Oh, YEAH! More Conspiracy Stuff!!!

[Charles Wilson]

1. Peter Kirby and I got into a small discussion yesterdayish and, as usual, "One thing led to another and..."
I made a point about Radiation of Learned Individuals in the Civilized World and the Lands Beyond. Oh, and the "Q Community". The point was that the Set of Q Community Members who could read and write and be aware of Cross Cultural Sensibilities would necessarily have been small and the size of a Community that celebrated "Q Sayings" would have been smaller yet. The implication, to me, was that if there was a "Q Community", the Sayings would not have been celebrated but instead would have been seen as Language to be Manipulated - a JOB. A job in the Roman Court or its assigns. But PK doesn't believe in Q anyway, so there...

PK responded with, "...Antioch, Alexandria, Athens, Ephesus, and Jerusalem (before the war) among them. Maybe more. Rome of course too, but not everything literary happened there..." Achaia might possibly be on that list but it was Nero's favorite and we all know about Nero.

Anyway, PK is, of course, correct, although we are discussing slightly different points.

2. Today I made a Post concerning Mark 13 as being written around Josephus and Antiquities... Domitian was mentioned and that means, to me, The Holy Spirit holds the pen that Titus once held. Domitian apparently didn't like Titus that much. Go figure. Anyway, that puts the authorship of Mark towards the end of Domitian, right?

3. Waitaminnit!!! Josephus writes Antiquities... in 93 - 94. If Mark writes about events in Antiquities..., then he must have a first edition copy and be VERY close to its place of manufacture. A copyist could complete a copy of Antiquities... in a certain amount of time (a week maybe?) and a School of Copyists, on orders, could complete a Series in several weeks, I would assume, and then move on to the next Royal Assignment. As time moves on, Mark can be farther away from [[Rome Copyists School]] and still begin his work.

At the earliest, then, 95 CE.

4. Is that all? Look for a moment, at the strange case of Domitian, dba The Holy Spirit. Those Retrograde Conspiracy Theorists claim that the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit represent the Flavians Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, respectively. Is there something different about Domitian, The Holy Spirit? There most certainly is. Vespasian is the Father. OK. Fine. Titus is the Son. Hard to argue that Titus is not the son of Vespasian.

The Holy Spirit, however, comes to us as a disembodied deity with no Attributes inhering in him. 'N this is most definitely Domitian. Domitian was held in Damnatio Memoriae immediately on the ascension of Nerva. Everything given as a Token of Domitian, coins and statues, were melted, arches destroyed and his name blotted out of records. Holy Spirit, indeed!

5. This means that Mark is no earlier than 95 and most probably no earlier than 96. If Mark is writing in 96, his copy of Antiquites... is still probably close to Rome and the Damnation of Domitian MUST be known. Here is another BIG problem. If Mark is writing close to Rome, he is under the auspices of the authorities who have just condemned Domitian. Mark is therefore writing of the Holy Spirit in a manner that is Most Approving! He KNOWS!

6. As time moves on, Mark has a chance to begin writing farther and farther away from Rome. We know that at some time there was one and only one Book of Mark in existence and in circulation: "Attention Copyists! We want you all to take your copies and tear off the end of your work so that the book ends in mid-sentence, OK?!??..."

Uhhh, No.

7. We also know that if Acts is to be trusted, the Power of the Holy Spirit only goes as far as Cyrene, which, coincidentally, is as far as the Empire went South under Domitian, in a very loose manner of speaking.

8. In summary, as we close in on 96 as the earliest year for Mark's Creation, the closer we get to Rome or the city of Copyists for Rome and Surrounding Cities of the Empire. The closer we get to 96, the closer we get to a VERY early copy of Antiquities.... Mark is probably not creating Chiastic Structures while pulling a plow on the lower forty acres in Hayseed, Gaul. He's got connections.

9. I could be wrong.

CW

[Peter Kirby]

To put a different spin on all this:

Scenario 1: Evangelical Christian fantasyland where the entire New Testament was written down before 70 AD. Beggars belief. The constraints, financial and educational, on pulling this off with a ragtag bunch of preachers and fishermen (and a tax collector) are extraordinary.

Scenario 2: The consensus where Paul's letters are authentic, in large part. We've debated how likely it is, but it can't be assumed blithely.

Scenario 3: The church gets big, both in the base of support and with the ears of important people, and begins to explain its beginnings with literature, including a myth baked in of how early that literature is. If there were no very early literature, it's only natural some claiming to be early would be created.

