How late might the gospels be?

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Paul the Uncertain
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

archibald
Otherwise, we have 'Mark' as a much later writer, deliberately writing about an unfulfilled prophecy, where no one like a son of man turns up. In other words, 'Mark' would be offering us Jesus as a false prophet.
To be a false prophet, Jesus would need to offer the statement as a forecast, a present assertion about a future factual circumstance. Mark's Jesus makes no such offer with respect to the timing of the glory event, and even denies that such a thing is possible in principle, at 13:32.

Forecasts simply are not the only variety of future contingency statements. For example, Jonah wasn't a false prophet, he just failed to realize until afterwards that he was delivering an ultimatum, rather than a forecast.

The thread has already discussed Olivet proper (13:30), wherein language that may well have originally referred to the end of the First Temple is alluded to while the teacher is overlooking the Second. Whether or not the intended reference was to the events of 70 CE, the events of 70 are an arguable fulfilment of what is arguably a scheduling statement, and so whatever the statement actually is, it isn't definitely false.

Some people argue that 14:62 makes the priest an indicator life for the fulfilment of the prophecy. I don't see why the general resurrection wouldn't situate the priest as "foretold."

And finally there's 9:1, which, when crisply separated from the rest of the speech of which it is the conclusion, sounds like a relatively clear scheduling announcement.

However, it concludes a speech which teaches that there are two kinds of death (8:35). One kind is apparently plain language mortality and the other is something else. If you plain-language die in the line of duty, then you don't die the other way.

If anybody standing there subsequently died in the line of duty, then 9:1 in context is in the process of fulfilment. Since Christians believe that lots of people have died in the line of duty, no issue arises among the pious about whether Jesus' statement is false. Lots of people have saved their (second type) lives, and now await the glory event.

Oddly, however, there is now that chapter boundary which invites some readers to view the statement apart from the rest of the speech. The chapter boundary was put there by some Christian. Except for the chapter boundary, there would be no question of Jesus having made a scheduling forecast; the meaning would clearly be what it is and has always been for the "start at the beginning and read through to the end" listener: that some people will avoid an extranatural kind of death by naturally dying according to the approved practice.

When that Christian gratuitously introduced the chapter boundary, the new possible meaning of 9:1 was a false assertion. It follows that some Christians would offer Jesus as a false prophet, because some Christian did make the offer an admissible reading, even though Mark didn't.

That pretty much takes "prophecy fulfilment" off the table as a dating tool, IMO. It shares a foundational flaw with the "criterion of embarrassment" - there is no telling what anybody else finds embarrassing or fails to find embarrassing. Period.
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by archibald »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:31 pm I am not talking about Mark 13.26. I am talking about, for example (and there are others), the next verse:

Mark 13.27: 27 And then He will send forth the angels, and will gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven.

We know what the symbolism for this sort of thing from the Hebrew scriptures means: it means that Israel will be regathered from the far reaches of the inhabited earth and reconstituted as a viable sociopolitical entity in the promised land. But of course nothing like this happened in 70; to the contrary, Israel was now more scattered than ever.
Ok but the 'he' in v 27 is still the same son of man in v26. So who do you reckon this could have been meant to be?
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:31 pm So does Mark leave out the resurrection on purpose?
Probably, imo.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:31 pmThat would make sense, if he is writing after 70 and no resurrection occurred at that time. However, what does he mean in 13.27, and does he really envision the greatest tribulation in history to culminate in a gathering of the elect but without the long expected resurrection of the dead, when seemingly everybody else, following Daniel, explicitly links these things?


So, on the one hand, it would make good sense for Mark to divorce the idea of resurrection from the gathering of the elect, since no resurrection took place. On the other, however, what kind of meaning, symbolic or otherwise, does that leave for 13.27? What happened in or near 70 to make that prediction come true in a way that was not already true before?
Perhaps, when Mark was written, they were still waiting for the arrival of the son of man, perhaps?
archibald
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by archibald »

Paul the Uncertain wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 3:38 am To be a false prophet, Jesus would need to offer the statement as a forecast, a present assertion about a future factual circumstance. Mark's Jesus makes no such offer with respect to the timing of the glory event, and even denies that such a thing is possible in principle, at 13:32.
I confess that sounds a bit too elaborate for me. Apparently there were followers in Thessalonia who expected something actual, soon. That idea had to come from somewhere. Most likely guess is it was attributed to Jesus saying it, of which Mark has a version. 13:32 only rules out accurate timing of it, which is secondary, because 'before you die' is all that was in the forecast.

As to whether a failed prophecy would have been embarrassing or not, I agree, it may not have been. Indeed apparently wasn't.
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by archibald »

Stuart wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 11:58 am Paul belongs in the 2nd century also, all post Bar Kokhba. One must separate the legend of Paul from the writings in his name. The so-called letters are in fact a diverse set of tracts cobbled together, often by similar topic (same is true of the Catholic Hebrews) and them put in the form of letters with formula greetings and closings. Material within them snowballed.

