Apollinaris of Laodicea, Papias, and the death of Judas.

[Ben C. Smith]

It is interesting that there are only 10 fragments in Migne, of which three are from Eusebius, History of the Church 3.39 and one is now known to be misattributed (fragment X). Of the remaining six, three are variants of this passage about Judas! How times have changed. Published fragments now number in the twenties, and tend to count both History of the Church 3.39 and the death of Judas as only one fragment each.

Ben.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

Because Luke-Acts is passing itself off as a classy piece of work. It also cleans up the poor syntax and grammar it encounters in its sources. Its description of Herod's death in Acts 12, while of the same kind as Papias' description of Judas' death (no actual, physical cause of death posited, just bodily corrosion from the worms and filth within), is restrained and clinical.

Yes, but that still does not explain why so little of the Acts version takes in account the long version (that you attribute to Papias) or the one of gMatthew. I am sure "Luke" could have used a classy vocabulary and still stay close to any of these versions, if they were written well before Acts did.

I think Papias did mention Matthew's gospel: he regarded it as one of the (not quite adequate) Greek translations from Hebrew Matthew (the logia).

Papias did mention Matthew's logias, but logias are not a gospel, but a collection of sayings or oracles. Of course, opinions differ, and some will claim that the logias of Matthew are actually referring to gMatthew. I do not agree with them.

So Papias regarded Luke as the gospel which was in order, in contrast both to Mark and to the putative translations of Matthew, but never actually mentioned it by name?

"Luke" wrote that her/his gospel was in order. Papias did not have to have regard for anything, only his Christians. And those in his community probably considered gLuke as their reference for order.
It is most likely that Luke's gospel did not have a name in these days, but it is, among the synoptics, the gospel where the author, in the preface, gave some ideas about from what, how & to whom (a VIP) the gospel was composed (not that I believe what goes into the preface is true). No other gospel does that. But certainly, because of the preface, that gospel could be considered more trustworthy than gMark.

Who cares at this point whether other Christians had "concerns" about Luke? If you are treating Luke as the one that is in order, if Luke is your go-to gospel of choice when it comes to order, you mention it. You do not hide it.

Papias did not have to go into these details if his purpose was to solve a problem. If his audience thought a particular (anonymous) gospel was in order, he had no reason to fight it & identify that gospel. Actually he admitted that gMark was not in order and then found some excuses in order to explain it. Furthermore Papias had very low regard for already written Christian material. He was not going to spend many words on this issue.

If there is any gospel that can lay claim to differing from Mark (and Greek Matthew, for that matter) on its order, it is John. The differences in order between Mark and Luke are paltry compared to the differences in order between any one of the synoptics and John. And we have quite a bit of evidence that those differences in order caused some consternation amongst Christians in century II

.
The author of gJohn did not say his gospel was in order. And actually, that gospel, is full of discontinuities as if some parts had been reshuffled (which is true): http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html.
And again we do not know if all gospels available were accepted in any communities. Most likely not. It looks gJohn (& gMatthew in my view) probably was not on the menu where Papias operated.
Actually, if it was gJohn the reference gospel about order, I would be most happy, because I amply demonstrated here (http://historical-jesus.info/62.html) that "John" knew about gLuke.
Also about the dating of gLuke: http://historical-jesus.info/53.html
About the dating of Acts: http://historical-jesus.info/63.html
and http://historical-jesus.info/64.html
And why do you think gLuke & Acts are creations, let say, published after 130 CE at the earliest?

Now, if Papias knew about Luke, would not Luke's preface call for comment?? Here is an author who, by his own admission, is not an eyewitness, yet he is claiming to write in order. How can Papias pass up the opportunity either to praise Luke for managing to get it right simply by researching it thoroughly or to condemn him for being so presumptuous as to inaccurately claim to have gotten it right?

Well if Mark and Luke were known not to be eyewitnesses, both gospels would be on par in this regard. Why would Papias expand on these books, when he did not have any faith in them? His comments on already written Christian material were very limited.

