The generational prophecy.

[Ben C. Smith]

To me, these passages are traces of the rationalizations made to reduce cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that Jesus (assuming he was real and physical) seems to have predicted an imminent coming of the final "age" which did not come as expected. "Reasons" had to be developed to explain this situation. Yet I do not see why the presence of the "apostles" (however defined) is required for rationalization to occur.

If you assume that Jesus himself made such predictions, then no, the apostles themselves are not necessary; they could be foils. But I was not making that assumption, since it could also be visions of a purely spiritual Jesus which prompted the expectation, in which case the recipients of those visions (the "apostles") would be key. It is also heuristically appropriate to speak of the apostles here rather than of Jesus himself, since it was at least some of them ("some standing here," "that disciple would not die") who were supposed to still be alive at the time. Jesus, by all accounts, knew he would already be dead.

[Ben C. Smith]

Early Christians may have kept the generational sayings because there was a spiritual meaning they perceived in them....

I think that is a very good point. It served Christian interests well to keep themselves on their toes, so to speak, always expecting the end within their own generation. But I also think, so far, that what allowed this to happen was the mitigation of the starkness of the original prediction(s). People had to be given something to distract them from noticing that certain things were promised within a certain time frame, and they did not happen. A path had to be forged by which people would still expect those events, but would be okay with them not having happened on schedule. The mitigating passages I gave in the OP still serve that purpose to this very day.

[Ben C. Smith]

After all, these are the stakes:

Deuteronomy 18.21-22: 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken?' 22 When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him."

[Giuseppe]

It think that the failed prophecy is attributed to Jesus so that the apostles - or, at least, ''some of the apostles'' - become virtually, by ''logical'' need (given the fact that Jesus can't be wrong), secret witnesses of the Magic Event. So Paul is not the unique apostle to claim secret revelations (=Apocalypses) of the last hour. There is always the possibility to brandish ''some of the apostles'' as anti-pauline witnesses of the End.

This view assumes:

1) an hostility against Paul and paulines.

2) that the Apocalypse predicted by the Gospel Jesus has to be meant as a secret knowledge (just as the Gnostic apocalypses of James or Mary Magdalene).

3) author's knowledge of rival Gnostic Apocalypses (i.e., Mark was written in 2 CE).

[Ben C. Smith]

I recently posted another example of what looks to me like somebody mitigating the force of a prediction after the fact. Mark 13.19 predicts (future tense) that there will be days of tribulation such as have never been witnessed before, and then Mark 13.20 states (past tense) that, if God had not cut short the days, nobody would have survived it.

[Ben C. Smith]

Also, modern Bibles still use glosses in order to mitigate the force of the failed prediction. The NASB, for example, puts "race" in a footnote as an alternative translation for "generation," to the effect that Jesus was stating that the Jews as a viable race of people would not die out before the end.

[DCHindley]

To me, these passages are traces of the rationalizations made to reduce cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that Jesus (assuming he was real and physical) seems to have predicted an imminent coming of the final "age" which did not come as expected. "Reasons" had to be developed to explain this situation. Yet I do not see why the presence of the "apostles" (however defined) is required for rationalization to occur.

If you assume that Jesus himself made such predictions, then no, the apostles themselves are not necessary; they could by foils. But I was not making that assumption, since it could also be visions of a purely spiritual Jesus which prompted the expectation, in which case the recipients of those visions (the "apostles") would be key. It is also heuristically appropriate to speak of the apostles here rather than of Jesus himself, since it was at least some of them ("some standing here," "that disciple would not die") who were supposed to still be alive at the time. Jesus, by all accounts, knew he would already be dead.

Yet what evidence would you propose for apostolic "visions" that *actually changed established doctrines*? Peter's vision that all foods were clean (in Acts) and Paul's vision on the way to Damascus (Acts & Epistle) do not really *change* anything (gentiles never had restrictions other than not to eat blood), although the authors of those statements (whoever they really be) did believe that some apostles did receive visions.

Use of visions to change established doctrine was practiced by Latter day Saints founder Joseph Smith and his various successors, and by Jehovah's Witnesses president Rutherford after the death of founder Charles Russell. However, these would be modern day examples of authorities ("apostles") who *formally* changed established doctrines using the explanation that the change was communicated via a vision, but did that actually occur in the early "apostolic" times?

We may be dealing with the difference between the process of creating rationalizations (re-thinking of a set of circumstances due to unfulfilled expectations, resulting in new interpretations) and explaining of unilateral decisions or interpretations that change established doctrines by church authorities.

The first process may be rationalizations that are put forward by various anonymous individuals who are uttering prophesies "in the spirit" in various places over time, which become known to other communities and sometimes adopted or adapted, until the "normal" POV of the group develops.

The second one, consisting of changes in established doctrines made on someone's specific authority, require explanations. So, I am doubting that "apostolic" authority, as Christians imagined it in NT times and later, even existed in the earliest times, because of their insistence of explaining things away. Possibly James the brother of Jesus took over the leadership of Jesus' movement and was considered it's leader whose decisions on matters of interpretation were considered final, but all that stuff about the 12 apostles and/or 70 disciples is, IMHO, made up for the occasion long after the fact.

As you know, I am of the opinion that 2nd century Christianity (as we know it in the NT) was only vaguely aware of the circumstances of their own origins, either that or what they did know was of the sort that it had to be recast in a non-threatening manner to Roman society. The explanations they came up with were developed here and there and cannot be expected to mesh together in lock step.

