The Origins of Christianity

[Clive]

I suppose I am arguing it is all Mark's fault

[Clive]

As a matter of interest, who here has experienced a proper pentecostal preacher, not those televangelists?

How it works is the preacher will say they are going to preach on a bible verse or passage , and everyone will be expected to find that passage in their bibles. As the sermon continues,other Bible verses are referenced, and everyone is expected to jump to those verses. As you can imagine, this does build up reading, memory and referencing skills

Maybe these techniques should be introduced into schools and universities?

[iskander]

As a matter of interest, who here has experienced a proper pentecostal preacher, not those televangelists?

How it works is the preacher will say they are going to preach on a bible verse or passage , and everyone will be expected to find that passage in their bibles. As the sermon continues,other Bible verses are referenced, and everyone is expected to jump to those verses. As you can imagine, this does build up reading, memory and referencing skills

Maybe these techniques should be introduced into schools and universities?

There was a time when only Latin words were murmured .


Jesus was a religious Jewish man discussing the interpretation of the Jewish sacred scriptures with fellow Jewish men.

Jesus himself was Jewish: he wears the fringes ; honours the Sabbath and keeps it holy, he argues with fellow Jews about the proper observance. It is from Torah that Jesus takes his commandments, love of god and love of the neighbour...

[Ben C. Smith]

Can you refresh my memory or alert me to the argument you have in mind that re Mark knowing of an alternative date for the crucifixion?

Yes: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2518.

[DCHindley]

My background is steeped in the thinking of apologists, pentecostal ones:-)

They continually seek out references in the "Old Testament" to Jesus, because it backs up the gospel story. If you search sermons and books you will probably find every possible reference it is possible to create to Jesus referenced back to the Hebrew Bible somewhere.

This is what Dake does all the time.

As a matter of interest, who here has seen and used a copy of Dake's Annotated Bible, which is the core Bible of proper pentecostal preachers

Snag is of course, that instead of the old prophesying the new, the new very cleverly may use the old!

I've heard of them but never saw one. In my day (1970s), the fundamentalists (sans speaking in tongues) much preferred the Thompson Chain Reference KJV bibles, backed up by a Strong's Concordance. When I visited some fundamentalist church I would take some of the tracts they would display in racks by the community cork-board. I had one that was fold out (about 8 small pages) to list "all' the "OT" prophecies of Christ fulfilled and yet predicted.

I did not hang out with a lot of Pentecostals proper, but was heavily into "full gospel" groups of Episcopalians (Anglicans), Baptists, and mainline protestants. There was even a full-gospel Roman Catholic church not too far away. Not all of these called it "full gospel" (that was usually the Baptists) but rather "charismatic". The full-gospel Baptists preferred the KJV (others were around, like the Good News For Modern Man Bible, but these were not used because they were usually translated to diminish any suggestion that "tongues speaking" or "prophesying" might still be going on today). The other, more mainline, congregations preferred the RSV or NAS, and any concordance was optional (usually Strong's, if any).

Since I cut my teeth on the KJV, I learned it by heart (that is hyperbole). I have at least two KJV cloth bound that ended up covered with underlined "prophesies" about Jesus. I used, and still use, Young's Concordance keyed to the KJV, even though I have moved on from the KJV. Because it is KJV, it is archaic for most folks to understand, but the concordance was very complete and useful. More useful, I think, than a Strong's. In the end there was a lexicon of the more common Greek & Hebrew/Aramaic words, in original language with transliterated pronunciation, for you to see what English words were used in the KJV to translate each of them.

My personal study bibles were the Roman Catholic NAB and an Oxford study bible based on the RSV. These too were also filled with highlighted "prophesies" as I started to doubt what I had been taught, and together their footnotes, along with a lot of independent study, helped me to come to terms with the chronological relationships between these "prophesies" and determine what they were originally referring to.

Fun fun!

DCH

[Clive]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTEvleiIPhw

This is a 15 minute amateur review of Dake, which is worth watching as it does explain how it works.

It misses out a fun bit of Dake, that it has amazing pictures and diagrams about various biblical issues! He also misunderstands the lists. These are actually teaching techniques for preachers.

Which brings me to something about xianity that I believe is misunderstood.

The concept of the word.

I understand what was happening was actually a very significant literary and educational change. Ordinary and poor people were learning to read and write. Hymn singing - the hymns of the Pauline writings, are critical parts of this - singing communally is a brilliant assistance to reading and writing.

The parables, story telling are also part of this.

I understand it is only later with the development of a priesthood that the word was again taken back into the control of "professionals" but the protestant revolution actually goes back to the earlier - originally Greek - idea of priesthood of all believers, where everyone read stuff for themselves. Dake is a fascinating ceolocanth.

So it is a religion of the book, and the adherents did read. This had huge economic and social ramifications - an educated populace. It took time to get going.

[Peter Kirby]

I have noticed that many others, in a move more subtle than apologetics but no less liable to skew results, will do much the same thing with their preconceived views of gospel origins.

With regard to the discussion of the sources (or lack thereof) of Mark, there are certainly those who believe they find some internal evidence of a pre-Markan passion narrative. I have a web page outlining some of this.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/passion.html

There are several details that are mentioned as potentially localizing the time and place of the passion narrative (which should perhaps be called a "passion week" narrative, given its plausible chronological extent) to the area of Judea in the period AD 30-65, with some trying to claim the earlier part of that range and others trying to leave that question open.