Let me ask you one question: don't you think the author, writing after Marcion, in order to gain a big advantage (more so on Marcion's gospel of the Lord), would have declared (falsely) within his gospel to be an eyewitness of Jesus?
And the trend in the second century was to incorporate the name of an eyewitness (or Paul) within the text as its author.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

Another lurid death, this one from Eusebius, History of the Church 3.16.3-5:

For though it was necessary that these things should take place, according to the divine judgment, yet the Word says, Woe to him through whom the offense comes. Therefore punishment from God came upon [Galerius], beginning with his flesh, and proceeding to his soul. For an abscess suddenly appeared in the midst of the secret parts of his body, and from it a deeply perforated sore, which spread irresistibly into his inmost bowels. An indescribable multitude of worms sprang from them, and a deathly odor arose, as the entire bulk of his body had, through his gluttony, been changed, before his sickness, into an excessive mass of soft fat, which became putrid, and thus presented an awful and intolerable sight to those who came near. Some of the physicians, being wholly unable to endure the exceeding offensiveness of the odor, were slain; others, as the entire mass had swollen and passed beyond hope of restoration, and they were unable to render any help, were put to death without mercy.

Again, this kind of death comes as a divine punishment, and the only physical cause of it is the body itself deteriorating from within. The worms make their usual appearance, and of course there will be foul secretions a great stench....

Ben.

[Ben C. Smith]

I will get to your latest post when I can, Bernard. Thanks.

[Ben C. Smith]

2 Maccabees 9.5-29:

5 But the Lord the God of Israel, that seeth all things, struck [Antiochus] with an incurable and an invisible plague. For as soon as he had ended these words, a dreadful pain in his bowels came upon him, and bitter torments of the inner parts. 6 And indeed very justly, seeing he had tormented the bowels of others with many and new torments, albeit he by no means ceased from his malice. 7 Moreover being filled with pride, breathing out fire in his rage against the Jews, and commanding the matter to be hastened, it happened as he was going with violence that he fell from the chariot, so that his limbs were much pained by a grievous bruising of the body. 8 Thus he that seemed to himself to command even the waves of the sea, being proud above the condition of man, and to weigh the heights of the mountains in a balance, now being cast down to the ground, was carried in a litter, bearing witness to the manifest power of God in himself: 9 So that worms swarmed out of the body of this man, and whilst he lived in sorrow and pain, his flesh fell off, and the filthiness of his smell was noisome to the army. 10 And the man that thought a little before he could reach to the stars of heaven, no man could endure to carry, for the intolerable stench. 11 And by this means, being brought from his great pride, he began to come to the knowledge of himself, being admonished by the scourge of God, his pains increasing every moment. 12 And when he himself could not now abide his own stench, he spoke thus: It is just to be subject to God, and that a mortal man should not equal himself to God. 13 Then this wicked man prayed to the Lord, of whom he was not like to obtain mercy. 14 And the city to which he was going in haste to lay it even with the ground, and to make it a, common buryingplace, he now desireth to make free. 15 And the Jews whom he said he would not account worthy to be so much as buried, but would give them up to be devoured by the birds and wild beasts, and would utterly destroy them with their children, he now promiseth to make equal with the Athenians. 16 The holy temple also which before he had spoiled, he promiseth to adorn with goodly gifts, and to multiply the holy vessels, and to allow out of his revenues the charges pertaining to the sacrifices. 17 Yea also, that he would become a Jew himself, and would go through every place of the earth, and declare the power of God. 18 But his pains not ceasing (for the just judgment of God was come upon him) despairing of life he wrote to the Jews in the manner of a supplication, a letter in these words: 19 To his very good subjects the Jews, Antiochus king and ruler wisheth much health and welfare, and happiness. 20 If you and your children are well, and if all matters go with you to your mind, we give very great thanks. 21 As for me, being infirm, but yet kindly remembering you, returning out of the places of Persia, and being taken with a grievous disease, I thought it necessary to take care for the common good: 22 Not distrusting my life, but having great hope to escape the sickness. 23 But considering that my father also, at what time he led an army into the higher countries, appointed who should reign after him: 24 To the end that if any thing contrary to expectation should fall out, or any bad tidings should be brought, they that were in the countries, knowing to whom the whole government was left, might not be troubled. 25 Moreover, considering that neighbouring princes and borderers wait for opportunities, and expect what shall be the event, I have appointed my son Antiochus king, whom I often recommended to many of you, when I went into the higher provinces: and I have written to him what I have joined here below. 26 I pray you therefore, and request of you, that remembering favours both public and private, you will every man of you continue to be faithful to me and to my son. 27 For I trust that he will behave with moderation and humanity, and following my intentions, will be gracious unto you. 28 Thus the murderer and blasphemer, being grievously struck, as himself had treated others, died a miserable death in a strange country among the mountains. 29 But Philip that was brought up with him, carried away his body: and out of fear of the son of Antiochus, went into Egypt to Ptolemee Philometor.

