Robert:
For our question here, it is irrelevant as to whether the author knew of such [resurrection appearances] stories or not.* * *
neither Mark’s knowledge or ignorance of resurrections appearances nor a lack of skill in being able to create such a narrative is completely irrelevant to our question here of posteriority.
Robert, I’m not sure I’m understanding the argument here.
If Mark was using Matthew or Luke or both as a source, he would by definition know about the resurrection appearances. Conversely, if Mark wrote first, and Matthew and Luke used him as a source, there is a technical possibility that he didn’t know of resurrection stories. Thus, if someone could somehow demonstrate convincingly that Mark did not know about resurrection appearances, it would effectively eliminate Markan posteriority as a possibility and leave Markan priority as the only viable option.
It’s only because such evidence has not been marshaled that the author’s knowledge has now been rendered moot.
Robert:
It is highly relevant [that resurrection appearances were not included on the matter of whether Mark was the first text or whether Mark was an abridgment]. It easily helps explains why all of the other gospel authors and many scribes would want to write what they would consider a much better version.
It’s merely fodder for one of several competing hypotheses. So, yes, it’s “relevant” in the sense that it supports the leading hypothesis. But it also helps explains competing hypotheses. You can argue that it better supports Markan priority than Markan posteriority; but those who support Markan posteriority argue that the lack of resurrection appearances points to Mark’s literary style and creates intrigue.
Robert:
While Mark’s motive is irrelevant to the question of posteriority…
Again, I’m just not tracking. The approach here seems to be that Mark’s knowledge, narrative decisions, skills as a writer, and motives are all irrelevant to Markan posteriority, but can be highly relevant to Markan priority. There seems to be a presumption in favor of Markan priority in this approach.
Okay, thanks for clearing up where the 88 came from. Sorry I didn’t put that together myself.
But I would return to the larger point. I think in interpreting those numbers, it is imperative to keep in mind Lowe’s purpose and method.
As to his purpose, Lowe’s argument is that, as a matter of pure logic, it is impossible for the mere ordering of elements in the three texts to provide evidence supporting Marcan priority against Marcan posteriority–regardless of the actual numbers. The numbers don’t matter; Marcan piority cannot come out on top.
Turning to his method: In the passage you quoted, he speaks of the thesis of *pure* Marcan Priority–that is the thesis that any time Mt and Lk both produce a pair of passages found in Mark, that Mt and Lk will both follow Mk’s order for those two elements. Thus any time Lk and Mt give a pair of Triple Tradition elements in different orders from one another that is taken to contradict pure Marcan priority.
But, those same cases (i.e., where Mt and Lk disagree in the order of a pair of Triple Tradition elements) say nothing against the thesis of Marcan posteriority, since Marcan posteriority, as such, says nothing about the relationship between Lk and Mt, and since whichever order Mk gives, he will necessarily be following one of them (for there are only two ways to order a pair, and if Mt and Lk disagree in order, then between them they represent both possible orderings) and that is consistent with the thesis of Mark copying from them.
(He somewhat cursorily notes that while we may weaken the thesis of Marcan priority, but if we correspondingly weaken the thesis of Marcan posteriority, the results will always turn out the same.)
Once the problem is framed that way, it becomes clear that regardless of the numbers, Marcan priority could never prove itself against Marcan posteriority by appealing to the ordering of elements. Who agrees with whom how many times in ordering elementswill never furnish an argument for Marcan priority against Marcan posteriority, because every instance that lends support to Marcan priority is equally compatible with Marcan posteriority, while a whole class of orderings that speak against Marcan piority say nothing against Marcan posteriority.
He isn’t saying these numbers give a compelling argument in favor of Marcan posteriority; he is saying the ordering of elements is useless as evidence to settle this specific debate.
Thanks, Porphyry.
And, yes. I completely agree with your assessment. Lowe is merely using this data set (involving the Triple Tradition materials) to demonstrate that, in employing the argument from order, Markan priority could never be demonstrated as more likely than Markan posteriority; but he is not using this data to arrive at a proof about Markan posteriority or that Mark could not possibly be second in chronology, with Matthew or Luke written, alternatively, first or last.
And, for my purposes, that’s really what I was trying to demonstrate — because, notwithstanding my title, I really began to write why I had found hypothesis of Markan priority not as strong as I had previously. And I think I accomplished my original goal (title notwithstanding).
