I have little doubt the story of Joseph predates all the gospels, but that doesn’t prove its veracity.  And FYI, many scholars think the author of John had access to some or all of the synoptics.  Why wouldn’t he?  The fact that he differs from them in so many ways doesn’t mean he didn’t know there were different versions of the stories he told.  It could just mean that he didn’t like those stories–perhaps because the Jesus in the synoptics is not divine enough for his tastes–too human. 

In any event, scholarly consensus says all the gospels had earlier sources (which were lost, because the gospels made them irrelevant, and people stopped copying them).  Meaning that someone who never read a given gospel could still have access to some of the sources that gospel was drawn from.

In ancient history, you should probably assume all histories–religious or secular–have some errors in them.  And frankly, that skepticism shouldn’t be abandoned when you get to modern history.  But I am not an advocate of invincible skepticism.  Forgive me for saying that at times, you seem to be.  Just about different things. 

It’s a pretty solid fact that they can’t find the slightest evidence of there ever being any such place as Arimathea, and if they can document the real-life existence of a paltry little hamlet like Nazareth……

I shouldn’t say ‘consensus’, because that’s a moving target, but there’s a lot of qualified people saying it’s likely all four gospels had at least some written sources, though not all the same ones.  The agreement among the synoptics can’t possibly be coincidence, and while we don’t have Mark’s sources, it’s a very polished work to have been made up out of only oral recollection.  John is the outlier, but it’s also the last one, and what are the odds that a literate Christian at that point in time would read absolutely nothing else written about Jesus prior to writing his version?  To me, it seems obvious that the author of John didn’t like what he’d read, and intended to improve on the existing gospels.  It’s a reaction against what came before. 

There’s a number of theories–

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Pardon me for saying, I don’t put much faith in them (least of all the one from ‘John Loftus’–I’m supposed to believe that’s a real name?)  The mere fact that people are still debating it proves we don’t know if there was such a place for John to come from.  I tend to think there was some germ of a real story to begin with, but the accretion of legend around it makes it very hard to see that tiny nugget of potential fact. 

Incidentally, I had forgotten this post of Bart’s, where he is forced to defend the existence of Nazareth.

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(The day will come when Bart will be asked to prove his own existence.)

You were admirably clear about that, Robert.  My point is that there are multiple potential explanations out there (including the perhaps mythic Mr. Loftus’s notion that it’s a made up name meaning ‘best disciple town’), which tends to underline the fact that we can’t be sure the village existed, whereas we do know for a fact there was a Nazareth in ancient times, even though there have been people who tried to prove it didn’t exist at the time Jesus was born.  Archaeology is a science, but hardly one of the most exact, particularly when you are not dealing with the ruins of great cities, there being certain limits to what can be proven with pottery shards and ancient latrines. 

We already had the Joseph of Arimathea discussion elsewhere, I’ve been on both sides of it, and frankly I don’t see there being any end to it.  I think people just like saying ‘Joseph of Arimathea’–even the people who want to prove there was no Joseph of Arimathea.  🙄

Hey, if Bart can change his mind about stuff he’s said for decades……

Bothers me that it’s in all four gospels (getting a bit more dressed up every time).  Very likely that it existed before any of them were  written (I don’t believe Mark invented it).  I have a hard time seeing it being made up out of whole cloth.  But I don’t believe any of the existing versions are accurate, even by the standard of Passion stories. 

So while Jesus is a real person who has been mythologized, maybe Joseph is a mythological person based on something real.  That’s about the best I can do.  Probably ever. 

I’d lean more towards there being a minority on the Sanhedrin who thought Caiaphas overreacted, and one or several might have interceded in some way with regards to the body, since it’s a shonda for the goyim to leave a religious Jew’s body to be eaten by birds and beasts.  This eventually led to the Joseph legend, and possibly other aspects of the Passion story. 

(I would assume Roger David Aus has some thoughts, probably relating to Haggadic literature repurposed by Jewish Christians and/or lost Aramaic Christian writings, and I see has in fact written an entire book on the subject.  Maybe I’ll get to it sometime.) 

It being in all four gospels argues against it being something dragged in from an entirely different quarter.  Obviously it began fairly early, since they needed some explanation as to why his body wasn’t left for the scavengers (I’m not saying it wasn’t–I’m saying that whether it was or not, people would ask). 

I question whether pagan converts would invent a sympathetic Jewish figure (why not make him a pagan convert–much more plausible that he could intervene with Pilate–John’s gospel is already moving in this direction). More likely came from Jewish converts who wanted to emphasize that there were Jesus-friendly figures even on the Sanhedrin.  At the time this legend came into being, I’d say the Jewish influence was still very strong, and pagans were not numerous and influential enough to be dragging in their own baggage. 

Anyway, we agree it didn’t happen.  The way it does in any of the gospels.  That’s about as far as we’re gonna get.  G’night. 

I agree Mark’s readership had a large Jewish component (there’s a reason it’s the gospel showing the least hostility towards unconverted Jews, as evidenced by Mark’s version of Joseph).  However, the murky origins of Arimathea are secondary to the question of how versions of this story began to be told in the Christian community.  

One cannot help but note a dearth of Christian writings in Greek in the substantial interval between Paul’s epistles and the gospels.  The lack of Aramaic and Hebrew sources is to be expected, since the percentage of Christians who could read in either language declined rapidly, and such texts would cease to be copied.  Why would significant Greek sources, accessible to the majority of literate Christians, disappear without a trace?  If there was a substantial community of literate Greek-speaking Jewish Christians, one would think they’d be interested in leaving a written record of their stories and ideas, and hard to see why it would be abandoned by later generations of Greek speaking pagan converts.  We have mentions of the Gospel of the Hebrews.  Why not the source and/or sources that mentioned the story of Joseph?

Robert, you noticed I mentioned Paul, right?  In that passage right above what you typed? 

As we both know, Paul’s audience was overwhelmingly gentile, and since we’re not debating the existence of Jewish Christians in this era, I don’t know why his mentioning them is relevant–the fact that he’s mentioning them indicates the letter isn’t addressed to them.     

I’m sure there were other Greek texts (and obviously Paul wrote other letters, not that letters is what we’re discussing here), but I don’t see why something as signficant as a Greek proto-gospel (and that’s what we’re talking about here.) would disappear without a trace, without even a brief mention of its existence.    

Again, the issue is copying.  People won’t copy texts they can’t read.  There are other reasons for a text to not be copied anymore, but a text in Greek you’d expect to stick around longer.  

If you feel the need to tell me you also mentioned Paul, when I just referred to you mentioning Paul, maybe it’s time to table the discussion.  🙂