With respect to your question, we shouldn't assume that Paul's letters were already enjoying wide distribution when the gospels were being written. Pauline Christianity was still early and growing, but it would be anachronistic to think that Paul's letters qhad attained any measure of authoritative weight in the wider community. He speaks with authority to the communities that he personally founded about very particular issues and problems each community was experiencing. The exception, Romans, covered a very general issue and was written to a diverse community in Rome, the capital of the empire, but it was maybe only a decade beforehand are the first gospel was written. 

We all know Paul's letters came before the gospels were written. By about 30-40 years. Yet none of the Gospels seems to quote Paul or other letters in the epistles. Paul doesn't seem to quote the gospels but the gospels don't seem to quote him either. Why not?

Thanks,

Saber Truth Tiger

Yep, definitely would want to spend some time with the author of Mark.   The other sessions I want to attend are Paul's first interviews with his interpreters.   The discussion between Paul and Augustine should be particularly entertaining.    

Probably not, but if 16,8 is the original ending that seems pretty absolute too.  But even if "and Peter" is spurious we're still left with "the disciples." The real question remains why Mark would feel it necessary to single out Peter. Why does Mark feel it necessary to make sure there is no doubt Peter was included?  Was there some doubt about it?

Stephen said 
Hypothetical, surely, but the oddity of the expression raises questions.   Why not "Peter and the disciples?"  Why mention Peter at all?  The ordering makes the phrase look late, tacked-on, a correction to the text.   And it completely goes against the downward trajectory of Peter's portrayal in the gospel. Somebody didn't want to leave Peter out in the dark. 

There are a number of hints in the gospel of Mark that he believes Peter and the disciples were eventually rehabilitated (eg, 10,28-30.39 13,9.11.13.23). As you have said many times the stupidity of the apostles in the gospel of Mark functions in part to re-interpret a traditional Jewish political and military understanding of the role of the Messiah. Peter was, for Mark, the first to recognize that Jesus was the Messiah, but like the blind man in Bethsaida in the immediately preceding scene (8,22–26), recognition of the nature of l Jesus' true role as Messiah is a two-step process, first that he was the Messiah and only later, after the resurrection and glorification in the heavens, the true meaning of Jesus the Christ. They still failed, most vocally Peter, still failed to understand this in the immediately following Transfiguration scene, but I doubt Mark wanted to totally annihilate the importance of the disciples in being the first to preach and suffer for the sake of this gospel 

What is the rate of exchange for shekels these days anyway? 
  

Depends. At the the time of Jesus, I'm told the Tyrian silver shekel (tetradrachm), weighing approximately 14 grams of ~94–97% pure silver, would be worth today about $15–$22 USD today if melted down. But in Jesus' contemporary economy, its purchasing power would have been around $400 – $600 USD today (equivalent to roughly 4 days of common labor at 1 denarius/drachma per day, recall the term 'tetradrachm'. Now the numismatic value today as an authentic collector's artifact would get between $1,500 – $3,500+ at the appropriate auction. This wager would be most interesting to Lila and me. On the other hand, the modern Israeli New Shekel (ILS) trades at approximately $0.33 USD. That wager would not interest us. 

… I will betcha a boatload of shekels that this is a later interpolation meant to rehabilitate Peter.

Unnecessary hypothetical.

Hypothetical, surely, but the oddity of the expression raises questions.   Why not "Peter and the disciples?"  Why mention Peter at all?  The ordering makes the phrase look late, tacked-on, a correction to the text.   And it completely goes against the downward trajectory of Peter's portrayal in the gospel. Somebody didn't want to leave Peter out in the dark.  What is the rate of exchange for shekels these days anyway? 

Stephen said
Prof Mark Goodacre has made a compelling case that, far from independent,  Luke knew Matthew and Mark, and raises the possibility that John knew them all. 

As you know Goodacre's suggested possibility is a long-defended scholarly view and even longer assumed position. He is simply one of the relatively recent young whipper-snappers to jump on board.

The creation of a figure like Judas and a story of deliberate betrayal might serve to cover a multitude of sins.

Good line!

 ... I will betcha a boatload of shekels that this is a later interpolation meant to rehabilitate Peter.

Unnecessary hypothetical.

... I think he had the frame story ...

Not only hypothetical, but an essential part of C.H. Dodd's conservative traditionalist opposition to Karl Ludwig Schmidt's view that Mark created the narrative framework. This initiated six decades of scholarly debate on the Markan summaries (Sammelberichte) that Geert Van Oyen finally put to rest in 1987.

... literary and narrative approaches to the gospels, emphasizing their qualities as stories over a historical-critical approach. Of course these two approaches to interpreting the gospels aren’t at odds. They complement each other quite well. 

Indeed, it is the historico-critical approach applied to Mark as an author (rather than being applied to Jesus) with a coherent literary style that unified these approaches, as exempliefied in the pioneering work of Van Oyen's promoter, Frans Neirynck, who was also the principal scholar responsible for reviving and defending the scholarly position that the author of the gospel of John was familiar with the synoptic gospels.

Agree very much with your approach and conclusion! 

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Prof Ehrman has been posting a series of comments about Judas.  I don't know if he's done yet but he's far enough along that I want to go ahead and respond. 

I never used to even consider the possibility that Judas might not be a historical figure.  It simply seemed absurd that somebody would make him up.  That Jesus would select a disciple who would turn around and betray him doesn't speak well for his management capabilities (to put it in modern jargon.)  The so-called Criterion of Embarrassment seemed to kick in.  Why would someone make this up?  

But now I'm not at all sure.  It's interesting to revisit the old arguments, as Prof Ehrman does, after I've spent years reading literary and narrative approaches to the gospels, emphasizing their qualities as stories over a historical-critical approach. Of course these two approaches to interpreting the gospels aren't at odds.  They complement each other quite well.  Even so we're left with some interesting questions.  So let's ask them, shall we?