For a completion of the argument from order in favor of Markan posteriority, one needs to return to William Farmer’s observations about order using the possibility that Mark was written second versus third. In that connection, Farmer observed that, when Matthew and Luke agreed on the order of pericopes and pericope subdivisions, Mark followed the common order of Matthew and Luke 100% of the time. However, the alternative was not true as to Luke following the order of Mark and Matthew when they agreed on order or Matthew following the order of Mark and Luke when they agreed on order.
Putting together all the data on the order of the Triple Tradition materials, Mark writing third and using both Matthew and Luke as sources is by far the most likely hypothesis on this metric.
Obviously there are other grounds to prefer Markan priority over other hypotheses, and I continue to favor it (if only very slightly). But, to me, this is very hard data that is extremely difficult to explain if Mark didn’t write third.
Porphyry, do you disagree with that last statement?
I agree with everything you wrote except the last statement.
I don’t think the data concerning ordering support the thesis that Mark wrote last; I think Lowe is right that those data are useless for adjudicating between the two theses.
There is no way to get a meaningful signal out of those numbers. Notice that Lowe’s argument reaches the same conclusion if you apply it to using ordering of elements to test whether Mt wrote first or last or whether Lk wrote first or last. Ordering cannot give meaningful data about who wrote first and who wrote last. The entire approach is fatally flawed, and that the very form of the argument is flawed can be rigorously proven before considering any of the actual data (as Lowe in fact does in the article).
So I don’t think the ordering of pericopes provides data that are hard to explain if Mark wrote last. I think the order of pericopes is meaningless in the discussion, and that we should stop looking at that and turn to meaningful sorts of evidence.
EDIT: After more thought, I think the precise take-away is that mere ordering of pericopes can’t tell us whether a gospel is before the other two (as a source for each) or whether it is last (using the other two as a source). A text can be a common term of another two texts either because it was a prior, common source that the other two drew from, or because it was a later writing that drew from the other two.
The most basic problem is that the fact that two texts follow the same order of events more or less closely only gives evidence that the two texts are related more or less closely, it doesn’t tell you which of the two is first. That is why something like editorial fatigue is interesting; editorial fatigue is directional (assuming you actually have reliably identified a genuine case of editorial fatigue–rather than some inconsistency in one of the texts that can be plausibly explained otherwise); the text that shows editorial fatigue is necessarily the later text.
The approach here seems to be that Mark’s knowledge, narrative decisions, skills as a writer, and motives are all irrelevant to Markan posteriority, but can be highly relevant to Markan priority.
Well Mark’s “motives” are completely occluded to us. As are any of his hypothetical sources. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that the author had some sort of frame story or pre-existing creedal formulations available to him such as we see in Paul and that the overwhelming majority of his narrative details are Markan inventions. (Including the Empty Tomb.)
Anyway even if we are totally agnostic about priority we are faced with the same question. Where did the material come from? Then, even if one of the writers made it all up why do the others feel the need to follow it so closely? Why didn’t the others do like John and write their own version?
Porphyry said
the reasons why Mark would exist as an abridgment simply don’t make any sense. I would even claim that the existence of Mark only makes sense if it was the first. It’s hard to see why it would have been preserved otherwise. It leaves out so much that has become considered central to the tradition. All those wonderful sayings! Mark’s Jesus is primarily a wonderworker, a healer and an exorcist rather than an ethicist. Who would such an abridgement be intended for?
To steelman the other side: Early Christianity was not monolithic. It could be that Mark belonged to an otherwise lost tradition of Christianity that had a very low Christology (and also, deemphasized his ethical teaching; or maybe Mark presumed knowledge of Q among his readers and didn’t feel the need to duplicate the material), so that is the Jesus we see in the gospel he produced. I don’t think that makes the most sense of the data, but I also recognize that, in principle, we can’t reliably date texts based on the ideas in them; rather we must date ideas from the texts that contain them.
Given that so much of Matthew and Luke consists of verbatim repetition of Mark, perhaps it might be better to consider them not as separate gospels, but as later versions of Mark? Perhaps what we’re dealing with here are not disparate literary traditions but one single literary tradition?
I think that is absolutely the right idea. I think they defy our neat categorizations (author vs. scribe-who-took-liberties). On the one hand, they act a lot like scribes given the extensive verbatim copying. On the other, they are clearly authors who have an overarching vision for the work: they don’t just tweak a passage here or omit an offensive line there; they fundamentally rework the material in a coherent way. But if we look at the trend: The earlier we go the less slavish were the copyists (which makes sense given that the sacredness of the text grew with time), if we then extrapolate backwards, I think the synoptics fit the trend line.
