Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:38 am
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Naturally, if we are to
expect place names in Mark to bear a double meaning, then of course
that is why I was expecting the same principles to apply to Bethphage as apply to Arimathea. The name Bethphage means something like "house of unripe figs," so I can think of lots of potential for a double meaning here (figs being symbolic of the land of Israel, its inhabitants, and its peace in the scriptures), and if that were all that had been claimed, I would be content to speculate along with someone that perhaps the name Bethphage made its way into Mark because of its etymology. But more is being claimed here than that the name of a locale was chosen for its name value. In the case of Arimathea:
He is named Joe --> Joe is rich, a disciple from Arimathea (best disciple) --> Joe of Arimathea, as he was rich, was a member of the council, and he was looking for God's kingdom --> Joe from the Jewish town of Arimathea (lost the pun) may have been on the council, but he was a good guy not one of those who consented to killing the lord, as he was looking for God's kingdom. This is simply classic case of filling in the back story.
In this scenario, the name Arimathea
precedes its recognition as a Jewish town. In other words, the name was an invented pun which
later got attached to a real Jewish locale, presumably based on phonetic similarity, as part of "filling in the back story" for Joseph. But I think this is profoundly wrong, and it does not work for Bethphage (which is why I brought it up as an example) or other place names in Mark (the Jordan river, Jerusalem, Capernaum, and so on), so why should we
expect it to work for Arimathea? In other words, Mark rarely if ever invents place names (there are a couple of puzzles, like Dalmanutha, but the overwhelming majority of place names in Mark are easy to identify with real and known locations). He may well
choose existing place names for their symbolic value or their capacity as puns (an argument which would have to be mounted separately in each and every case), but he does not tend to
invent them. Yet for some reason a lot of people seem to lapse extremely easily into thinking that Arimathea was just a made up place. In reality,
its derivation from Ramoth is just as easy as the derivation of the names of other locales (like Jerusalem and Bethphage) in Mark from Hebrew place names. Is it perhaps the initial A in Arimathea that throws people off? Not sure. At any rate, to suggest that the connection of Arimathea with a real place name in Palestine is completely artificial is misguided. There is no reason to treat Arimathea differently than we treat, say, Jericho, whom nobody thinks Mark invented as a place name.
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Ben,
You are under a few mistaken assumptions here, and are in need of correction. the first is that Arimathea is a real town. We don't know that. The only thing we have is speculation on the legend from Eusubius at least 150 years after Luke was written (and I am dating Luke late, as in 175 AD here). Eusubius is where the Ramoth came from. Did Mark and Matthew's source know that town and make that pun? Maybe, or maybe some other town Eusubius "the dubious" is unaware of, or made up from whole clothe.
The second point you get wrong is what I am saying about Luke mentioning that it is a Jewish town. Mark and Matthew and even John make no mention of this condition of the town, because it was not a point of contention for them. This does not mean they were not aware of it being a town in Judea. This would however indicate that they wrote from an earlier stage of development than what Luke was concerned with, the Jewishness of the town was not an issue to them, as it was to Luke. (ask why)
A mild digression here, to understand the perspective I come from looking at the Gospel. I sort their order by their knowledge of the others and their direct refutations of what must be prior Gospels. Matthew targets the Marcionite Gospel for correction, John targets Matthew for correction, while Mark shows mild correctives of Matthew, and Luke corrects all. These corrections are from the perspective of the author and his sect. Each wrote in a different style and using a different core. So be it. A second note, John sees Matthew's Christians as those who are "Jewish" and believe in a Davidic Christ and that John is Elijah, points he refutes head on against Matthew's depiction, and believers in his Jesus as not being Jewish (Jewish Christian).
So when I look at Luke's account I see a corrective of two versions, John and Mark. John states that Joseph was a secret disciple because he feared the Jews. But it was important for Luke to counter this by pointing out that Joseph was himself a Jew, hence the mention that Arimathea was a Jewish town. (One could also argue this is a post Bar Kokhba account, made necessary because we are now aware that Jewish towns mostly vanished in the mid-2nd century from Judea and instead recent Israeli archaeology finds Gentile towns in the region starting the mid-2nd century; but my point is theological here.) So Luke counters John, in addition to exonerating Joseph of responsibility for Jesus' death by being on the council, as Mark mentions - Mark never intending to imply guilt. This is what I mean by corrective. Luke rejects John's theology, and so whenever a character was named as being separate from the Jews, like Joseph, he corrects that.
Luke's correction is dependent upon Mark and John. John is dependent upon Matthew, who in turn is dependent upon Marcion. Mark in this instance seems to expand upon Matthew.
None of this correction says anything about the realness or not of the town. I am more skeptical because I have a very low regard for Eusubius. But understand, my order of the gospel stories is based on the theology and the questions each is answering as it relates to the others. If Arimathea was a Jewish town in Judea near Rammoth as Eusubius claimed, and all the writers were aware, that would not change the dependency order. It is in fact irrelevant.