First of all Prof Ehrman relies on the principle of multiple attestation.  He still sees the gospels as continuing separate, independent sources.  But this is precisely the argument that has undergone the most critique as of late. Prof Mark Goodacre has made a compelling case that, far from independent,  Luke knew Matthew and Mark, and raises the possibility that John knew them all.  So we're not dealing with four separate literary traditions but with one, originating with Mark, supplemented by sources unique to at least Matthew and John.  Consequently the suggestion that the story of Judas is in "all our traditions" becomes much less compelling. 

So let's cut to the chase. What we're dealing with here is Mark.  Many of the core components of the Jesus story seem to originate with Mark.  Interestingly many of these core components are absent for our only earlier witness, Paul.   This is certainly true of Judas, as Prof Ehrman himself demonstrates in his post linked above. 

So why would Mark (or someone) invent Judas?   I suggest there is a deeper embarrassment here than that one of his disciples deliberately betrayed Jesus to his enemies.  And that’s the fact that all of Jesus’ disciples seem to have abandoned him to his fate at the hands of Rome. The creation of a figure like Judas and a story of deliberate betrayal might serve to cover a multitude of sins.   

But it's also worth highlighting the long recognized aspect of Mark's story that he has a very jaundiced view of Jesus' disciples in the first place.   Remember he has Peter himself deny Jesus publicly.  But for a fleeting reference in Mark 16:7, Mark leaves Peter out in the dark and cold. (Now we have no surviving variants that exclude "and Peter" but I will betcha a boatload of shekels that this is a later interpolation meant to rehabilitate Peter.) 

My growing doubt about Judas rests also on my view of Jesus' arrest and execution.  I won't belabor this since I've discussed it before but I doubt very few of the narrative events in Mark are historical.  I think he had the frame story and surviving credos, like Paul, but most of Mark's gospel is literary creation, not collections of stories collected over decades and passed along by members of the Jesus community.  (For example I think Mark probably knew that Jesus was executed sometime around Passover and he made it the day he did in his gospel for his own agenda. For his depiction of the crucifixion he lets Psalm 22 do the heavy lifting.)     

If we assume that there was some kind of "incident" in the Temple that led to Jesus' arrest, then we have to wonder how Jesus got off the Temple mount unmolested?  I have suggested that the more likely historical account is that Jesus was arrested in the Temple outright and that the story of a trial before the Sanhedrin was created by Mark, just as unlikely as the trial before Pilate.  Consequently there was no need for Judas, and he was created to pull focus away from the larger Jesus community who all got away somehow.  (Or cynically, Judas was just one more bad disciple.) 

Have I tied up all the loose ends?  Of course not.   I'm merely suggesting an alternative scenario that tries to make sense of the obvious loose ends in our surviving gospel narrative.   

ps: A natural question is that if I'm going to question the historicity of Mark's narrative why assume the incident in the Temple actually happened?  Fair enough.  But something brought Jesus to the attention of the Romans and some sort of prophetic "acting out" in the Temple around Passover - maybe Jesus expected the Parousia then and there? - seems like a logical candidate.   

gavriel said
The single most effective arguments against Q as a Matthean expansion of Mark seems to me to be these:
a. It requires that Luke  realized that Matthew had expanded Mark. How could he know?
b. Having identified all the expansions into a pseudo-Q , Luke made a new gospel producing a mixture of Mark and this pseudo-Q. How likely is that?

This actually works better as part of an argument for something like Q and against Luke creating a quasi-Q from Matthew's additions to Mark. Why would he have left out and contradicted so much of quasi-Q? It's not a complete argument, only part of an argument. Supporters of the Farrer hypothesis are always free to answer this question with their own imaginings of why Luke treated quasi-Q so strangely, as crazyfish does in the initial post in this thread. A more complete argument for something like Q comes from apparent divergences of obvious Matthean redaction from unredacted Q material as well as a  detailed analysis of the order of Q material in Luke. While I do believe there is something like Q that was available to Matthew and Luke, I do not discount the possibility that a later final composition of Luke was not completely independent of Matthew. Thus it is more problematic to reconstruct Q than for those who believe Matthew and Luke were completely independent.

Robert said:

Is this thread really about the gospels of Matthew and Luke or is it about Mike Pompeo, Anthony Fauci, the CIA, Stephen Miller, Dick Cheney, Susan Neiman, Cornel West, and Hannah Arendt?

And let's not forget Trump.  As the description of the first video in Post 5 says:

"Trump is part of a larger system Cornel West warns. We are resharing this conversation of David Griscom and Cornel West this week that goes deep into Trumpism and the way we fight back."

Robert said

Steefen said
In Luke 13:1-3, people told Jesus about a time when Pontius Pilate killed a group of Galileans. He slaughtered them right as they offered their worship, so their human blood mixed with the blood of their animal sacrifices. Jesus did not stop it, and instead used the tragedy to warn the crowd to repent of their own sins.

Jesus was being told about an event in the past. He was not in a position to stop what had already occurred. Or are you imagining that Jesus was capable of time travel without respect for the temporal prime directive?
  

You think so?

Pontius Pilate began his ten-year term as the fifth Roman governor (prefect) of Judea in 26 CE (AD 26)

Even if it is in the recent past, Pontius Pilate, Jesus was an adult. Maybe he was located outside of Galilee, but the statue of limitations should not have been up for the Father or the messiah to call the offense out.

Robert said
Is this thread really about the gospels of Matthew and Luke or is it about Mike Pompeo, Anthony Fauci, the CIA, Stephen Miller, Dick Cheney, Susan Neiman, Cornel West, and Hannah Arendt?
  

Subforum: New Testament Gospels
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