Three Assumptions

[Ben C. Smith]

Sorry, John, I somehow managed to skip this!

And the Fourth Philosophy was certainly engaged with the wider world, and as Josephus notes in Ant. 18.1.1, "the nation was infected with this doctrine to an incredible degree."

The thing is, Josephus may have motives for unduly playing up the influence of his "Fourth Philosophy" upon the nation, much in the same way that political parties today have motives for playing up the words and deeds of the more extreme factions among their rivals. Since Josephus is virtually our only source for whatever Jewish motives lay behind the war, we are in an unenviable position, and I do not want to be too quick to believe things that Josephus may be telling us tendentiously. But I have a lot more studying to do in that regard.

Rabbinic writings echo Josephus though.

In the Talmud, the Zealots are the non-religious (not following the religious leaders), and are also called the Biryonim (בריונים) meaning "boorish", "wild", or "ruffians", and are condemned for their aggression, their unwillingness to compromise to save the survivors of besieged Jerusalem, and their blind militarism against the rabbis' opinion to seek treaties for peace. However, according to one body of tradition, the rabbis initially supported the revolt up until the Zealots initiated a civil war, at which point all hope of resisting the Romans was deemed impossible. The Zealots are further blamed for having contributed to the demise of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, and of ensuring Rome's retributions and stranglehold on Judea. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin:56b, the Biryonim destroyed decades' worth of food and firewood in besieged Jerusalem to force the Jews to fight the Romans out of desperation. This event directly led to the escape of Johanan ben Zakai out of Jerusalem, who met Vespasian, a meeting which led to the foundation of the Academy of Jamnia which produced the Mishnah which led to the survival of rabbinical Judaism. The Zealots advocated violence against the Romans, their Jewish collaborators, and the Sadducees, by raiding for provisions and other activities to aid their cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealots#In_the_Talmud

Yes, that is true. I recently tracked down one of the main Talmudic passages related to that issue: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2575&p=100511#p100511. It is part of a section which also deals with Nakdimon ben Gorion.

And thanks for the Charlesworth feedback!

No problem. I like some of his other stuff, but his ideas about messianism just add complications where none existed, nor should exist, the main cause being that he defines what a Messiah is first, before allowing the ancient authors to tell us what they think a Messiah is; it is rather similar to prescriptivism versus descriptivism in lexical projects.

I much prefer Matthew Novenson's approach in Christ Among the Messiahs. I have this book physically on my extra desk right now, having read it only quite recently, and have found myself agreeing with pretty much everything he says; plus, he adds insights into the matter which I had never considered. Highly recommended.

[neilgodfrey]

No problem. I like some of his other stuff, but his ideas about messianism just add complications where none existed, nor should exist, the main cause being that he defines what a Messiah is first, before allowing the ancient authors to tell us what they think a Messiah is; it is rather similar to prescriptivism versus descriptivism in lexical projects.

No, no, no, no, no!!! You have certainly misread Charlesworth here. He is taking the conventional definition of a messiah -- your definition, in effect -- and testing it against the data. He is allowing the ancient authors to test the definition by letting them tell us what they think a Messiah is. Charlesworth's approach is the very antithesis of prescriptivism -- you have that reversed. See the above comment where I quoted enough of Charlesworth's case to demonstrate that.

Charlesworth demonstrates that the description of "the messiah" in the conventional view is prescriptive and it is that presciptive definition that he finds wanting.

[arnoldo]

Three assumptions seem to be prevalent here. I am not expecting discussion of this point but am simply wanting to express what I see as limitations in some of the discussions. . .

Third: Oral tradition.

• The assumption that the evangelists drew upon oral traditions for their sources is so prevalent that it is easy to not recognize that it is only an assumption and not a fact. The fact is that a whole branch of biblical scholarship has been demonstrating that we do not need oral tradition to explain the contents of the gospels. Oral tradition biblical scholars have drawn upon specialist oral historians to find explanations for the gospel material but it has been demonstrated that several times biblical scholars misuse their research, sometimes quoting it out of context, sometimes quoting passages in a way that directly contradict the central arguments of those oral historian researchers. The oral tradition hypothesis originated from a circular assumption that the gospel narratives were historically based. That the grounds for assuming that they were historically based was that it was believed those events had been relayed through oral tradition was forgotten, and the circularity of the hypothesis has been missed.

