Stephen said
…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.
Hi Stephen,
There is no redefinition of the messiah. This is precisely what popular religiosity is all about. A parallel definition of the well-known official religious phenomenon. Let me give you an example. You have the official Marian cult with icons, churches, precious votive offerings from the elite, and, at the same time, the popular belief in subsequent Marian apparitions. To whom does Mary appear? To children, most often prepubescent girls. And the official Church always has a problem with this, because there have been local schisms when the hierarchy refused to acknowledge a miracle. How the Church has been toying with Medjugorje for 40 years is classic. Jesus is the popular messiah. The people aren’t interested in a great, victorious leader or a great high priest. What can he offer them? They don’t care about the Roman occupation. The uprising in Judea was a revolution – the debt registers were burned first. The Romans were attacked because they were the guarantors of social order. Because they were in Jerusalem. The target was the corrupt Jewish elite. Josephus writes about folk messiahs who took violent action in a contemptuous manner. However, he is aware that folk messianism is still alive and something must be done about it. He has thus promoted a new folk messiah. Had he heard of it or invented it? We have no way of asking him.
Early Christian writings are not a direct offer to the faithful – they are tools for standardizing a product in a top-down direction. What we say and how we say it. Something like textbooks.
Robert said
Jarek said
Popular religiosity completely eludes biblical scholars. …For a couple of hundred years, the exact opposite has been true. Only in the past 50 years has there been a growing attempt to approach the texts as sophisticated rhetoric and literature, a cause that I’ve championed, but that hardly removes the dimension of popular appeal. And please don’t call me ‘honey’!
Sorry for that. Apologies for the frivolity.
Content creators for the masses are able to prepare an appropriate offer for the general public, driven by competition among themselves, but this does not mean they are able to fully control popular religiosity.
The creators of messianism sought to create a universal messiah who would fulfill certain important social expectations. A military liberator, a spiritual liberator.
But this does not close the door to various impostors who will be able to attract followers from the lower classes. If the messiah is to be, perhaps it’s a carpenter’s son, from the lower classes.
Stephen said
…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.
Quite.
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.
Again, while my expertise is in different areas, so the fact that something strikes me as plausible is not intended to suggest that adds weight to the argument, but that does indeed strike me as plausible.
Note that Aramaisms in the text does not pin down that it is someone personally originating in Judah or “Galilee of the Nations”, so it could as well be a diaspora Jew somewhere in Roman Syria and Aramaisms could easily creep into the Greek text without there being any direct translation going on.
…
I must say it is a provocative idea that the communities coalesced around the gospels rather than the gospels were produced by communities.
Yes, we may take for granted that Christianity evolved from a faith seemingly propagated by traveling bush prophets into a faith propagated by a scripture, but it seems like the transition is not a high probability event but more of a matter of fortuitous circumstances of conditions at the time that Jerusalem epicenter of the early Church was destroyed and the faith was coping with the aftermath.
A believer who had the capability to compose and get set down an account, who had developed a particular perspective and had developed the conviction that the perspective needed to be shared seems far more likely to me for any late 1st century composition than “the church” “commissioning” a work at that time (never mind the same “church” commissioning several) and the emergence of congregations coalescing around gospels that have been produced in the aftermath of the anchoring of the early church to the Poor of Jerusalem being released is at the very least congruent with the timings for original composition that many come up with.
BruceRMcF said
A believer ….
Giovanni Garbini portrayed the authors of the Hebrew Bible as atheists conscious of what they were doing. I claim the same about the authors of ALL early Christian writings. Writings that are entirely a fabricated tradition. The mechanism is always the same – an explosion of enthusiasm on the part of some recipients upon hearing about a miracle. For some, this was the news they had been waiting for, and now they want to participate in this project. This eagerness must be skillfully sustained with anticipated content that expands on this miracle. The source of the Nativity Story for Luke and Matthew was their own imagination – I offer this as an obvious example. Biblical scholars are desperately trying to salvage the remnants of authenticity in several of Paul’s letters. But logic opposes their arguments.
BJH1960 said
The funniest thing about Eurpoe is .. it’s the little differecies. ABBA, baby, ABBA
After your comment, I did a little searching, and discovered how insanely popular ABBA is in Poland.
Under communism, there was no free market; everything was controlled. ABBA broke through the censorship office because they were from neutral Sweden at a time when the authorities had abandoned communist orthodoxy. But the only institutions that could still invite artists were the state media. ABBA was everywhere.
BJH1960 said
Fascinating.
Were you able to receive any foreign radio stations at all? I know that during the Greek Dictatorship (1967-1974), my wife’s father would secretly tune into the BBC for news.
The Polish People’s Army defended the country against hostile propaganda using a network of transmitters that jammed medium-wave MW broadcasts. Radio Luxembourg was listened to, but it was illegal and could not be heard en masse. Most receivers were designed to receive a single state-owned station.
BJH1960 said
They were certainly determined to make sure citizens weren’t exposed to fake news.
Were there other ways of getting info about what was really happening?
I realize this is thread drift but it interests me to no end.
Until Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II in 1978, the system was relatively tight. This was a decisive blow to the entire system.
Even if someone had previously listened to Radio Free Europe despite the interference, they didn’t discuss it due to the surveillance of society. All correspondence and telephone calls with the West were spied on.
But the government was bankrupt, and the security forces were calculated to contain the situation to a certain level. This level was exceeded in August 1980. Solidarity was formed, and the system’s corrosion accelerated.
Jarek said
BruceRMcF said
A believer ….
Giovanni Garbini portrayed the authors of the Hebrew Bible as atheists conscious of what they were doing. I claim the same about the authors of ALL early Christian writings. Writings that are entirely a fabricated tradition.
Is this Power’s view, or are you accreting Powers to a prior conviction?
