Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:14 am
And that does not work for me at all. That would be the death of critical inquiry.
We ought to wonder whether Marcion was first, among other reasons, precisely
because the church fathers denied it. We ought to wonder whether our roommates have been reading our diary precisely
because they denied it. Likewise, we ought to wonder whether Jesus uttered the temple word (or it was attributed to him early enough for later tradents to respond to) precisely
because Matthew and Mark deny it.
From now on I have to fear that you count me among the opponents of critical inquiry
But I think that your analogy is not correct. The predominant view about the temple word is not, that there are „
reasons to doubt“, that we should consider the opposite of Mark's claim „
as a possibility“ or that we „
ought to wonder“. The majority opinion is the
positive claim that the historical Jesus
in fact uttered the temple word as it stands in Mark 14:58.
Imho the correct analogy is if the predominant view of scholars would be Marcionite priority over Luke, developed not from text comparisons and studies, but against the claims of the church fathers.
1) My interest in this discussion is not that I believe to have a better solution to the source problem, but the question of whether the majority opinion of German scholars meets scientific standards. I find it interesting that there is a direct contradiction between a opinion of modern scholars and the Gospel of Mark, and that the majority of German scholars claim, without a sufficient source, a little fact about the historical Jesus that the Gospel of Mark explicitly denies.
So far I know the scholarly opinion was mainly developed by D.F. Strauß with additions of Wellhausen, Lietzmann and Bultmann (all great ones). They argued that the Jewish trial and especially the charge of blasphemy against Jesus is historically not plausible and therefore secondary. From this point of view scholars tried to detect the „true historical facts“. Already Strauß and Wellhausen believed that the historical Jewish charge was in fact what Mark presented as a false testimony. Since then many scholars claimed that Mark couldn‘t hold it back because "the facts were well known", but he turned it into a false testimony because it was "so embarrassing for him".
It may be interesting in what context this scholarly view arised. In the OP you presented it as an interesting case for source criticism. But the theory was developed in Historical Jesus studies. It was seen as a problem in Historical Jesus studies, they developed a solution with regard to the historical Jesus and they never really tried it another way. They started with the presupposition that it is a "Jesus-temple of Jerusalem-thing" and – Io and behold - they came to the conclusion that it is a "Jesus-temple of Jerusalem-thing". Note that the theory was developed by Strauß even before the text of GPeter was discovered in 1886 and the text of GThomas in 1945.
2) My impression is that you could agree that the weakest point of the trajectory in the OP is that the assumed earliest stratum is preserved in a presumably later source (GThomas) and that the presumably earliest source shows an assumed later stratum (2 Corinthians 5.1 – offshoot of Reinterpretation 2).
imho therefore a good rival theory would be a case which could show the following dependence of the big four in this game
Paul -> Mark –> John / Thomas
The working hypothesis would be that it's not a "Jesus-temple of Jerusalem-thing", but a
body-temple-thing
2.1) We would start with 2 Corinthians 5:1 and 1 Corinthians 6:19
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
Let's first note that John agreed with Paul: it's a body-temple-thing, because the body of Jesus is the temple.
John 2:19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Is there a possibility that Thomas agreed?
Thomas 71: Jesus said, "I shall destroy [this] house, and no one will be able to rebuild it ..."
Some scholars seems to think that. Christopher W. Skinner wrote in “John and Thomas - Gospels in Conflict?”, page 11
What's with Mark?
14:57 And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” 59 Yet even about this their testimony did not agree.
It seems difficult. Therefore let's go back to 1 Corinthians 6:19
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
Paul's line of thought seems to be: In the body of Christians is the holy spirit likewise the spirit of God was in the temple of Jerusalem. Therefore the bodys of Christians are technically a holy temple of God.
We know that according to Mark Jesus' body is filled with the holy spirit since his baptism. Paul would say that the body of Jesus in GMark is a holy temple. In Mark's pericope of the Jewish trial is the claim of false witnesses that Jesus said “I will destroy this temple ...”. But the Markan ironic truth seems to be the reversal, namely that they are going to destroy the true temple, the body of Jesus. Therefore the saying reappeared during the crucifixion when they in fact destroy the body of Jesus.
Mark 15:27 And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!”
2.2) That's might be the way John understood both Paul and Mark and connected Mark's temple saying with the body-logy of Paul. Therefore John made Mark's ironic truth explicit. Not Jesus, but they are the destroyers of the true temple. And he added a Johannine twist (“ I will raise it up”)
John 2:19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
That's the moment when Thomas disagrees. According to Thomas Jesus will completely destroy his body, so that the soul is set free and can ascend to heaven.
Thomas 71: Jesus said, "I shall destroy [this] house, and no one will be able to rebuild it ..."
Look how easy it was to start with a different presupposition and to get a different conclusion (by putting all problems away as I learned it from German scholarship)