dating the birth stories?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
rgprice
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by rgprice »

mlinssen wrote: Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:56 pm I've gone through all 72 logia of Thomas and their version in the canonicals - and hadn't even heard of Marcion at that point. But the order clearly is Luke before Matthew in most cases, whereas Matthew (top of my head) could be earlier in some cases.
But, why doesn't anyone hold to the theory that Luke and Matthew were written together, or even by one person?

Take Marcion and turn it into Luke, it will take you a good weekend and a case of beer - it's not that it must have taken great effort. Take the verbatim agreements on top of that, and it's a closed case: if you want to refute Marcion, you take his gospel, wrap it into your context, add a bit to it and write your own to go along with it so they strengthen one another. Make sure they differ and you can say "Hey dudes! I have these two divergent stories here and they tell Da Truth, and look how much Marcion looks like Luke! What a shameless plagiarist he is, tsk tsk"

But, if you like a challenge, please do read viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7707
I'm very confident that Mark was first. The way it is written, it cannot have been derived from another Gospel. It's all chiastic, it has hundreds of "hidden" literary references that only work in an original structure. You take something like the Temple cleansing scene, which is based on at least three different scriptures and was foreshadowed using hidden scriptural references in the beginning of the story. Then you look at that same scene in all the other Gospels and you can see that its been totally mutilated. None of the scriptural parallels line up anymore and most of the "hidden" meaning of the scene is lost. The allegorical understanding is shattered and its been historicized.

I've no doubt Mark is first, despite many people now wanting to put Marcion first, which has its appeal, but it just can't be.

Luke has almost certainly been produced in three revisions. Although I'd say there is some possibility that Marcion is actually a revision of a proto-Luke. Luke 3:1-23 is most certainly written by a different person than Luke 1-2 & 24. I'd say its possible that Marcion is derived from Luke 3-23, however the Capernaum issue makes this quite doubtful, but I wouldn't entirely rule it out.

Assuming that Marcion came before any version of Luke, then its Marcion > proto-Luke > canonical Luke. To complicate matters it could well also be that the writer of canonical-Luke also did some final editing to Luke 3-23. I'd say that its possible that the final editor created the Capernaum problem. If that's true, then we are back to the possibility of proto-Luke > Marcion + proto-Luke > canonical Luke.

What I'm confident in is that Luke 1-2 & 24 is a response to Marcion. The body of Luke shows no major sign of being anti-Marcionite, other than the genealogy back to David, while Luke 1-2 & 24 is overloaded with anti-Marcionism. It is very noteworthy that the genealogy in Luke is separate from the birth narrative - coming after Luke 3:1. IMO, this lends support to the possibility that Luke 3-23 came before Matthew, but that Luke 1-2 & 24 was written after Matthew.

Matthew is most certainly by a different person than Luke. Totally different writing style, totally different approach to the material. Matthew is anti-Marcionite throughout. It's clear to me that Matthew is a total rewrite, start to finish. I know you don't like arguments that involve layers, but the evidence is clearly there in Luke to indicate that Luke was written in layers.

I can certainly envision a situation where we start with Mark. Then proto-Luke is derived from Mark. Marcion is a redaction of proto-Luke. Then we get Matthew as a reaction to Marcion, who builds upon Mark and proto-Luke (which of course is very similar to Marcion, but it contains the genealogy that Marcion has removed), then canonical Luke is written which builds upon proto-Luke + Matthew + John.

Oh yeah, and in the mean time, John was written somewhere along the way. John is derived from Marcion with influence from Mark. But John also has two layers as well, the final of which wasn't done until it was put into the collection with all four Gospels, most likely around 150-160. John is a weird blend of Gnosticism and anti-Marcionism. It's still not clear to be that John puts forward a Jesus who was born of a woman. Jesus seems to reject his association with Mary in John.