An interesting data point is that (I’ve been informed) the Kata + (author) formulation (such as we use to identify the gospels) was routinely used in the ancient world to distinguish different versions of the same text.
While by no means a Bible scholar, I am by marriage connected to the DRC, a country that has numerous “mother tongues”, two regional lingua franca and one global lingua franca, and it occurs to me that different language competences may also possible help explain differences in what to include.
If there is a Christian church who is in an Aramaic speaking area with koine Greek as the lingua franca, then roving “apostles/prophets/teachers” who have memorized Aramaic speeches representing their testimony of the teachings of Jesus may provide an ongoing, “live”, connection with the teaching of Jesus, but as the years pass, the narrative of Jesus’s life and works and teaching and death and resurrection becomes more distant and harder to sort out from conflicting accounts, so an established narrative from one of the early copies of “Mark” in Greek that is in circulation is valued, and effort is put into copying it, preserving it, and circulating it.
But as the Church expands into areas where Aramaic is not spoken, it becomes more urgent to get these memorized speeches translated into Greek and collected so that they are readily available to those who are not fluent in Aramaic. The earliest version of that impulse may be translations of those speeches into scrolls of translated speeches, but with some signs and teachings in “Mark”, incorporating those speeches into the information in “Mark” seems like a natural next step to make … natural enough that it’s done more than once in different parts of the non-Aramaic speaking Christian world, so that some of the translated teachings in circulation are in common by both compilers, aka “Q”, and some are unique to each, aka “M” and “L”.
And then once these teachings are incorporated into these expanded Gospels, there is less urgency in copying and circulating the individual scrolls of translated speeches, so they are not preserved into the period from which we have surviving manuscripts, and the focus of the effort of copying for preservation and circulation of the gospels, and for other efforts to focus on the works that are distinct from the gospels … works of other sorts like preserved letters, the Shepherd of Hermes, and etc.
Mind, without work on identifying what features of the texts of the earliest extant manuscripts would tend to be supportive and what features would tend to be dismissive of this picture, it is entirely speculative, so I am only suggesting it in terms of one picture with a bit of plausibility, and not suggesting whether or not it is particularly likely.
The one line that might be pursued regarding supportive evidence might be part of the evidence for Matthew and Luke making independent use of the same common source material(s), with materials collected together in Matthew that are more scattered in Luke, where it seems less likely that Luke would come across a coherent collection and then choose to scatter them. But another thing that scattering might suggest is that there are multiple smaller distinct collections of sayings which Matthew has collected into one place in the overarching Markan narrative, where Luke has elected to place one of them here and another one there and another one in a third place.
Bruce, welcome.
The scenario you sketch out is one possibility. It does seem pretty clear though that Mark, for one, was not a translation from Aramaic but was originally written in Greek. There are so-called “Aramaisms” present but they tend to stand out from the body of the surrounding text, either because they are directly transliterated into Greek or only make sense when translated back into Aramaic.
I’ve come to the conclusion that although Mark definitely had sources, most of the narrative details of his gospel were invented by him. Not fiction, but theologized history. I’m no mythicist but Mark was a literary creator. The perfect example for me is the Transfiguration of Jesus in chapter 9. Every theme in the gospel is encapsulated in this one episode which simultaneously points back to Jesus’ adoption as God’s Son at his baptism and forwards to the Resurrection. This episode is the center of gravity of the entire text. This is not history but literature.
Stephen said
Bruce, welcome.
The scenario you sketch out is one possibility. It does seem pretty clear though that Mark, for one, was not a translation from Aramaic but was originally written in Greek. There are so-called “Aramaisms” present but they tend to stand out from the body of the surrounding text, either because they are directly transliterated into Greek or only make sense when translated back into Aramaic.
I’ve come to the conclusion that although Mark definitely had sources, most of the narrative details of his gospel were invented by him. Not fiction, but theologized history. I’m no mythicist but Mark was a literary creator. The perfect example for me is the Transfiguration of Jesus in chapter 9. Every theme in the gospel is encapsulated in this one episode which simultaneously points back to Jesus’ adoption as God’s Son at his baptism and forwards to the Resurrection. This episode is the center of gravity of the entire text. This is not history but literature.
