Metacrock wrote:One thing that always bothers me is these synoptic don't give any trace of the temple being recently destroyed.
There are indications. Remember the temple curtain being rent in two, exposing the holy of holies, thus marking the overthrow of the temple. Then there's the parable of the wicked tenants (Mk 12:1-12), in which the vineyard with its tower was given over to others, ie Jerusalem was captured (and the loss of the temple), literally by the Romans, but spiritually the christians took over. The vaticinium ex eventu in Mk 13:2 is a reflection on the loss of the temple. So it is there. You just won't like the fact that prophecies are more likely than not to be post hoc. Feel free to explain these away. I just thought if you wanted to know, I'd help.
Very weak,Spin. You are REALLY stretching it here.
The actual destruction of the inner sanctuary building was a hugely dramatic event, with even Titus, the son of the Roman emperor, running onto the scene trying to save it- as he had ordered.
Priests were defending the building to the last man from the Roman soldiers (who were after the legendary gold that the temple held) even as the Temple was burning. It was an Alamo-like action that probably put the real Alamo last stand, and Custer's last stand, to shame.
Metacrock wrote:One thing that always bothers me is these synoptic don't give any trace of the temple being recently destroyed.
There are indications. Remember the temple curtain being rent in two, exposing the holy of holies, thus marking the overthrow of the temple. Then there's the parable of the wicked tenants (Mk 12:1-12), in which the vineyard with its tower was given over to others, ie Jerusalem was captured (and the loss of the temple), literally by the Romans, but spiritually the christians took over. The vaticinium ex eventu in Mk 13:2 is a reflection on the loss of the temple. So it is there. You just won't like the fact that prophecies are more likely than not to be post hoc. Feel free to explain these away. I just thought if you wanted to know, I'd help.
Very weak,Spin.
Mark was written in Rome. The drama is therefore your injection.
steve43 wrote:You are REALLY stretching it here.
The actual destruction of the inner sanctuary building was a hugely dramatic event, with even Titus, the son of the Roman emperor, running onto the scene trying to save it- as he had ordered.
Priests were defending the building to the last man from the Roman soldiers (who were after the legendary gold that the temple held) even as the Temple was burning. It was an Alamo-like action that probably put the real Alamo last stand, and Custer's last stand, to shame.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
Metacrock wrote:One thing that always bothers me is these synoptic don't give any trace of the temple being recently destroyed.
There are indications. Remember the temple curtain being rent in two, exposing the holy of holies, thus marking the overthrow of the temple. Then there's the parable of the wicked tenants (Mk 12:1-12), in which the vineyard with its tower was given over to others, ie Jerusalem was captured (and the loss of the temple), literally by the Romans, but spiritually the christians took over. The vaticinium ex eventu in Mk 13:2 is a reflection on the loss of the temple. So it is there. You just won't like the fact that prophecies are more likely than not to be post hoc. Feel free to explain these away. I just thought if you really wanted to know, I'd help.
those could be about anything. look the world in which Jesus is going about is a placid world. There are no batter there are no references to war. no one is running saying "O may my whole finmily was killed the siege at Masada" or anything like it.
how could someone who just went through a turmoil so traumatic his whole religion was destroyed (the temple was the Jewish religion) then he would just write this nice peaceful thing where no one is fighting and there's no war, but the Romans are in charge no one seems to care?
Peter Kirby wrote:
My website estimates that they date between 70 and 130....
(above erroneously attributed by Metacrock to Adam)
LostnTym wrote "Do you have a break down of what you would consider to be the genuine sayings of Jesus? Would you include Matthew 21-25 as genuine sayings?"
Adam wrote:
I'm Lost,n tym, 8:
Why do you pick such a difficult slab of chapters from the most disparate of all the gospels?
That selection includes lots of purely Matthean (M) sayings, most notably the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, beloved of Pelagian (and some Arminian) theologians to prove that virtue pays and evil in punished; Mt 25:31-46. Same applies to both preceding parables in Matthew 25. It's as if (and may well be) that the final editor fitted this late material in just before launching in to the Passion Narrative chapters 26 and 27. (But did he also insert Mt 21:28-31, 45-46 and 23:1-12, 14-24, 26-32?) Contrast this with Mt 20:1-16 with its anti-Pelagian "death-bed conversion" motif--is it from a different editor's "Matthean" additions?