For what it's worth.

Given that there was no oral tradition then the gospel/epistles were written accounts of events previously unknown to the reader. Presumably a reader of such accounts would have no social memory of these events. For example, I recently experienced social memory of the Mexican revolution by discussing with a co-worker I never met before in my life of events that both of our grandfathers discussed with us of when we were children. We didn’t read about these events in books however our accounts were somewhat similar. Therefore we shared a social memory, perhaps based on oral tradition, of events that occurred before we were born. In contrast, readers of the gospel/epistle accounts at the time these texts were written could possibly object to accepting the gospel/epistle accounts since these accounts were invented out of thin air, no?

[neilgodfrey]

Given that there was no oral tradition then the gospel/epistles were written accounts of events previously unknown to the reader. Presumably a reader of such accounts would have no social memory of these events. . . . . readers of the gospel/epistle accounts at the time these texts were written could possibly object to accepting the gospel/epistle accounts since these accounts were invented out of thin air, no?

That's the general position taken by the mainstream New Testament scholarship but there are several grounds for objection.

The point you express assumes the gospels were written as histories to readers who had some general idea of the events beforehand.

Yet the Gospel of Mark has been interpreted by some scholars to imply that its readers knew nothing of the story it contains. It's conclusion at 16:8 indicates that no-one had known of the events, certainly nothing about an empty tomb, until that gospel was read. That position is consistent with Paul's failure to mention anything about an empty tomb. There was no prior social memory to appeal to.

If the Gospel of Mark was the first account of the Jesus' ministry and Passion narrative then audiences would have had that narrative in mind when they heard the subsequent revisions of it in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

We are on even more certain ground when we compare the gospels with other works of history and biography in those times. The gospels (even Luke, its prologue notwithstanding) contain nothing that indicates they are attempting to persuade readers as serious historical accounts. Historians of that time would take certain steps to win the confidence of their readers and prove that they were in a position to know what they were writing about, and they would attempt to explain to readers why their version of events had some credibility. Usually they would make some appeal to sources. They would certainly inform readers of their identity -- or write as someone who was already well-known. Historians would often lie, even fabricate sources sometimes, but our evangelists don't even do that.

Rather, what they do is take passages from the OT and weave them into a new narrative. The whole narrative in Mark can be traced to OT or other early Jewish literary sources. Ditto then for Matthew. Then Luke. (Luke's prologue is nothing like the prologues of ancient historians: it is vague and tells us nothing about the author or the actual sources.)

It is of course not impossible for an author to colour real historical events with trappings of passages from the OT. But when that happens, we have evidence of the historical event itself and it is clear that the author has used literary flourish to embellish it. The gospels are not like that. They are entirely embellishment sourced in mostly OT literature.

Example: the calling of the disciples in the Gospel of Mark is straight from the call of Elisha by Elijah; the baptism of Jesus is straight from stories of the Exodus; chapters 11 to 16 of Mark's gospel are a pastiche of over 160 allusions to OT passages.

Matthew and Luke and John did not treat Mark as a historical account. They recognized it was a theological narrative and felt quite free to change it for their own theological messages. That's not how history is written or rewritten.

It is no different with, say, the account of the Exodus. There was clearly no social memory of the crossing of the Red Sea, but that story could be introduced cold turkey and embraced in the social traditions.

There was no social memory of Elijah bringing down fire from heaven and killing all the prophets of Baal, but that was introduced into the tradition without any problem.

Ditto for the story of Jonah.

There was no social memory of the story of William Tell in Switzerland. National and political myths are regularly foisted on people.

Made-up stories are indeed known to spread and find acceptance very quickly, even among generations who are supposed to have been alive at the time of the stories.

[John2]

Neil wrote:

Yet the Gospel of Mark has been interpreted by some scholars to imply that its readers knew nothing of the story it contains. It's conclusion at 16:8 indicates that no-one had known of the events, certainly nothing about an empty tomb, until that gospel was read. That position is consistent with Paul's failure to mention anything about an empty tomb. There was no prior social memory to appeal to.

I buy what Papias (the earliest reference we have to Mark) says in EH 3.39.15:

Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.

