List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

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neilgodfrey
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by neilgodfrey »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:31 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:13 amand Lukuas is not the only messianic candidate
do you mean that other contemporary figures were called "kings"? Treves points out that Theudas was a prophet, not a king, differently from Simon and Athronges, who were kings but they preceded Pilate. So the uniqueness of Lukuas as bearer of the title of "king" is surprising.
Yes, I have long thought the attempts to read messianic pretenders into anyone before 70 CE have been a bit iffy -- motivated by a "need" to find a target for the prophecy in the gospels prior to 70 and tendentiously reading "messianism" into various persons like Theudas. There appear to have been several leaders of rebellions or attempts of Judeans to return to Judea in Trajan's time. I can't recall off hand details about titles like "king", though. But other evidence supports the messianic interpretation of the rebellions and their leaders.
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by Giuseppe »

A curiosity: the Book of Judith is dated by Treves under Hadrian: Nebuchadnezzar would be Hadrian, Holofernes would be Julius Severus (Hadrian's general) and Bethulia would be Bethar, the last refuge of Bar-Kokhba.
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by Giuseppe »

neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:13 amThe desolation itself, though, is more likely Hadrian's work. In due time I hope to be blogging details.
while expecting your complete case, I would observe that the interpolation of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone 16 in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

...assumes a historicist Gospel-based context and in the same time the imminent destruction of the Jews under Hadrian, i.e. the interpolator was reporting what he knew was an imminent contemporary episode: the wrath of god falling "upon them at last".
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:01 am The Treves's book is arrived. I read the following quote from pseudoHyppolitus;

Ce n'est pas Vespasian qui installa l'idole dans le Temple; c'est la légion de Trajan. Quiétus, le chef des Romains, y a érigé la statue appelée César.

The references to wars and between kingdoms in Mark 13: Caligula, Vespasian and Hadrian didn't wars against other kingdoms. Trajan did wars in Dacia, Nabatea, Armenia and Mesopotamia and Parthia. More kingdoms than so!

As to the reference to 'false Christs":
  • 'Christ' means 'king'.
  • Lukuas is the only rebel called by Eusebius with the title of 'king'. Not even Bar-Kokhba was called 'king' but Nasi Israel (President of Israel). Being Lukuas a contemporary of Trajan, then the point is made that the abomination of desolation is the idol placed by Trajan in the site of the temple, giving an independent confirmation to Hyppolytus's claim.
The passages allegedly from Hippolytus are here
There is an interesting discussion Jewish War
Obe should note that some scholars e.g., Brent would date Hippolytus against Gaius/Caius later than the 3rd century.

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neilgodfrey
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by neilgodfrey »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:24 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:13 amThe desolation itself, though, is more likely Hadrian's work. In due time I hope to be blogging details.
while expecting your complete case, I would observe that the interpolation of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone 16 in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

...assumes a historicist Gospel-based context and in the same time the imminent destruction of the Jews under Hadrian, i.e. the interpolator was reporting what he knew was an imminent contemporary episode: the wrath of god falling "upon them at last".
You are probably aware of Joseph Turmel's view that 2 Thess 2 had Simon bar Kokhba in mind: https://vridar.org/2011/05/31/identifyi ... salonians/
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by ABuddhist »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Nov 06, 2022 4:41 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Sun Nov 06, 2022 4:34 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Nov 06, 2022 3:34 pm
Yes, I am assuming that there were Christians based in the Greek world during the early second century. The Book of Revelation, if written in the time of Hadrian as I strongly suspect it was, testifies to Christians of long-standing in Asia Minor, so presumably since at least the late first century.

(Even if the Pliny persecutions were not historical, that would still stand.)

OK. Cool
(though I wonder about the nature of 'Christians' before Hadrian, but that'd be more off-topic & I don't think it's a worthwhile exercise at present)

FWIW, Alan Garrow has recently argued "that the imagery of Revelation is richly and directly informed by recent reports of the eruption of Vesuvius. This has consequences not only for our understanding of the relationship between the visions of Revelation and the events of history but also for our estimate of the date at which Revelation was composed." https://www.alangarrow.com/bntc-2022---revelation.html
Yes, I have heard of the Mount Vesuvius explanation but find Witulski's thesis overrides it because of the cogency with which it aligns the historical events of the early second century with the chapters on the 7 churches, the four horsemen, the beast and false prophet, the two witnesses and measuring the temple. Setting the time of Rev to the generation of Vesuvius would raise more questions than it answers, I think.
To this I would add that even if we assume that the parallels were accurate, that does not necessarily mean that Rev was written soon after Vesuvius's eruption. Rather, it could have been using the parallel from a later time, either due to popular cultural osmosis (akin to the strong association of mushroom clouds with nuclear disaster decades after Hiroshima) or due to consulting Pliny for suitably apocalyptic imagery. Rev is nothing if it is not intertextual.
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

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Jonas_Koenig wrote: Thu Nov 10, 2022 2:08 pm Hey Neil and/or Giuseppe (I can't tell who originally wrote the point). Can you elaborate more on this claim? The "ideological portrayal of Pharisees is unhistorical but explicable in a post 135 rivαlry context given the paucity of evidence for rabbinic movement until then (the yavneh post 70 tradition notwithstanding)."