Yes, note that in that scenario, all of the gospel compositions are in Greek by Greek speakers.
I presume one can invent a wide range of scenarios in which “Aramaisms” enter into Mark, such as a proto-Mark composed by a literate and reasonably fluent speaker of koine Greek whose mother tongue was Aramaic (which would not be limited to Judah or the Galilee, but could also be a member of a Syriac church) and so Aramaisms enter in from the way that many people in the region spoke Greek, and in circulation and copying in areas with people whose mother tongue was Greek, some of those end up being smoothed over, but not all of them.
However, the scenario I was discussing above did not touch on the composition of Mark so much as the composition of Matthew and Luke using Mark as the narrative frame into which they knit in teachings and signs from other sources that they also have on hand.
I guess that regarding the composition of “Mark”, where I would go with the multi-lingual setting that some of us are less familiar with is to note that someone who spoke Aramaic as their mother tongue and is a reasonably fluent speaker of Greek doesn’t have to be translating an existing text to be conveying in Greek what they have learned in Aramaic. Given that what we know about the evolution of memorized oral traditions, and the likely length of individual testimonies memorized as individual speeches, it seems likely that there would have been an increasingly wide range of varying narrative stories to choose from. So “Mark” could well be composing in Greek what he believes to be the facts of the narrative as he has heard it from the testimonies that he gives the most credence to, but it would still be his original composition of those details, and it would be his editorial choice what to give credence to and what to omit or to modify in light of other testimonies he gives greater weight to.
B. Ward Powers presented very interesting arguments in his 2010 book “The Progressive Publication of Matthew.” He considered the Gospel of Mark to be first-contact sales material for sales networks created after Matthew and Luke. He probably used the words “kerygma for nonbelievers.” Essentially, it was the missionary’s first contact material with potential recipients. A very good book by an apologist. The synoptic problem rests on the unverifiable assumption that the evangelists wrote sequentially. This is amusing, because the first confirmation of the gospel’s existence is common to Mark and Matthew. The synoptic problem may be an artificial construct.
Robert said
Jarek, Jarek, Jarek, what are we to do with you, my friend? How many critical scholars have endorsed the conclusions of B. Ward Powers? Also, if you study the history of the scholarly discussion of the synoptic problem, it did not always (and still does not strictly) presume that the gospels were written sequentially. Rather this developed over time as a generally better and less speculative way to account for all the data.
Robert, honey, I owe Powers a personal revelation, reinforced by a walking pilgrimage through Umbria, during which I had time to reflect. The Cammino Francescano is magical. I’ve never had such blisters on my feet in my life, walking the trail in sandals like the saint. Vineyards and olive groves. The Church exploited the figures of Clare and Francis as ruthlessly as Hollywood does its heroes today. The synoptic problem is just an excuse to write so many contradictory books, each of which easily passes scientific review. A load of laughs.
Jarek said
B. Ward Powers presented very interesting arguments in his 2010 book “The Progressive Publication of Matthew.” He considered the Gospel of Mark to be first-contact sales material for sales networks created after Matthew and Luke. He probably used the words “kerygma for nonbelievers.” Essentially, it was the missionary’s first contact material with potential recipients. A very good book by an apologist. The synoptic problem rests on the unverifiable assumption that the evangelists wrote sequentially. This is amusing, because the first confirmation of the gospel’s existence is common to Mark and Matthew. The synoptic problem may be an artificial construct.
And this seems to be an update on the long held view that Mark was in large part a synopsis of Matthew, by taking the work of the past century or two on board by having it by a synopsis of both Matthew and Luke.
If one does not adopt the assumption of univocality, then to me, I tend to lean toward arguments that parallel passages read as Luke copying Mark more faithfully, Matthew copying Mark with more summarizing and softening of language, but that is the kind of argument which is persuasive to those who get that sense when they read, and not to those who don’t see it … it is not an answer to a logic puzzle, which may be pursued in hope of getting a more “objectively” persuasive argument regarding sequence in general terms (where ‘composed at different locations over the same general period in time’ is a possible sequence).
It’s just that there is reason to be skeptical that those specific dynamics can be inferred from the textual structure. Whatever dynamics you can get from textual structure is great, but we shouldn’t assume that just really wanting to solve a particular question in dynamics means that it’s the kind of dynamics that can be inferred from structure.
