Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
(and maybe a future Platinum Member blog post writer)
Authors of the Gospels Wrote These Things to the Mutual Exclusion of Jesus Saying These Things
For searchers of the historical Jesus from a character of historical fiction remove
John 8: 1-11 Woman caught in adultery
Priority 2 because we know about this.
Mark 12: 1-12 parable of the wicked tenants
Matthew 21: 33-43
Mark chapter 13
The destruction of the Temple Foretold
the Signs of the End
the Coming Persecution
the Great Tribulation
the Coming of the Son of Man
the Lesson of the Fig Tree
the Need for Watchfulness
Matthew 23: 38-39
Your house will be abandoned.
You will not see Jesus until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus could be talking to the wicked tenants.
And Matthew 24
The destruction of the Temple Foretold
The Beginning of Calamaties
The Great Tribulation
The Coming of the Son of Man
Steve Campbell:
With Mark writing this after AD70 (and scholar saying Jesus did not foretell the destruction of the Temple)
Mark was talking about the Roman General Titus, son of Vespasian, a Gaius [Caesar]: a leader of the Roman Empire.
So, Jesus was not talking about Jewish Apocalypticism, Jesus was speaking as his author, Mark, would have him speak, Jesus was also speaking about Titus.
The Lesson of the Fig Tree
The Unknown Day and Hour
The Faithful or the Unfaithful Servant [Judgment]
Luke Chapter 21: 5-36
The destruction of the Temple Foretold
The signs of the end
The coming persecution
The great tribulation
The coming of the son of man
The lesson of the fig tree
Exhortation to be vigilant
Have the strength to stand before the Son of Man (Titus)…
Steve Campbell, author of Historical accuracy
for he will judge John who he will let live and he will judge Simon and make him go where he does not want to go before Simon dies.
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
Certainly, Mark 13: 2 supports the dating of his gospel after the fall of the temple.
Steefen, Argumentation specialist
“Do you see all these great buildings?” Jesus replied. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
Adela Y. Collins (and Martin Hengel) considers the desolating sacrilege to be Nero redivivus, the statue installation of a foreign god, or an emperor. However, the best candidates would be the bandits, the Zealots who occupied the Temple or Titus.
Since the Greek term for the abominator is expressed in a neuter noun qualified with a masculine participle “standing” (13:14a) the referent is not a thing such as a statue but a male person. It’s not an image of Nero, a statue, or Roman standards.
= = =
The withered fig tree reinforces a postwar dating of Mark because the fig tree represents Israel and its Temple.
Steefen, Argumentation Specialist
Wait a minute, Stephen: Jesus curses the fig tree and the fig tree withers. For consistency, this would imply that the Temple was destroyed by command of Jesus.
Mark 11: 20
20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
So, Jesus on the way to Jerusalem knows he’s going to get rejected and the next 40 years is the unfolding of his curse on Israel and the Temple.
No: it didn’t happen that way.
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
Traditionallyk forgiveness was exclusively reserved for God to offer through the priests based in the Jerusalem temple (Ex 34: 6-7, Isa 43: 25, 44: 22, cf. Mark 2:7). But Mark shows now forgiveness can be administered unconditionally among members of his community.
Jesus said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Steefen, Argumentation specialist
So, Jesus is a post-war entity. I told you Jesus was not from the late 20s / early30s.
Mark, writing after AD70 shows forgiveness is NOW administered by Jesus without Temple priests after the Temple had become desolate of its purpose.
The character of historical fiction, Jesus serves as a post-Temple forgiver, not while the Temple was functioning.
Did Jesus give the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in the late 20s/early 30s
or did Mark write it after Rome put down the Jewish Revolt?
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
The postwar date of Mark’s Gospel is supported by the Parable of the Vineyard, especially the words referring to the ownerof the vineyard destroying the tenants and giving the vineyard to others (Mark 12:9). God is the owner of the vineyard, the Jewish people are the vineyard, and the tenants are Jewish authorities (chief priests, scribes, elders, etc., [Sanhedrin and kings]) who have been entrusted by God to care for the Jewish people.
Steefen, Argumentation Specialist
But the Jewish authorities killed John the Baptist and James the brother of Jesus; and, in the historical fiction, plotted to have Jesus crucified. John the Baptists and James were killed moreso than Jesus, a fictional character.
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
The parable fits the situation of Palestine after the fall of the Temple.
Steefen, Argumentation Specialist
So Jesus did not give us the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, the authors of the gospels did.
Certainly, that is what happens when it is concluded Jesus did not foretell anything.
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
The ripping of the Temple Curtain is something that did not happen in the late 20s / early 30s
Steefen, Argumentation Specialist
when the character of historical fiction died.
Stephen Kimondo, PhD
The Gospel of Mark was written after Titus entered the Holy of Holies.
Steve Campbell, member of Ehrmanblog
Scholars must be 100% accurate that the biblical Jesus could not remote heal or tell the future.
I sometimes say, We’ve all read Oedipus Rex. Jesus was as good as the oracle in Oedipus Rex and Jesus must have been as good as the oracle of Delphi.