Do you think that the Yavneh generation is a later tradition that was not historical (or, if historical, extremely marginal at the time)? It seems more likely to me that the Rabbinic movement after 135 shares more continuity with what came before than the later Rabbis may have wanted to let on, and we should be suspicious of a dramatic discontinuity at 135. For example, R. Akiva was crucial in early Rabbinic traditions (which some may classify as "Pharisaic") and yet he was popular throughout the interwar period and was executed immediately after 135. It seems possible to me that Mark's portrait of the Pharisees is unhistorical in the 30s CE, like you say, but that the post-70s Rabbis make as good a candidate for his criticism as post-135.

Would be interested in your thoughts on this (or any sources you've found but not yet read).
I found this in my moderator backlog
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by MrMacSon »

Jonas_Koenig wrote: Thu Nov 10, 2022 2:08 pm
Hey Neil and/or Giuseppe (I can't tell who originally wrote the point). Can you elaborate more on this claim? The "ideological portrayal of Pharisees is unhistorical but explicable in a post 135 rivαlry context given the paucity of evidence for rabbinic movement until then (the yavneh post 70 tradition notwithstanding)."

Do you think that the Yavneh generation is a later tradition that was not historical (or, if historical, extremely marginal at the time)? It seems more likely to me that the Rabbinic movement after 135 shares more continuity with what came before than the later Rabbis may have wanted to let on, and we should be suspicious of a dramatic discontinuity at 135. For example, R. Akiva was crucial in early Rabbinic traditions (which some may classify as "Pharisaic") and yet he was popular throughout the interwar period and was executed immediately after 135. It seems possible to me that Mark's portrait of the Pharisees is unhistorical in the 30s CE, like you say, but that the post-70s Rabbis make as good a candidate for his criticism as post-135.

Would be interested in your thoughts on this (or any sources you've found but not yet read).

For recent scholarship on the Pharisees, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10004
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by Diogenes the Cynic »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 10:42 pm no independent evidence of the existence of GMark until the mid second century

ideological portrayal of Pharisees is unhistorical but explicable in a post 135 rivαlry context given the paucity of evidence for rabbinic movement until then (the yavneh post 70 tradition notwithstanding)

more certainty that false messiahs had arisen post 70 (arguable that the Josephan figures are not depicted as pseudo messiahs), and widespread violence of 115-117 and Trajan's wars and preps for war -- fits scenario of Mark 13's false messiahs and wars and rumours of wars

post 135 allows for time for a "new Israel" narrative to gestate and mature in wake of 70 so that by time of 135 the personification of the ideal Israel was "ready to go" (GMark's Jesus makes no historical or narrative sense; only makes sense as a metaphor, "parable"). Also more time to read and digest and adapt Josephus by then. (Also Galilee appears to have escaped the punishment Hadrian inflicted on Judea.)

were Christian Jews actually persecuted during the Bar Kochba war? Mark is a persecution gospel.

-- I'd like to say that after the Jews were banished from Jerusalem a Christian cleric named Mark was established at a church boss there- -- but that's probably going a tad too far.
I read your presentation of Witulski's theory on Vridar and found it compelling, but the one thing I don't really get is the identification of Trajan as the 7th head. The one whose "time will be short." Conventionally that figure is usually identified with Titus, who only lived two years as Emperor. Trajan ruled for almost twenty years. A lot of the other stuff really adds up, though.

As an aside, I don't believe there is any necessary reason to attach the name "Mark" to the first Gospel. It was given that name by Irenaeus in the late 2nd Century based on his own fallacious reading of Papias.
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Re: List of arguments to date Mark after Hadrian

Post by neilgodfrey »

Diogenes the Cynic wrote: Sun Dec 18, 2022 10:08 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 10:42 pm no independent evidence of the existence of GMark until the mid second century

ideological portrayal of Pharisees is unhistorical but explicable in a post 135 rivαlry context given the paucity of evidence for rabbinic movement until then (the yavneh post 70 tradition notwithstanding)

more certainty that false messiahs had arisen post 70 (arguable that the Josephan figures are not depicted as pseudo messiahs), and widespread violence of 115-117 and Trajan's wars and preps for war -- fits scenario of Mark 13's false messiahs and wars and rumours of wars

post 135 allows for time for a "new Israel" narrative to gestate and mature in wake of 70 so that by time of 135 the personification of the ideal Israel was "ready to go" (GMark's Jesus makes no historical or narrative sense; only makes sense as a metaphor, "parable"). Also more time to read and digest and adapt Josephus by then. (Also Galilee appears to have escaped the punishment Hadrian inflicted on Judea.)

were Christian Jews actually persecuted during the Bar Kochba war? Mark is a persecution gospel.

-- I'd like to say that after the Jews were banished from Jerusalem a Christian cleric named Mark was established at a church boss there- -- but that's probably going a tad too far.
I read your presentation of Witulski's theory on Vridar and found it compelling, but the one thing I don't really get is the identification of Trajan as the 7th head. The one whose "time will be short." Conventionally that figure is usually identified with Titus, who only lived two years as Emperor. Trajan ruled for almost twenty years. A lot of the other stuff really adds up, though.

As an aside, I don't believe there is any necessary reason to attach the name "Mark" to the first Gospel. It was given that name by Irenaeus in the late 2nd Century based on his own fallacious reading of Papias.
Yes, I would like to ask Witulski that same question about the "short time" of the seventh head. I attempted to approach him but maybe my email was filtered into spam. I can imagine he gets lots of queries of varying quality about a topic like Revelation.

On the other hand, re the name of the Gospel -- someone (was it Markus Vinzent?) pointed out that the gospels have always been known by the names we assign to them so it seems reasonable to think that they were assigned those titles/names from their beginning. But I'm not going to bet my house on it.
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