Why Mark had to be called Mark

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Giuseppe »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:16 am
Giuseppe wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:04 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:52 am
This question makes sense only if you have utterly failed to grasp my position.
your position is that Papias was really reporting a tradition by real Elders (beyond if these Elders were all liars, for you they "existed") and that he met them directly.
No, that is not my position. I was very clear. Carry on. I am not flagellating myself further.
Your textual words prove that for you the Elders were already all dead by the time Papias reported their tradition:

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:47 am Note that Papias is not claiming contact with the elders (but rather with those "who had followed" the elders), and he is not claiming contact with the disciples, either. That is because they are the same group.
So my point remains: the death of the last Elder marks the first steps of the first heresy, in the propaganda of Papias.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:22 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:16 am
Giuseppe wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:04 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:52 am
This question makes sense only if you have utterly failed to grasp my position.
your position is that Papias was really reporting a tradition by real Elders (beyond if these Elders were all liars, for you they "existed") and that he met them directly.
No, that is not my position. I was very clear. Carry on. I am not flagellating myself further.
Your textual words prove that for you the Elders were already all dead by the time Papias reported their tradition:

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:47 am Note that Papias is not claiming contact with the elders (but rather with those "who had followed" the elders), and he is not claiming contact with the disciples, either. That is because they are the same group.
:tombstone:
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Giuseppe »

Ok, a little oversight by me but the my point remains: the death of the elders by the time of Papias is evidence of their not existence.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:54 am You created this newly emboldened Joe. Enjoy.
I am not the only one on this forum who has attempted to strive against the unwarranted holding of untested assumptions.
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
User avatar
arnoldo
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 6:10 pm
Location: Latin America

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by arnoldo »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:33 am Ok, a little oversight by me but the my point remains: the death of the elders by the time of Papias is evidence of their not existence.
ImageImageImage
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by DCHindley »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:05 am
DCHindley wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 8:56 am If the rabbinic sages (the more outstanding among their peers) differed in their interpretive opinions or even facts of the matter, can we not also expect that Christian elders might pass on unwritten traditions that differed in lore or facts. What else can one expect?
The problem with this view is that the marcionites didn't have something as a ''old tradition''. The God of Marcion was totally a new revelation and the only ''Elder'' allowed is only him, SOLUS PAULUS. Even Celsus recognized this fact and despised the being too much suspiciously ''new'' of this religion. So the term ''tradition'' identifies without shadow of doubt only the Judaizers field.

And if I identify Papias as an anti-marcionite figure, then any his use of the term ''tradition'' is made not ''innocent'' (innocent in the sense meant by DCH) by the simple his being a tradition eo ipso in opposition to Marcion.
I dunno Giuseppe. IMHO, introducing Marcion and his followers into a discussion always seems to muddy the waters, mainly because we really don't know all that much about them other than what was said about then by authors who followed the anti-heresy movement. I think that what had been relayed has suffered severe redaction to make him/them into straw men to be knocked down. In some ways they are relaying rumors as if facts, and I suspect they had never read anything by Marcion other than his Antitheses.

The statements by early Christian writers (up to about the end of the 3rd century CE) just assumed, for the sake of polemic, that Marcion had, besides subjecting the received written gospel(s) and letters of Paul available in his age and area to analysis, distinguishing a core gospel preached by Jesus from the parts he believed had been added Judaic beliefs pertaining to an ignorant creator god, had also re-wrote the gospel(s) into a unified gospel, and his own compact version of the Pauline corpus, all reversed engineered to remove the Judaic parts.

The Heresiologists may have been right about him creating a revised Gospel text to publish what he believed to be a message from the true, real god, as preached by Jesus.

The high Christology of the Paulines may have been what attracted Marcion to Paul's writings in the first place, but the problem is that I think I have already made a prima facie case that all Christological material in the Paulines was added to existing coherent texts.

If one wants to assume as many here have done that the Christology was central to them and somehow Marcionite in nature, then I have to say that this would be much harder to prove than most think. The christological statements are not by any means thematically presented and differ in details from the cosmology attributed to Marcion by the Herseiologists.

I think that what Marcion had liked about them was Paul's condemnation of the Judean Law as *the* means of reconciliation with God, offering instead that faith in God's promise of respite for all who believed that it would or could be accomplished was the *real* means of reconciliation to god. That resonated with his belief that the gospel truth had been contaminated with Judaistic thought. It didn't matter to Marcion that Paul's god was the Creator god, but what he had read had encouraged him to formally oppose the contamination that he believed had already occurred.

If the proto-orthodox somehow Judaized it because many of them were of Judean origin, then we have a shaky Christological core around which is this counterpoint of coherent hellenized Judean narrative that has nothing to do with Jesus or cosmology at all.

So, no, I do not think this adds anything to a discussion about what conditions may explain how traditions from these elders could vary from one another.

DCH
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Giuseppe »

DCHindley wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:28 pm I dunno Giuseppe. IMHO, introducing Marcion and his followers into a discussion always seems to muddy the waters, mainly because we really don't know all that much about them other than what was said about then by authors who followed the anti-heresy movement. I think that what had been relayed has suffered severe redaction to make him/them into straw men to be knocked down. In some ways they are relaying rumors as if facts, and I suspect they had never read anything by Marcion other than his Antitheses.
ok but also the rumors (if not "facts") you are talking about could move the Judaizers to react against the gnostics and against Marcion. For example, I have advanced a strongly persuasive reason to resolve the need of a Judas in Mark that assumes simply the previous existence of that rumor about Marcion and Gnostics, totally beyond if that rumor matched perfectly the real marcionite belief.
So the my point is that the entire Gospel tradition, even if entitely made by Judaizers and proto-Catholics, betrayes a mix of fear, reaction and interest about the parallel phenomenon of Christian gnosticism and marcionism. And traces of this anti-Gnostic struggle are still visible in Mark (the case of Barabbas in primis).

