The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
andrewcriddle
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by andrewcriddle »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:01 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 12:50 pm I'm just going to clarify where the idea of Jochebed and Amran separating and then remarrying comes from. This may be peripheral to our discussion but I'm worried that we have left the impression that Midrash is grossly arbitrary and fanciful and I'd like to clarify.

After Shifrah and Puah are identified with Jochebed and Miriam then Miriam appears to be around helping mum deliver babies before her father and mother marry. This is eventually explained by having Jochebed and Amran separate after Pharaoh''s decree but then being reunited by Miriam the young prophetess.

The identification of Shifrah and Puah with Jochebed and Miriam is the basis for Miriam being the ancestor of David.
And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.
is understood as the midwives becoming founders of distinguished lineages.

However this identification is probably not early, (there is no trace in Philo who discusses the midwives and their names) the full development of the implications will be later still.

Andrew Criddle
If we go back to my initial comment, it was suggesting possibilities for the origins of the gospel Marys. I spread the net far and wide. Anyone who knows my other work on midrash knows it is very far indeed from anything arbitrary. The ad hoc references were to my application of certain ideas to gospel persons and situations -- because they were raising nothing more than possibilities. If you don't think the ideas were even possible then that's perfectly fine.

No-one knows how far back the interpretation goes. But if we are looking at the gospels as midrashic creations then we are quite entitled to raise the possibility that Mary was chosen to be the mother of Jesus in part because there was an idea "in the air" that the OT counterpart of that namesake was thought to be an ancestress of David. It has never been presented as anything more than that. Of course, if we are looking at the gospels from other perspectives then that approach is beside the point. I think if that's the case then it would be more profitable to debate the core reason for the different approach.

But to bring in Philo as a counter to that possibility .... Did he even read Hebrew? Did any rabbinic midrashists even know of Philo?
Hi Neil

First of all, when I said
but I'm worried that we have left the impression that Midrash is grossly arbitrary and fanciful and I'd like to clarify.
I was primarily worried about an impression I thought I might have made. Maybe I should have said
but I'm worried that I have left the impression that Midrash is grossly arbitrary and fanciful and I'd like to clarify.
(even if it reads badly through excessive use of I). I didn't mean to cause offense.

On the main point, in itself the ignorance of Philo (who knew no Hebrew but had access to many Jewish traditions) is not strong evidence. However, Exodus Rabbah links the tradition of the descendants of Miriam and Jochebed to discussion between Rab and Levi c. 200 CE which tends to support a 2nd century or later dating. However, I agree that the evidence is unclear, my main point was the unlikelihood of later developments of the tradition (the divorce and remarriage of Amran and Jochebed) being relevant to the New Testament.

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:21 am
First of all, when I said
but I'm worried that we have left the impression that Midrash is grossly arbitrary and fanciful and I'd like to clarify.
I was primarily worried about an impression I thought I might have made. Maybe I should have said
but I'm worried that I have left the impression that Midrash is grossly arbitrary and fanciful and I'd like to clarify.
(even if it reads badly through excessive use of I). I didn't mean to cause offense.
I'm surprised my comment was understood as responding to an insult of some kind -- not at all. Only pointing out what I thought was no need to interpret anything in the discussion about midrash being arbitrary. I certainly didn't take your earlier comment that way.
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:21 amOn the main point, in itself the ignorance of Philo (who knew no Hebrew but had access to many Jewish traditions) is not strong evidence. However, Exodus Rabbah links the tradition of the descendants of Miriam and Jochebed to discussion between Rab and Levi c. 200 CE which tends to support a 2nd century or later dating. However, I agree that the evidence is unclear, my main point was the unlikelihood of later developments of the tradition (the divorce and remarriage of Amran and Jochebed) being relevant to the New Testament.

Andrew Criddle
I have no dispute with the date of the passage being much, much later than the gospels. No doubt. Yes, I have always discounted the relevance of any of these rabbinic texts to gospel studies. But I have come more recently to at least open myself to the likelihoods -- that they are likelihoods needs argument, certainly -- of various traditions and even ideas having roots in the Second Temple era and soon after. That there are areas where the late rabbinic witness is taken as proving to be relevant to areas of New Testament studies and the studies of companion texts, I am sure there is no doubt.

