Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 9:04 pm About my point about Robertson and Bermejo-Rubio, in essentia I agree with Robertson about the fact that an evil person named Jesus Barabbas could be inserted only to remove the confusion in the real world between two rival Jesus.
According to J. M. Robertson the rival Jesus of which Barabbas has to be the parody was an old Joshua 'Son of Father' cult but there is no evidence of the his existence to a so great degree to be embarrassing for Mark.
According to Bermejo-Rubio (a mere proponent of the seditious anti-Roman Jesus) the rival Jesus of which Barabbas has to be the parody was a historical Jesus who acted riotously against the Roman Empire. But there is no evidence that a historical Jesus existed and/or that he was a seditious anti-Roman.
I have changed my view about Marduk since Couchoud himself has given a better theory: ubi maior minor cessat.
While there is an ocean of evidence about the existence of a rival Christian sect that preached a Jesus Son of the Father who was not the Messiah of the Jews even if he was confused as such.
What the Couchoud's theory implies logically in the my eyes is that Mark was written against the marcionite threat well in view. Since you can introduce the parody of the marcionite Christ only if you are already aware about the preaching of Marcion. So Mark can be dated with certainty after 140 CE as terminus post quem.
(reordered by me)
Thank you for this. I think it clearly reveals the way you work. It seems that you read a theory and agreed with it, or part of it; then you read another and so you drop your previous belief in the theory read earlier to replace it with the one you have just read. It seems you have to either agree or disagree quickly, that you can’t look at the theory critically and consider it for a while and the arguments against it before enthusiastically embracing it and preaching it to others.
(bold changed by me)Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 9:04 pmshe has to talk necessarily about proto-John insofar she uses - as she writes - terms as "impose", "taming", "domesticating", "bringing in line", in a word, corruption of a previous Gospel (i.e. proto-John):Michael BG wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 4:48 pm She is still talking about John’s gospel and not a proto-John. You seem to be reading more into what she wrote than is there!Could it have emerged in a moment when Gnostic spirituality collided with emergent Christian mythology and the Jewish scriptures? If this is what happened, then its orthodoxy would have come later, as the result of a secondary interpretation that was imposed upon the Gospel by Apostolic Catholics who read into it their own view of the biblical God. If so, this would have ended up domesticating the Gospel, taming its wild Gnostic proclivities and bringing it in line with Apostolic Catholic Christianity.
She does not have to be talking about a proto-John. It does not even seem that she is talking of the sources used by the author of John’s gospel. She is clearly stating that the gospel of John was domesticated by being secondly interpreted by Catholics so it could be acceptable to them and to refute its gnostic tendencies.
If the Marcionites didn’t use the title Christ your position would make a little more sense. My point was why did they use a Jewish title – Messiah for Jesus?Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 9:04 pmthe marcionites denied explicitly that the true Jesus Christ Son of Father was the Jewish messiah. Marcion preached that his Christ was confused by the Judaizing apostles as the Jewish Messiah (hence you have the confusion at work in the marcionite Gospel) but this was only an error of recognition by them, since Paul realized the truth: Jesus was the Messiah of an Alien God, not the Messiah of the god of the Jews.Your point one is the start of my issues. My issue is; why would Marcion have a Jesus Son of the Father God who is also the Messiah in any sense what so ever? Being the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God are not multi-exclusive for either the Marcionites or the Catholics
However you seem to be accepting that the Marionites didn’t create another Jesus to rival Jesus Christ, but took over the Jesus Christ figure and re-interpreted it. This seems to be evidence for my point – there was no need to create another Jesus, the Catholics could have countered the Marcionite interpretation with their own interpretation with different emphasises without Jesus Barabbas.
Perhaps your theory would fall down if we looked at what is likely to have been in Marcion’s gospel. According to Dieter T. Roth as presented by Ben C Smith Barabbas is there (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1765&start=20). Also on this page is a quotation from Tertullian telling us what is in the Marcion gospel – “Then Barabbas, the most abandoned criminal, is released, as if he were the innocent man; while the most righteous Christ is delivered to be put to death, as if he were the murderer”.
From my reading of Ben’s presentation it appears that according to Jason BeDuhn this section ends with (v 25) “He released him who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus up to their will”. This “him” had already been named as Barabbas in verses 18 and 19 according to Roth.
So Barabbas was not created to counter Marcionite theology he was already in the traditions used by both sides.