Galatians especially belongs in the era well after the Marcionite Gospel, and after the first edition of Matthew were published, in the later half of Antoninus. The debate about circumcision and Law (of Moses' code vs Roman code "of the peoples") fit the era after Judea is dissolved, and in the aftermath of Antoninus making a provision allowing Jews to circumcise. Further the perverted Gospel is Matthew. When the Pauline letters say Gospel, I have concluded they mean written Gospel, not oral. The letters are parallel to the development of the Gospel, not prior. Again the autobiographical elements, are drawn from apocryphal acts or invented by the writers to fit the established period piece genre of the Gospels. It was a convention, much like the famous heroes and villains of the post civil-War American West, must make an appearance or be mentioned to give placement for a Western novel or movie. But the debate discussed, or the moral being told, is contemporary.

A note on the Pauline collection in Marcionite form. Most probably it did not come together all at once, but accumulated over a couple decades. Unlike the Gospel which appeared in the first decade of the reign of Antoninus, the collection may have not come together in ten letter form until as late as 160 AD. It was not strictly Marcionite, but contained tracts and elements from a variety of what we'd call heretical and Gnostic sources, even with some proto-orthodox elements within.

The story I present is a New Testament that came about from competition between various sects, which can broadly be divided into to two camps, where the nature of the High God and father of Jesus -that is whether he was also the Jewish law giver and the creator or not- was the dividing line. The success of the Marcionite using a Gospel to spread their message forced reactions, first in the form of Matthew, which itself forced a reaction in John, and ultimately in Luke. The letters of Paul derived similarly and were revised like the Gospels. Celsus was quite correct in his claim that Christians came pen in hand, rewriting and adjusting their Scripture to counter whatever arguments of the day.

My model says some of the New Testament books are from the first half of the 3rd century, such as 2 Peter, Jude, 2 & 3 John, possibly James and Hebrews. The only document I believe may have started life in the 1st century was Revelation, but only part of it and as a Jewish document that became Christianized. It was a snowball that in the form we have is probably from very late in the 2nd or the start of the 3rd century. The theology is very different from any of the Gospels or letters. Amazing the diversity of Christianity. But that diversity is what drove competition, and why the NT was put together the way it was. Were there no competition between sects, otherwise the NT might look more like the Koran, a haphazard collection of sayings and legends, and would have been formed over hundreds of years.
Thanks. I haven't time right now to assess that and give you my personal response.

I am gestating a general theory myself though. In this upcoming theory, I may propose that it is, unfortunately and for a variety of reasons, relatively easy to come up with almost any model for early christianity (up to start of 4th C I mean) and indeed Jesus, none of which, mainstream or otherwise, can ever be conclusive or anywhere close to it. :)

I might say one general thing though. Imho, it might be easier, I'm thinking, to tie the NT to the 1st Jewish War than to the Bar Kokhba Revolt. But I haven't looked into the latter before now. I think it was Jax who recommended to me a book doing the former, and I haven't followed that up yet either. So many theories, so little time. :(

And so one small question.....just for brief clarification....do you think that by and large the NT-described events themselves (I suppose I'm thinking mainly of the events in the epistles and the four main gospels, and Acts) happened back in the 1st C (or were at least located there by the later writers)? Or do you, for example, have Simon bar Kokhba as 'Jesus' and some or all of the relevant events in the 2nd C as well as the writings.
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Kapyong
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by Kapyong »

Gday neilgodfrey :)
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 6:32 pm Granted the lack of evidence for Hadrian erecting a temple/placing of image in temple, I had somehow for some reason understood that Hadrian promoted himself as a reincarnated Antiochus Epiphanes and that plausibly had something to do with the rumours and "fake news" of a repeat of the Antiochus episodes. But it is all distant memory to me now. Do you know what the evidence is for [Hadrian] Antiochus promoting himself as Antiochus Epiphanes redivivus?
I found no direct evidence of Hadrian specifically promoting himself as a new Antiochus Epiphanes,
but,
the similarities have been noted, suggesting exactly that.

Here is a comment by By Anthony R. Birley in Hadrian: The Restless Emperor :

The influence on Hadrian’s thinking of the first and most famous bearer of that name, Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria, had already been seen at Athens. It had, after all, been that king who had revived and gone a long way to completing
the construction of the Olympieion. He too, like Hadrian, had promoted the cult of Zeus Olympios. There are various other aspects of the character and policies of the eccentric monarch which find an echo in Hadrian, of Whom he seems to be almost a mirror image. In his long years as a hostage the Seleucid prince had acquired a fervent admiration for Roman ways. His behaviour at Antioch, mingling with the common people like a would-be civilis princeps, recalls Hadrian the plebis lactantissimus amator. Antiochus was also, at least in his latter years - and notwithstanding his promotion of Zeus Olympios - a devotee of Epicureanism.
Whatever impact these various features or Antiochus may have had on Hadrian — and, considering the length of time he spent altogether at Antioch, he must have had ample opportunity for finding out about them — Antiochus Epiphanes was remembered not least for his Jewish policy, which had provoked the uprising of the Maccabees. There was considerable debate in antiquity over the circumstances and course of events which led to the emergence of an independent Jewish state. One thing is undisputed: the Temple at Jerusalem was desecrated by the 'abomination of desolation’. An altar to Olympian Zeus was set up in the Temple court and circumcision was strictly prohibited under

and :

It was not merely by completing the Olympieion tnat Hadrian emulated and outdid the Syrian king. Like Antiochus three hundred years before him, he sought to hellenise the Jews. This is the only plausible explanation for his prohibition of circumcision and for his conversion of the ruined Jerusalem into a colonia under the name of Aelia Capitolina, with a temple of Jupiter or Zeus to be erected over the Holy of Holies. It was an appalling misjudgement.