Scenario 4: Conspiracy stuff. Top-down Christianity. Some noble lord somewhere wanted to spread this and hired some writers to make it happen.

The fourth scenario looks good compared to the first or even the second. The third looks good in contrast with all the rest.

[Peter Kirby]

Is there anything more to add to this thread, Charles?

[Charles Wilson]

Is there anything more to add to this thread, Charles?

Yes, I do.
Today may be No Post Saturday, however.
I'll try to get to it Real Soon Now!

Mebbe some OTHER people might have a comment of a constructive nature? After all, evidence that Mark knew of Antiquities... might be of interest to people if Mark was written in, say, the 80s and Antiquities... was written in 94/95. Mebbe Mark got the preprint version or somethin'. PK, it's like when I asserted that Demetrius Eucerus committed the Abomination of Desolation. I thought that might bring out some comment as well but, as a great baseball manager once said, "If the fans ain't comin' to the park, how you gonna stop 'em?"

CW

[ghost]

Scenario 3: The church gets big, both in the base of support and with the ears of important people, and begins to explain its beginnings with literature, including a myth baked in of how early that literature is. If there were no very early literature, it's only natural some claiming to be early would be created.

Alternative: early Christianity and the early Christian church come from the Divus Iulius cult. The literature is composed of both early and late layers as a result of a decades- or centuries-long rewriting process. People gradually forget that Jesus was Caesar.

[arnoldo]

Scenario 3: The church gets big, both in the base of support and with the ears of important people, and begins to explain its beginnings with literature, including a myth baked in of how early that literature is. If there were no very early literature, it's only natural some claiming to be early would be created.

Alternative: early Christianity and the early Christian church come from the Divus Iulius cult. The literature is composed of both early and late layers as a result of a decades- or centuries-long rewriting process. People gradually forget that Jesus was Caesar.

I would agree with Peter in part that some early christian writings was created perhaps in the second century and backdated to have been written in the first century. However, to accept that all of the early christian writings was backdated and none written in the first century is also hyper-skeptical fantasyland IMHO. Perhaps I'm wrong but it's my understanding that there are a lot of papyrus fragments of writings which eventually became part of the New Testament spread over a wide geographical areas. If scenario #3 is correct then all of these papyrus fragments may be close to being the autographs and not copies of much earlier copies. Additionally, it's equally doubtful that these writings which were created out of whole cloth would spontaneously emerge across wide geographical areas. That's why scenario #1 seems more plausible than the others ones listed IMHO. Of course the possiblility remains that all four scenario are wrong.

[Peter Kirby]

Timeframe is important. Yes, there is p52, and it could date before AD 150. What other papyrus fragments have any chance at all of being autographs, on any of these four scenarios?

[arnoldo]

I dunno, maybe frament 0212 of the Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony. . .

The Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony is known only from fragment 0212. On this fragment, D.C. Parker, D.G.K. Taylor, and M.S. Goodacre state: "It may therefore be concluded that the parchment was produced at some point between the second part of the second century and the building of the embankment [c. 255 CE], and we would prefer a late second century date." (Studies in the Early Text of the Gospels and Acts, pp. 198-1990
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/dura.html

Would you happen to know the geographical location of where p52 was originally found?

[Peter Kirby]

I dunno, maybe frament 0212 of the Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony. . .

Okay.

Would you happen to know the geographical location of where p52 was originally found?

It was bought on the grey market in Egypt in the early 20th century by Bernard Grenfell.

It is usually assumed that the fragment was stolen from the Oxyrhynchus site, but it is not known for certain.

Rylands Library Papyrus P52

[arnoldo]

I dunno, maybe frament 0212 of the Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony. . .

Okay.

Would you happen to know the geographical location of where p52 was originally found?

It was bought on the grey market in Egypt in the early 20th century by Bernard Grenfell.

It is usually assumed that the fragment was stolen from the Oxyrhynchus site, but it is not known for certain.

Rylands Library Papyrus P52

Thanks, although not an accepted scholarly source of information the following statement from wikipedia is along the lines of what I was looking for.

. . . The significance of 52 rests both upon its proposed early dating and upon its geographic dispersal from the presumed site of authorship; traditionally thought to have been Ephesus. As the fragment is removed from the autograph by at least one step of transmission, the date of authorship for the Gospel of John must be at least a few years prior to the writing of 52, whenever that may have been. The location of the fragment in Egypt extends that time even further, allowing for the dispersal of the documents from the point of authorship and transmission to the point of discovery.