Anyway, Luke is difficult to understand because it has multiple writers with entirely different perspectives.
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mlinssen
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by mlinssen »

rgprice wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:23 am What I'm confident in is that Luke 1-2 & 24 is a response to Marcion. The body of Luke shows no major sign of being anti-Marcionite, other than the genealogy back to David, while Luke 1-2 & 24 is overloaded with anti-Marcionism. It is very noteworthy that the genealogy in Luke is separate from the birth narrative - coming after Luke 3:1.
Agreed
Matthew is most certainly by a different person than Luke. Totally different writing style, totally different approach to the material. Matthew is anti-Marcionite throughout. It's clear to me that Matthew is a total rewrite, start to finish.
Agreed
I can certainly envision a situation where we start with Mark. Then proto-Luke is derived from Mark. Marcion is a redaction of proto-Luke. Then we get Matthew as a reaction to Marcion, who builds upon Mark and proto-Luke (which of course is very similar to Marcion, but it contains the genealogy that Marcion has removed)
Agreed. Yet what if the Luke 3-23 that we have is just Marcion redacted? I understand they liked his stuff, they just didn't like the direction he took afterwards - so did they need to change much to his gospel? Just a bit here and there, then play the old "No you are late and we were first" game, and it would explain the agreements between Luke and Matthew if it was Matthew who took Marcion and redacted it into Luke by adding chapters 1-2 and 24, also to support his own story

We would need to look at the disagreements between Marcion and Luke and assess the "Matthean-ness" of them, and we'd need to look at chairs 1-2 and 24 and just look at the text itself
Oh yeah, and in the mean time, John was written somewhere along the way. John is derived from Marcion with influence from Mark. But John also has two layers as well, the final of which wasn't done until it was put into the collection with all four Gospels, most likely around 150-160. John is a weird blend of Gnosticism and anti-Marcionism. It's still not clear to me that John puts forward a Jesus who was born of a woman. Jesus seems to reject his association with Mary in John.
Agreed. John is very Thomasine - I know that you don't like that idea but trust me, Thomas is the passive basis underlying it all. No religious movement, just a bunch of self seekers happy with their IS; once the movement went mainstream-ish I think that most got to misunderstand most of it, which is no surprise. It's meant as a one-on-one life lesson exactly like the Tao, to which it bears many similarities
Anyway, Luke is difficult to understand because it has multiple writers with entirely different perspectives.
Only two, if we assume that Matthew redacted Marcion

And by the way, when I said Luke before Matthew I meant exactly that LOL. Thomas, Mark, Luke, Matthew is what I concluded 1.5 years ago, when I didn't know Marcion

I'd now shuffle Marcion in between Mark and Luke: He took Mark and doubled the Thomasine material, likely because Mark had been too reluctant - and Mark 4:26–29 is a perfect example of a very hesitant copy of Thomas logion 57.
We also see Luke and Matthew adding to previous copies of Mark
hakeem
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by hakeem »

rgprice wrote:
I'm very confident that Mark was first. The way it is written, it cannot have been derived from another Gospel. It's all chiastic, it has hundreds of "hidden" literary references that only work in an original structure. You take something like the Temple cleansing scene, which is based on at least three different scriptures and was foreshadowed using hidden scriptural references in the beginning of the story. Then you look at that same scene in all the other Gospels and you can see that its been totally mutilated. None of the scriptural parallels line up anymore and most of the "hidden" meaning of the scene is lost. The allegorical understanding is shattered and its been historicized.

I've no doubt Mark is first, despite many people now wanting to put Marcion first, which has its appeal, but it just can't be.
The version of the Jesus story in gMark is not only the earliest of the Gospels but also the entire NT. gMark's Jesus was a Galilean preaching to people in the surrounding area telling them that the Kingdom of God was at hand and that they must repent.

gMark's Jesus the Galilean had no interest in universal salvation, no interest in a new religion, did not want to be known publicly as Christ, did not ask people to worship him as a God and did not commission his disciples to preach the Gospel to the world after the resurrection.

We can see that all other NT writers including the so-called Paul changed the Jesus story and invented post-resurrection visits by the risen Jesus to the apostles and finally in the Epistles of over 500 persons.

In fact, in the Epistles, it is claimed that without the resurrection there could be no universal salvation.

Romans 10:9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved

.

gMark's Galilean preached no such thing, commissioned no-one, and likewise commissioned no-one to preach "redemption by the resurrection".

The Pauline "redemption by the resurrection is a very late teaching unknown by all NT writers and even the so-called heretic Marcion.
Bernard Muller
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by Bernard Muller »

MrMacSon,
The fact Basilidies, a Valentinian or semi-Valentinian, is said to have mentioned or in fact didi Christian 'items' such as Christ or Jesus 'to be crucified' (?) doesn't mean he was a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, Bernard, or that he was even aware of him.
For sure, Basilides was not an orthodox Christian, but that does not mean he was unaware of Jesus: he quoted or mentioned some of the content of the gospels:
Irenaeus and Hippolytus in their critiques of Basilides, also said his theories mentioned Christian items, such as Christ, god of the Jews, Jesus to be crucified, appearing on earth as a man who wrough miracles. Basilides even modify a passage from gMark & GMatthew about the role of Simon of Cyrene, the bearer of Jesus' cross, but "so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them.".

