You avoided the question: Something like Q or any other non-Marcionite Urevangelium or proto-Luke account of John the Baptist? Evidence? There’s no dispute about this narrative being separate and most probably earlier than Mark or especially Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism by John. But why is the origin of this story only found in the *Ev of Marcion? If you cannot interact with the other source theories, you’re just making assertions without any evidence or critical argument at all.
*Ev is not a homogeneous text as Klinghardt wanted and was created from many sources. Recently even Vincent has changed his mind. I don’t know how to insert a drawing so I’ll send it to you. I just wanted to point out that Q is the result of the analysis of canonical texts and is used only in simple relationships between these texts of the 2SH type. If you do what Burkett and Boismard do, such Q makes no sense.
The content of the gospels cannot be placed in a simple type 2 SH structure or in Klinghardt’s hypothesis. The only hope is the models of the multiple source hypothesis. These 5 sources are hypothetical, then there are hypothetical intermediate versions of the 3 gospels, and finally we come to the canonical versions. In total, a dozen or so boxes in 3 rows. I propose – there are no sources, nor this whole hypothetical web, authors and editors working on jointly developed texts release subsequent products. The first one we know about because it appeared on the market was *Ev. The same team released M, Mt, L.
I claim that the writings of Josephus are the primary and at the same time the only source of the story about the figure of Jesus.
You don’t need anything else. The Gospel narratives are dependent creations written by the evangelists. In the case of all the authors of Paul’s letters, all the Apostle’s knowledge about the historical Jesus is contained in TF because it serves one purpose – “Yes, this guy appeared to me”. He doesn’t need the historical Jesus for anything more.
There is no evidence – there is only a simple and coherent theory that has an advantage over others because it is more probable.
You don’t reveal private correspondence. Too many misunderstandings. Kloppenborg said that Vinzent thinks that… and then it turned out that he did not understand Vinzent.
Jacob Berman did it recently. Beware of podcasters. They sell not only the knowledge of biblical scholars but sometimes also biblical scholars themselves. Without respect and honor. Capitalist Red Guards revealing everything that can be sold.
Nonsense! Read the source critics of the nineteenth century. Some of their competing theories are still being bandied about today, e.g., Heinrich Julius Holtzman, Michael Bird, James McGrath. There’s lots of theories out there. Why does no one believe in yours?
Provide a specific study where the narrative about John from *Ev is analyzed. The word has been spoken – aureus is yours. If you don’t provide it – you’ll get it anyway….
It’s also the same in reconstructions of Q or any other non-Marcionite Urevangelien or proto-Luke accounts of John the Baptist. You’ve given no argument for why we should think that the source is Marcion’s *Ev.
I say that within the known texts the order is
Ant./*Ev/Mk/Mt/J/L.
I don’t mind the order
Ant./…/…/*Ev/Mk/Mt/J/L. I am good with such proposal
So far there’s nothing to refute. Just assertions that no one finds credible or worth engaging. I do it because I’m your friend, and I remember the old Jarek the skeptic. What happened to that guy? He was fun.
This is just another disgusting story of creating content for the taste of a mass customer, a story of competition between individuals who believed only in themselves.
People loved the Jesus from the short story and wanted more. There was no more. Even if someone told them they wouldn’t believe it. So there were those who created more.
When you realize for yourself that all this mysticism and spirituality is commercial rhetoric and products focused on sales, it stops being funny.
Business as usual.
I know you don’t like my hypotheses and don’t believe in them.
Unfortunately, I believe in them and I honestly can’t stand it.
@Jarek
*”In Matthew, Jesus and John have a chat, then John baptizes Jesus. Then in chapter 11 John sends the disciples with a question, as if he had completely forgotten that he had already talked to Jesus and that he had baptized him earlier. Someone clearly got lost in the narrative”*
What needs to be remembered in the Matthew version is that John is in prison when he sends his disciples to Jesus. He is beginning to doubt (just like some of the readers of the gospel). When John saw the messiah in person he knew it was him but he was expecting a messiah who’s “winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” So why is John in prison is if the messiah has come? (That’s a question some followers of the messiah would be asking of themselves at the time.
Matthew’s Jesus tells John’s disciples to go back to him and say ” … Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me”. ie he’s not the expected Messiah but that shouldn’t cause doubt.
So Matthew’s account works fine. The historical expectation would be that the role of John the baptist would be diminished in later Christian accounts which is why placing John/Mark after Matthew/Luke makes better sense.
Mark’s account of John the Baptist testifies to its anterior position in the tradition. Mark simply acknowledges Jesus’ humanity and John’s spiritual priority. It is Matthew, nervous at this, who has John declare his own inferiority and who witnesses the vision of the Holy Spirit, previously a private vision of Jesus. Brenmcg if you wish to hold onto Matthean priority the story of John the B is not your friend.
Yes, only I compare these gospel narratives with the source material (Ant.) according to literary criteria. Expansion of content and new literary constructions.
Luke, writing *Ev, has a great idea to employ John in promoting Jesus in a refined, subtle, humble way. A small episode, without any John’s declaration about Jesus. Smart way to attach popular John to Jesus story.
Luke, writing the canonical version of the gospel, changes his attitude from “gun-shy” to “He’s mine”. Why? Because he noticed that his original idea had been expanded by others. So he did a takeover on steroids starting with John in the womb
No free space left for others.
