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.
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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: Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:26 am I'm certainly conflicted on the issue of there being any narrative prior to Mark.
Are the references to "gospel" in Aristides and "memoirs of the apostles" in Justin the earliest independent indications of awareness of an actual written "narrative" of about Jesus?

I tend to think that that's where the evidence points. But if so, then we have the earliest narrative lacking a Judas since in both cases it appears that Jesus appeared to all twelve disciples after his resurrection and sent all twelve out to the world to preach. Of course, that narrative allows no room for the introduction of Paul.

It makes me wonder (enter refrain from 'stairway to heaven') if our canonical gospels are the ones that were chosen and survived because they accommodated Paul, allowing him to be coopted into "orthodoxy" away from Marcionism.

The earliest gospel narrative that Aristides and Justin appear to refer to is, of course, not Marcionite. But has it been lost because it no longer served the needs of the war against Marcion?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

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ABuddhist wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:16 pm
rgprice wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:26 am I'm certainly conflicted on the issue of there being any narrative prior to Mark.
With all due respect, do not Paul's writings reveal a narrative about Jesus? Certainly, it seems to have lacked many features in gospels, but it had Jesus crucified after being handed over, following which he was resurrected.
Being "handed over" is the same term behind the passages that say God handed over or delivered up Israel to her enemies. It does not require any narrative explanation to be meaningful. Each of the points in being delivered up to be crucified and resurrected is entirely self-explanatory on its own without any need for narrative elaboration in order to be understood or believed.
rgprice
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

Post by rgprice »

ABuddhist wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:16 pm
rgprice wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:26 am I'm certainly conflicted on the issue of there being any narrative prior to Mark.
With all due respect, do not Paul's writings reveal a narrative about Jesus? Certainly, it seems to have lacked many features in gospels, but it had Jesus crucified after being handed over, following which he was resurrected.
I meant a narrative outside of the Jewish scriptures. The Suffering Servant doesn't count.
rgprice
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

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neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 2:44 pm
rgprice wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:26 am I'm certainly conflicted on the issue of there being any narrative prior to Mark.
Are the references to "gospel" in Aristides and "memoirs of the apostles" in Justin the earliest independent indications of awareness of an actual written "narrative" of about Jesus?

I tend to think that that's where the evidence points. But if so, then we have the earliest narrative lacking a Judas since in both cases it appears that Jesus appeared to all twelve disciples after his resurrection and sent all twelve out to the world to preach. Of course, that narrative allows no room for the introduction of Paul.

It makes me wonder (enter refrain from 'stairway to heaven') if our canonical gospels are the ones that were chosen and survived because they accommodated Paul, allowing him to be coopted into "orthodoxy" away from Marcionism.

The earliest gospel narrative that Aristides and Justin appear to refer to is, of course, not Marcionite. But has it been lost because it no longer served the needs of the war against Marcion?
I don't know. Martyr's testimony is so close to the Gospels I have a hard time believing that he had read some pre-Markan Gospel that was that similar to Mark. Due to the way that Mark is written, I have a hard time imagining that it wasn't the first Gospel (or that its a shortened version of a longer Gospel).

Even the parts about Judas are tightly bound into scriptural references.

I think Klinghardt's proposal that Marcion's Gospel was first has its appeal, but I just don't see any way that you can start with Marcion's and get to Mark. Mark is just too intricate and too perfectly structured. It has to be the foundation. Otherwise you have to argue that we somehow started with a jumbled pile that someone was able to turn into a palace, instead of starting with a palace that got jumbled up into a variety of piles.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

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

Post by Giuseppe »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:39 amthe 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)
the interpolator of Paul in 1 Cor 11 knows otherwise (i.e. that the last supper preceded the death). According to Bolland, he is based on the first gospel but not on our canonicals, hence there would be some reason behind Justin placing the "last supper" after the resurrection.
rgprice
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

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

Post by andrewcriddle »

ot
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:50 pm
andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 1:22 am Shemot Rabbah/Exodus Rabbah is late (early medieval in its present form). I'm unclear how much of the tradition about Miriam is genuinely ancient.