The above is from Irenaeus. Now from Hippolytus:
"Basilides, therefore, and Isidorus, the true son and disciple of Basilides, say that Matthias communicated to them secret discourses, which, I being specially instructed, he heard from the Saviour." Matthias is mentioned as the replacement of Judas the traitor in Acts 1:23 & 26.
"And that each thing, says (Basilides), has its own particular times, the Saviour is a sufficient (witness when He observes, "Mine hour is not yet come." And the Magi (afford similar testimony) when they gaze wistfully upon the (Saviour's) star." (from gJohn and gMatthew).
"And these things happened, he [Basilides] says, in order that Jesus might become the first-fruits"


His religion was orthodox Christianity (as defined by the gospels) plus a lot of extrapolations with ancient gnostic concepts conceived by the Greek long before, way beyond other Christians would accept.

And Basilides was not a Valentinian or ex-Valentinian. Rather Valentinus was greatly influenced by Basilides' writings.

Cordially, Bernard
cora
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by cora »

Hello everybody,
I wanted to apologize for spitting out my theory over everybody. I should have known that nobody is ready for that but I wanted so much to share. Of course my vision is way out of everything known, but I did not invent it, I found it during long historical research. Nobody understands how important history is. Only by historical facts you can come to know the context of the NT, and understand what is going on. Because there is going on something.

I see nobody reacts on what I wrote, so I am simply being ignored. In the next reactions it is business as usual. When were the gospels written and who was first. What does it matter anyway who was first? They were brought together to rome by Irenaeus after 185. Actually Marcion was first: the beginning with the landing on earth is gnostic christian. The gospels were written to defeat Marcion, everybody knows that, so after Marcion had visited the church which IMO was around 125. So they are all written after 125. But there came only reaction when Marcion became very successful with his own churches. Then we must be at least in 150. It was Jahweh against the gnostic god. This is history. It can be delivered at the university.

I feel the most for the idea that Luke and Mathew were written by one person, exactly in the way as described by MLinssen, by Mathew. In Luke is only part of Marcion. John was an existing gospel, also called John (I know because I found an earlier version with Aramaic names in it) and is a gnostic gospel. There are forgeries in it, by Mathew. The Mark problem.

There are some historical facts:
1. the gospels were first named and talked about in the book of Irenaeus from 185.
2. they were never before mentioned, there was never even talked about a gospel. (once in a while a line means nothing, it can be planted).
3. because of the anti-Marcion sentiments, it must all be written after 125 (visit Marcion), more probable after 155 (success Marcion).
4. the gospels originate in the church of rome (which had declared war against Marcion). In 125 they still had only the OT, so they were not Christian (that cannot be without a gospel).
5. there is no evidence of any gospel being written earlier, that is only an assumption.
DOES THIS LOOKS LOGICAL?

The problem Justin Martyr:
1. IMO Justin is a raving lunatic, and a fanatic.
2. Justin was NOT a member of the church, he was a self-appointed philosopher with his own school.
3. Justin invented nasty things, like the resurrection in the flesh-last judgement-heaven and hell, particularly hell (eternal burning in the lake of fire) and Satan being the devil. That works like this: Sata means apostate, and the n is the first letter of the word for serpent (and 1000's of other words of course). This makes Satan meaning apostate serpent, which is the devil. What did I say? Crazy. Because of this catholics say that the serpent in the garden is the devil, while jews say that it is just a serpent. Jews don't know any devil.
4. After his death Justins papers went to Irenaeus in 170.
STILL SOUNDS LOGICAL?

