When you say ‘it is evident’ do you mean that there is evidence for your claim? Can you tell us what it is, or must we content ourselves with your claim that it exists? Or do you mean that it’s self-evident, as in:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
It is, of course, very possible that I am mistaken. But you will have to do a little (and when I say a little, I mean a great deal) more work to demonstrate that I am. You did not at any point in your five posts ever examine the possibility that the old and new clothing and wine were metaphors for the old and new selves in baptism, nor have you explained in any detail what those figures represent in the synoptics on your theory. You haven’t answered the arguments I was making; you’ve simply emphatically expressed your personal disagreement and asserted a contrary conclusion.
Do you mean Mark thought Jews could not become Christians? If not, what do you mean? If so, how do you know that?Mark is going for a completely "Gentile" movement.
Also, why have you placed the word Gentile in scare quotes, which are normally used to distance oneself from a term others use? If you don’t mean precisely Gentile, what precisely do you mean?
Does he? Luke 5.39 is indeed congenial to the reading that Jews, or at least many of them, are content with their religion and not amenable to becoming Christians (in fact, I’ve heard modern Jews say that when confronted with Christians attempting to convert them).yet he [Luke] also adds the explicit show stopper of verse 39
But you don’t discuss that it’s one of the Western Non-Interpolations missing from many manuscripts and many scholars don’t think it came from the author of Luke, but is a non-Lukan addition.
And how exactly does it contradict the thesis that the Markan parable was using the cloak and the wineskins as metaphors for the old and new selves in baptism? The fact Luke 5.39 is congenial to your reading does not make it uncongenial to mine.
Is your Luke also the author of the Acts of the Apostles? Because that Luke certainly believed in the Gentile mission, but he by no means thought in terms of the church as an exclusively Gentile movement. He reports that the church, led by apostles who had received the holy spirit, attracted thousands of Jews (Acts 2.41, 47; 4.4, 21.20) and, indeed, seems to take that as proof of the truth of Jesus’ claims (5.38-39 with 6.1).
So is your Matthew also going for a completely ‘Gentile’ movement?Matthew is very moderate and sticks to Mark.
This is decidedly not what the vast majority interpreters of Matthew think. Like all the canonical evangelists, Matthew is open to a gentile mission (Matt 28.19-20), but his main audience seems to be Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Christ. The text seems to presuppose that they have only recently separated (left or been expelled, depending on whom you ask) from the synagogue, are familiar with synagogue practices, and even that Pharasaic interpretation of Mosaic law are normative for them (Matt 23, especially vv 1-3):
Matt 20.1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it;
When Matthew sticks to Mark, does this mean he radically reinterprets what Mark wrote, or does he mean what Mark meant? Or is your “completely ‘Gentile’ movement” somehow broad enough to accept large numbers of Jews and continuing observance of the Mosaic Law?
Best,
Ken