@Robert
Its only unfulfilled if the 12 have already completed (preaching) in all the towns of Israel. There’s no reason to think the 12 went to every last town. And if Matthew is supposedly copying from Mark he has no need to “complement” or “expand upon” it. He can do as Mark did and leave it out.
The point of the passage is that the mission for the 12 is a dangerous one, they are sent out like “sheep among wolves”,”you will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
And that they will be prevented from preaching to all the towns. Not until the son of man returns at the renewal of all things will it be possible.
Instead the 12 will be brought before the gentiles as a witness to them.
Out of journalistic obligation, I would like to mention that in my poor, backward country, the consensus based on Mark’s priority does not impress anyone and is contested by contemporary biblical scholars. So much so that it’s hard to find a new work that relies on it. The primacy of Matthew, the theory of multiple sources, the primacy of Luke. The most popular attitude is expressed in works showing arguments for and against Mark’s precedence.
Research in the field of New Testament criticism is necessarily based on a very dense network of assumptions and axioms. Recognizing a given explanation as probable is often based on weighing arguments and grading probability, which is particularly visible in the history of research on the synoptic problem. The gradation of probability and weighing of arguments depends on the adopted criteria. In the case of Mark’s dating, it makes no difference what you choose – it’s a simple coin toss
Mark’s dating based on his emotional attitude towards the destruction of the temple, I would like to point out that this is just childishness. There is not the slightest argument that Marek heard the account immediately after this event or 20, 40 years after. This is an absolutely unsolvable alternative. And the biblical scholars solved it… Miracle.
I’ll have to side with the scholars I’m familiar with. They assign priority to Mark and date it to roughly 70AD.
That would place that text within two decades of Paul’s genuine letters, at least by traditional dating, and with four decades of the crucifixion, again by traditional dating.
I’m good relying on those sources, which include Erhrman and I’m sure represent the vast majority of scholars. But I’m also good with you believing whatever you want.
Jarek, in my own extremely rich, backwards country, it is not unusual to encounter attacks on any scholarly or scientific consensus as a sure sign of conspiracy. If 99% of climate scientists come to the conclusion that climate change is being driven by human use of fossil fuels then it must be because they are a bunch of radical leftwingliberalsocialistpostmodernistwokeneomarxists dedicated to undermining godly free market capitalism. It just couldn’t be that the vast majority of specialists in a specific field have come to a similar conclusion based on their analysis of the data. Noooo…
To anticipate an objection I agree that the field of NT studies is by no means one of the hard sciences. But the thought processes are the same. The consensus consists of the opinions of those who know a field best. It is not inviolate. The consensus can always change. But the real question to ask is, why have these folks come to this conclusion? To go from A to B you have to understand how we got to A in the first place.
We do deal in probabilities but If you think Markan priority is simply a “coin toss” then you clearly don’t understand the arguments. It’s not the “consensus” that should impress anyone but the arguments that led to the consensus.
Brenmcg, the mediocre lay apologist but brilliant literary scholar C S Lewis, a fluent classicist, considered Mark 9:1 “the most embarrassing verse in the NT” but also pointed out that it served to illustrate Jesus’ admission in Mark 13:32.
@Stephen – “the mediocre lay apologist but brilliant literary scholar C S Lewis, a fluent classicist, considered Mark 9:1 “the most embarrassing verse in the NT” “
two things
1) Matthew’s version should be considered by CS Lewis to be the more embarrassing – Matthew 16:28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
ie Mark’s version could be seen as more of a spiritual coming of the kingdom (see Luke 17:20), Matthew’s will be a real physical event and is obviously the older version.
2) CS Lewis is reading it the verse incorrectly. Compare John 8:51-52 “whoever obeys my word will never see death … whoever obeys my word will never taste death”. John will be perfectly aware that some Christians have died by the time he’s writing so this shouldn’t be understood as some embarrassing inclusion on his part. It’s meant in a non-literal way of passing through death to life (not seeing/tasting/experiencing death).
As a child, I sat in a pew with my mom in a small Pentecostal church on a hot summer evening. The church’s windows were open to let a gentle breeze waft through them to compensate as best it could for the lack of air conditioning.
As the congregation began to whip itself up into a holy frenzy prodded on by some great, old-timey preaching and a small church band playing a honky tonk version of Christian hymns, the pastor began to prophesy.
Turns out, according to that imposing man of God, Jesus’ return was just around the corner. His return would occur in 1975, a couple of years away, he claimed, though he was not allowed to know the day or hour.
That scared the bejesus out me, and I knew I needed to get right with God sometime between that moment and January 1, 1975, preferably around late December, 1974.
This will come as no surprise to the reader, 1975 came and went with nary a sighting of Jesus. But the point is, Christians have believed the second coming is just around the corner for nearly two millennia, and there’s no reason to believe the gospel writers were an exception. Even the redactor who brought us John 21 to adjust the expected timing of Jesus’ return past his own generation probably believed it was still imminent.
Markan dating is a coin toss because we do not know whether Mark was impressed by the direct account of the destruction of the temple or whether he found out about it 20-30 years later.
Let’s imagine that we have irrefutable proof that Mark wrote the gospel in 95 CE. How should this affect Markan priority? Well, it shouldn’t be, because Markan priority is the result of a critical analysis of the text and the relationships between the texts. Therefore, the new dating automatically moves all this gospel forward in time. Markan dating is a different problem than Markan priority.
Mark’s priority as a consensus is the result of voting taking into account the weight of the arguments for and against. The weight of arguments is determined by biblical scholars following the criteria of biblical studies. I do not question the reasoning of biblical scholars. Bible scholars themselves do this to each other. I’m just stating that they created a dozen or so models for solving the synoptic problem and chose one by voting. In my opinion, they used the wrong selection criteria. Proof of this is the fact that in Marcion’s time there were no canonical versions of the gospels. The comparisons of arguments for and against Mark’s primacy indicate the parallel development of the gospels. These are my conclusions from the works of European researchers.
