And you’re creating him to be dumber than you.

Even though he was self-evidently a genius, and you’re–well…….

But why do you think that?  I think he was a great anthologist, certainly.  But very unlikely he invented much of it.  Entirely possible much of his gospel is directly translated (with minor emendations) from earlier Aramaic or Hebrew texts–many scholars have suggested this.  Without the source material, we can’t be sure what exactly his contribution was, other than to stitch the pieces together, add some of his own ideas, and tell a harmonious story with a focused thematic element.  I recognize that since the German Romantics came along, we have this religious reverence (sorry, that’s the only way to put it) for artists.  But in Mark’s day, there was no such feeling about people who wrote things down.  Some were better, some were worse. 

I suppose Homer could be seen as an exception, except he was probably illiterate (and blind to boot), so he never wrote anything down.  It just got transcribed (again, with changes) later on–assuming he existed at all. Am I allowed to call Homer a genius?  Genius depends on being educated to a certain level?  Frankly, I see much evidence that formal education can get in the way of genius, if one isn’t careful.  Pretty sure Buckminster Fuller would agree. 

We just know Mark’s gospel has a strange power to it, as you agree–but allow me to express the opinion (see, I qualified) that you are looking for some way to make the power of the text somehow irrelevant to the man who originally inspired it.  You need to make him less, so that you can go on ignoring what he had to say.  But what he had to say (filtered though it be) has inspired untold thousands of people the whole world reveres as geniuses.  Were they all so much less intelligent than you? 

You are aware, incidentally, that the word ‘prodigy’ is a synonym for genius in any thesaurus ever printed?  You’re disagreeing with yourself now! 

Could the two of us tell Jesus all kinds of things he wouldn’t know about?  Sure.  And we could do the same with Isaac Newton, and that’d be much easier, since he spoke English.  What’s your goddam point? 

As to ‘originality’–if you’d study the history of ideas, you’d know there’s no such effing thing.  Some atheist you are.  Apart from religion, you’ll believe just about anything.  😀

anvikshiki said

This is, as I understand it anyway, Crossan’s position.  Jesus, in Crossan’s estimation, based on texts in the Synoptics and Q, sends his disciples out on missions to preach and heal, talking no provisions with them, and in exchange they are allowed to eat with those to whom they minister and those they heal.  These communities are the proto-“kingdom,” and after the crucifixion, these communities, through the disciples’ ongoing work, continue to spread.  Crossan sees all of this egalitarian community-building as fighting against the socio-economic agendas of Antipas and Tiberius, who want to exploit peasant labor, expropriate peasant land and increase rural production for the benefit of cities.  “God’s kingdom,” as Jesus would have it, heals people and creates communities of interdependence for them, while “Cesar’s kingdom” exploits people and makes the poorer.  That, as I understand Crossan’s larger narrative, is what is distinctive about the movement created by the historical Jesus; it is non-violent, egalitarian “resistance in the name of God” directed against unjust Roman rule.  Jesus’ “kingdom of God,” seen in Crossan’s light, is distinct from apocalyptic, isolationist and violently rebellious resistance to Rome and Jerusalem collaboration with Rome.  That, if I’m not mistaken, is Crossan’s meta-narrative regarding the movement of the figure he takes to be the historical Jesus.

What I’m saying is that I think this larger narrative itself is not that probable in terms of history. As Ehrman himself points out, a peasant movement in which goods were shared among people with certain Jewish religious convictions would not have been considered a threat by Roman authorities, nor would it have been in violation of its laws.  It would not have obviously run afoul of the Sanhedrin either.  So, if we are trying to figure out what about Jesus’ mission got him in trouble with the Sanhedrin and Rome, Crossan’s notion of “God’s kingdom” as egalitarian communities doesn’t explain it.  

There were certainly later agrarian movements, in the modern era for example (which goes back to the Renaissance) that fell afoul of the authorities in their own time.  It’s really hard to say without more data what would have gotten the Romans excited–myself, I think their attitude was more or less “If you don’t understand it, get rid of it.”  I think we could even question the notion that the only reason they persecuted Christians was because they believed failing to sacrifice to the gods of the polis would bring misfortune.  There were probably a network of reasons, and who says people need to have good reasons, even by their own lights, for every shitty thing they do to people who are no threat to them? 

Rome wasn’t a tolerant society.  Period.  It didn’t think it could afford to be, and it was probably right about that.  If you just let people believe whatever they wanted, it would be too hard to make all these different nations (and many differences within each nation) cohere into any kind of working administrative unit.  But there were so many moving parts, they couldn’t pay attention to all of them at once, and then they’d see something sticking out like a loose nail–and they’d hammer it down. 

None of this is to agree with Crossan, but let’s be honest–even the experts are not all on the same page–take Christianity out of the picture entirely, and we’re still very much in the dark about most of the things the Roman authorities did or didn’t do.  We’re still debating what happened during the French Revolution, and why, and my professors in that field used to lament about the sheer plethora of documentary evidence they had to wade through.  More information, in many ways, just makes the picture muddier.  We’re arguing about what’s happening NOW and why!

Peter couldn’t write OR coherently dictate, according to Bart.  If Mark had just listened to Peter tell stories of his time with Jesus, and then wrote this gospel out of that, he’d have achieved something pretty damned remarkable.  I don’t believe there’s any serious chance that’s true.  But I also think we can be sure Mark was trying to be true to the sources he had, even while altering them.  I can believe some of his material is invented by him, but not most of it.  It’s not how this type of story comes together.  It grows over time, from storyteller to storyteller, and we just don’t have most of the links in the chain, because the original sources weren’t preserved by a church that increasingly found them incomprehensible, as gentiles became the majority.  I would suggest Mark was trying to preserve the older traditions, while at the same time adding to them. 

I don’t believe there were enough Greek sources for him to work with at the time he was writing (and there’s no good explanation for why they were all lost).  So what other languages would they have been written in, and why is he including Aramaic phrases and then explaining them to his readers?  Obviously most if not all the earliest written sources would be in Hebrew and Aramaic, because most original Christians were Jews.  I agree Mark probably wasn’t Jewish (so Hebrew would not be a language he grew up using), but his Greek was no great shakes either. 

And answer me this–any of you–Mark is a genius–Paul sure as hell was–Peter was clearly an organizational genius, at least, all the more impressive if we believe he was illiterate–the New Testament is full of geniuses. 

How did all these geniuses coalesce around the memory of a mediocrity?

Go try and find genius in Scientology.  I dare you.  L. Ron Hubbard was a mediocrity who inspired other mediocrities.  Jesus was a visionary whose memory left ripples that are still being felt today.  He wasn’t an accident of history.  History itself is the accident.  At least he didn’t just stand around gawking.