the Roman religons of the time were excluding women so Roman women may have been casting about for a religion that was more inclusive of them.
3. Yes, some of the Jewish messiah sects might have been looking for a leader to get rid of the Romans a la the situation hundreds of years earlier when the Jewish priests were putting together propaganda to energize the populace for a fight against the Assyrians but the thrust of Christianity is not that. The Gospels appear to be put together as propaganda against the Jews and in favor of the Romans.
4. Judaism at its biblical core is a tribal religion that needs to be modified for widespread acceptability in a non-ethnic Jewish world. My supposition is that this was a problem recognized by the priests that were trying to take advantage of the then current interest in Judasim by the Gentile crowd.
5. I think there is almost a universal appeal to many of the old testament stories and maybe some of the mysticism associated with Judaism. The Kabala fad of today is an example of how elements of Judaism can inspire even ethnically non-Jewish people to adopt aspects of Judaism. I find it plausible that this is exactly the kind of thing that was going on around the time of Christ. Maybe at this time the belief in an impending messiah was acting as a particularly inspirational notion to attract even non-Jewish converts.
ETA: I didn't add this initially because I had already referred to it, but I would like to expand on it a little.
6. The original Gospel (assuming it is Mark) seems to have been written by a person with a limited knowledge of Jewish customs. My thought here was that he very well might have been non-Jewish or at least associated wtih a sect that was moving away from Jewish traditions. The fact that Matthew, a later Gospel, seems to be more Jewish oriented implies to me that there is a cross pollination going on between sects that are not strongly associated with Judaism and those that are strongly associated with Judaism. As somebody mentioned above it is Matthew that the line about only preaching to Jews shows up.