And while I'm not suggesting that Josephus was aware of the existence of the gospel of Mark (though I don't rule it out), I would class Mark among the type of writers Josephus mentions in the preface to the Jewish War:

... some men who were not concerned in the affairs themselves have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay ...

If there were people who weren't involved with the 66-70 CE war who nevertheless wrote about it from things they heard, then why couldn't Mark have written about Jesus like Papias says he did (along with "vain and contradictory stories")?

[neilgodfrey]

If there were people who weren't involved with the 66-70 CE war who nevertheless wrote about it from things they heard, then why couldn't Mark have written about Jesus like Papias says he did (along with "vain and contradictory stories")?

He could have, but we have no evidence that he did. Everything in the narrative points to it being a pastiche of reinterpreted OT passages. So the evidence we do have is that he created the story whole. It is a recycled OT story. It is not told as remembered events or remembered words with some OT embellishment. The OT influence is there at the core with little to no room for anything that is not intertextual.

We know that some historians wrote what they heard from others because they tell us that they are writing what they heard from others. Mark even concludes his story with a statement that no-one heard anything about at least the final event.

[John2]

And Paul at least mentions that Jesus had been buried (which was commonly in tombs) and that the information was of "first importance" and was taught by Jewish Christians in 1 Cor. 15:3-11:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried ... Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed."

Is it really a stretch to suppose from this that Jesus cold have been buried in a tomb?

During the Second Temple period, rock-cut tombs were built outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem in every direction, but predominantly to the north and south of the city. The tombs extend as far as 7 km from the city walls, with the more prestigious tombs located close to the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-cut_ ... ent_Israel

[neilgodfrey]

Is it really a stretch to suppose from this that Jesus cold have been buried in a tomb?

Not a stretch at all. But Paul is citing that as a theological point of faith, not a historical event.

Besides, the mere fact of burial is not a story and we have to assume it has the powers of a mustard seed if it can take root and flourish into a Markan narrative, or even the last part of the Markan narrative -- especially given that Mark indicates the disciples were not told to return to Galilee etc.

And even Mark's story of the tomb burial itself is taken from the LXX of Isaiah 22:16 -- it is built on Isaiah's image of the Temple being a tomb cut from a rock. Jesus, the temple destroyed will rise again. (The same word for "hewn" from a rock was even planted earlier in the narrative with the story of the paralytic lowered through the "hewn out" roof to meet Jesus inside.) -- The Isaiah 22 passage is combined with a Suffering Servant passage about rich persons associated with the burial.

And again, there are also reasons to seriously question whether even that section of 1 Cor. 15 was original to Paul. Sturdy listed Straatman, van Manen, Teylers and more have published since then to argue that point.

[neilgodfrey]

One more "besides...." -- when ancient authors wanted to persuade readers that their accounts had credibility they gave reasons to believe them: usually those reasons happened to be appeals to eyewitnesses or authoritative reports. The Cor. 15 passage is a statement of faith that must be believed. It is not said to be derived from witnesses but is actually a declaration of faith about supernatural events happening to others. The passage offers the reader no information about how its author came by his knowledge of what he writes.

[John2]

He could have, but we have no evidence that he did. Everything in the narrative points to it being a pastiche of reinterpreted OT passages. So the evidence we do have is that he created the story whole. It is a recycled OT story.

But that's what "the gospel" is. As Jesus says in Mk. 9:12 and 14:21 (for examples):

"Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected?"

"The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him."

This is in keeping with what Paul says in 1 Cor. 2:7 and 1 Cor. 15:3-11 (for examples):

... we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.

...Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ... Whether, then, it was I or they [i.e., Jewish Christians], this is what we preach ...

And the same kind of thing is going on in the Dead Sea Scrolls with respect to the Teacher of Righteousness and such, like in 1QpHab col. 1-2, for example:

"[Behold the nations and see, marvel and be astonished; for I accomplish a deed in your days but you will not believe it when] told [Hab. 1:5]" ... this saying is to be interpreted [as concerning those who] will be unfaithful at the end of days. They ... will not believe when they hear all that [is to happen to] the final generation from the priest [in whose heart] God set [understanding] that he might interpret all the words of His servants the Prophets, through whom He foretold all that would happen to His people and [His land].