Bart D.E.
The authors of the Gospels – all of them, not just Mark – wrote down stories that had been passed along by word of mouth for years and decades before they wrote. For that reason, when the Gospel writers produced their accounts, they were not simply inventing the stories themselves; but they were also not recording what actually happened based on direct testimony. They were stringing together stories that had long been circulating among the Christian communities. For Dibelius, “stringing together” is precisely what the Gospel writers did. The Gospel stories are “pearls on a string.”
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
(and maybe a future Platinum Member blog post writer)
Not all of the stories.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
(and maybe a future Platinum Member blog post writer)
Authors of the Gospels Wrote These Things to the Mutual Exclusion of Jesus Saying These Things
1)
John 8: 1-11 Woman caught in adultery
This isn’t a pearl. Jesus did not experience this.
2)
Mark 12: 1-12 parable of the wicked tenants
Matthew 21: 33-43
Not a pearl. Jesus didn’t say this parable but Mark wrote about the obvious.
3)
Mark chapter 13
The destruction of the Temple Foretold
Not a pearl but obvious after AD 70 when Mark was written.
4)
Matthew 23: 38-39
Your house will be abandoned.
Not a pearl but obvious after AD 70 when Mark and the synoptic gospels were written.
Bart, do you agree on these four points–they were not passed on by word of mouth but were written by gospel authors without oral tradition?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Bart D.E.2/19/2017
The question with Mark is whether it was written before or after the Jewish War with Rome, that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Temple, in 70 CE. Scholars debate the point, but the majority (outside of fundamentalists and very very conservative evangelicals) think the answer is “afterward,” in part because they see the comments of Mark 13 about the Temple (that it will be destroyed) as indicating that Mark was living after the fact.
I’m not sure if this is right or not; I have tended to think that Mark’s description of the destruction is so vague that it’s not clear that he knows about it as a past event. But that may be simply because he is living outside of Palestine and has just heard the rumors of what it was like.
Stephen
I doubt Jesus ever predicted the Romans would destroy the Temple. If he made a prediction at all it was probably that the Temple would be destroyed by God when he established his kingdom.
Steefen
Sometimes two or more heads is better than one: I wouldn’t have made that chess move.
I’m not good enough yet at chess.
Okay, let me comment on Stephen’s post.
1
I remember Bart at one time going with 67 CE as the date for Mark but over the past 12 years or so, he accepted a 70/71 CE dating.
And, there is something about what Mark wrote in chapter 13 that made scholars say this “foretelling” is after-the-fact “prophecy.”
And, no, Jesus did not have the power of precognition [because most scholars secularized the historical Jesus removing the supernatural].
2
Mark knew who would be standing at the right hand of power (the right hand of the emperor of the empire, the emperor of Rome: his father Vespasian).
So, if Jesus did not say you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and only Mark wrote that knowing Titus would sit at the right hand of Vespasian,
Mark certainly knew the Jewish rebels and Titus both destroyed the Temple.
If Jesus did say you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and Jesus had the power of precognition, the future seen by Jesus would be Titus and Vespasian, not the Son of Man of Jewish Apocalypticism.
Now, let’s deal with Stephen’s suggestion.
Yes, Stephen is correct to say Jesus does not say Who will destroy the Temple.
Yes, Stephen is correct to say Jesus does not say the Romans will destroy the Temple.
If the rebels did not use the Temple as a fortress, the Temple would not have been a military target of Rome.
If the rebels did not use the Temple as a fortress, the Temple would not have been a military target of Rome.
So, we could be left with God wanting to destroy the Temple for a new Temple.
Why? Because John the Baptist was killed, Jesus was killed, the Samaritan Redeemer was killed, James the brother of Jesus was killed and others were killed (high priests Ananus and Jesus of Gamala were killed at the Temple). I think someone named Zechariah was also killed.
I’m not understanding why Jewish Apocalypticism is calling for a replacement of Herod the Great’s Temple.
Because for Jewish apocalypticists and rebels alike the Temple had become a symbol of collaboration with Rome. Part of the evil world system that must be purged and transformed in the establishment of the kingdom of god.
Maybe there is something in Ezekiel and/or The Temple Scroll that made Herod the Great’s renovation vulnerable to rejection and replacement.
Well a big chunk of Ezekiel is devoted to a vision of the Temple in the kingdom of god. This vision seized the imagination of Jewish apocalypticists – like Jesus!
Was Sparta more evil than Rome?
During the lifetime of the biblical Jesus, Emperor Tiberius did not lead Rome into being evil
During the lifetime of the historical Herod the Great, Augustus did not lead Rome into being evil.
The dual reign of Seneca and Nero was not characterized by evil.
The case I will make is that Rome should have put their governors in Israel on a shorter leash.
“Scholars… the majority… think the answer is ‘afterward,’ in part because they see the comments of Mark 13 about the Temple (that it will be destroyed) as indicating that Mark was living after the fact”
Were Daniel’s visions first formulated _after_ the occurrence of the events the book of Daniel describes in those visions?
BDEhrman
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