We see once again that this kind of death, with worms and decay and stench from within, is for those for whom there will be no forgiveness.

Ben.

[Ben C. Smith]

to Ben,

Because Luke-Acts is passing itself off as a classy piece of work. It also cleans up the poor syntax and grammar it encounters in its sources. Its description of Herod's death in Acts 12, while of the same kind as Papias' description of Judas' death (no actual, physical cause of death posited, just bodily corrosion from the worms and filth within), is restrained and clinical.

Yes, but that still does not explain why so little of the Acts version takes in account the long version (that you attribute to Papias) or the one of gMatthew. I am sure "Luke" could have used a classy vocabulary and still stay close to any of these versions, if they were written well before Acts did.

I am going to put the issue of the death of Judas on hold for now while I reevaluate the attestation for the passage in Papias. There are some scholarly writings on the subject which I would like to consult. The whole issue hangs both on reconstructing what Apollinaris said and then on reconstructing how much of that came from Papias. I knew that the Apollinaris quotes one finds in lists of the Papias fragments were reconstructions, but until I actually tracked a few of them down I was not fully aware of just how complicated the sources are which go into those reconstructions.

Papias did mention Matthew's logias, but logias are not a gospel, but a collection of sayings or oracles.

I agree that the logia are not our gospel of Matthew. For one thing, Papias says they were written in Hebrew, while the gospel of Matthew is written in Greek. I think you and I agree on that. What I am trying to say and you apparently are not understanding is that Papias or his elder apparently knows of texts that they consider to be translations of the Hebrew logia: "Matthew therefore in the Hebrew dialect ordered together the oracles, and each one interpreted/translated them as he was able." Were they really translations? I bet they were wholesale textual adaptations at best, if they were related at all; and I think that some form of our gospel of Matthew may have been one of those texts.

Of course, opinions differ, and some will claim that the logias of Matthew are actually referring to gMatthew. I do not agree with them.

Nor do I. My view is that one of the putative translations may have been. Another may have been something like what eventually came to be known as the gospel of the Hebrews, for example.

"Luke" wrote that her/his gospel was in order. Papias did not have to have regard for anything, only his Christians. And those in his community probably considered gLuke as their reference for order. .... It is most likely that Luke's gospel did not have a name in these days, but it is, among the synoptics, the gospel where the author, in the preface, gave some ideas about from what, and how, to whom (a VIP) the gospel was composed (not that I believe what goes into the preface is true). No other gospel does that. But certainly, because of the preface, that gospel could be considered more trustworthy than gMark. .... Papias did not have to go into these details if his purpose was to solve a problem. If his audience thought a particular (anonymous gospel) was in order, he had no reason to fight it & identify that gospel. Actually he admitted that gMark was not in order and then found some excuses in order to explain it. Furthermore Papias had very low regard for already written Christian material. He was not going to spend many words on this issue.

It is interesting that you think that Luke-Acts was already written, prefaces and all, but nobody had ventured to name the author yet, despite the "we" passages.

I have to admit, however, that I am still unsure about a lot of things with respect to Luke-Acts. You ask, for example:

Let me ask you one question: don't you think the author, writing after Marcion, in order to gain a big advantage (more so on Marcion's gospel of the Lord), would have declared (falsely) within his gospel to be an eyewitness of Jesus?
And the trend in the second century was to incorporate the name of an eyewitness (or Paul) within the text as its author.

That is a great question, and I am not sure I have a complete answer yet. Neither Luke-Acts nor John falls into either clear category: totally pseudonymous or totally anonymous. Something is going on there, and I am not sure what. It seems to suggest a middle state of affairs, later than Mark but earlier than something like the gospel of Peter, with its full-fledged autobiographical "I, Peter." There is also the question of when and how those standardized titles (εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κατὰ Μάρκον, κατὰ Λουκᾶν, κατὰ Ἰωάννην, κατὰ Θωμᾶ, κατὰ Πέτρον, κατὰ Ἑβραίους, κατὰ Αἰγυπτίους) got attached. The combination of standardization and uniqueness suggests to me that only one of them (at most) was the actual, original title of the work it labelled, with the rest following suit by analogy. What if that gospel was Luke itself, with its authorial preface? You may be right that Luke-Acts was still anonymous for a while, even with those internal autobiographical touches, but what if you are wrong, and Luke was actually the first gospel whose title, κατὰ Λουκᾶν, was authorial (whether pseudonymous or nor)?

