Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Irish1975
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:08 am For example of one of many earlier:
The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel, Helen Bond (2020)

Abstract
Reading the gospels as ancient biographies makes a profound difference in the way we interpret them. Biography immortalizes the memory of the subject, creating a literary monument to the person’s life and teaching. Yet it is also a bid to legitimize a specific view of that figure and to position the author and the audience as appropriate “gatekeepers” of that memory. Furthermore, biography is well suited to the articulation of shared values and commitments, the formation of group identity, and the binding together of a past story, present concerns, and future hopes.

Helen Bond argues that Mark’s author uses the genre of biography—while both utilizing and subverting its literary conventions—to extend the proclamation from an earlier narrow focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus to include his way of life. The First Biography of Jesus shows how this was a bold step in outlining a radical form of Christian discipleship, one patterned on the life and death of Jesus.
I don’t know this book.

But I have a lot of problems with the idea of gMark as “biography.” It is a religious text presenting itself as scriptural revelation, constructed largely around snippets of OT scripture. It hardly contains any teaching by Jesus at all, although I suppose the Great Commandment in chapter 12 would count as a bare minimum. It certainly isn’t about Jesus’ “way of life,” but all about the drama of his death and resurrection and messiahship. There were no pre-existing models for a portait of the messiah and his suffering.

If we have to take the genre approach to the Gospels—and I don’t see any good reason why we would—why is the idea of gMark as an apocalypse (the whoe thing, not just 13) so rarely considered?
davidmartin
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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The gospel of Mark riffs on the pre-existing memory of a teacher (hence all the parables derives from this earlier stratum) but represents it in a new way, with additions from the OT scripture and Pauline theology. The disconnect is between the original teachings and the newer layer. Ultimately is it safe to say that the person who is the star of the show in Mark would have often disagreed with his own portrayal in Mark? That is the supposition. The mantra of the later layer is that the older generation did not understand the new meanings, but maybe it was the other way around and the later layer usurped what was a complete and comprehensive model in and of itself?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:08 am There have long been various approaches to reading and analyzing gospels.

Walsh may be very insightful (and I'm guessing she didn't use the word "stench"--why demonize?) but not the first to focus on differing authorship choices and styles or different gospels. That's not news.

For example of one of many earlier:
The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel, Helen Bond (2020)
You really are set on poo-poohing what you haven't read, aren't you Stephen, and no, Walsh doesn't use the words "stench", -- I do, and I use it in way that demonizes no-one.

Bond's study (and I have read Bond's work as well as Walsh's) is not a prior attempt to tackle the questions Walsh does.
StephenGoranson
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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I was not poo-poohing Walsh.
Whether you demonized, I leave to each reader.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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Irish1975 wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:52 am If we have to take the genre approach to the Gospels—and I don’t see any good reason why we would—why is the idea of gMark as an apocalypse (the whoe thing, not just 13) so rarely considered?
I have argued along slightly similar lines in the past, and no doubt you are as aware as anyone else of the answer: that the gospels are "biography genre" because historical-biography is what they are about. It's circular, of course, as at least a few admit.

One title that attracted my attention not long ago was Theocritus’ Pastoral Analogies: The Formation of a Genre by Kathryn Gutzwiller. It was the subtitle that interested me and it was a fascinating exploration into the history of how a genre can evolve. Another classicist once "set me straight" by pointing out that the ancients were not so interested in "genre boundaries" as we are, and that they were more prone to "mix and match" genres, thus making it harder for us to assign neat genre classifications to some of their works.

I think a work like the Gospel of Mark can justifiably be said to be an apocalypse and a scripture-midrash and a "bios" and probably something else as well. A "bios" (to be technically correct) need not be about a real historical figure or even primarily about that figure's life for the sake of sharing life-events. It can even be a distortion and fabrication of a person's life for the purpose of teaching some moral values.

I'd prefer to ditch the idea of biography genre entirely when discussing the gospels because what it means to us is not what it always meant to the ancients. The Gospel of Mark, I think it is fair to say, is made up of elements of several ancient genres.
StephenGoranson
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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To clarify, many have commented on NT, including scholars skilled in classical studies. Two examples:
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), Decline and....
George A. Kennedy (1928- was in Classics Dept., UNC-Chapel Hill) New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (UNC Press, 1984).
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:14 am I was not poo-poohing Walsh.
Whether you demonized, I leave to each reader.
Sigh, of course you weren't, Stephen. Just talking off from what you guess on the basis of what you read in blurbs.

(I'd actually prefer a discussion of the "stench" of unfounded assumptions and the chaotic methods of what passes for "historical" studies in the field of biblical studies. Classicists do have a lot to offer in that area. And yes, I have read Kennedy's book, too - and a whole lot more. Would you like a bibliography of classicists and other historians who have had something to say about the methods of biblical studies? But you have to promise to read more than the blurbs if I provide one for you.)
StephenGoranson
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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How childish: a contest of who has read more.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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davidmartin wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:16 am The gospel of Mark riffs on the pre-existing memory of a teacher (hence all the parables derives from this earlier stratum) but represents it in a new way, with additions from the OT scripture and Pauline theology. The disconnect is between the original teachings and the newer layer. Ultimately is it safe to say that the person who is the star of the show in Mark would have often disagreed with his own portrayal in Mark? That is the supposition. The mantra of the later layer is that the older generation did not understand the new meanings, but maybe it was the other way around and the later layer usurped what was a complete and comprehensive model in and of itself?
It is an open question whether the gospel of Mark draws on any pre-existing memory of a teacher at all, but you do hit on a major point addressed by Walsh -- who refers to a fuller and excellent discussion of the same point by Eva Mroczek in The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity -- and that is the concept of "authorship".

We think of authors as being responsible for completed works, so a name can be rightfully attached to a printed book. But what if that idea did not apply so uniformly among many of the works we are studying here? Someone, or maybe more than one, might write a story of X but that story is not necessarily considered a finished work. No author name may be attached to it because it is expected that the work will be an ongoing process that is added to and/or revised or varied by others. Multiple versions, various "traditions", -- as we see in our canonical gospels and in other noncanonical gospels -- being the result.

A work, in that sense, can become raw material for other ideologies; contradictory stories will sometimes emerge -- but that's all part of the expected process.

One might say, I suppose, that the original written composition was a conversation starter, a stimulus for debate and other stories for other purposes.

I'm reminded of the ideas of the likes of Davies, Lemche, Gmirkin -- that the OT came together through an ongoing series of exchanges and debates among scribes. Ditto for the works that later became the NT? Author names were not added, or perhaps pseudonyms were sometimes added, because the whole exercise was about the debates the stories represented.

Canonization processes of the NT did require assigning authoritative names to the gospels, however.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Robyn Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature

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StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:40 am How childish: a contest of who has read more.
Or an appeal to someone to go beyond mere blurbs and reviews and appeals to authority. Let's discuss the issues, not who has the most original idea or whatever.
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