F O R D I S C U S S I O N
(in order to reach better conclusions than what has been generally accepted)
The New Testament Gospels and Sources in the Order of When They Were Written:
1. The Book of Enoch / 1 Enoch (Chapters 1-36) The Book of Watchers
2. The Book of Enoch / 1 Enoch (Chapters 37-71) The Book of Parables
3. Authentic Letters of Paul (see if they match what was in Marcion’s canon)
4. Mark
5. Q
6. Matthew
7. John
8. Marcion’s Gospel according to Paul
9. Luke (a response to Marcion)
The author of Luke-Acts has a response to Marcion. The author would accept Marcion’s hero Paul without the theology of his epistles. To do so the author replaced Marcion’s canon with a two-volume work of his own. He merely expanded Marcion’s gospel with added traditions, but he rejected entirely the Pauline epistles as theologically unacceptable.
John T. Townsend, “The Dating of Luke-Acts” … in Charles Talbert (ed.), “Luke-Acts: New Perspectives from the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar” (1984) p. 56-58
The gospel of Luke was not written decades before Acts of the Apostles, which never was reasonable.
The gospel of Luke was written closer to when Acts was written, after Marcion’s gospel was written.
Reading List
1) Bart D.E.’s Recent Post, 1/25/2022, “Where Did the Apocalyptic Views of Jesus (and others) Come From?
2) Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century by Judith M. Lieu
3) The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon by Jason D. BeDuhn
4) The Gospel of Mark and the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE: Jesus’ Story as a Contrast to the Events of the War by Stephen Kimondo
Bart D.E.
Where Did the Apocalyptic Views of Jesus and others Come From?
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Steefen
I read the above. I remember the gist of it from one of your Great Courses.
God was not at fault, his enemies were. … God had relinquished control of this world to evil forces. That almost sounds like the Gnostics.
QUESTION #1: Given the historical challenges to the prophetic perspective, were there two responses: Apocalypticism where God relinquished control to evil forces and Gnosticism where the force had been evil all the time? Did Gnosticism originate before, at the same time, or after the Apocalyptic Alternative?
QUESTION #2: With Jesus being an apocalyptic prophet, should he be less tied to the Prophetic Perspective than to the Historical Challenges to the Prophetic Perspective:
Apocalypticism where God relinquished control to evil forces
and
Gnosticism where the force had been evil all the time?
All of Jesus’ ministry is not tied to Gnosticism
All of Jesus’ ministry is not tied to Apocalypticism
because in the first part of Jesus’ ministry, God had not relinquished power to evil: Go tell John [basically, the Kingdom of God is at hand, the Son of Man is here, etc.]. It wasn’t until Jesus himself saw his Heavenly Father relinquishing power to the evil of “the wicked tenants killing the messengers and the son.”
I support Johannine priority.
Why? For the same reasons people think John knew the synoptics, only in reverse. Matthew and Luke are responding to John’s theologizing and amorphous narrative details. (Currently I suspect that Mark did not know John but both Matthew and Luke clearly did. That could change as I keep making stuff up…uh, I mean, thinking things through.) Sooo…
1) Paul’s authentic letters
2) Mark and John, independent of each other
3) Matthew, who knows Mark and John (Q is simply one of Matthew’s sources)
4) Luke, who knows Matthew Mark and John
I still haven’t come up with a catchy name for the Johannine priority hypothesis yet. This is perhaps the most important part.
Stephen said
I support Johannine priority.Why? For the same reasons people think John knew the synoptics, only in reverse. Matthew and Luke are responding to John’s theologizing and amorphous narrative details. (Currently I suspect that Mark did not know John but both Matthew and Luke clearly did. That could change as I keep making stuff up…uh, I mean, thinking things through.) Sooo…
1) Paul’s authentic letters
2) Mark and John, independent of each other
3) Matthew, who knows Mark and John (Q is simply one of Matthew’s sources)
4) Luke, who knows Matthew Mark and John
I still haven’t come up with a catchy name for the Johannine priority hypothesis yet. This is perhaps the most important part.
Although all four gospels have the feeding of the five thousand and the anointing of Jesus with perfume, only mark and john tell us bread to feed 5,000 would cost 200 denarii and that the perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii.