BruceRMcF said
Jarek said
B. Ward Powers presented very interesting arguments in his 2010 book “The Progressive Publication of Matthew.” He considered the Gospel of Mark to be first-contact sales material for sales networks created after Matthew and Luke. He probably used the words “kerygma for nonbelievers.” Essentially, it was the missionary’s first contact material with potential recipients. A very good book by an apologist. The synoptic problem rests on the unverifiable assumption that the evangelists wrote sequentially. This is amusing, because the first confirmation of the gospel’s existence is common to Mark and Matthew. The synoptic problem may be an artificial construct.
And this seems to be an update on the long held view that Mark was in large part a synopsis of Matthew, by taking the work of the past century or two on board by having it by a synopsis of both Matthew and Luke.
If one does not adopt the assumption of univocality, then to me, I tend to lean toward arguments that parallel passages read as Luke copying Mark more faithfully, Matthew copying Mark with more summarizing and softening of language, but that is the kind of argument which is persuasive to those who get that sense when they read, and not to those who don’t see it … it is not an answer to a logic puzzle, which may be pursued in hope of getting a more “objectively” persuasive argument regarding sequence in general terms (where ‘composed at different locations over the same general period in time’ is a possible sequence).
It’s just that there is reason to be skeptical that those specific dynamics can be inferred from the textual structure. Whatever dynamics you can get from textual structure is great, but we shouldn’t assume that just really wanting to solve a particular question in dynamics means that it’s the kind of dynamics that can be inferred from structure.
Mark’s text is tailored to a mass audience. Street slang, powerful rhetoric, dramatic impact, and excellent theatrical construction. The content was chosen with the first contact with pagans in mind. The Gospel of Mark is just description of the Passion of the Lord with an introduction.
If you’re selling a phone or a washing machine, you don’t recite a 50-page service manual; you focus on the most important functions and create arguments to convince a potential customer.
The synoptic problem doesn’t exist if the Gospel was commissioned by church leaders. The church commissions content based on briefings.
Michelangelo didn’t invent the Pietà. The Church commissioned the Pietà 200 years before Michelangelo to various artists. He was merely the chosen artist for the next one, following the same principles as before. In a village church in Umbria, conservators uncovered four Saint Sebastians from different eras. The Church is a content company like Hollywood. With greater experience. Powers called the book Progressive Publication. Intemediate Mark, Intermediate Matthew and ..so we end up with multisource hypotheses as a last resort.
2SH is a dead end
Jarek said
Mark’s text is tailored to a mass audience. Street slang, powerful rhetoric, dramatic impact, and excellent theatrical construction. The content was chosen with the first contact with pagans in mind. The Gospel of Mark is just description of the Passion of the Lord with an introduction.
Though, as Mark Goodacre stresses in a Youtube short I recently saw, that “introduction” is half of the text. His characterization is that Mark is, in short, “Christ, Crucified”, with the first half of the text is establishing that Jesus is the awaited Messiah and the second half narrating the journey to the Cross.
And yes, this appears to be directed to both pagans and Jews, as a Crucified Anointed One is a “folly” to the pagans and a “scandal” to the Jews.
If you’re selling a phone or a washing machine, you don’t recite a 50-page service manual; you focus on the most important functions and create arguments to convince a potential customer.
The issue I see with Matthew as the service manual and Mark as the Quick Start Guide is the way that Matthew summarizes Mark in much of their common material. “Here’s your source but leave out the sermons”, “Mark” is hypothetically instructed, but also, “and when describing miracles and signs, make up all sorts of details that are not in your source material”, as in exactly how many people carried the paralytic man to see Jesus and how they got him past the crowd.
The synoptic problem doesn’t exist if the Gospel was commissioned by church leaders. The church commissions content based on briefings.
Michelangelo didn’t invent the Pietà. The Church commissioned the Pietà 200 years before Michelangelo to various artists. He was merely the chosen artist for the next one, following the same principles as before. In a village church in Umbria, conservators uncovered four Saint Sebastians from different eras. The Church is a content company like Hollywood. With greater experience. Powers called the book Progressive Publication. Intermediate Mark, Intermediate Matthew and ..so we end up with multisource hypotheses as a last resort.
2SH is a dead end
It’s an interesting hypothesis to consider, but then it seems to me that the texts should read as if they were originally commissioned by the same group of people, each text produced for different ends, and they don’t read that way to me. Luckily I’m not a bible scholar or anything remotely close to one, so I am not troubled if they read that way to some other people.
