Steefen said
brenmcg,Question 1: Why in the world would Mark leave out Jesus teaching the Our Father Prayer?
Question 2: Why in the world would Mark leave out the Beatitudes?
Question 1 is easy – Mark is a first century christian and the Our Father has no mention of Christ, Jesus has not been glorified in the Our Father so 1st C christians stopped wanting to say it.
Luke, writing second, removes some parts of the prayer; “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is removed because Jesus is supposed to be Lord of heaven and earth; “deliver/save/rescue us from evil” is removed because Jesus is supposed to deliver christians from evil.
Mark writing third removes it altogether.
Everything about the Our Father says early church and Matthew should be considered earliest for having it.
Question 2 is not so easy but probably Mark had problems with the kingdom of heaven being promised to the poor in spirit and the inheritance of the earth being promised to the meek. These were to be given to believing christians not to those simply being poor or meek.
Robert said
But don’t you also think Matthew was a 1st-century Christian? Didn’t Matthew and the members of his community also believe that Jesus had been glorified?
Yes but the question is “why in the world would mark leave it out”. The answer is easy, its not a particularly christian prayer.
Why Matthew, who believed much the same things as Mark, would leave it in is a separate question. The tradition of the prayer being taught by Jesus may have simply been too strong in his community to leave out.
And Matthew did not believe Jesus to be Lord of heaven and earth?
Also, are you saying that Matthew believed that the Father (but not Jesus) was supposed to deliver Christians from evil, but Luke disagreed with this. He thought the Father was not supposed to deliver Christians, but only Jesus was supposed to deliver Christians?
No the Our Father does not deny Jesus’s Lordship or role in delivering in delivering from evil – but it doesnt mention them either. The prayer would become less important to early christians as they moved away from Judaism and wanted to pray to Christ.
The Our Father is not particularly christian, it could pass for 1st C Jewish orthodoxy. The development of the Our Father from Matthew to Luke to Mark would best match the history of early christian development from Judaism to a gentile centred religion.
Isn’t the Our Father (in its Matthean form) still being said in the churches to this very day, nearly 2,000 years later? Do you think it died out and then was mistakenly reinstituted by some pope in the middle ages?
The gospel of Matthew survived so the Our Father became part of scripture. But it wasnt thought scripture when Luke or Mark were writing and they felt free to compose their own version of orthodoxy.
Really? Doesn’t Mark relate the story about how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God? Doesn’t he have something about how it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God? With respect to meekness, doesn’t Mark say something about whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. I don’t know but that sort of sounds something like being meek.
Yes but I’m saying Marks problem with the beatitudes may be that they appear to guarantee the kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit. For Mark it is the elect whom the Lord has chosen who will be gathered up to heaven – Mark 13.
For Mark simply being poor in spirit or fighting for righteousness doesn’t get you into heaven. Jesus dying for your sins does.
And again the question is “why in the world would Mark leave it out?”. I’m just trying to give a possible answer not claiming that Mark must leave it out. Arguments for Markan priority based on this kind of reasoning are weak.
Aren’t you just making this up to try and come up with ad-hoc justifications for your preferred source-theory? Can you support these ideas from other texts in the respective gospels?
I’m not trying to justify Matthean priority here – I’m trying to refute an argument against it (Mark couldn’t possibly leave these out).
Robert said
Markan priority is an hypothesis as is Matthean priority. Although Markan priority is the preferred hypothesis by the overwhelming majority of critical scholars, it is pointless to argue that one can nonetheless come up with ever more unlikely ad hoc rationalizations for how one might imagine Mark to be editing Matthew. One still has to judge which one is more likely. Otherwise, you’re only trying to refute a strawman.
Your argumentation results in a distorted view of Mark. For example, you end up attributing a kind of sola fidei idea to Mark as a way of differentiating Mark’s supposed redaction of Matthew.
But it is not only Mk 13 that views the faithful as the elect. See Mt 24,31: And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Nor does Mark supposedly believe that it is ‘only Jesus dying for your sins that gets you into heaven’. In Mk 10,17 a rich person asks the Markan Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The Markan Jesus answers that he must keep the moral commandments and sell what he owns, his many possessions, and give the money to the poor in order to have treasure in heaven.
Thus, your attempts to invent reasons for why Mark might have edited Matthew end up with a selective and distorted view of Mark’s gospel.
Not sola fide, works are important for Mark, but there must also be a role for Jesus. The rich man must sell all he has which will then be stored in heaven but he also must come follow Jesus.
Mark 10:29-30 “Anyone who has left home or brothers or sisters … for my sake and for the gospel will not fail to receive their reward … ” ie Jesus must be involved.
There’s no role for Jesus in the beatitudes or the Our Father. If the poor in spirit get the kingdom of heaven what’s the need for God to send his son. If the will of the Father will be done on earth as in heaven what’s the point in Jesus becoming Lord.
A later christian editor would feel a need to either edit in a role for Jesus or remove the passages from the gospel.
Also there need not be any theological difference between Matthew and Mark here. All the gospels have some truths and some inventions and need not be internally consistent.
We have in the first century the development of a new religion out of an old one. In the beatitudes and Our Father we have two passages which appear to be wholly acceptable to the older religion. If we have three books by the new religion, one which contains the passages, one which edits them down and one which removes them altogether, we should expect the chronological ordering of these books to follow this same pattern.
Robert said
You have not identified a distinguishing characteristic of Mark over against Matthew that would justify Matthew keeping the beatitudes and Mark deleting them. As for ‘for my sake’, Matthew has this phrase in the very beatitudes (!) and elsewhere in his gospel: Mt 5,11 10,18.39 16,25 19,29
Identifying a distinguishing characteristic of Mark against Matthew wouldn’t help in deciding which gospel came first. This identity would serve equally as evidence for Matthew adding the beatitudes to Mark. So Matthew’s inclusion of “for my sake” in one of the beatitudes and elsewhere is not significant.
What’s needed is to identify a general tendency of christians to move away from traditional Jewish views and to extending the significance of the role of christ. If that can be established then Luke’s shortening of beatitudes/Our father and Marks omission of them would suggest the chronological ordering Matthew -> Luke -> Mark.
This would be true regardless of whether o not the writers shared precisely then same theology. Matthew may just contain older material which contradicts some of his own additions. Luke and Mark would then be “tidying up”.
Whats important is a general tendency to increase the significance of christ.
Your use of a continuum of ‘more Jewish’ to ‘less Jewish’ to date the gospels is anachronistic and based on wrong assumptions. Whether or not Mark or Matthew addressed Gentile as well as Jewish concerns was a function of the nature of their audiences and communities, not chronology. Some Christian communities remained well affiliated with Jewish synagogues into the late 5th century, continuing to engage in common synagogue worship and festivals, even circumcision. The separation of Judaism and Christianity took place in different ways and rates and times in various places. It is useless as a criterion for solving the synoptic problem.
True, christian writings can’t be dated simply by how Jewish they are; and neither can manuscripts be dated simply by hand writing style. But they are not completely useless either.
All that’s needed is a general tendency in some direction; the more Jewish ideas in a christian writing the earlier its likely to have been written – especially when comparing two documents with obvious literary connection. Matthew’s gospel being more concerned with Jewish ideas than is Mark’s is not proof of Matthean priority but is certainly evidence for it.
Robert said
No, you’re missing the point entirely. Your use of a continuum of ‘more Jewish’ to ‘less Jewish’ to relatively date the gospels is not valid. There were plenty of more Jewish communities around when Mark wrote his gospel and plenty of more Gentile communities around when Matthew wrote his gospel. The various issues were being dealt with differently prior to the writing of the first gospel as can be seen in Paul’s letter to the Galatians and continued to be dealt with differently long afterward, at least up until the end of the 5th century as can be seen in the writings of John Chrysostom. To use this ‘tendency’ to try and impose relative dating for Matthew and Mark, written within a generation, but for different communities and purposes is not valid.
I dont see that I’m missing the point – certainly christian writing can’t be dated base solely on how Jewish it is. But if its true that christian theology developed a more central role for christ at the expense of more traditional Jewish views then it necessarily follows that the more traditional Jewish views a christian writing has, the earlier it is likely to be. Otherwise there’s no development in christian theology. On this reasoning the evidence of the Our father taken in isolation would place Matthew earlier than Mark, though of course it doesn’t prove it to be.
As for your belief that Mark displays a “general tendency to increase the significance of christ,” that’s just bizarre. Matthew adds a virgin birth, Jesus being conceived by the Holy Spirit, his name being “God with us,” his birth (and birthplace and later place of residence) being prophesied in scripture, announced in dreams, and written in the stars, prompting foreign astrologers to come and worship him, and his being murderously opposed by King Herod, all while still an infant.
These can all be dealt with together by the claim that Mark is less concerned with traditional Jewish belief than Matthew. Jesus fulfilling old testament prophesies is not as important to Mark as it clearly is to Matthew. Which is why he can leave out the virgin birth and “God with us” claim and the whole invented story of a trip to Bethlehem.
How to deal with Jesus’s earthly father is a problem for all early christians who believe him to be the son of god. We’d expect this to result in Joseph role being reduced slowly being written out of the story. Which is exactly what we get with the Matthew > Luke > Mark pattern.
In Matthew the annunciation is to Joseph, in Luke this is changed to Mary, Mark writes Joseph out of his gospel entirely.
Matthew tells us Jesus is the son of the carpenter, Mark in the corresponding passage tells us Jesus is the carpenter. The direction of Mark to Matthew here, where Matthew would add in “the son of” is almost inconceivable. Far more likely is Mark removing all reference to Joseph.
Likewise, to the end of Mark’s gospel, Matthew adds a resurrection appearance of Jesus with the disciples worshiping him, Jesus announcing that ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, and commands them to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that he commanded’ and that ‘he will be with them always, to the end of the age’. Against this, you want to claim that Mark displays a general tendency to increase the significance of Christ and this explains why he would leave out the beatitudes and the ‘Our Father’. And yet Mark would also leave out all these other elements of very high christology? Not credible.
The ending of Mark is disputable and the real question is how much of this Mark has elsewhere in his gospel. Mark’s Jesus says the gospel must be preached to all nations. Mark’s Jesus will cut short the end times for the sake of the elect whom he has chosen. He will come with great power and glory with his angels and gather the elect from the ends of the earth to the end of the heavens. The words of Mark’s Jesus will never pass away. Mark’s Jesus tells the disciples he’ll see them in Galilee after the resurrection. Mark’s Jesus will baptize will the holy spirit.
The only theological development we really see in the synoptics is one of a reduction of traditional Jewish beliefs from Matthew to Luke to Mark.
Robert said
You are assuming that the degree of ‘Jewishness’ of a gospel may be dictated solely by chronological concerns, when I have already shown that this is not true. It is much more a function of the identity of the author and his community. Cephas was open to eating with gentiles and living like a gentile in Antioch before he adopted a more Jewish lifestyle at the behest of the men from James. This shows that decades before the gospels were written, there already existed gentile christian communities and Jewish christian communities and practices. Cephas’ behavior developed in the opposite direction that you propose and Paul called him out on this. Likewise we see Christian communities into the late 5th century using Jewish prayers and worshiping with Jews in synagogues.
As for the development of a more central role for Christ at the expense of more traditional Jewish views, Paul exhibits a much higher and more central role for for Christ than any of the synoptic gospels, and he was writing long before any of the gospels. Paul views Christ as the pre-existing instrument of all creation. Where do you find that in Matthew or Mark?
What specifically Jewish elements in the ‘Our Father’ do you think is not essentially contained in Jesus’ prayer in the gospel of Mark?
αββα ὁ πατήρ, πάντα δυνατά σοι· παρένεγκε τὸ ποτήριον τοῦτο ἀπ᾿ ἐμοῦ· ἀλλ᾿ οὐ τί ἐγὼ θέλω ἀλλὰ τί σύ.
Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; take this cup from me; but not what I want, but what you want.”
What you’re claiming above is that arguments for priority of gospels based on level on Jewishness are weak arguments. Which is certainly true, they are weak. I’m not saying Mark’s lack of the Our Father is strong evidence for Matthean priority; it isn’t.
The question is is Mark’s lack of the Our Father evidence for Markan or Matthean priority? Weak though that evidence will be in either case. Are later christian writer’s more likely to add in new ideas wholly acceptable to the older Jewish tradition or more likely to remove ideas wholly acceptable to the older tradition? and especially when these ideas concern the very points of theological differences between the old and new faiths – ie Jesus will be Lord of heaven and earth.
The point of the Our father as opposed to Jesus’s prayer at Gethsemane is that later christians are supposed to pray the Our Father. Christians who believe Jesus is now lord of heaven and earth are supposed to say prayer that doesnt mention him. Its easy to see why this would become a problem for christians after Matthew.
The virgin birth is NOT a traditional Jewish messianic belief! Nor is the idea that the Messiah would be divine. You might expect that Joseph would be ultimately written out of the story but that is precisely what did not happen. Joseph’s role has increased in importance in Christian churches. To the point that we have churches named after St. Joseph, prayers being said to him, feast days in his honor. You’re just making stuff up. If as you think Mark is purposefully writing Joseph out of the story, why would he reject both Matthew and Luke’s view that Jesus was conceived of the holy spirit? Also not a traditional Jewish messianic belief. That Jesus’ great importance had been written in the stars, prompting the three astrologers to come and worship him is not a Jewish element; it is precisely the opposite. It foreshadows the great importance of the Christ for all nations.
Its not exactly what all various Jewish messianic beliefs were – there will certainly conflicting views. The main point here is that the messiah coming from Bethlehem was a traditional Jewish belief which Mark was not particularly worried about.
With the virgin birth there are three possibilities
1) the virgin birth of the messiah was a traditional Jewish belief and Matthew invented the story of Jesus’s virgin birth
2) the virgin birth of Jesus actually happened and Matthew invented the prophesy of the virgin birth of the messiah
3) Matthew invented both the prophesy of the virgin birth of the Messiah and the story of the virgin birth of Jesus.
I think 1) is the most likely.
Re Joseph, his role has certainly been diminished by Luke and Mark. The feast of the annunciation celebrates only the angel’s visit to Mary. Matthew’s Joseph is the one visited by the angel on three occasions, Joseph takes the mother and child to egypt and takes them back again when its safe. A very central role for Joseph in the protection of god’s son. Luke removes this role of protector receiver of gods word – and if it was down to Mark we’d never have even heard of Joseph’s name. The celebration of Joseph today is down solely to the fact that Matthews gospel survived and became scripture.
Re the Holy spirit, Matthew and Luke both have the explicit admission that the lord of heaven and earth used to be a baby, which is quite undignified. The conception through the Holy spirit is therefore required to be made explicit so Jesus can be god’s son.
John and Mark, two later christian writers, avoid this explicit admission so no need to mention conception by the Spirit.
Do you really want to burden your weak arguments for a nearly universally dismissed source-critical view of Matthean priority with the also dismissed view that Mark did not end his gospel at Mk 16,8? Are you going to argue for the authenticity of the longest ending, 16,9-20? Or are you going to claim that another hypothetical ending of the gospel was lost? In addition, if Mark’s gospel was more evolved and developed to suit the growing christianization and de-judaizing of the Christian communities, why is it that it was relatively ignored for so many centuries, while Matthew became the highly preferred gospel of the Christian church, placed first in the canon, cited much more frequently than Mark? The reality is that Matthew served the needs of the evolving Christian church much better than Mark and that is why it became the most prominent gospel while Mark fell into relative disuse for centuries.
I don’t think Mark 16:9-20 are authentic but don’t think the original intention of the writer was to end his gospel at 16:8. Whether the original ending was lost or he failed to finish it for reason’s outside his control. I think Jesus and the man in the tomb telling the disciples he’d go ahead of the them to galilee and see them there establishes this.
As to why Matthew became the highly preferred gospel of the church, I think early christians knew for themselves what st Augustine would later claim, that Mark was the attendant and abbreviator of Matthew. That in Matthew they had the earliest account of the life and words of Jesus.
I’ve noticed a recent emphasis on Matthean priority among some Christian apologists. It seems motivated by the desire to save the idea of eyewitness testimony in the gospel. This makes them date the gospel ridiculously early. And if they should accept Markan priority they would have to explain why Matthew, presumably an eyewitness, quotes Mark, a non-eyewitness.
I’m not an academic or a specialist but I have been reading widely (and deeply I hope) in this field for thirty years and, frankly I regard Markan priority as a done deal like the idea of Jesus the Apocalypticist. These concepts have so much explanatory power that to dissent at this point seems mere obstinacy. I am agnostic on the question of whether Luke knew Matthew or John knew the synoptics at all. A lot of folks seem to assume they must but I have never seen a completely convincing case and we tend to underestimate still the diversity and relative isolation of these groups in the formative years of the movement.
Robert said
Matthew’s inclusion of the Our Father is not even weak evidence for Matthean priority. Even if one grants that you have correctly identified a Jewish-toward-Gentile dynamic toward exclusion of the Our Father (and I don’t since actual history militates against this), you are still ignoring a much more important issue that overrides any micro-chronological expression of this putative dynamic. There were largely Gentile communities alongside and in tension with more Jewish communities long before the gospels were written. If Matthew included a more Jewish version of a prayer of Jesus because Matthew and his community were more Jewish, that would not be because Matthew was writing earlier and Mark was writing later. Your argument to the contrary assumes something like ‘all other things being equal’ Jewish Christianity was succeeded by Gentile Christianity. That is true globally in terms of centuries, but it has no bearing on the relative dating of two texts written within the same generation when there were at the same time both relatively Jewish and relatively Gentile Christian communities and literature.
True Matthew including a more Jewish version of a prayer than Mark/Luke does not necessitate Matthew being written earlier;(There were plenty of Jewish Christian communities around both before and after Mark was written). But it does make it more probably, however small that probability may be.
We know that the writing of Matthew and the writing of Mark were in causal connection with each other and that this causal connection must be placed somewhere on line of a centuries long global succession of Gentile over Jewish Christianity.
In the absence of any other evidence of where/when the communities that wrote Matthew/Mark existed the evidence of a global succession of Gentile christianity would place the more Jewish gospel earlier.
Talk of the great variety of Gentile/Jewish christian communities of the first century serves only to reduce this probability not to eliminate it.
You think there was a temporary and unattested opposition to the Our Father within Gentile Christianity only because you assume 1) Matthew was written earlier than Mark; 2) Mark used Matthew as a source; and 3) that Mark supposedly omitted the Our Father from Matthew for this reason. Circular reasoning. There is no evidence whatsoever for Gentile Christian opposition to the Our Father as a Jewish prayer, not even by Marcion. You are merely looking for any argument of convenience, however weak you yourself admit to it being, to oppose the overwhelming consensus of critical scholars in favor of Markan priority.
No I think the christian religion added christological elements to traditional Jewish beliefs and that the Our Father is a prayer containing traditional Jewish beliefs absent specific christian christological additions. From this I conclude the our father would cause some difficulty to second generation christians. Looking for an ordering of the synoptics based on their treatment of the Our Father I would say the best fit is Matthew > Luke > Mark.
ie Inclusion > Editing > Exclusion.
So no circular reasoning.
Marcion edited Luke’s 10:21 “I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth… ” to “I thank Thee, Heavenly Father…”, displaying the precise problem later christians would have with Our father.
Pure wishful thinking on your part. Other than this fervent desire of yours for the idea of the virgin birth to be a traditional Jewish messianic idea, there is nothing to support it. Zero evidence in the entire corpus of Jewish literature for this.
I dont think it was necessarily widely held to be a messianic prophesy but its inclusion in Matthew suggests it was by some. And of course Matthew itself may possibly be part of the corpus of Jewish literature.
I’m not sure why you are speaking of the feast of the Annunciation. The traditional Christian feasts of St. Joseph, the Holy Family, his being considered a saint, churches being named after him, etc, should make it clear that there was no later Gentile tendency to downplay the role of St Joseph as opposed to earlier Jewish Christianity. The fact that Mark shows no evidence of knowing Joseph’s name is not evidence of Mark writing later than and being dependent on Matthew.
Taking the majority view that Matthew was written before Luke we can see the earliest account of the annunciation was made to Joseph. Given that the feast of the annunciation is wholly devoted today to the annunciation to Mary we can see the Joseph’s role has certainly been diminished by a later christian account.