I CONCLUDE: every gospel with a temptation by the DEVIL/SATAN must have been written after 170. There is no other option.
That includes Mark. Why it was written differently from the others, NO IDEA. They cannot all be the same...… For fun...….
Ask Mathew why he did it. Maybe his sister did it. I was not there.
I THINK THIS A LOGICAL CONCLUSION. WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Maybe this boring and unimportant item (who was first?) can finally be led to rest, after a 100 years.
Did yo know that Mark and Mathew are called the "catholic gospels", especially in Mathew that is very clear. By the way BOTH are pushing the Messiah-idea, which is the most ridiculous I have ever seen. Just look up what a messiah is and does. Luke and John are more normal. In the middle of Luke you get Marcion which was originally a human being, and John is a typical gnostic gospel: the son of god has come to introduce his father (the gnostic god). As a jewish gnostic he hates Jahweh and probably all the jews.

I hope somebody can get out off the texts and read this. Some reaction would be nice. For now I am tired.
And I forgot something: do you think gospels from after 170 are historical and reliable???

greetings, Cora.
gryan
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by gryan »

Hi Cora,

As you may know, I come at these texts in the mainline Christian way. I study them as scripture first, and only marginally as history to be taught in university history departments. So when did legit history of the church begin? Surely, Constantine's conversion would make the cut. Before that, it gets pretty specialized. I've never studied Justin Martyr. I dislike apologetics.

I'm interested in the birth stories: "born of a woman, born under the law" from Galatians strikes me as a simple form of a birth story that predated those of Matt and Luke. My assumption is that Jesus and James were both sons of Mary, as recorded in GMark. I don't think Paul and the author of GMark thought in terms of a contrary-to-nature "virgin birth."

I think Jesus, the man, in his own time was historically insignificant, ie in terms of history department history. That is why nobody wrote about him as historical in the sense that Alexander the Great was "historical." The texts that became the NT had a historical impact; but as for what the claims they make about what came before, a good dose of agnosticism is fine with me.

I do not think any of the texts of the NT were written against Marcion--I think they were written before Marcion, and I'm not alone in that, as you well know.

Best,

Greg
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GakuseiDon
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by GakuseiDon »

cora wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:18 pmI see nobody reacts on what I wrote, so I am simply being ignored. In the next reactions it is business as usual. When were the gospels written and who was first. What does it matter anyway who was first? They were brought together to rome by Irenaeus after 185. Actually Marcion was first: the beginning with the landing on earth is gnostic christian. The gospels were written to defeat Marcion, everybody knows that, so after Marcion had visited the church which IMO was around 125. So they are all written after 125. But there came only reaction when Marcion became very successful with his own churches. Then we must be at least in 150. It was Jahweh against the gnostic god. This is history. It can be delivered at the university.
By "gospels", do you mean those four Gospels that eventually made the canon? Or do you mean any written gospel, extant or not?
hakeem
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by hakeem »

gryan wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:55 pm Hi Cora,

As you may know, I come at these texts in the mainline Christian way. I study them as scripture first, and only marginally as history to be taught in university history departments. So when did legit history of the church begin? Surely, Constantine's conversion would make the cut. Before that, it gets pretty specialized. I've never studied Justin Martyr. I dislike apologetics.
Your statement that you have never studied Jesus Martyr because you dislike apologetics is most bizarre. Your methodology of studying Christian Scripture by studying only what you like is by far the worse I have heard.
gryan wrote: I'm interested in the birth stories: "born of a woman, born under the law" from Galatians strikes me as a simple form of a birth story that predated those of Matt and Luke. My assumption is that Jesus and James were both sons of Mary, as recorded in GMark. I don't think Paul and the author of GMark thought in terms of a contrary-to-nature "virgin birth."
Why do you assume that gMark is an historical writing? I don't know how a character who was God's only son and made of a woman is a simple birth story? The Epistles do not even state the name of a human father of their Jesus.
gryan wrote:I think Jesus, the man, in his own time was historically insignificant, ie in terms of history department history. That is why nobody wrote about him as historical in the sense that Alexander the Great was "historical." The texts that became the NT had a historical impact; but as for what the claims they make about what came before, a good dose of agnosticism is fine with me.
What you say does not make sense. Josephus, Philo, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the elder, Pliny the younger, Plutarch, mentioned many, many insignificant characters And since you claim the NT had an historical impact then that makes your "insignificant Jesus" even more absurd due to the fact that it would be expected that the historical impact would have been acknowledge by early non-apologetics.

The NT had no historical impact on early non-apolgetics and their writings.
gryan wrote:I do not think any of the texts of the NT were written against Marcion--I think they were written before Marcion, and I'm not alone in that, as you well know.