However, if I were to suggest a progression, it would be:
1) Jesus, speaking of the establishment of a kingdom of God on earth, predicts its immediate implementation.
2) Jesus, whether or not he considered himself, or was considered by others to be, the anointed leader who would inaugurate that new age, was arrested and executed for treason against Roman rule. This in no way dislodges the idea that the coming of the new age was imminent, although now Jesus' Judean followers at least expect him to be the inaugural messiah, resurrected for that very purpose. At this point perhaps some began to believe that Jesus made his prediction of imminence subject to the lifespan of some of those who heard it uttered.
3) After about 40 years (we could quibble over the time-frame implied by the word "generation," but I would say that since the average life span in that age was about 40 years then the period of a "generation" would be, at maximum, about 40 years) there was the discomfiture of the Judean rebellion in 66 CE, which did not impose a kingdom of God on earth like Jesus predicted. I'm not saying that Jesus advocated human implementation of the event (by his followers) but there was also no divine intervention with Jesus swooping down from the clouds of heaven to gather up the saints to join the myriads of angels who would evoke the final implementation of the kingdom of God on earth. This must have been a great disappointment, and this disappointment is what I would suggest drove the gentile faction within the Jesus movement to rationalize what Jesus had "really" meant by his predictions, ultimately evolving into the Christ theology of the NT that we all know and love today.

The more I read about the early years of the Jehovah's Witnesses and LDS movements, the more I think that it is possible for formal changes to be made official or at least be explained in some quite weird and bizarre ways.

DCH

[Ben C. Smith]

To me, these passages are traces of the rationalizations made to reduce cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that Jesus (assuming he was real and physical) seems to have predicted an imminent coming of the final "age" which did not come as expected. "Reasons" had to be developed to explain this situation. Yet I do not see why the presence of the "apostles" (however defined) is required for rationalization to occur.

If you assume that Jesus himself made such predictions, then no, the apostles themselves are not necessary; they could by foils. But I was not making that assumption, since it could also be visions of a purely spiritual Jesus which prompted the expectation, in which case the recipients of those visions (the "apostles") would be key. It is also heuristically appropriate to speak of the apostles here rather than of Jesus himself, since it was at least some of them ("some standing here," "that disciple would not die") who were supposed to still be alive at the time. Jesus, by all accounts, knew he would already be dead.

Yet what evidence would you propose for apostolic "visions" that *actually changed established doctrines*?

....

However, if I were to suggest a progression, it would be:
1) Jesus, speaking of the establishment of a kingdom of God on earth, predicts its immediate implementation.
2) Jesus, whether or not he considered himself, or was considered by others to be, the anointed leader who would inaugurate that new age, was arrested and executed for treason against Roman rule. This in no way dislodges the idea that the coming of the new age was imminent, although now Jesus' Judean followers at least expect him to be the inaugural messiah, resurrected for that very purpose. At this point perhaps some began to believe that Jesus made his prediction of imminence subject to the lifespan of some of those who heard it uttered.
3) After about 40 years (we could quibble over the time-frame implied by the word "generation," but I would say that since the average life span in that age was about 40 years then the period of a "generation" would be, at maximum, about 40 years) there was the discomfiture of the Judean rebellion in 66 CE, which did not impose a kingdom of God on earth like Jesus predicted. I'm not saying that Jesus advocated human implementation of the event (by his followers) but there was also no divine intervention with Jesus swooping down from the clouds of heaven to gather up the saints to join the myriads of angels who would evoke the final implementation of the kingdom of God on earth. This must have been a great disappointment, and this disappointment is what I would suggest drove the gentile faction within the Jesus movement to rationalize what Jesus had "really" meant by his predictions, ultimately evolving into the Christ theology of the NT that we all know and love today.

All good points to consider. But understand that I was writing in my OP strictly of the prediction itself, not of the historicity (or nonhistoricity) of Jesus, nor of the nature of apostolic authority. I used the apostles' lifetimes as my meter because the texts do that; nothing more.

[Ben C. Smith]

As you know, I am of the opinion that 2nd century Christianity (as we know it in the NT) was only vaguely aware of the circumstances of their own origins....

I actually agree with this in great part.

[pavurcn]

It is essentially the overthrow of all authorities, kings, emperors (as in the apocalyptic scenarios). "I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:33). The Resurrection was the unexpected form of the inbreaking of the eschatological era.

So here you seem to be applying the generational prophecy to the death and resurrection of Jesus himself, producing a scenario in which Jesus promised that the generation whose apostolic representatives he was addressing on Olivet would not die out for, oh, say, another few days. Besides, how can one apply the rest of chapter 13 to the resurrection without sacrificing intellectual integrity? That is a serious question: how?

Very good point. The end-time discourse and the (Resurrectional) fulfillment of time discourse might have been conflated but they point to different realities. I wonder how close we are to the most primitive tradition. Has there been garbling? I can see Jesus saying: something astounding is about to take place and you are going to see it. But I can also see him saying: my vision of the absolute end, the resolution of all history chronologically, is that it is going to be like this. (He does have some end-time parables, as in Matt 25.) Some people think that the two were the same thing for the historical Jesus: what turned out to be death and resurrection would be the entree to the cosmic end. Do we know enough to say for sure? I think Mark 13 has indications that there is a long way to the end (preaching the gospel to all nations is going to take some time). But Jesus also seems to believe in some kind of amazing imminent fulfillment of the time: the kingdom is near.