There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Giuseppe »

Four redactions of the same story over the course of fifty years is not a boom, if we assume that the four canonical Gospels were written in 1 CE.

But if you accept the dating of all the Gospels in II CE, then the principal implication is that there was really a boom in Jesus stories after the first Gospel. Any sect wrote his own Gospel in reaction to the first Gospel.

does any Gospel portrait of Jesus fit more this latter feeling of new, of surprising, of gossip about a recently-known figure?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
Jax
Posts: 1443
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2017 6:10 am

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Jax »

Accepting a 2nd century dating for all of the Gospels is kind of tough, as the first Gospel, usually thought to be Mark, can possibly be as early as the 70's in the 1st century. The last Gospel, possibly Luke, may be as late as after the introduction of the Marcion cannon somewhere in the 140's. This gives a possible spread of 70 years for the four Gospels of the NT. Not exactly a boom.

If it could be shown that the Mark Gospel is reliant on the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus and that this Gospel was indeed the first then we could shave about 20 years off of this estimate.

Lot of If's.
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Jax wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2017 7:38 am Accepting a 2nd century dating for all of the Gospels is kind of tough, as the first Gospel, usually thought to be Mark, can possibly be as early as the 70's in the 1st century. The last Gospel, possibly Luke, may be as late as after the introduction of the Marcion canon somewhere in the 140's. This gives a possible spread of 70 years for the four Gospels of the NT. Not exactly a boom.

If it could be shown that the Mark Gospel is reliant on the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus and that this Gospel was indeed the first then we could shave about 20 years off of this estimate.

Lot of If's.
Why limit the inquiry to the canonical four? All of the following noncanonical texts, and more, can lay a decent claim to having been written either late in century I or any time in century II:
  • Gospel of Mary.
  • Gospel of Peter.
  • Gospel of Thomas.
  • Gospel of Philip.
  • Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
  • Infancy Gospel of James.
  • Gospel of the Ebionites.
  • Gospel of the Egyptians.
  • Gospel of the Hebrews.
  • Gospel of the Nazoraeans.
  • Dura-Europos Gospel (Dura-Europos 0212).
  • Berlin Gospel (Papyrus Berolinensis 11710).
  • Cairo Gospel (Papyrus Cairensis 10735).
  • Egerton Gospel (Papyrus Egerton 2 & Papyrus Köln 255).
  • Fayyum Gospel (Papyrus Vindobonensis 2325 or Rainier Gospel Papyrus)
  • Merton Gospel (Papyrus Merton 51).
  • Oxyrhynchus 210 Gospel (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 210).
  • Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840).
  • Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1224).
  • Oxyrhynchus 4009 Gospel (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 4009).
  • Evangelion (Marcionite Gospel).
  • Memoirs of the Apostles (as cited by Justin Martyr, with seeming differences from our canonical gospels).
  • Diatessaron.
This list does not even include commentaries and similar works such as those by Basilides, Papias, and Hegesippus. Nor does it include purely hypothetical (but hardly impossible) early sources like Q, the Signs Source, or the Passion Narrative. Dating virtually any of these works, however, is diabolically difficult, both in relative and in absolute terms. And, even if we were able to locate the date of each to within, say, a decade, whether the results ought to be characterized as a "boom" may be open to interpretation.
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Secret Alias »

I think we should be looking at things in terms of 'uncontrolled copying' - i.e. the worst sorts of scribal abuse for the explanation of the multiplicity of narratives. At least part of the justification for the limiting of 'the gospel' to four exemplars must have had something to do with a proliferation of gospel texts. This seems to be hinted at in early sources behind Al Jaffar's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Jabbar_ibn_Ahmad) historical work on the origins of Christianity.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Giuseppe »

Therefore if I understand well, all you, Jax, Ben and Secret, agree that *if* the Gospels were written all in II CE, then there was really a boom in Jesus stories in that period?

Do you think that the way how Mark introduced his Jesus gives some clue about his being something of NEW, of SURPRISING, of UNEXPECTED (even when proclaimed by the scriptures via John the Baptist) ????

And if your answer is yes, isn't that SURPRISE the sign that both authors and readers were dealing with a kind of best-seller idea, something of very close to the causation of a boom of INTEREST about this Gospel figure?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Secret Alias »

I am not saying anything about dating of the gospel. Just that bad or improper scribal habits seem to be exhibited in early Christianity.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by MrMacSon »

Giuseppe wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2017 2:05 am
Four redactions of the same story over the course of fifty years is not a boom, if we assume that the four canonical Gospels were written in 1 CE.

But if you accept the dating of all [first authorship of] the Gospels in [the] II CE, then the principal implication is that there was really a boom in Jesus stories after the first Gospel. Any sect wrote his own Gospel in reaction to the first Gospel.
There is a prevailing assumption that all Christian-related texts, including the pseudepigraphical and apocryphyl 'gospels' and epistles/texts, were and are written as a response to (a 'reaction to') the synoptic or canonical gospels [the canonical gospels being the 3 synoptics + gJohn].

I would argue that there is a reasonable chance that is not the case.

I put the proposition that the books of the NT, including the Pauline epistles as we know them today, arose out of a milieu of gnostic, spirit-worshipping stories, pericopes, and texts that predominated in an/the inter-testamentary period.
.
Stuart
Posts: 878
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2014 12:24 am
Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Stuart »

MrMacSon wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2017 2:44 pm
There is a prevailing assumption that all Christian-related texts, including the pseudepigraphical and apocryphyl 'gospels' and epistles/texts, were and are written as a response to (a 'reaction to') the synoptic or canonical gospels [the canonical gospels being the 3 synoptics + gJohn].

