The genre of the gospels.

[MrMacSon]

I'm not suggesting that they were unknown in that period and that one day in the second century someone found these Pauline texts hidden in a cave or something and then wham.

I appreciate you weren't suggesting that.


I was also alluding to the fact that

... what is missing is testimony to Christianity itself ...

- any writings or any evidence; independently or otherwise [in the 60 yrs from when the first texts are asserted to have appeared and to the 2nd century references to Christian figures or memes].


This is interesting -

Evidently there was in that period a reverence for Paul among some groups (now lost to us), and it's not till the second century that we catch sight of this reverence. And it's mostly on the side of groups destined to disappear as heretical.

- though is 'evidently' the best descriptor to use here? Maybe purportedly, or 'hinted at' (??)

What reverence are you referring to?

[outhouse]

the very clear evidence advanced by biblical scholars that the gospel narratives were indebted to other literary works.

We all or all should be able to admit that Judaism was plagiarized and is the core foundation to the movement that factually divorced Judaism yet kept its core values.

[outhouse]

How do we know that?

.

Do you really think illiterate people did not talk about religion at a religious festival where everyone was getting drunk?


Its like saying drunks at a baseball game would never talk about baseball in any shape or form, is it not?


Do you think these illiterate peasants had no religion?

[outhouse]

Reciting verbatim a literary text is NOT the same thing as oral tradition. You know from your reading of Vansina alone that oral traditions change with each re-telling.

.

They did change, with the key fact that the longer the story existed the more it changed.


Reciting text however, was done for the sole purpose of retaining traditions verbatim so that illiterate people would not change traditions.

And while not the same thing, it was used to spread religion orally in peasant communities.

[Clive]

Is Jesus the peasant a new one in contrast to the emperor Christ? May we expect churches named that? But why not Jesus the slave eunuch then?

[Ben C. Smith]

Of interest to me with respect to my thesis on this thread is a recent book preview uploaded to Academia.edu by Claude Pavur. Some excerpts:

Talbert’s suggestion that the gospel is a biography also fails to persuade fully because “It is not at all clear...that Mark’s major aim is to portray the ‘character’ of Jesus.” Mark seems rather more interested in symbolic, revelatory events than in biographical account.

....

I propose to advance our understanding of Mark by offering as or in place of a generic designation for the gospel a category not usually accepted as a “genre,” but one that I believe will be most radical, comprehensive, directly applicable, and heuristically helpful. If we allow the text to reveal its own claim about its character, we may come to see that Mark’s gospel was composed to be, more than anything else, a “scriptural” kind of book. It is only by appreciating it as such that we will be able to understand Mark’s primary purpose and to perceive most clearly the nature of the work In the same focus in which the primary redactor most probably perceived it.

....

The thesis claims, then, that the intention and character of Mark’s gospel are best understood by analogy with the intention and character of earlier scriptural works as these were understood in Mark’s day. This text was written to be a revelational, authoritative work. The ambiguity of the concept of “scriptural book” should not dismay us if we are really seeking Mark’s purpose rather than our own clarity.

(I do not yet have the entire book, but I may get it soon.)