Jerome: Gospels pre-date Pauline Epistles

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Jerome: Gospels pre-date Pauline Epistles

Post by neilgodfrey »

maryhelena wrote: And yet the two, passion and apocalyptic fall of Jerusalem, are disconnected in the story-line. i.e. JC being crucified years prior to 70 c.e.
They are certainly connected by common imagery and the implication of cause and effect. The gap years is part of the story line as much as the wilderness years are part of the story of Israel between Egypt and Canaan; or from the prophecy in the days of Jeroboam up to the captivity; or the ages to be accomplished before Daniel's Antiochus Epiphanes.
maryhelena wrote: Indeed. However, lets also keep in mind that 70 c.e. was not the only fall of Jerusalem upon which the gospel writers could draw upon for their story. The story of Jeremiah prior to 587/6 b.c. - and the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in 37 b.c. with the execution of the last King of the Jews (hung on a stake and beheaded...)
Apocalyptic literature as I understand necessarily takes its meaning from events in the very recent past of the readers. This is what I argue sets the composition of the Gospel of Mark shortly after one of Jerusalem's falls. The most plausible one would seem to be that of 70 ce. Of that particular event we read that thousands of Jews were crucified outside the city walls. The temple was destroyed. Jesus is, it would appear from the "midrashic" allusions, identified with all of this -- he represents the fall of the old and the resurrection of the new. (Stealing Clarke Owens' argument here.)
maryhelena wrote: Neil, of course, the Jesus of the Gospels is a literary/metaphorical figure - but that position does not rule out that the gospel JC story has a historical relevance. There is a historical core to that story - however distorted the literary and mythological, metaphorical, and prophetic and apocalyptic, that gospel story is. That, is it not, is what euhemerism attempts to highlight in interpretation or understanding mythology. To discount a historical relevance for the gospel story is to attempt to discount reality from having primary value in our lives. We don't just live in our heads, in our imagination. Our feet have to remain on terra-firma. We live in a historical reality. Particularly, in a Jewish context, one should not discount history as having significance relevance.
I agree wholeheartedly that the gospel story had historical relevance. The story was very relevant to Jews who had experienced directly and vicariously the fall of their political and cultic and system. Jesus/Joshua gave them a new hope to emerge as a new identity as the "new" people of God. Other Jews took the course of rabbinism.
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maryhelena
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Re: Jerome: Gospels pre-date Pauline Epistles

Post by maryhelena »

neilgodfrey wrote:
maryhelena wrote: And yet the two, passion and apocalyptic fall of Jerusalem, are disconnected in the story-line. i.e. JC being crucified years prior to 70 c.e.
They are certainly connected by common imagery and the implication of cause and effect. The gap years is part of the story line as much as the wilderness years are part of the story of Israel between Egypt and Canaan; or from the prophecy in the days of Jeroboam up to the captivity; or the ages to be accomplished before Daniel's Antiochus Epiphanes.
Well,I suppose one could say that everything in the gospels is connected in some way - that's the story after-all....
maryhelena wrote: Indeed. However, lets also keep in mind that 70 c.e. was not the only fall of Jerusalem upon which the gospel writers could draw upon for their story. The story of Jeremiah prior to 587/6 b.c. - and the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in 37 b.c. with the execution of the last King of the Jews (hung on a stake and beheaded...)
Apocalyptic literature as I understand necessarily takes its meaning from events in the very recent past of the readers. This is what I argue sets the composition of the Gospel of Mark shortly after one of Jerusalem's falls. The most plausible one would seem to be that of 70 ce. Of that particular event we read that thousands of Jews were crucified outside the city walls. The temple was destroyed. Jesus is, it would appear from the "midrashic" allusions, identified with all of this -- he represents the fall of the old and the resurrection of the new. (Stealing Clarke Owens' argument here.)
Apocalyptic - end-time scenario - is a repeatable scenario. i.e. history repeats itself. The specifics might change, Rome rather than Babylon, but the retelling, the language of apocalyptic, becomes sort of like boiler-plate. Or as Detering made reference to it - a handbill.
If the SynApoc constitutes an independent literary unity,
however, the question arises as to its function and meaning apart
from its present context, i.e., in its own Sitz im Leben. The
customary conception is that we are dealing here with an
“apocalyptic handbill” which Mark appropriated and reworked.
Despite numerous objections, this conception seems to fit in so
far as the Apocalypse is concerned to provide not only a largely
disinterested description of the signs of the end time, but has a
very specific situation in view.
Herman Detering: THE SYNOPTIC APOCALYPSE (MARK 13 PAR):
A DOCUMENT FROM THE TIME OF BAR KOCHBA
Detering going with a context of 132-135 c.e. My position - one should not rule out the historical events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem to Rome, and the execution of the last Jewish King, in 37 b.c., as having relevance to the gospel story. Gaps in the gospel story-line - a JC crucified in 30 c.e., 40 years prior to 70 c.e. Or how about another gap in the story-line - the 70 years between the fall of Jerusalem in 37 b.c. and the execution of the last Jewish king, to a crucifixion date for the gospel JC in 33 c.e.?
Antigonus

Josephus states that Marc Antony beheaded Antigonus (Antiquities, XV 1:2 (8-9). Roman historian Dio Cassius says he was crucified. Cassius Dio's Roman History records: "These people [the Jews] Antony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern; but Antigonus he bound to a cross and scourged, a punishment no other king had suffered at the hands of the Romans, and so slew him."[4] In his Life of Antony, Plutarch claims that Antony had Antigonus beheaded, "the first example of that punishment being inflicted on a king."[5]
maryhelena wrote: Neil, of course, the Jesus of the Gospels is a literary/metaphorical figure - but that position does not rule out that the gospel JC story has a historical relevance. There is a historical core to that story - however distorted the literary and mythological, metaphorical, and prophetic and apocalyptic, that gospel story is. That, is it not, is what euhemerism attempts to highlight in interpretation or understanding mythology. To discount a historical relevance for the gospel story is to attempt to discount reality from having primary value in our lives. We don't just live in our heads, in our imagination. Our feet have to remain on terra-firma. We live in a historical reality. Particularly, in a Jewish context, one should not discount history as having significance relevance.
I agree wholeheartedly that the gospel story had historical relevance. The story was very relevant to Jews who had experienced directly and vicariously the fall of their political and cultic and system. Jesus/Joshua gave them a new hope to emerge as a new identity as the "new" people of God. Other Jews took the course of rabbinism.
If the events of 70 c.e. were relevant to the gospel story i.e. if one grants that history is relevant to the gospel story - then one cannot cherry-pick which history one deems to be relevant. One cannot jettison the historical events prior to 70 c.e. as being irrelevant to the gospel story. That story, like apocalyptic itself, runs backwards and forwards i.e. the gospel story was updated as well as stories being backdated. There are many end times and there are many new beginnings.......37 b.c., 70 c.e., and even 132-135, are all end times. They are history. The new beginnings? Well, now, the historical origins, beginnings, of the christian 'movement', ideas/philosophy, lie somewhere within that historical core.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
Roger Pearse
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Re: Jerome: Gospels pre-date Pauline Epistles

Post by Roger Pearse »

Blood wrote: I presume there's a full text out there, but I found it in The Glossa Ordinaria on Romans by Michael Scott Woodward.
Good - thank you.

All the best,

Roger Pearse
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