… The source of the Nativity Story for Luke and Matthew was their own imagination – I offer this as an obvious example. …
The reach of an argument by it being obvious would be those who find it obvious.
BJH1960 said
Thanks, Jarek.
Any books (available in English ) on the system, and/or its unraveling that you’d recommend?
“Utopia nad Wisłą Historia PRLu” Antoni Dudek Zdzislaw Zblewski. PDF is offered In Polish. But google is a very good translation option.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Yes, we may take for granted that Christianity evolved from a faith seemingly propagated by traveling bush prophets into a faith propagated by a scripture, but it seems like the transition is not a high probability event but more of a matter of fortuitous circumstances of conditions at the time that Jerusalem epicenter of the early Church was destroyed and the faith was coping with the aftermath.
A believer who had the capability to compose and get set down an account, who had developed a particular perspective and had developed the conviction that the perspective needed to be shared seems far more likely to me for any late 1st century composition than “the church” “commissioning” a work at that time (never mind the same “church” commissioning several) and the emergence of congregations coalescing around gospels that have been produced in the aftermath of the anchoring of the early church to the Poor of Jerusalem being released is at the very least congruent with the timings for original composition that many come up with.
The advantage of the “literate believer in a community collecting oral tales and composing a written gospel” viewpoint is that it provides some connectivity between the days of the historical Jesus and the days when the gospels were produced. Otherwise all we have between Paul and the earliest gospel manuscripts we possess is a big ole blank space. If these texts were not central to a dominant faith tradition then this blank space would not seem so intolerable. Especially to those traditions which privilege the text above all else.
My favorite solution to the problem was provided by a sect of Jains who claimed that their divine scriptures were delivered pure and free from corruption but were subsequently lost. All the divine texts they retain were derived from the scribes and sages who wrote them down from memory of the originals. The elegance of the Jain approach is that it retains belief in the authority of the sacred texts while acknowledging their obvious human limitations. I offer this solution to the cadres of apologists busy defending the authority of the Christian scriptures.
Stephen said
The advantage of the “literate believer in a community collecting oral tales and composing a written gospel” viewpoint is that it provides some connectivity between the days of the historical Jesus and the days when the gospels were produced. Otherwise all we have between Paul and the earliest gospel manuscripts we possess is a big ole blank space. If these texts were not central to a dominant faith tradition then this blank space would not seem so intolerable. Especially to those traditions which privilege the text above all else.
Yes … the tradition that Mark, the Secretary of the Apostle Peter (as opposed to the author of the text of the “Mark” that we have) set down in Aramaic script the first version of the gospel, which seems to be preserved for us in quotations of Papias c. 130CE, is remarkably convenient for privileging the gospels composed later, as it allows for them to be cast as “originally” based on the work of an Apostle before they had developed the patina of age and established traditions of Apostolic authority to protect their status, explains away why they are in more or less good Greek at a time when it would have been well understood that the core of the early Church were largely illiterate, even more largely unable to write, and spoke Aramaic, the latter certainly and the former likely in common with Jesus himself … “oh, you see Mark was the secretary of Peter, who spoke Aramaic, so Mark (obviously) wrote in the Aramaic script, and then later it was translated into Greek so we could read it”.
It seems likely that there were one or more versions of gospels written in Aramaic script in circulation by c. 130CE, so at that time the suggestion (especially to Greek or Latin speakers who were not from the Aramaic speaking regions) that an Apostle composed one of them would be even more plausible … even if it’s more likely they were composed after the destruction of the Temple, similar to the Greek texts.
If those gospels strongly conveyed a low Christology, and/or an Arian version of a high Christology, and/or were influenced by Jewish esotericism, the combination of Aramaic script fading in use in favor of the Greek lingua franca until being inundated by Arabic and the disinclination of monks to copy texts that appeared to be heretical and of Jewish Rabbis to copy texts that harshly criticized the Rabbinical tradition would account for them not being preserved to the present.
And then later the connection of the Greek composition we now call “Mark” could have its Apostolic authority be upgraded by having Mark proceed to compose the Greek text after composing the text in Aramaic script as, say, Alexandrian churches were advocating for the canonization of the gospel of “their founding Apostle”.
“A believer, we’ve lost track of who exactly and where exactly, who was able to write in Greek, wrote down a narrative of the baptism, ministry, triumphal entry into Jerusalem and arrest and Crucifixion of Christ Jesus, based on what he’d learned from traveling Christian teachers and prophets who had visited his home town/city” is, after all, far from the most compelling case to be relying on a gospel text as scripture, several generations later when groups relying on what we call “Mark” were faced with advocates of reliance on other texts.
BruceRMcF said
Jarek said
BruceRMcF said
A believer ….
Giovanni Garbini portrayed the authors of the Hebrew Bible as atheists conscious of what they were doing. I claim the same about the authors of ALL early Christian writings. Writings that are entirely a fabricated tradition.
Is this Power’s view, or are you accreting Powers to a prior conviction?
… The source of the Nativity Story for Luke and Matthew was their own imagination – I offer this as an obvious example. …
The reach of an argument by it being obvious would be those who find it obvious.
Powers was an apologist who believed in the veracity of the patristic tradition and advocated early dating. He came up with an excellent idea: the Gospel of Mark as a missionary message to the Gentiles. I recommend the book.
I, in turn, advocate dating all the Gospels between Antiquities (93 CE) and Papias (110-130 CE).
Powers’s idea also clarifies the issue of Marcion’s Gospel. Marcion shortened the Gospel of Luke not for theological reasons, but for practical reasons. He wanted to increase the effectiveness of missionaries by pointing them to the content most effective in converting believers. The Nativity stories were invented by Matthew and Luke. They were not imposed on them like the Double Tradition or the Triple Tradition.
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