Certainly all of that could be debated. Certainly someone could dismantle every potential argument / reason / evidence one by one.

But I do share a sense of unease at the proposition that, once having done so, we can then proceed on the assumption that there was no source behind Mark (or, at least, no source that could have been based on rumors / legends / stories / accounts of his life and death). I have always disliked attempts at maneuvering opinions into some kind of default victory, as I believe that there needs to be a robust space for the unknown and a sensible approach for how to handle the unknown. I don't regard crowning any hypothesis the default victor as sensible.

TL; DR - any claim regarding the sources of Mark (or absence thereof) needs to be evidenced before being used to reach any further conclusions.

I also am not attributing this position to anyone in this thread, as I'm willing to guess that everyone would want to distinguish their own ideas from it (making it a possible "straw man"), even if I'm not quite sure of how they would prefer to do so.

[Ben C. Smith]

I have noticed that many others, in a move more subtle than apologetics but no less liable to skew results, will do much the same thing with their preconceived views of gospel origins.

With regard to the discussion of the sources (or lack thereof) of Mark, there are certainly those who believe they find some internal evidence of a pre-Markan passion narrative. I have a web page outlining some of this.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/passion.html

Well, quite. I am very familiar with Gerd Theissen's work in this area. The Gospels in Context is a highly informative work, and a number of my points regarding the passion narrative stem ultimately from him.

There are several details that are mentioned as potentially localizing the time and place of the passion narrative (which should perhaps be called a "passion week" narrative, given its plausible chronological extent) to the area of Judea in the period AD 30-65, with some trying to claim the earlier part of that range and others trying to leave that question open.

Certainly all of that could be debated. Certainly someone could dismantle every potential argument / reason / evidence one by one.

But I do share a sense of unease at the proposition that, once having done so, we can then proceed on the assumption that there was no source behind Mark (or, at least, no source that could have been based on rumors / legends / stories / accounts of his life and death). I have always disliked attempts at maneuvering opinions into some kind of default victory, as I believe that there needs to be a robust space for the unknown and a sensible approach for how to handle the unknown. I don't regard crowning any hypothesis the default victor as sensible.

Agreed.

It is interesting to find the name of J. D. Crossan on a list of scholars whose work has undermined the notion of a pre-Marcan passion narrative, since Crossan is a strong proponent of such a narrative. Sure, his reconstruction of it (what he calls the "Cross Gospel") is completely different than that of other scholars (one might even call it eccentric), but it most definitely qualifies as a pre-Marcan passion narrative. But of course it ought to be frankly admitted that Crossan is also very strong on redaction criticism and on interpreting the gospel of Mark as a whole, on its own merits. His work, I think, goes to show that both are possible: the identification of source materials and the treatment of texts as integrated wholes.

Ben.

[iskander]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTEvleiIPhw

This is a 15 minute amateur review of Dake, which is worth watching as it does explain how it works.

It misses out a fun bit of Dake, that it has amazing pictures and diagrams about various biblical issues! He also misunderstands the lists. These are actually teaching techniques for preachers.

Which brings me to something about xianity that I believe is misunderstood.

The concept of the word.

I understand what was happening was actually a very significant literary and educational change. Ordinary and poor people were learning to read and write. Hymn singing - the hymns of the Pauline writings, are critical parts of this - singing communally is a brilliant assistance to reading and writing.

The parables, story telling are also part of this.

I understand it is only later with the development of a priesthood that the word was again taken back into the control of "professionals" but the protestant revolution actually goes back to the earlier - originally Greek - idea of priesthood of all believers, where everyone read stuff for themselves. Dake is a fascinating ceolocanth.

So it is a religion of the book, and the adherents did read. This had huge economic and social ramifications - an educated populace. It took time to get going.

Reading the bible without any commentaries, just to understand the words on their own without any modifiers, is a good way to integrate the text within a personal outlook.

God does not exist and therefore any story involving gods could only be an invention of men and women. This starting point eliminates the power of gods in the kingdom of the dead , where gods are masters and the dead slaves.


Some gods, however, are the head of powerful religions and dealing with the members of any such religions is a very real problem in the kingdom of the living.

That is why I appreciate the work of this man: In honour of William Tyndale .


Melvyn Bragg on William Tyndale: his genius matched that of Shakespeare

Tyndale was burned alive in a small town in Belgium in 1536. His crime was to have translated the Bible into English. . He was effectively martyred after fighting against cruel and eventually overwhelming forces, which tried for more than a dozen years to prevent him from putting the Word of God into his native language. He succeeded but he was murdered before he could complete his self-set task of translating the whole of the Old Testament as he had translated the whole of the New Testament.

More than any other man he laid the foundation of our modern language which became by degrees a world language. “He was very frugal and spare of body”, according to a messenger of Thomas Cromwell, but with an unbreakable will. Tyndale, one of the greatest scholars of his age, had a gift for mastering languages, ancient and modern, and a genius for translation. His legacy matches that other pillar of our language – Shakespeare, whose genius was in imagination.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... peare.html

[neilgodfrey]

goes to show that both are possible: the identification of source materials and the treatment of texts as integrated wholes.

Ben.

As mentioned in the other thread, I have never thought there is any conflict between redaction and literary criticism. A literary criticism can address any layer of narrative. I thought Debelius's "pearls on a string" concept of the gospels pulls the rug out from any possibility to doing literary criticism as it is generally understood.

Literary criticism is in fact often used to identify sources.