Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Giuseppe »

It is very hard to think that this quote:
Secret Alias wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 9:47 pm Brilliant Giuseppe. I was blind but now I see.
...answers to this:
Giuseppe wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 8:26 pm The Parable of Tenants:
He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

(Mark 12:9)

Jerusalem was not given "to others" after 70 but only after 135: it became Aelia Capitolina and populated exclusively by Pagans.
It is part and parcel of the non-sense of the life. :confusedsmiley:
davidmartin
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by davidmartin »

Giuseppe wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:34 am
davidmartin wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:08 am It probably contains material from the late 1st century to mid 2nd as an anthology
ok (for me Hermas is not only an old text, but even a text with mythicist evidence), but my point above is that Mark follows Hermas, accordingly Mark dates still to mid 2nd.
Hermas could indeed support your dating
Because i seriously doubt the mid 2nd century dating of it - i think it was in use a generation before and the church fathers are actually late-dating it in order to discount it (like with the Didache). they didn't want certain early documents to be preserved (along with Papias, Bel and the dragon, Preaching of peter and so on. And the Odes as well)
so really Hermas has to be considered an absolutely key text
but Hermas lacks gospel information. it doesn't seem to know Mark or other gospels??? it knows Paul
that could support your case
.. the Rome centric early Christianity didn't have gospels even if they were already gaining popularity elsewhere? c. 100AD - 125AD
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

davidmartin wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 7:44 ambut Hermas lacks gospel information. it doesn't seem to know Mark or other gospels??? it knows Paul
It is very hard to say what or whom Hermas knows:

Joseph Verheyden, “The Shepherd of Hermas and the Writings That Later Formed the New Testament,” in Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, page 329: 329 Finally, does all this make it a plausible conclusion (for plausibility rather than certainty is all to which we can aspire) that Hermas effectively made use of the gospel of Matthew and of one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians? I can live with this idea, and with the idea that others will probably remain unconvinced.

Hermas could indeed support your dating
Because i seriously doubt the mid 2nd century dating of it - i think it was in use a generation before and the church fathers are actually late-dating it in order to discount it (like with the Didache). they didn't want certain early documents to be preserved (along with Papias, Bel and the dragon, Preaching of peter and so on. And the Odes as well)
It may be worth noting that, in Lecture VIII of his 1913 Bampton Lectures, published as The Church of Rome in the First Century, George Edmundson argued that the Shepherd "bears every mark from internal evidence of being a product of the Flavian age" (page 208 of the book). I think you would hate most of what Edmundson has to say about the Roman church in century I, honestly, but in this one respect perhaps you may find a measure of potential agreement.

Edmundson gives cause to doubt the report in the Muratorian Canon that "Hermas composed the Shepherd recently, in our own times, in the city of Rome, while his brother Pius the bishop was sitting in the chair of the city of Rome" (lines 74-76). He points out that, while the likes of the Liberian catalogue names the brother of Pius as Hermas/Hermes (frater eius Ermes), the Felician catalogue names his brother as Pastor (frater Pastoris). Now, given that the Latin title of the work is Liber Pastoris (= Book of Pastor = Book of the Shepherd), Edmundson suggests that the Latin title of the book was interpreted as naming its author instead of the angelic guide, and thus the author was thought to be Pastor, the brother of Pius. Hermas was also confused with the Shepherd, or Pastor, in pseudo-Tertullian, Carmen Adversus Marcionitas 3.387-389: "Then after him Pius, whose biological brother was Hermas, the angelic shepherd, because he spoke the words delivered to him" (post hunc deinde Pius, Hermas cui germine frater angelicus pastor, quia tradita verba locutus).

An alternate possibility, however, it seems to me — and one which Edmundson does not fend off, to the best of my memory — is that the Shepherd was known to have been penned by the brother of Pius (his name being Hermas), and the Latin title Liber Pastoris was mistakenly thought to name the author as Pastor, thus artificially giving the name Pastor to Hermas, the brother of Pius. This would draw the line in the opposite direction: from Hermas to Pastor rather than from Pastor to Hermas.