Its not that Mark doesnt know Joseph’s name its the fact the Mark never makes mention to any earthly father of Jesus. Given that the christianity preaches the father of Jesus to be God, the evolution of the role of Jesus’s earthly father is almost certainly to be one of reduction. When three gospels mention Jesus’s earthly father and Mark does not, Mark is unlikely to be the earliest written.
Paul writing earlier than Mark, Matthew, Luke, like Mark and John, does not mention conception by the Holy Spirit, thus this is NOT a general tendency to downplay an earlier Jewish motif. The subsequent history of the Gentile church which increasingly honors and emphasizes the incarnation, the virginal conception, and the birth of Jesus more than adequately demonstrates that there was no later, Gentile tendency to downplay or ignore this ‘indignity’.
General tendency does not mean universal, and Paul mentions almost nothing of Jesus’s earthy life. Marcion excludes the nativity, so we know of at least one christian who knowingly removed the virgin birth story.
The order Matthew > Luke > Mark > John > Marcion neatly places gospels with the nativity earliest, and those without it latest.
What you think is ‘established’ is in complete disagreement with the vast majority of critical Markan scholars. You’ve repeatedly declined to answer my questions as to why do you think it is that the vast majority of critical scholars do not accept arguments such as yours. Surely you don’t think the vast majority of critical Markan scholars are simply unaware of Mk 14,28 & 16,7. So why is it that your arguments carry no weight with critical scholars? Why is it that what you think is ‘established’ is certainly not considered ‘established’ by these critical scholars? One can only conclude that you are merely grasping for rationalizations.
I’ve given reasons scholars use to support Markan priority, but not sure what other kind of answer you’re looking for? Why does Mark Goodacre think the vast majority of scholars do not accept his arguments for the non-existence of Q?
By “established” I just mean personally convincing – also I’m not sure there’s a widespread consensus on whether or not the author of Mark originally decided to end at Mark 16:8.
You can imagine hypothetical reasons for why you want to believe that Matthew’s gospel became the preferred gospel of the Gentile church, but the point is Matthew DID become the preferred gospel of the Gentile church. Thus there was no general tendency of Gentile Christianity to eliminate the elements in Matthew’s gospel that you want to believe Mark was eliminating.
I dont think this follows. There may have been many reasons why Matthew’s gospel was preferred and which overcame the minor problems that Mark sought to address. Matthew’s gospel being better written, a fuller acccount, and (possibly) earlier and more widespread would have overridden the beatitudes claiming the poor in spirit being promised the kingdom of heaven or that the father will save christians from evil.
Stephen said
I’m not an academic or a specialist but I have been reading widely (and deeply I hope) in this field for thirty years and, frankly I regard Markan priority as a done deal like the idea of Jesus the Apocalypticist. These concepts have so much explanatory power that to dissent at this point seems mere obstinacy.
What is it about Markan priority you find so convincing?
brenmcg said
Stephen said
I’m not an academic or a specialist but I have been reading widely (and deeply I hope) in this field for thirty years and, frankly I regard Markan priority as a done deal like the idea of Jesus the Apocalypticist. These concepts have so much explanatory power that to dissent at this point seems mere obstinacy.What is it about Markan priority you find so convincing?
It would be hard to answer without writing a book. The short answer – its explanatory power. Ockham’s Razor. It’s just the simpler explanation for the data.
How reasonable is it to suppose that Mark happened to leave out just the material shared by Matthew and Luke and also their special sources?
Scholars have long pointed out that even though Mark lacks this other material when he shares stories with Matthew and Luke his stories are longer with more detail.
It just makes more sense of the material to claim that Matthew and Luke modified Mark and added more material than to say Mark left out this material and complicated the stories he did use.
Robert said
“However small that may be …” You’re trying to strain out gnats and swallowing camels. Whatever infinitesimal increase in probability that might derive from your subjective perception of whether a particular point may be placed on a sliding scale of more vs less ‘Jewish’ has to be balanced against your other phrase, “in the absence of any other evidence.” Such a situation does not exist. We have quite a bit of evidence and I do not have the luxury of ignoring it in favor of selective argumentation for statistical irrelevance. At one point, if I recall correctly, you agreed to look at the actual arguments and evidence brought forward by leading scholars in favor of the scholarly consensus. Why not do this?