As for the discussion on the impact of the use of fossil fuels on the climate, its practical significance is of little importance. It doesn’t matter who is right. Without technical progress and new breakthrough discoveries, the use of fossil fuels will increase because it will be decided by the societies of Asia, Africa and South America. These people have the right and want to live better, safer lives and these are their priorities. There are a lot of these people. Europe is responsible for 9% of greenhouse gas production and its share is constantly falling as their production outside Europe increases. Pro-ecological activities in Europe are pure PR considering the numbers. Irrelevant. Ireland wants to kill cows and the Netherlands wants to eliminate part of agriculture to achieve its ecological goals. Germany closed its nuclear power plants due to public sentiment and planned to base its green transformation on Russian gas. Now they are building coal-fired power plants. This is pure PR-motivated madness.
The result is hysteria among some of the young generation, manifesting itself on the streets and in museums.
Yes, we discussed it before and you still have a problem with it. And it is a simple mathematical logic task of determining the probability of events based on available information from the first year of high school. Mark could have been 10 years old when he heard about the fall of the temple, he could have read about it in Josephus as an adult, he could have heard about it from an eyewitness, etc… These are equally likely potential answers and we have no chance of identifying the true one. No biblical education is needed. It is important to remember what we learned in logic classes at the age of 15.
But as you can see, there are inexplicable problems with this. Maybe program differences in youth education????
Precisely dating the process of the creation of the gospels is simply a mistake, because you are drawing out a specific case and giving it meaning based on nothing.
The author could have written the gospel in the period from 70 to almost 100 if the dating of 1 Clem turns out to be true.
@Robert “And there’s no contextual reason to interpret Mk 9,1 in a spiritual sense other than Bren’s attempt to create a contrived interpretation based on the assumption and circular ‘proof’ that Mark is following Luke. What is “obvious” to Bren is mysteriously never obvious to anyone else.”
Mark 4:11-12 “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding”
The mystery of the kingdom has been given to the disciples but those outside (the kingdom that is) are only given parables.
Two senses of “seeing” and “perceiving” are also contrasted here. βλέπωσιν (they might see) and ἴδωσιν (they might perceive),
and its the second (perceiving) that Mark uses in Mark 9:1. Where the kingdom of god is “perceived” ἴδωσιν not “seen” βλέπωσιν
Fascinating discussion. As a layperson, it seems to make more sense to give the words in the text their apparent meaning and acknowledge that when the prophesy didn’t come to pass believers began to reinterpret their meaning. Especially for Jewish believers who already had to reinterpret OT prophesies about the Messiah, the Kingdom of God, etc., rethinking who Jesus was referring to about who would not pass away before the kingdom arrived doesn’t seem like a major obstacle. (People have been doing it for 2,000 years, without losing faith.)
The “zeal of the convert” is a real thing. In and around 70 CE, wouldn’t most Christians still be converts – and a small minority of Judea and the Roman Empire, to boot? Psychologically, they had taken on a new way of viewing the world and new expectations about their place in this one and the next that placed them at odds with everyone else. This is not something people do lightly – even if it happens in an instant. (See Paul) I think Jesus was an apocalypticist. So, those who had faith in him truly believed the End was imminent. Their conversion to that belief was not easily undone. Even if they considered it, where would they go, what community would have them, then?
Why would Jesus intentionally say something so vague that it couldn’t be discerned by the people hearing him? Granted, he taught in parables, but the quote about who would not die before the Kingdom came is not a parable – it’s a warning. The time to “get right with God” is now! Jesus is saying, ‘I’m giving you, the people I’m speaking to, instructions for how to be among the sheep, not the goats.’ They would have heard that and understood the urgency. The fact that those instructions apply to anyone beyond Jesus’s generation seems accidental.
Mark Goodacre has repeatedly emphasized Mark’s obsession with the destruction of the temple and how well dated this gospel is. On his podcast, Goodacre talks to Faith Robyn Walsh. On Myth Vision where everyone goes to sell their simplified answers to difficult topics. Same David Litwa. Almost every book mentions the year 70 as the date of the gospel. Bart said that Jesus could have predicted that the temple would fall. Well, since others predicted the same things we know from Josephus, Jesus could also have shown intuition.
I say this is a frivolous statement without any value.
Mark could have written his gospel in 97 CE, and taken some themes from Josephus – Sign Prophet, Jesus Ben Ananias prophecy,….
Josephus describes precisely such historical figures who use divine command in the PR layer. I am God’s agent who will bring an end to this ungodly era and begin a new era of God’s Kingdom. There are at least 6 of them and they are called Jewish Sign Prophets.
The alternative we face is this:
A. Is Josephus one of the sources for creating an imaginary biography of the “historical” Jesus located in a specific place and time?
B. Is Josephus a testimony of the real historical Jesus, independent of Christian sources, taking into account that TF is partially OK?
Considering that a 70 CE date is as good as a 97 CE date, proposition A is as good as proposition B. And there is nothing that can decide the outcome other than a coin toss.
An assignment for the first grade of high school in logic.
In the book, the author describes a historical event that took place in 1970. The first evidence confirming the existence of the book comes from 1997.
When was the book written or published?
What is the probability that this occurred in 1970 and what is the probability that it occurred in 1990?
Answer one – the book was written and published in the period from 1970 to 1997. The date of publication and the date of writing do not have to coincide.
Second answer. The probability of writing a book in 1970 is approximately 3.704% and is the same for every year from 1970-1997.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)