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Re: How late might the gospels be?

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archibald wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:17 am I might say one general thing though. Imho, it might be easier, I'm thinking, to tie the NT to the 1st Jewish War than to the Bar Kokhba Revolt. But I haven't looked into the latter before now. I think it was Jax who recommended to me a book doing the former, and I haven't followed that up yet either. So many theories, so little time. :(
Nope. Not me. :)
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by Bernard Muller »

To be a false prophet, Jesus would need to offer the statement as a forecast, a present assertion about a future factual circumstance. Mark's Jesus makes no such offer with respect to the timing of the glory event, and even denies that such a thing is possible in principle, at 13:32.
But "Mark" had Jesus make a forecast for the future in the mini apocalypse (Mk 13).
For gMark (13:18-24), the day of the Lord was supposed to happen in the days following the great tribulation, that is the events in Jerusalem & Judea in 70 CE:

Mk 13:18-24 RSV
Pray that it may not happen in winter.[the Roman invasion of Judea, the siege and destruction of Jerusalem happened in the summer: the praying was successful ;)]

For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be.

And if the Lord had not shortened the days, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.

And then if any one says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it.

False Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.

But take heed; I have told you all things beforehand.

"But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,


So "Mark" had Jesus predicting the fall of Jerusalem and soon after, the advent of the Kingdom.
Right for the first prediction but wrong for the second one.
If "Mark" would have written the mini apocalypse years after 70, Jesus would have been proven a false prophet or the gospel not truthful, certainly not something that "Mark" would have wanted.
"Matthew" & "Luke" changed the wording in order to say the advent of the kingdom will happen well after the fall of Jerusalem.

About Mk 13:32, there is no denial that such a thing is possible in principle, just that the exact day and hour is still unknown. It's just like: He will see me soon, but I don't know which day and which hour.

Mk 13:32 RSV: "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Cordially, Bernard
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DCHindley
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by DCHindley »

arch,

Just about every angle one can think of has been proposed here. Heck, we could even give R. Eisenman ideas that even he hasn't thought up yet (I'm kidding, R E would win this hands down, and I mean that in a positive way).

Regarding theories that posit "time shifting:" In an earlier thread I had dug up an interesting book by John I Riegel & John H Jordan, Simon Son of Man (1917), that claims that the Gospel Jesus and even the High Christology of the Pauline epistles was loosely based on the life and claims of the rebel leader Simon "bar Giora" in the revolt of 66-73 CE. They propose that Josephus called him "bar Giora" (which means "son of a proselyte") to denigrate him, and the fact was that Simon used a large number of nick names all revolving around the phrase "son of man."

While I am not buying into the time shift aspect of this theory, I was intrigued by some other aspects that quite accidentally correlated with other angles I had been pursuing:
1) Hegesippus' stories about James the Just seemed to be a retelling of the story of Idumean general James son of Sosas, who helped, you guessed it, Simon bar Giora during the final year in the capital as it faced and then withstood a Roman siege.
2) The persona of Josephus' Simon "bar Giora," especially as enhanced by Riegel & Jordan into a "common man" type nick-name, might explain the book called The Parables of Enoch preserved in Ethiopic but not anywhere so far identified among the DSS. In short, the PofE was not an early Christian production, nor was it influenced by early Christianity. It was a piece of propaganda written by Simon to champion his radical social message of common men turning on and utterly destroying the power structures that existed, in the hope that something good might rise up from the ashes. Simon was a, :eek: , Nihilist!

Strange things go bump in the night ...

DCH (just euthanized our 14 y/o dawg, and was fitted with partial dentures today - yes, I've had better holidays)
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by Bernard Muller »

Otherwise, we have 'Mark' as a much later writer, deliberately writing about an unfulfilled prophecy, where no one like a son of man turns up. In other words, 'Mark' would be offering us Jesus as a false prophet.
No, if "Mark" wrote the mini apocalypse soon after the fall of Jerusalem, but before the expected "Day of the Lord". At that time, Jesus would not look as a false prophet (yet), but rather as a really good one.

Cordially, Bernard
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neilgodfrey
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Re: How late might the gospels be?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Kapyong wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:55 pm I found no direct evidence of Hadrian specifically promoting himself as a new Antiochus Epiphanes,
but,
the similarities have been noted, suggesting exactly that.

Here is a comment by By Anthony R. Birley in Hadrian: The Restless Emperor :
Thanks. I'm also waiting to see Detering's reference making the same point -- Stewart Perowne's "Hadrian".
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