The preponderance of evidence may or may not support Markan priority, however the implications of the individual pieces of evidence, taken in isolation, must be agreed before the preponderance of evidence is examined.
The original point leading to this discussion was that Mark could not possibly leave out the Our Father if he had seen it and therefore Mark could not have read Matthew. My point when refuting this claim is that in the absence of other evidence the less Jewish account in more likely to be later, however miniscule the probability. IHowever I don’t actually think the probability is miniscule.
whatever the evidence for Markan priority maybe elsewhere, the evidence of the Our Father points to Matthew and the original point should stand refuted.
Not everything in ‘the Christian religion’, as you put it, consists of christological elements. For example, early Christian morality was more or less identical to Jewish morality. The Christians were not looking to reject traditional morality because it did not partake of specific christological elements. You feel that Mark was opposed to the Our Father, enough so to leave it out of his gospel, because it was not sufficiently and specifically Christian. OK, where are the specifically Christian prayers that he would have used instead of this ‘Jewish’ prayer? What evidence is there in Mark that he would object to this ‘Jewish’ prayer? Otherwise, you are still assuming that Mark had a problem with the Our Father as an overly Jewish prayer, that it caused him difficulty, as you put it. Thus you have not escaped your circular reasoning.
Your Marcion example has nothing to do with an assumed christological augmentation of the Our Father.
Mark did not have a problem with the our father because it was a Jewish prayer. He had a problem with it because it absented some specific christian additions to Judaism.
The Marcion example shows a later christian having a problem with calling the Father Lord of heaven and Earth. Jesus is supposed to be. We can see Luke having the same issue when he removes “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” from the Our Father. I’m just assigning Mark his natural position in this evolution.
Matthew > Luke > Mark. Traditional Jewish prayer > editing for greater consistency with Christian beliefs > complete removal.
If you want to count Matthew as Jewish literature in order to support the idea that the virgin birth was a traditional Jewish messianic belief, you’re still stuck in the same circle. I have no problem with considering the gospels as developing out of a Jewish matrix and thus being representative to a large extent of Jewish literature in a community in flux, but that does not make every element within their text traditional Jewish messianic belief. Your argument
In Post #90 you tried to deflect the obviously higher christology of Matthew’s virgin birth by claiming that this was traditional Jewish belief that Mark did not consider important. In Post #92 you asserted, without any evidence or even argument, that it is most likely the case that the virgin birth of the messiah was a traditional Jewish belief. Now you admit that it may not have been a widely held traditional Jewish messianic belief. So, without any evidence that any other Jewish person than Matthew (if Matthew was indeed a ‘traditional Jew’) ever held this view, what is your argument for the probability that a virgin birth was a traditional Jewish messianic belief?
Well first of all I think if Mark had said that Jesus had been naturally and sexually conceived by Mary then Matthew’s virgin birth would obviously be a higher christology. However I don’t agree that the virgin birth is a higher christology than Mark’s complete absence of a birth narrative; especially considering Mark’s non-mention of any earthly father and also John’s lack of birth narrative (Matthew could not be said to have an obviously higher christology than John).
Secondly, yes I don’t know if it was a widely held belief or not, but the question is did Matthew make it up? I think religious writers will sometimes invent stories to fit ancient prophesies and sometimes invent ancient prophesies to fit recent historical facts. If Matthew had been the first to say the virgin birth was a messianic prediction he would be inventing ancient prophesies to fit invented non-historical stories. Of the three possibilities my personal opinion in this case is that the first possibility is most likely – Matthew invented the story of the virgin birth to fit an ancient prophesy.
Robert said
The fact that Mark shows no evidence of knowing Joseph’s name is not evidence of Mark writing later than and being dependent on Matthew.
brenmcg said
Its not that Mark doesnt know Joseph’s name its the fact the Mark never makes mention to any earthly father of Jesus. Given that the christianity preaches the father of Jesus to be God, the evolution of the role of Jesus’s earthly father is almost certainly to be one of reduction. When three gospels mention Jesus’s earthly father and Mark does not, Mark is unlikely to be the earliest written.Robert said
What is your evidence that Mark knew Joseph’s name but chose not to include it?