BruceRMcF said
Jarek said
Mark’s text is tailored to a mass audience. Street slang, powerful rhetoric, dramatic impact, and excellent theatrical construction. The content was chosen with the first contact with pagans in mind. The Gospel of Mark is just description of the Passion of the Lord with an introduction.Though, as Mark Goodacre stresses in a Youtube short I recently saw, that “introduction” is half of the text. His characterization is that Mark is, in short, “Christ, Crucified”, with the first half of the text is establishing that Jesus is the awaited Messiah and the second half narrating the journey to the Cross.
And yes, this appears to be directed to both pagans and Jews, as a Crucified Anointed One is a “folly” to the pagans and a “scandal” to the Jews.If you’re selling a phone or a washing machine, you don’t recite a 50-page service manual; you focus on the most important functions and create arguments to convince a potential customer.
The issue I see with Matthew as the service manual and Mark as the Quick Start Guide is the way that Matthew summarizes Mark in much of their common material. “Here’s your source but leave out the sermons”, “Mark” is hypothetically instructed, but also, “and when describing miracles and signs, make up all sorts of details that are not in your source material”, as in exactly how many people carried the paralytic man to see Jesus and how they got him past the crowd.
The synoptic problem doesn’t exist if the Gospel was commissioned by church leaders. The church commissions content based on briefings.
Michelangelo didn’t invent the Pietà. The Church commissioned the Pietà 200 years before Michelangelo to various artists. He was merely the chosen artist for the next one, following the same principles as before. In a village church in Umbria, conservators uncovered four Saint Sebastians from different eras. The Church is a content company like Hollywood. With greater experience. Powers called the book Progressive Publication. Intermediate Mark, Intermediate Matthew and ..so we end up with multisource hypotheses as a last resort.
2SH is a dead end
It’s an interesting hypothesis to consider, but then it seems to me that the texts should read as if they were originally commissioned by the same group of people, each text produced for different ends, and they don’t read that way to me. Luckily I’m not a bible scholar or anything remotely close to one, so I am not troubled if they read that way to some other people.
Popular religiosity completely eludes biblical scholars. The crucified Messiah, the common man of the people, “απλός άνθρωπος,” is an offering for the poor, for those without prospects or hope for a better life. It doesn’t matter whether they are Jews or pagans, because they share a common social status. Slaves, the urban poor, the hoi polloi. It’s a quiet social revolution through religious imagination.
The concept of the crucified Messiah who rose from the dead doesn’t interest those with a stable social position and is either a folly or a scandal.
When you write for the mass market, you do so guided by premises, assumptions, because you yourself are not representative. Each of these authors had their own vision of the audience’s needs, and the client gave them all a chance to prove themselves. This is, above all, the element that distinguishes the Gospels – the need to adapt to the audience. Biblical scholars are hasty in seeking answers through consensus. Consensus is the absence of a solution masked by a vote.
…the long held view that Mark was in large part a synopsis of Matthew…
Mark was long the proverbial “red-headed stepchild” of the gospels. The church fathers didn’t quite know what to make of it, hence the “synopsis” idea. But of course it makes a lousy synopsis, since it simply ignores whole swatches of material that came to be regarded as central to the tradition and in the stories it shares Mark tends to add more detail, not less. Mark only makes sense as the original gospel.
Jarek! You’re back!
Mark’s text is tailored to a mass audience.
Just the opposite. Mark seems intended for a specialized, “insider” audience. It presumes a great deal of knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures, for example. That, and the fact its central themes involve a radical redefinition of the concept of the Jewish Messiah and a narrative meditation on the fate of the Temple, leads me to believe that the author of Mark was not a pagan convert, but a Hellenized diaspora Jew, like Paul.
The concept of the crucified Messiah who rose from the dead doesn’t interest those with a stable social position…
But Paul is not writing to slaves, but to slave masters. Reread his letters and notice whom he addresses and what social situations he focuses on. And of course whoever he is sending the actual letter to is already in the elite simply because they can read!
Robert is right. In her work Robyn Faith Walsh is encapsulating a lot of ideas that have been slowly rising to the attention of other scholars. I suppose because of my literary background I have been suspicious of the “gospels as a curated collection of oral traditions” view for a while. (That’s not to say I follow Walsh everywhere. Now that I have read her book and thought about it for while I have questions.)
I must say it is a provocative idea that the communities coalesced around the gospels rather than the gospels were produced by communities.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert