The generational prophecy.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Re:

Post by neilgodfrey »

hakeem wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:57 pm
Nothing that you say precludes the possibility or argument that 2 Thessalonians was written after gMark.
I did not suggest it did. I simply pointed out an article arguing that the author of the second gospel used 2 Thessalonians as one of his sources. I thought the argument would be of interest in the context of a question about the "end time".
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The generational prophecy.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 10:23 am
Likewise, I wonder (as others have) about what the original context or reference might be for "before all these things take place" in verse 30. All what things, exactly? There seems to be a difference between (1) "in those days" (of ultimate tribulations) and (2) what you are definitely bound to see before you die (persecutions, false messiahs, wars, rumors of war) when "the end is not yet."
Well, in the text as we now possess it, "all these things" must hearken back to the beginning of the chapter:

Mark 13.1-4, 30: 1 As He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, "Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!" 2 And Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down." 3 As He was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning Him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will these things [ταῦτα] be, and what will be the sign when all these things [ταῦτα... πάντα] are going to be fulfilled?" .... 30 Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things [ταῦτα πάντα] take place.

I have tended to think that "these things" = the events leading up to and the calamity of the destruction of the Temple; the war events, in other words = the fig tree in leaf with new twigs = tribulation.

All of that precedes the end of the heavenly powers and the coming of the Son of man and resurrection of "some of this generation" in the clouds as per 1 Thess. 4 (angels gathering, etc)

If so, then the sun, moon, stars being shaken, etc is metaphor not for the collapse of the old political order (that was accomplished as part of "all these things" that were to happen prior to the coming of the Son of man. Rather, it may be metaphor for the fall of the demonic powers and rule over the world as Jesus comes to take charge.

Such an interpretation would mean that some of the apostles' generation would live to see the sign of the end/coming of the son of man -- the fall of Jerusalem.

Once that happened, one was to be on alert for the sudden "thief in the night" coming of the Son of man in clouds to resurrect his saints.

This interpretation would allow the possibility of expecting Jesus to return anytime within a very few years of the events of 70, and therefore I can make some sense of "Mark" writing a gospel. The idea that the second coming was expected to follow "immediately" as part and parcel of the events of 70 raises the question of why anyone would bother to write a gospel in such a state of mind -- assuming they were writing in or just prior to 70.

Does this interpretation overlook any of the pertinent data?

But the problems mount. What persecution was there of Christians prior to 70? (I can't accept the historicity of Nero's persecutions.) What false christs appeared around then? Maybe Hermann Detering is right and the prophecy was augmented by someone with the Bar Kochba times in mind.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The generational prophecy.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 9:28 am Daniel is informed that these predictions are not for his own generation:

Daniel 12.4: 4 "But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the time of the end; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase."

Daniel makes an interesting comparison. Certainly Daniel is given no guarantee of living until the time of the end but the possibility is not unambiguously excluded. Is it possible that Daniel did in fact imply that some of his own generation would indeed live to see the end times? I'm thinking of his prophecy in chapter 12 to those who wait 1290 and then 1335 days from the time of the abomination of desolation -- which takes us back to 11:31 and the events of either 168 or 167 BCE.

The author apparently died prior to Antiochus's death in 164 but long enough after 168 or 167 to have hope that the Maccabean revolt would succeed in removing imperial rule from the Judeans. The 1290 and 1335 days prophecies seem to be vague and long enough to give readers hope that the time of the end would be within 3 1/2 to about 7 years (depending whether the 1335 days overlap with the 1290 or not) from Antiochus's action.

That would seem to be a very dissimilar scenario from what we might be reading in Mark 13 -- ??
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hakeem
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Re: Re:

Post by hakeem »

neilgodfrey wrote: Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:27 am
hakeem wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:57 pm
Nothing that you say precludes the possibility or argument that 2 Thessalonians was written after gMark.
I did not suggest it did. I simply pointed out an article arguing that the author of the second gospel used 2 Thessalonians as one of his sources. I thought the argument would be of interest in the context of a question about the "end time".
Well, I simply pointed out that 2 Thessalonians is regarded as a forgery or false attribution and that there are writings attributed to 2nd century writers which show that stories of Jesus called Gospels were already written but show no knowledge of Paul, the so-called Pauline Epistles, Acts of the Apostles, no influence at all by Pauline teachings and no knowledge of Paul as an evangelist of Christ.

In any event, the so-called generational prophecy is part of the evidence that the Gospels or stories of Jesus were most likely written no earlier than the end of the 1st or start of the 2nd century.

The Jesus story with the generational prophecy was probably written after famines, major earthquakes, after the Fall of the Temple and after volcanic eruptions in the 1st century and early 2nd century..

 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.


But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains


 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

John2
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by John2 »

This thread dovetails nicely with my thread asking if Jesus was a false prophet.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3667

As I wrote there:

I think this is why Jesus was a false prophet (at least from the perspective of the Torah), because he made this prediction that "you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven" (echoed in Mk. 9:1: "And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power"; and in 13:26-27: "At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens"), and I don't think this ever happened (to judge from Christians themselves!).