About Papias, I don't see why his "elders" have to be considered differently from Ireneus's Jesus and from Hegesippus's Jesus family, given the recognized fact that the mere presence of an "Elder", of a Brother or of the same Jesus still alive is an optimal remedy against heresy.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
Jax
Posts: 1443
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2017 6:10 am

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Jax »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:30 am
Jax wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:13 am If you have Papias in the late 1st century to early 2dn century, and Paul in the mid to late 1st century BCE, Papias would have elders galore.
I am not sure exactly where to put Papias chronologically. Dating him to the reign of Hadrian depends upon Philip Sidetes having quoted him accurately about those whom Jesus had raised from the dead, but it is possible that he confused Papias with Quadratus. Dating him earlier is usually a way of making it possible that he consulted actual disciples of Jesus (Aristion and the elder John), whereas I have agreed elsewhere (with an older generation of scholars) that the second "disciples of the Lord" phrase in Eusebius' quotation of Papias may well be an interpolation. All that remains, I think, is that Eusebius treated his writings during the reign of Trajan, alongside those of Ignatius, but in this case Eusebius does not tell us why (as he often does elsewhere) he dates him to that period; so perhaps it is just a hopeful guess. Thus is Papias loosed from his chronological moorings, and I really do not know how to situate him. Any ideas?
None I'm afraid. Sometime before Irenaeus and after Matthew I suppose is the best we can do.
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by DCHindley »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:30 am
Jax wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:13 am If you have Papias in the late 1st century to early 2dn century, and Paul in the mid to late 1st century BCE, Papias would have elders galore.
I am not sure exactly where to put Papias chronologically. Dating him to the reign of Hadrian depends upon Philip Sidetes having quoted him accurately about those whom Jesus had raised from the dead, but it is possible that he confused Papias with Quadratus. Dating him earlier is usually a way of making it possible that he consulted actual disciples of Jesus (Aristion and the elder John), whereas I have agreed elsewhere (with an older generation of scholars) that the second "disciples of the Lord" phrase in Eusebius' quotation of Papias may well be an interpolation. All that remains, I think, is that Eusebius treated his writings during the reign of Trajan, alongside those of Ignatius, but in this case Eusebius does not tell us why (as he often does elsewhere) he dates him to that period; so perhaps it is just a hopeful guess. Thus is Papias loosed from his chronological moorings, and I really do not know how to situate him. Any ideas?

How about the traditions he is said to have relayed?
Irenæus, Hær., v. 32. wrote:As the elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord remembered that they had heard
from him how the Lord taught in regard to those times, and said]:

“The days will come in which vines shall grow, having each ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand
twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five-and-twenty metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, ‘I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.’ In like manner, [He said] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear would have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and that apples, and seeds, and grass would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals, feeding then only on the productions of the earth, would become peaceable and harmonious, and be in perfect subjection to man.”

[Testimony is borne to these things in writing by Papias, an ancient man, who was a hearer of John and a friend of
Polycarp, in the fourth of his books; for five books were composed by him. And he added, saying, “Now these things are credible to believers. And Judas the traitor,” says he, “not believing, and asking, ‘How shall such growths be accomplished by the Lord?’ the Lord said, 'They shall see who shall come to them.’ These, then, are the times mentioned by the prophet Isaiah: ‘And the wolf shall lie down with the lamb,’ etc. (Isa. xi. 6 ff.).”]

If this is the kind of thing that the elders told Papias that they recalled the Lord preaching about, then it bears uncanny resemblance to what God is said to have relayed to Baruch in 2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch:
29:1 wrote: And He [God] answered and said unto me "Whatever will then befall [at the time of the advent of the Messianic kingdom] (will befall) the whole earth; therefore all who live will experience (them).
2 For at that time I will protect only those who are found in those self-same days in this land.
3 And it shall come to pass when all is accomplished that was to come to pass in those parts, that the Messiah shall then begin to be revealed.
4 And Behemoth shall be revealed from his place and Leviathan shall ascend from the sea, those two great monsters
which I created on the fifth day of creation, and shall have kept until that time ; and then they shall be for food for all that are left.
5 The earth also shall yield its fruit ten thousand fold and on each (?) vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster produce a thousand grapes, and each grape produce a cor of wine.
6 And those who have hungered shall rejoice : moreover, also, they shall behold marvels every day.
7 For winds shall go forth from before Me to bring every morning the fragrance of aromatic fruits, and at the close of the day clouds distilling the dew of health.
8 And it shall come to pass at that self-same time that the treasury of manna shall again descend from on high, and they will eat of it in those years, because these are they who have come to the consummation of time.
Regardless of whether Jesus actually said these things (and I am inclined to think he did), Papias seems to have quote-mined something much like 2 Baruch 29 to flesh out his account.

The editor/translator of 2 Baruch in Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (v1.617), A. F. J. Klijn, dates it to 1st or 2nd decade of the 2nd century.

DCH
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Why Mark had to be called Mark

Post by Ben C. Smith »

DCHindley wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:08 pmHow about the traditions he is said to have relayed?
The 2 Baruch thing is suggestive, and I agree there is something going on between Papias and 2 Baruch (whether directly or indirectly), but the only hard datum I can come up with for dating 2 Baruch is that it was written after 70. Scholars have their reasons for preferring certain dates (I have seen "around 90," "late first century," "early second century," and other ranges). But those ranges are, in my judgment so far, just as soft as the ones governing the dating of Papias. And a date in the late first century for 2 Baruch may already do little more than correspond with what Jax said about Papias postdating Matthew, since Matthew is often dated to the late first century. Again, however, the hard datum for Matthew is that it postdates 70.
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Post Reply