At the other extreme is Mt 21:1-17, 23-27; 22:15-46; 24:1-25, 29-36. It is all shared Synoptic material, the Triple-Tradition (though by my view supported MacDonald's Q+, it is what I say is from the Grundschrift). By a broader view of "Matthean" there is also Mt 21:17-22 that is later material added conjointly to Mark (Mk 11:12-14, 20-24) and Matthew.
That still leaves the large hunk usually called simply Q that is shared with Luke only. However, it comprises at least two layers. I used to follow Boismard (and Benoit) in seeing Matthew as copying in Mt 23:33-24:51 from wherever comparable verses were scattered in at least five locations in the near-final edition of Luke (Lk 3:7; 11:49-51; 13:34-35; 21:5-33; 12:42-46; and17:26-27, 34-35, 37) . I now see these as the final Q stratum identifiable by such exact Greek correspondence between Matthew and Luke.
To further complicate matters, there is some of the original Q independently translated from Aramaic scattered in these chapters as well. See Mt 21:31b-43; 22:1-14; 23:13,25 and perhaps some of the elements of the first two parables in Matthew 25 that are not attributable to independent oral or written Aramaic tradition (though in the latter case would be yet another strand in what Maurice Casey calls "Chaotic Q ".
Edited to add:
As for dating, the earliest of Q layers could have been written in Aramaic taken (by Matthew himself, like as not) down while Jesus was preaching. I strongly contend for a written Aramaic Q for most of the looser parallels among the three Synoptics, but if these were late insertions (in these Mt chapters 21 to 25) on the line of Casey's Chaotic Q I would not rule out oral tradition. The bulk of "Q" passages here are quite exact, so that they came into Matthew and Luke from Greek allows (or demands?) a later date, maybe the '50's. The Triple Tradition passages in Matthew 26 and 27 include much from the Passion Diary I contend that John Mark wrote immediately, but the specifics are better seen in the S and G that Howard Teeple extracted from John 18 to 19. The Triple Tradition I list above is from later date, but I am sympathetic to the arguments of Casey and James Crossley that the Little Apocalypse gelled around the Caligula Crisis sometime during his reign as Caesar from 37 to 41 A. D. In Matthew 24 we find a particular propensity to intensify whatever Jesus said in this regard to apply end-time prophecy to immediate liberation from the Roman yoke. Though it is obvious Jesus spoke on this subject, he was not an apocalyptic prophet. Even his hot-head disciples don't quote Jesus as speaking on the matter to the crowds nor even in secret until immediately before he was crucified.
The second (or third, depending on whether we follow Kloppenborg's dubious separation or Casey's chaotic version) layer o Q material that comes to us from a Greek translation does not necessarily have to be late. These portions could have been written up in Greek originally or could have been translated from Aramaic to Greek with only this latter document known to the evangelists. Using style instead of presupposed ideological contrasts (as per Kloppenborg and the whole Jesus Seminar crowd), I don't find that much difference between Q1 and Q2 (or Q3, etc.) Yet I'm willing to concede that the more purely obviously early "Q" sayings do tend to support a Historical Jesus who is more like a Cynic philosopher (and Franciscan monk) than like any Caesaropapist (or certainly not Byzantine Orthodox) state religion.
M and its perhaps identical secondary Marcan layer could well be later, from the '60's, let's say, with the Gospel of Matthew written in that decade.
Metacrock wrote:]Excellent analysis. I'm out of the loop in terms of Hebrewisms and Aramaic originals in Matthew. I don't know what they are saying about that know. I think back when i studied Greek (they hadn't had the Trojan war yet) they were saying there weren't any.
All the excitement about Mental Flatliner allowed the serious misattributions by Metacrock to go unnotied. And what became of LostnTym, by the way? He was only here two days, but those days were during the Reign of Mental Flatliner, which would naturally have induced any reasonable entrant here to wish he had not tried to make himself at home here.