The author of gJohn did not say his gospel was in order. And actually, that gospel, is full of discontinuities as if some parts had been reshuffled (which is true): http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html.

True, but that gospel is the one that actually makes a point of differing in order the most from the synoptic story: the multiple trips to Jerusalem, the early Judean ministry, the different day on which the anointing occurred, the different day on which the crucifixion occurred, the numbering of the signs (Cana first, Capernaum second), the numbering of the appearances (first and second in Jerusalem, third in Galilee), and so on.

Actually, if it was gJohn the reference gospel about order, I would be most happy, because I amply demonstrated here (http://historical-jesus.info/62.html) that "John" knew about gLuke.

I have come to suspect that there are layers of knowledge between the two.

And why do you think gLuke & Acts are creation, let say after 130 CE at the earliest?

I am not committing to that view yet. I am simply searching for arguments either way. Not all of the good arguments point to Luke-Acts preceding the turn of the century, or Marcion; some seem to go the other way; I am trying to work out why that is.

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

From the Dialogue of Adamantius (De Recta in Deum Fide)

AD. Will you agree if I show from the Gospels that they are not fabrications?
MEG. I will agree if you prove it. First state the names of the Gospel writers.
AD. The disciples of Christ wrote them: John and Matthew; Mark and Luke.
MEG. Christ did not have Mark and Luke as disciples, so you and your party are convicted of producing spurious writings. Why is it that the disciples whose names are recorded in the Gospel did not write, while men who were not disciples did? Who is Luke? Who is Mark? You are therefore convicted of bringing forward names not recorded in the Scriptures.
EUTR. If Christ had disciples, would He not have committed the work to them rather than to men who were not disciples? Something seems wrong here. The disciples themselves ought rather to have been entrusted with the task.
AD. These men are also disciples of Christ.
MEG. Let the Gospel be read, and you will find that their names are not recorded.
EUTR. Let it be read.
AD. The names of the twelve apostles have been read, but not of the seventy-two.
EUTR. How many apostles had Christ ?
AD. First he sent out twelve and, after that, seventy-two to preach the gospel. Therefore, Mark and Luke, who are among the seventy-two, preached the gospel together with Paul the apostle.
MEG: It is impossible that these ever saw Paul.

Now read Irenaeus Adv Haer 3.13 - 15 to look for the orthodox response to this. If Luke never saw Paul how do we keep pretending that the Marcionites might have accepted 'Luke's gospel'? Why do we allow for the opponents of orthodox to be utterly irrational but at the same time uphold the idea that the orthodox were steadfast preservers of pristine editions of the original texts?

How is it plausible that Paul thought himself to be Christ or speak for Christ but then entrusted the all important (and messiah-like) act of composing the new Torah to some junior assistant? How is this remotely likely? Why do we always start with convention (i.e. all the nonsense in Acts) and then ask the other side to prove its case OR ELSE we fall back to the inherited position of our ancestors? Where else in science is there a similar position? The Marcionite position is that Christ dictated the gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus, not Paul or any other human figure. The reason for this emphasis of course is that the Pentateuch was written by Moses - a human being and thus not a particularly sacred text.

[Ben C. Smith]

Actually, if it was gJohn the reference gospel about order, I would be most happy, because I amply demonstrated here (http://historical-jesus.info/62.html) that "John" knew about gLuke.
Also about the dating of gLuke: http://historical-jesus.info/53.html
About the dating of Acts: http://historical-jesus.info/63.html
and http://historical-jesus.info/64.html

I think you have a mistake here:

The following sequence of events is the same for GMark and the original GJohn:
John_the_Baptist => In Galilee => Feeding_of_the_5000 => Walking_on_water => In Galilee => In Judea/Jerusalem => Across_the_Jordan => Royal_welcome_into_Jerusalem => Disturbance_in_the_temple => Last_supper => Judas'_betrayal & Jesus'_arrest => Interrogation_by_the_high_priest and Peter's_three_denials => Trial_by_Pilate_&_crowd and Barabbas => Crucifixion_as_"King_of_the_Jews" => Burial => Post_Sabbath_empty_tomb

John puts the temple incident much, much earlier.

And do you have exact references for your proposed original layer of John?

Ben.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,
No this is not an error, just part of the sequence of the reconstructed original gJohn, which I took great pain to explain & justify next in that webpage and others.
I introduced the sequence as such (emphasis added):
"The following sequence of events is the same for GMark and the original GJohn:"
Is it misleading?

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

My mistake. I had not read far or thoroughly enough.