I would argue that there is a reasonable chance that is not the case.

I put the proposition that the books of the NT, including the Pauline epistles as we know them today, arose out of a milieu of gnostic, spirit-worshipping stories, pericopes, and texts that predominated in an/the inter-testamentary period.
.
I would counter this by saying that your proposition of the origins of the texts coming from the milieu of differing beliefs (need not be heretical as you imply) would not in anyway impact the observation that the written texts came in response to written texts. These are not mutually opposing positions and in fact I think they are complimentary.

The explosion of NT texts, IMO a gospel first, came about from competition as a result of the diversity. But before I digress into that, we need to step back and consider another set of questions first to understand why Jesus stories would promulgate. Why were the NT books written in the first place? What was their initial audience and their their distribution?

**** Everything below is my opinion at the moment, an educated guess ****

It is my belief that a "pre-published" gospel, which critics love to label a proto-Gospel, circulated in the synagogues (meaning the physical building, as the term by NT writers means the physical building or compound, not the congregation/assembly, which Ecclesia or "Church" in our English translations meant). This book was more a manuscript, IMO a religious play of sorts, not dissimilar to those of other cults in the Roman Empire -- these are already Hellenized congregations. The theology contained within is neither Marcionite nor Gnostic, but rather ambiguous. I don;t know if the play was ever performed, but as at least few versions of the prototype were made it is probable it was.

It is my general belief that Christianity had two primary camps of factions, one which became known as all the various heretical Gnostic type sects, and the other would coalesce into the Orthodoxy (after many decades of evolution). One of the sects within the proto-Heretical camp, which we call the Marcionites, took a version of the proto-type Gospel and using it as a structure wrote their own Gospel. They used this with great success for evangelism, giving them a huge leg up on the other sects and especially over the proto-Orthodox camp. The Gospel of Matthew was almost certainly an immediate reaction to the Marcionite, using a different version of the prototype Gospel as it's base (it was organized much differently). The Gospels of Mark (possibly) and Luke (definitely) were reactions to both of those. The Gospel of John was a reaction to Matthew.

None of these created new sects, all of thse emphasized the positions of those sects. No two Gospels were written by the same sect either. This is why the theologies conflict. Each was written to "set the record straight" from those written before. And to help the sect using them to evangelize. For once one sect began to grow rapidly with new recruits and starting new churches it became a competition to grow your own sect to not become overwhelmed in numbers so as to be rendered too small and insignificant to survive. Christianity expanded because of this internal bickering and competition (Celsus commented on this bickering characteristic of Christians). The Gospels and other books were the tools of this expansion.

The competition was why the Jesus stories came about in what was likely just one or two generations. Mind you these books were not mass produced, but only made enough for a congregation (their synagogue/building) to house one. When Paul says he brought a Gospel in Galatians, it means a physical copy. It is the salesman's tool, the preacher's book. Other texts supported these. What these congregations likely already had was a LXX copy - but that is another story.

I do agree with Giuseppe's basic assumption that the books appeared first in the second century, probably about the early reign of Antoninus Pius, and before the end of the reigh of Commodus all the Canonical Gospels were present in forms not too dissimilar from what we know. That is a remarkably brief time frame, and suggest tremendous competition.

That is my best guess.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by Giuseppe »

It is my belief that a "pre-published" gospel, which critics love to label a proto-Gospel, circulated in the synagogues . . . The theology contained within is neither Marcionite nor Gnostic, but rather ambiguous. I don't know if the play was ever performed, but as at least few versions of the prototype were made it is probable it was.
Yes, I am inclined to think so, also. Obviously, the ambiguity of the theology of that first Gospel is a reflection of the his being (still) a very primitive form (and a relatively unknown writing, still “innocent” about what it would have provoked some years after), even if I believe that their authors were Gentile Christians and not Jewish Christians (since the first had wanted to have a sacred drama of their god like the other mystery religions of the Empire).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: There was an apparent boom in Jesus stories after the first gospel?

Post by MrMacSon »

Stuart wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:17 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2017 2:44 pm
There is a prevailing assumption that all Christian-related texts, including the pseudepigraphical and apocryphyl 'gospels' and epistles/texts, were and are written as a response to (a 'reaction to') the synoptic or canonical gospels [the canonical gospels being the 3 synoptics + gJohn].

I would argue that there is a reasonable chance that is not the case.

I put the proposition that the books of the NT, including the Pauline epistles as we know them today, arose out of a milieu of gnostic, spirit-worshipping stories, pericopes, and texts that predominated in an/the inter-testamentary period.
I would counter this by saying that your proposition of the origins of the texts coming from the milieu of differing beliefs .. would not in anyway impact the observation that the written texts came in response to written texts. These are not mutually opposing positions and in fact I think they are complimentary.
Well yes. I'm not sure why you've said any of that.

As for "need not be heretical as you imply" - I didn't make any reference to anything being heretical.

I think 'heretical' is a description to try to besmirch many texts as being later reactions to orthodox texts. I reject that.

I think many of the so called heretical texts preceded or co-existed with what became known as the orthodox texts.

Please don't misrepresent me.
Post Reply