How late might the gospels be?

[Ben C. Smith]

I was refering to Hermann Detering's argument that this is about Emperor Hadrian trying to place a statue of Jupiter in the (ruined) Temple, which sparked the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-135 AD.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080227161 ... %20JHC.pdf

I am familiar. Thanks. Are you aware of the tentative nature of the evidence for that eventuality (for Hadrian trying to place a statue on the Temple Mount)?

[archibald]

Context is everything, yes? When we see the other literature Mark knew with the same prophetic imagery, is it not at least reasonable to suggest our author of the gospel used it in a similar way as it was found in Isaiah, Daniel etc?

Who's the 'him' who is 'like the son of man' in the Daniel prophecy?

[neilgodfrey]

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[neilgodfrey]

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[archibald]

I didn't address the epistles because I understood we were talking about the Gospel of Mark.

So context is not everything then?

[archibald]

Do you deny that Daniel's imagery was metaphorical?

I can't see how a representative of the Maccabee kingdom was metaphorical.

[archibald]

The stone imagery is not out of place. Peter himself was called a stone. Christians were likened to stones. The nation of Judea and temple of Jerusalem was to be destroyed utterly.

But they are in the actual temple in the scene, and the actual temple was destroyed.

If we are talking about christians as metaphorical stones then we have....christianity being destroyed....?

[neilgodfrey]

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[neilgodfrey]

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[archibald]

If anything in the expectation in the Thessalonians contradicted either interpretations of Mark 13 we would have an interesting point of discussion.

The point about Thessalonians was to illustrate that early christians were expecting and were encouraged to expect an actual big event. This seems to be contrary to your reading of Mark.