Best,

Greg

If you had studied the writings of Justin Martyr you would have realized that there were no Gospels known as according to Mark, Matthew, John and Luke in the time of Marcion.
cora
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by cora »

Of course Basilides was a Christian gnostic. They all were. It was called "gnostic Christianity" and it started around 100. They were the first and only ones. Until the church of rome tried to take over in 200. In 200 the canon was opened and 4 gospels went in. That was the first time they had gospels, which is the beginning of the catholic church. Of course they don't tell you that, they re-wrote history (as often happens). But you can check their story quite easily on the internet and see I am right. When was the first catholic apologist? In 150. And the first writer? In 185. Looks like this "really" started in 30, don't you think? Just take over the term Christianity (was chrestianity) from the gnostics and nobody can see anymore who is who.
Gnosticism as a religion comes from Greece 4th century BC, it was invented by Plato.
greetings, Cora
cora
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Re: dating the birth stories?

Post by cora »

Hai GakuseiDon,
I mean our 4 gospels, but they did not make it "eventually" to the canon. In the beginning there was as story from Judea. It was an invented written story about a human being. It played in 30 but it was written in 72. So it was historical fiction. Paul deceived them and stole it. He needed it for a new religion he was planning. It was a mystery religion, which is gnostic. Paul is a gnostic and started gnostic chrestianity. He did not talk of Jesus Christ, but of Isu Chrestos. He was preaching life after death, which did not really exist at the time. He kept to the story he had stolen. The gospel of John is also gnostic and has the same message as Paul. I think Paul asked him to write it. After Paul's death his papers went to Marcion: 10 letters and 1 gospel, called by Paul "the gospel of the lord". It is the jewish story slightly changed (and not about a human being anymore). Paul's Isu is a god, a divine spirit. Marcion took the papers to rome. They kept the papers when he was kicked out. Marcion started his own church, and became very successfull. All the other gnostic communities (from Paul) stayed where they were, or expanded. There were many gnostic gospels written. The Old Testamentic church of rome (jews and others who wanted to worship Jahweh) felt the competition from Marcion and decided to wipe him out. We are now in 155 or 160 and there are no church gospels: they still had to be written. In 185 Irenaeus presented in his book 22 books of the NT, among whom the 4 gospels. I know Irenaeus a lot better than I had ever wanted, so IMO he did it himself. Especially as he got Justin's papers in 170, and I have found Justin's text in Mark, in Mathew, in Revelation and in Paul's letters. This can only be done by Irenaeus. So he took John (which was there) and the gospel of Marcion (which was the ur, ur, ur story from Judea) and he divided it over the synoptics. What he could not use he threw away. And the gospel of Marcion was gone. There is a part in Luke, but there is also a part in Mathew, and probably Mark (which is a part of Mathew). The rest (birth stories, John the baptist (based on John), the Satan in the desert (based on Justin) etc. he invented and wrote himself. The arrest etc story he took from the gospel of John. But John being gnostic means something else. The ur-gospel's ending was quite differently. So the ur-story is hidden in 3 or 4 gospels. The rest is invented and fake. Isu was changed in Jesus, I think by Justin. So the gospels are invented stories from after 160. Paul's letters are that much forged that it is hardly able to find Paul at all. Paul talked about a god, not a human being, that is all forgery. Paul is also not a jew, that is all forgery. Parts of Irenaeus' theology is planted in Paul, as if he said that. Paul cannot know a brother of the Lord, because the Lord is a god. Paul did not live in 35 - 67, the original story was written in 72. Paul was placed back from 90-120 to 35. This was very successfull of course: nobody connected Marcion anymore with Paul, and Marcion wrote the gospel so-called himself.
So the gospels are fake, written and forged between 160 and 185. The name was Isu, not Jesus. The gospel names were put on by Irenaeus. The resurrection was invented by Irenaeus. Okay John did it too, but that is because he is gnostic. If you look well Paul has no resurrection (by himself).
The gospels went to rome after 185, the canon opened in 200, 4 gospels went in. And that is the beginning of the catholic church: without gospels no "Christianity".
I don't know why I wrote all that, it is quite a story if you want to tell everything you know. For the moment nobody believes me, except my professor-friend in Canada, but what does it matter. The real history is not the history you read in the Christian books. It has been rewritten.
greetings, Cora.
PS: Jesus did not exist, because Isu also did not exist, it was a written story, historical fiction.
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