There is much (too much) about the Shepherd that I am utterly unsure of.
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Wed Oct 21, 2020 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ken Olson
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Ken Olson »

andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 11:08 pm I've posted on this before. I accept the authenticity of the middle recension of Ignatius but I regard a date during the reign of Hadrian as more likely than that of Trajan.
Eusebius' dates for the early bishops of Antioch appear to be basically guesses.

Andrew Criddle
Andrew,

I agree about Eusebius, and would go so far as to say that many of the dates he gives for figures from the first half of the second century are best guesses. So if Ignatius wrote in the reign of Hadrian, I would have to move my latest possible date for Mark (based on the criterion I stated) up to Hadrian.

But what are the reasons favoring a date in the reign of Hadrian over one in the reign of Trajan?

Best,

Ken
Giuseppe
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Giuseppe »

Where is the problem?

Simply, Hermas CANNOT know Mark because otherwise it would have not called the holy spirit as "heir" and "beloved son", contra Mark applying these titles to Jesus in a not ambiguous manner.

Hence any discourse about "what Hermas knows" or about "who wrote Hermas" is reduced to zero before this simple and evident fact: that Hermas DID NOT KNOW Mark.
Giuseppe
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Giuseppe »

In addition, there is this curious passage:

Sanhedrin 93b Mark 14:65

Bar Koziba (Son of a Lie) reigned three and a half years, and then said to the Rabbis, 'I am the Messiah.' They answered, 'Of Messiah it is written that he smells and judges. Let us see whether he can do so.' When they saw that he was unable to judge by the scent, they slew him


Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, “Prophesy!” And the guards took him and beat him


Usually the objection is that prophecy is not the same thing as judgement, but if the episode of Peter's denial (Mark 14:66-72) is meant as a realization of the "prophecy" in question, then that prophecy is also a judgement: Peter fears the divine punition and accordingly:

...he broke down and wept.

Giuseppe
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Giuseppe »

Another pointer to Hadrianic times is the episode of Symon the Cyrene:

To drive the point home Basilides composed a Gospel (now lost) in which Jesus was not crucified, but allowed Simon of Cyrene to be mistaken for him and to suffer in his place, while he stood by and laughed. This recommendation to the elect to save their skins and leave fools to their fate illustrates the demoralization of the richer Alexandrian Christians in the reign of the enlightened Hadrian.

http://www.ditext.com/robertson/oc7.html

What is interesting in this quote is that, even if you think that Basilides doesn't matter at all with the original meaning of the Cyrenaic, the moral point of the episode (that Jesus didn't escape to persecution despite of - or just in virtue of - Simon's help as carrier of the cross) allows easily its dating in a time of "demoralization in the reign of the enlightened Hadrian".
davidmartin
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by davidmartin »

It may be worth noting that, in Lecture VIII of his 1913 Bampton Lectures, published as The Church of Rome in the First Century, George Edmundson argued that the Shepherd "bears every mark from internal evidence of being a product of the Flavian age" (page 208 of the book). I think you would hate most of what Edmundson has to say about the Roman church in century I, honestly, but in this one respect perhaps you may find a measure of potential agreement.

Edmundson gives cause to doubt the report in the Muratorian Canon that "Hermas composed the Shepherd recently, in our own times, in the city of Rome, while his brother Pius the bishop was sitting in the chair of the city of Rome" (lines 74-76). He points out that, while the likes of the Liberian catalogue names the brother of Pius as Hermas/Hermes (frater eius Ermes), the Felician catalogue names his brother as Pastor (frater Pastoris). Now, given that the Latin title of the work is Liber Pastoris (= Book of Pastor = Book of the Shepherd), Edmundson suggests that the Latin title of the book was interpreted as naming its author instead of the angelic guide, and thus the author was thought to be Pastor, the brother of Pius. Hermas was also confused with the Shepherd, or Pastor, in pseudo-Tertullian, Carmen Adversus Marcionitas 3.387-389: "Then after him Pius, whose biological brother was Hermas, the angelic shepherd, because he spoke the words delivered to him (post hunc deinde Pius, Hermas cui germine frater angelicus pastor, quia tradita verba locutus).
Thankyou Ben
yes i would feel i agree with Edmundson on the dating there - i have no idea what he says about the Roman church though!
my reasons are not very scholarly (as usual) it's just kind of obvious when reading it that it's a compilation of various sources it's really quite strange the feeling i get from it
it feels like a 'church newspaper' that's been updated over time and is quite 'parochial' (is that the right word?) when it starts complaining about the bishops wife by name at one point. it dates to a time of joint male/female leadership i'd wager. i am convinced it is very early.