Andrew Criddle
Just returning to this assertion -- I have decided to collate references to places where numerous scholars have pointed out, in contradiction to proposals by Bauckham et al. who argue for unique forms of Christian exegesis, that certain Jewish writings that we find in the Mishnah and Talmudic literature are very likely to go back to the second and even first centuries and they are evidence that the Christian styles of exegesis were part and parcel of the Jewish methods of the day.

There was a time when I dismissed out of hand any attempt to use rabbinic literature to argue a point in the gospels but I have over the years been compelled to change my mind on that score. Indeed, those rabbinic writings in many instances stand as independent sources for some of the disputes and interpretations that go back to the first century. One of the most obvious examples many of us are aware of is the Toledoth Jeshu, certainly no older in surviving manuscript form than the Middle Ages, but Origen is witness to knowledge of at least part of that larger narrative and we can see evident dialogues between that story and scenes in both the canonical and extracanonical gospels. Further, the idea of a suffering messiah through interpretation of Isaiah 53 is hardly explicable as a Jewish response to Christian views so again we have good reason to believe this concept in the rabbinic literature is also very early and not unique to Christianity.

There is a very large body of scholarly work, both articles and book form, that present arguments along the lines I have just outlined. It has taken me some years to read enough to gradually shift me from initial resistance to the idea of turning to some rabbinic literature to interpret the New Testament writings so I don't have on the top of my head an easy list to present here now. But it is something that I will work on and, the gods willing, write up some sort of annotated bibliography.
I have been trying to look into the Miriam traditions although some of the relevant sources are obscure and/or hard to access.

Tentative Conclusions

A lot of this material is ancient and is in principle potentially relevant to the NT. The emphasis on Miriam as prophetess is very ancient and may be relevant for passages such as the Magnificat in Luke. Miriam as ancestor of David and other OT characters is first mentioned in Sifre to Numbers (c 250 CE) but is probably older.

However this material
Miriam is on "record" as having criticized her father for denying Israelite women their conjugal rights when he ordered them all to divorce their wives to prevent Pharaoh from murdering their newborn sons. (Mary's father listened to Mary and that's what led to the birth of Moses. Another midrashic commentary I recall from somewhere says that Moses' mother was a virgin in that she had been restored to youthful virginity when her husband took her back prior to conceiving Moses.)
seems late (after 300 CE) Its attestation is late (although much earlier than Exodus Rabbah) It is not really compatible with the genuinely early traditions in Josephus and pseudo-Philo and it is not mentioned in Sifre to Numbers at a place where it would be relevant.

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

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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?
I wrote up a chart comparing Justin's remarks on the "gospel" of Jesus with other gospels: http://vridar.info/xorigins/justinnarr.htm

Read with caution, as I am sure you will. On looking at it again "after all these years" I see some mistakes and miswording in it. It is long overdue for a revision.

Also Aristides -- he says some odd things that he implies are from "the gospel" or "writings" of the Christians but are not in any of the ones we know.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The family of Jesus across the Gospels (origin of Mary as mother?)

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andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:15 am However this material
Miriam is on "record" as having criticized her father for denying Israelite women their conjugal rights when he ordered them all to divorce their wives to prevent Pharaoh from murdering their newborn sons. (Mary's father listened to Mary and that's what led to the birth of Moses. Another midrashic commentary I recall from somewhere says that Moses' mother was a virgin in that she had been restored to youthful virginity when her husband took her back prior to conceiving Moses.)
seems late (after 300 CE) Its attestation is late (although much earlier than Exodus Rabbah) It is not really compatible with the genuinely early traditions in Josephus and pseudo-Philo and it is not mentioned in Sifre to Numbers at a place where it would be relevant.

Andrew Criddle
I trust my flippant comment on that detail . . .
So for the "over the top" bit and more for fun than anything serious, we have the virgin Mary being based on (for all the other reasons above) Miriam the advocate for the woman's conjugal rights in marriage.
. . . was sufficient to indicate that I only throwing out the whole shebang from Moshe Reiss's article and not seriously embracing each and every such detail as background to the gospels. The point is "what is kosher" in world of Jewish interpretation.

But we also have a place at the table for the Reverend Thomas Bayes, here. What is the likelihood of Jewish exegetes concocting a notion of a virgin mother of the saviour of Israel (Moses) in response to, or at least within the context of, the Christian dogma?
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