I'm considering something that Josephus says in War 6.5.3 in light of Jesus' prediction, that one of the signs seen before the destruction of 70 CE was that:
...a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared; I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armour were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities.
Maybe this was Jesus and his angels. Maybe Jesus was right. But as I said, Christians themselves don't seem to think that Jesus has come on the clouds of heaven yet. Hegesippus, for example, says that the grandsons of Jesus' brother Judas were still waiting up to the time of Trajan:
And when they were asked concerning Christ and his kingdom, of what sort it was and where and when it was to appear, they answered that it was not a temporal nor an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly and angelic one, which would appear at the end of the world, when he should come in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and to give unto every one according to his works. Upon hearing this, Domitian did not pass judgment against them, but, despising them as of no account, he let them go, and by a decree put a stop to the persecution of the Church. But when they were released they ruled the churches because they were witnesses and were also relatives of the Lord. And peace being established, they lived until the time of Trajan.
Regarding Josephus' statement, I suppose there are several ways of looking at it. One (and the one I lean towards) is that Josephus (or his source/s) made it up and it is based on Daniel's "son of man"; two, Josephus (or his source/s) made it up but it wasn't based on Daniel's "son of man"; three, it actually happened and actually had something to do with Daniel's "son of man," but it wasn't Jesus; four, it actually happened and actually had something to do with Daniel's "son of man" and it actually was Jesus.

In any event, the last option is the only way I can see of absolving Jesus of the charge of false prophecy (not to pick on Jesus though, because I think all prophets are "false" since I don't believe in God); it at least seems like a better way out of the "problem" of the generational prophecy than the mitigations that Ben has pointed out.
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Bernard Muller
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Bernard Muller »

This interpretation would allow the possibility of expecting Jesus to return anytime within a very few years of the events of 70, and therefore I can make some sense of "Mark" writing a gospel. The idea that the second coming was expected to follow "immediately" as part and parcel of the event of 70 raises the question of why anyone would bother to write a gospel in such a state of mind -- assuming they were writing in or just prior to 70.

Does this interpretation overlook any of the pertinent data?

But the problems mount. What persecution was there of Christians prior to 70? (I can't accept the historicity of Nero's persecutions.) What false christs appeared around then? Maybe Hermann Detering is right and the prophecy was augmented by someone with the Bar Kochba times in mind.
But I do accept the historicity of Nero's persecutions, as mentioned in Tacitus, Suetonius & Eusebius' works.
Eusebius, History of the Church, 2, 25 "When the government of Nero was now firmly established, he began to plunge into unholy pursuits, and armed himself even against the religion of the God of the universe. To describe the greatness of his depravity does not lie within the plan of the present work. As there are many indeed that have recorded his history in most accurate narratives, every one may at his pleasure learn from them the coarseness of the man’s extraordinary madness, under the influence of which, after he had accomplished the destruction of so many myriads without any reason, he ran into such blood-guiltiness that he did not spare even his nearest relatives and dearest friends, but destroyed his mother and his brothers and his wife, with very many others of his own family as he would private and public enemies, with various kinds of deaths. But with all these things this particular in the catalogue of his crimes was still wanting, that he was the first of the emperors who showed himself an enemy of the divine religion."
These persecutions under Nero are also mentioned in Ascension of Isaiah 4, 2-3.

The events of 70 in Judah were sure to raise a great turmoil among orthodox Jews and Christian Jews: Jerusalem, the holy city, had been destroyed and hundreds of thousand Jews were either killed or reduced to slavery.
For Jewish Christians, Jerusalem was supposed to be the future capital of the kingdom of God when installed on earth. Jerusalem was also the home of the church of Jerusalem, to which the Christians of Corinth sent a collection some 13 -14 years earlier.
So it should not be surprising that, among Jewish Christians, false Christs appeared, gathering followers around them, at the time a second coming was expected to happen (in order to right things) and false apostles were busy predicting a revenge from God to occur soon.

Also, my analysis of Revelation (http://historical-jesus.info/rjohn.html) showed me that most of that book started as a strictly Jewish text, written soon after 70 CE, when John was still a Jew. Certainly in this Jewish Revelation, John pretended to be a prophet, announcing a new world order on earth.

Cordially, Bernard
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hakeem
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by hakeem »

Bernard Muller wrote: Tue Jan 23, 2018 2:57 pm
But I do accept the historicity of Nero's persecutions, as mentioned in Tacitus, Suetonius & Eusebius' works......
Church History attributed to Eusebius is a work of fiction.

You must have forgotten that Tacitus and Suetonius admitted that the Jews expected their Messianic ruler/rulers c 66-70 CE around the time of the Jewish War. Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius claimed Vespasian was the Christ or Messianic ruler . Even in the Gospels there were no persons called Christians since in their own story Jesus told his disciples not to tell anyone he was Christ.

Matthew 16:20
Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

Mark 8:30
And he charged them that they should tell no man of him

.

Luke 9:21
And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing

There were no Jewish Christians at all before c 70 CE or during the time of Nero.

Now, in the writings of Josephus, it was Jesus the son of Ananus who appeared to have predicted some kind of calamity of Jerusalem and the Jews.

War of the Jews 6.5.3
there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, (23) began on a sudden to cry aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!" This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night in all the lanes of the city....

Philo, Josephus, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus and Suetonius knew nothing about a Jewish Messiah called Jesus before c 70 CE and wrote nothing about Jesus Christ of Nazareth or his followers.
John2
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by John2 »

hakeem,

To me your point of view is like saying that since we don't have any pre-70 CE writings from or about the Pharisees then the Pharisees did not exist. Like Jesus, they too are first mentioned in post-70 CE writings (if you don't count the Dead Sea Scrolls). Do you likewise think that the NT, Josephus and rabbinic writings invented the Pharisees? Just curious.
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