Where later ideas appear to be independent of Christianity, and where they appear to shed light on early Christian ideas, the question of the origins of those ideas does surely arise. Of course, whether they do cast an interesting light on earlier texts is itself a question in its own right.
andrewcriddle
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by andrewcriddle »

There is an interesting thesis about the history of interpretation of the passage about Shiphrah and Puah at
The enigmatic «Meyalledot Ha'ivriyyot»

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by neilgodfrey »

rgprice wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 5:08 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:39 am
rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:38 am I don't know. Martyr's testimony is so close to the Gospels
Yet the differences are telling, are they not? No Judas, no betrayal by one of the twelve, Mary (not Joseph) descended from David, The Baptist "sitting", the fire in the river when Jesus entered it, Herod condemning Jesus to crucifixion along with the other Jews, different words of Christ on the cross, the eucharist being given for a memorial of Jesus in the flesh and the rite appearing to be given, along with other church rituals, after the resurrection (i.e. not a last supper), born in a cave, made ploughs and yokes, the twelve go out to the whole world after the resurrection....
do you have a good resource that compares Martyr's testimony to the canonicals?
In addition to the link I posted I have just been reminded of J. C. O'Neill's discussion of Justin's knowledge of the Gospel of Luke, or lack of it. It's in https://archive.org/details/theologyofactsin0000onei -- starts at page 29 as Appendix 1.

David Landry has a chapter ("Reconsidering the Date of Luke in Light of the Farrer Hypothesis") in Marcan Priority without Q discussing step by step the evidence for terminus a quo and ad quem dates for the Gospel of Luke and includes a discussion of what Justin appears to know. Landry writes, p. 189
While there are complications with respect to all this evidence, it is O’Neill who is swimming against the tide of the evidence when he argues that Justin did not know Luke.84 If the terminus ad quern of Luke’s gospel is not set by Marcion, then it almost certainly is by Justin.

84. O’Neill, Theology of Acts, pp. 10—19.


My reading of O'Neill is that it is the tide that is out of place and that O'Neill's analysis deserves priority consideration. O'Neill concludes that Justin was working from a source now lost and from which the author of the gospel drew. The Gospel of Luke as we know it was surely composed after Mark, Matthew and John and some time around 160-170, with Irenaeus, not Justin, setting the ad quem limit.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

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neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:12 pm David Landry has a chapter ("Reconsidering the Date of Luke in Light of the Farrer Hypothesis") in Marcan Priority without Q discussing step by step the evidence for terminus a quo and ad quem dates for the Gospel of Luke and includes a discussion of what Justin appears to know. Landry writes, p. 189
While there are complications with respect to all this evidence, it is O’Neill who is swimming against the tide of the evidence when he argues that Justin did not know Luke.84 If the terminus ad quem of Luke’s gospel is not set by Marcion, then it almost certainly is by Justin.

84. O’Neill, Theology of Acts, pp. 10—19.
Against Landry's 'point' is the likely fact that Marcion and Justin Martyr were contemporaries ...

... so, any terminus ad quem of Luke’s gospel 'set' by Justin would likely also 'be set by Marcion'.

Neil nails more with
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:12 pm The Gospel of Luke as we know it was surely composed after Mark, Matthew and John and some time around 160-170, with Irenaeus, not Justin, setting the ad quem limit.

(As a side note, Andris Abakuks' article, 'A Statistical Time Series Approach to the Use of Mark by Matthew and Luke,' in Marcan Priority without Q, Bloomsbury, 2015, provides evidence Matthew's and Luke's redactions of Mark were not independent of each other)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by neilgodfrey »

MrMacSon wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:26 pm
... so, any terminus ad quem of Luke’s gospel 'set' by Justin would likely also 'be set by Marcion'.f each other)
Of course, whatever Marcion used was not the canonical gospel that we know.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by MrMacSon »

neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 6:08 pm Of course, whatever Marcion used was not the canonical gospel [of Luke] that we know.
Sure, though there's still the proposal[s] of Jason Beduhn and Matthias Klinghardt that both the marcionite 'eungelion'/'gospeltext' and a proto-Luke* [and perhaps even a[nother] text composing most of *Luke*] were based on and thus preceded by an earlier, as-yet-unknown text

( * and that such a proto-Luke could even pre-date Marcion's text-handing period)
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