So I think you’re correct to place these closely in chronological order.
However they should both be placed after rather than before Matthew/Luke.
Luke preceded gjohn. The raising of Lazarus shares details with rich man & Lazarus parable; the good samaritan parable is one of several influences on Jesus & the Sanaritan woman text. Its unlikely that a witnessed miracle would be rewritten as parable.
LXX seems to be the chief source for Mark (and thus for the key events in the gospels).
The New Testament Gospels and Sources in the Order of When They Were Written:
1. The Book of Enoch / 1 Enoch (Chapters 1-36) The Book of Watchers
2. The Book of Enoch / 1 Enoch (Chapters 37-71) The Book of Parables
3. Authentic Letters of Paul (see if they match what was in Marcion’s canon)
4. Mark
5. Q
6. Matthew
7. John
8. Marcion’s Gospel according to Paul
9. Luke (a response to Marcion)
The New Testament Gospels and Sources in the Order of When They Were Written:
1. The Book of Enoch / 1 Enoch (Chapters 1-36) The Book of Watchers
2. The Book of Enoch / 1 Enoch (Chapters 37-71) The Book of Parables
3. Authentic Letters of Paul (see if they match what was in Marcion’s canon)
4. Mark
5. Q
6. Matthew
7. Luke
8. John
9. Marcion’s Gospel according to Paul with Marcion editing Luke’s gospel
10. Acts of the Apostles (a response to Marcion and brazenly re-writing the autobiographical information in the authentic Pauline Letters)
Robert said
Both Luke and John also have Peter running (ἔδραμεν) to the tomb (τὸ μνημεῖον), only in John’s version, an additional disciple (presumably the idealized beloved disciple) accompanies him and actually runs ahead (προέδραμεν) of Peter and, like Peter in Luke’s gospel, he bends down and sees (καὶ παρακύψας βλέπει τὰ ὀθόνια). Unlike Peter who in Luke’s gospel went away amazed, this idealized disciple immediately believes. It seems pretty obvious that ‘John’ has added this idealized disciple into this scene, just as he also added him to the denial scene to explain how Peter was allowed into the high priest’s courtyard.
Why not go one step further and say Luke added Peter to Matthew?
danceswithwombats wrote
Luke preceded gjohn. The raising of Lazarus shares details with rich man & Lazarus parable; the good samaritan parable is one of several influences on Jesus & the Sanaritan woman text. Its unlikely that a witnessed miracle would be rewritten as parable.
Aye but there’s the rub. If someone claims that Luke/Acts were composed as late as the 120s then you have to consider the possibility that John preceded them. Will scholars begin to detect an influence on Luke by John? What happens to the idea that John knows the synoptics?
Robert wrote
Why reject the nearly universal judgement of critical scholars for more than a century?
Why indeed? It seems pretty clear that the early church fathers didn’t really know what to do with Mark hence the odd idea that Mark was a synopsis of Matthew. Mark became the proverbial redheaded stepchild of the gospels until the development of the modern consensus. Then its mysteries began to at least partially reveal themselves. As I’ve said before the existence of the gospel of Mark makes no sense unless it was first. If Matthew was first then Mark becomes superfluous. On the other hand the characteristics that Matthew and Luke would have found troublesome about Mark are obvious (and not just the ending).
Robert said
Entirely possible, but only after Matthew first added the appearance to the Eleven on a mountain in Galilee to Mark. And if Luke is based on Matthew, he changed a lot more than that!
Yes Luke changed a lot more than that.
But taking this understanding of luke adding a disciple witness to empty tomb and john adding an additional disciple witness to empty tomb how should we then conpare matthew’s “go tell his disciples” with mark’s awkward “go tell his disciples and Peter”
In light of Luke and John’s edits, which one of Matthew and Mark’s version looks like the older one?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)
It has to do with how historical circumstances forced thinkers in Israel to re-evaluate what the prophets had said. Here is the simple version of the story, as I lay it out in my textbook on the Bible, edited a bit.
Steefen
Please confirm which textbook that is.
Is it The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction?
Not The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd Edition
You have written two textbooks (not including scholarly works that can be supplemental texts)?
You have not had to do a second edition of the 2013 Bible textbook?