@Stephen
*”Mark’s account of John the Baptist testifies to its anterior position in the tradition. Mark simply acknowledges Jesus’ humanity and John’s spiritual priority. It is Matthew, nervous at this, who has John declare his own inferiority and who witnesses the vision of the Holy Spirit, previously a private vision of Jesus. Brenmcg if you wish to hold onto Matthean priority the story of John the B is not your friend.”*
But Mark’s John also declares his inferiority.
Matthew’s John has preaching of his own “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
But Mark’s John’s only words are “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Mark’s John had diminished in stature. His gospel is focused entirely on Jesus.
Mark/Luke’s message from heaven is private to Jesus himself “you are my son”. Matthew’s is a public declaration “this is my son”.
So of the three who’s most likely to be writing “heaven was opened … and a voice from heaven said …”? The writer’s who want a private message or the one who wants a public declaration?
Boismard’s schema was destroyed by Neirynck. I felt sorry for Boismard and even somewhat embarrassed for Neirynck. I think we’ve discussed this before.
No, we have not. Boismard, Rolland, Burkett (Delbert) were proposed by Grzegorz Wingert in his 2023 doctoral thesis on the synoptics and Marcion. Polish historians dealing with the subject have rejected all 2SH hypotheses, the Klinghardt hypothesis. According to them, all hope for solving the synoptic problem lies in developing multisurce schemas. They do not claim that any current schema is correct, but that the target structure will be in Boismard’s style. The position that the first gospel was a homogeneous text is not possible to demonstrate with the available material. The entire scheme proposed by Klinghardt fits into Boismard’s structure. Klinghardt lost the battle that Ev is a homogeneous text. So he has to add some earlier sources written in the language of Mt. And then it looks like Boismard’s.
These are not my inventions, but the theses of the doctoral dissertation from 2023, approved by reviewers, the university committee and the supervisor.
Q hypothesis need not, and should not be so simple.
Q is only a solution that allows the guys to write at different times and in different places. But even that is not enough because instead of one Q, four hypothetical sources are now analyzed. And you still have to exchange intermediate texts via ancient DHL.
What are your arguments for your theory being more probable?
John is a prophet. It is easier to recognize someone as a prophet than someone else as the messiah. Socially, such a proposal is more widely accepted. Because it is not revolutionary, it fits into the standard. It is therefore popular. His cult is located in the culture from which he originated – these are Mandaeans speaking Aramaic.
Jesus as the messiah is a more controversial proposition, aimed at selected enthusiasts.
In the case of Jesus, we have a fragmentary TF account of the cult from the time of his life and death. Therefore, we should expect some smaller community that is embedded in local realities. But it does not exist, or disappears as a result of unknown events. And then we have a new cult embedded in a Greco-Roman environment, in a completely different place, which for some reason has no connections with this original cult. The new cult creates this connection through early Christian literature, drawing information from Josephus.
The new cult recreates alleged figures from the original cult, attributing to them freshly written letters, gospel stories, apocryphal stories.
I see no traces of continuity, and even the original Paul changes nothing here because he appears too late to fulfill this role. For a simple reason. Information about Jesus arrived faster thanks to TF. Only after it did the Pauline Corpus appear. Even if some letters are real, it is only an artifact of Christianity that operated in the 40s-60s and then disappeared. Or maybe it was invented. This alternative cannot be solved, as everyone knows. Messianic expectations were popular thanks to the LXX also in diaspora communities. And here someone well-known announced that there was a cool Messiah, in a densely populated city, whose Jewish – Hellenistic population was twice as large as the population of Jerusalem.
Robert, you are a Catholic and you know the regular eruptions of folk religiosity in the form of Marian apparitions. They have been recurring regularly for hundreds of years. They are an emanation of people’s expectations for divine intervention. There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of such local events in Poland. Most of them were limited to 2-3 week episodes during which a few thousand people visited the place of the miracle, prayed together, held some night vigils and that was it.
A small number of events ended in success thanks to someone providing intriguing content that gathered a lasting group of enthusiasts who organized themselves, collected money for a chapel, obtained the care of the clergy, parish priest, bishop. In such a case, the chapel grew into a church or even an extensive center of Marian worship efficiently serving pilgrimages and raising funds for its activities.
Such is the pattern. A whole mass of perishable trifles that disappear after a short time. A few chapels in selected places remain. Some chapels are transformed into churches. And some churches are turning into permanent centers of Marian worship, which is celebrated to this day.
I don’t know if you have such experiences, but I’m showing you how it is done in Poland. A natural grassroots movement driven by expectations of divine intervention has been working in this pattern for centuries, because such are the needs of the faithful.
Jesus dies in 30 CE. The story about him begins to circulate. The news about the messiah is passed on in environments expecting the messiah. But there is little of this content. It is enough for short-term interest of the audience, but not enough to sustain it permanently.
But to create more content, you need a larger audience. Even Paul fails to create a lasting project that will last his death. There will be a few letters from him and his communities published together 40 years later.
Years later, a historian comes to the aid of the movement, who notices a Christian movement and describes it in a short note. After the publication of the book, the news about the messiah reaches much wider. Enough enthusiasts appear and there is a need for content. Writers appear. Some of them come up with an idea – maybe use John the Baptist. A nice complementary story.. And they succeed. After a few iterations John the Baptist serves the Messiah from his own conception.
The big bang of Christianity is Josephus – he was the main medium of information about Jesus to the masses and he provided the information to write the gospels. He was chosen by the evangelists as their primary, if not only source of knowledge about the historical Jesus.
This version with the authentic Paul was created especially for you.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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