it really is a fascinating text for what it says and also what it lacks
actually.. what i really would love is a list of textual variants. there are said to be a lot but i never did find anywhere that lists them all (in English)
i suspect there's gold to be had in the variants
Paul the Uncertain
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

What would be a likely late date or a late terminus ad quem? How far would you seriously go?
While I'm personally happy with our host's estimated range, 65-80 CE, and within that range, not frightened off from the 60"s, I could see an argument for the mid-90's.

Chiefly, there's a fair chunk of John the Baptist material that seems not to have come from Paul, and it might have been prompted from Josephus' Antiquities, 93 CE.

I appreciate that the guild doesn't grok "prompt" and can get sniffy that Mark repurposes John's baptism, gets Antipas's title wrong, links the divorce and remarriage to John's arrest, and has no support from Josephus for the whole dance-to-head-on-a-platter thing.

That is, however, what prompt means in the context of creative writing. Take some evocative material and make a gripping story of it.

Maybe the better rebuttal would be that Josephus says that people in general were still talking about John after he died, and of course Josephus himself is writing about John +/- two generations later. Maybe Mark got his inspiration from one of those talkative survivors of the Baptist.

Not insisting, then, but there is, IMO, at least a foundation for suggesting mid-90's.
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mlinssen
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Re: Late dating of Mark: How far would you go? And what are your arguments?

Post by mlinssen »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 10:55 am .
.
The starting point of my question is the dating probably prevailing among scholars, namely to the years 69/70.


--> What would be a likely late date or a late terminus ad quem? How far would you seriously go?


--> And what are your arguments? (Can you give another argument if your main argument would be the certainty that Mark was written after Marcion or after another „heretic“ of the second century and shows an anti-marcionite view.)
Inasmuch as I would like to contribute, I will not go near this can of worms.
First, the exact order has to be established.
Then we can talk about dates.
Which inevitably will bring us back to order, etc

1) Order solely established via literary criticism
2) Date(s) solely established via true, objective historical records

And after that one can look at the Origens etc, Josephus', and date attempts from content itself. But those sit in a very different universe of reliability

Personally, I place Thomas at the end of the first half of the first century, and perhaps it got written decades earlier but just didn't catch on. All the gospel stuff? Late first, beginning of second century. And all literary fiction from beginning to end, with the only purpose of "steering a movement in the desired direction"

Perhaps Paul started it (by hijacking the movement instigated by the text of Thomas), and Mark wrote a narrative to support that - a decade or so later.
Then even later, a decade or so, perhaps two, it needed another overhaul because Marcion, initially in favour, had to be ousted. So Matthew rewrote Marcion, accompanied by his own, just as Paul recreated Thomas, and Mark sustained Paul with fiction.
At the other side of the camp, near the Thomas movement, there was a lot going on, and people went in the other direction: full-blown gnosticism, mixed with the new story from Paul and Mark.
And somewhere in the middle, there was John Presbyter. I've always said it: he is Thomas who switched sides, but of everything I've written in this post, that is entirely unlikely, closer to impossible. But John, a century after it all started, still had to be used to answer the questions that remained. So he got altered here and there, and incorporated

James David Audlin is about to wrap up on his 5 decades of research on John, and will publish his 3,000 pages within the next year, gawds help it. I've seen some on academia.edu already, and it is very promising

By the way, all this is just a brain bug. I like the idea but it will likely change: I have little knowledge of all the different MSS, accepted or not, that have flown around.
But it is all fiction, with perhaps a tiny historical core. And we can only rely on textual criticism and archeology, because there's too much at stake. And proven to have been interpolated
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