Here I’m not claiming Mark knew Josephs name and decided not to use, I’m saying the salient point is he never mentions an earthly father. Mark mentions Jesus’s mother and brothers but never a father. In the same passage Matthew tell’s us Jesus is the carpenter’s son. Given that these two writer’s claim that Jesus is the son of god, the editorial direction should be obvious.
Wow. Are you aware of the fact that you’ve completely ignored the fact that Paul exhibits a much higher and more central role for for Christ than any of the synoptic gospels, and he was writing long before any of the gospels, even seeing Christ as the pre-existing instrument of all creation. Did you purposefully avoid this? Or are just not paying attention to anything that does not confirm your preconceived ideas.
No, we do not know that Marcion knew the virgin story as it exists in the current version of Luke and eliminated it.
I’m not ignoring Paul, the immediate discussion was about the various authors treatment of the nativity. The generally accepted ordering for four of them is Matthew > Luke > John > Marcion which would indicate a christological movement away from the virgin birth in bethlehem story. Mark’s natural place in this list would then be after Luke.
Paul barely discusses the earthly life of Jesus so can’t be placed anywhere on this list of treatment of the nativity.
We know Marcion had a copy of the gospel of Luke, we know of no ancient copy of Luke without the nativity story, we know Iraenaeus said Maricion excised the story from his gospel.
Sorry, I really don’t want to offend you here, but I’m just not sure that you’ve yet attained the recognition for scholarship that Mark Goodacre has. Many scholars recognize the validity or at least the importance of his arguments. The view of Matthean and Lukan independence may still be the majority, but I would not characterize it as the vast majority of scholars. Not a few of us entertain the likelihood of at least Lukan indirect awareness of elements of Matthew without necessarily eliminating the likelihood that something like Q also existed.
As I believe I’ve already indicated, I am not asking you why the the overwhelming majority of critical scholars accept Markan priority. I’m somewhat familiar with this. I’ve been asking you why critical scholars do not take arguments such as yours very seriously.
Yes but all Mark Goodacre could say in response is that other scholars are more convinced by the opposing arguments.
I think the % of scholars who accept Markan priority is comparable with the % who accept the existence of Q.
Also I’m not sure arguments such as mine are not taken seriously (Mark not mentioning a father of Jesus in the same passage where Matthew does, cant be dismissed as a non-serious argument), I think they consider the arguments in favor of Markan priority to be stronger.
Mark Goodacre thinks evidence favors Luke using Matthew but he’d be unable to tell you why most scholars hold the opposite view.
I am. The widespread consensus of critical scholars is that Mark intended to end his gospel at Mk 16,8. But don’t take my word for it. Read up on some of this scholarship.
I’m not sure consensus is the right word, its entirely subjective to speak of the intentions of a 2,000 year old author. Majority opinion though it may be.
Like I said, you can imagine hypothetical reasons for why you want to believe that Matthew’s gospel became the preferred gospel of the Gentile church, but the point is Matthew DID become the preferred gospel of the Gentile church. Thus there was no general tendency of Gentile Christianity to eliminate the elements in Matthew’s gospel that you want to believe Mark was eliminating.
This doesnt follow. Sometimes you just get stuck with things you don’t want.
Matthew’s gospel contains many elements. Those elements favored by the early Gentile church simply outnumbered those they didn’t like.
Stephen said
It would be hard to answer without writing a book. The short answer – its explanatory power. Ockham’s Razor. It’s just the simpler explanation for the data.
How reasonable is it to suppose that Mark happened to leave out just the material shared by Matthew and Luke and also their special sources?
Scholars have long pointed out that even though Mark lacks this other material when he shares stories with Matthew and Luke his stories are longer with more detail.
It just makes more sense of the material to claim that Matthew and Luke modified Mark and added more material than to say Mark left out this material and complicated the stories he did use.
Mark left out lots not just what Matthew and Luke shared – he left out things peculiar to Matthew and some things peculiar to Luke also.
Matthew and Luke both deciding to leave out the same minor details of Mark’s story is surely less likely than Mark adding in minor details later?
Matthew adding to Mark and Mark subtracting from Matthew both make sense in and of themsleves, but on a surface level the first should be preferred due to patristic evidence.
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