How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by perseusomega9 »

Which has relevance one way if we assume Luke-Acts was substantially by the same author and a different relevance if there was just a final editor with separate authors and sources.
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by MrMacSon »

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:38 pm In response to the question in the title of the thread, it should be noted that a form of the false accusation story missing from Luke is found in Acts 6.8-15
That's primarily a reference to false witnesses against Stephen, isn't it?

Acts 6.8 Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and others of those from Cilicia and Asia, stood up and argued with Stephen. 10 But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke. 11 Then they secretly instigated some men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” 12 They stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes; then they suddenly confronted him, seized him, and brought him before the council. 13 They set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law; 14 for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.” 15 And all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

There's a few layers there: what the 'false witnesses' said about what Stephen is supposed to have said about Jesus {and, in that account, what Jesus is supposed to have said or intended].

The predominant theme to me is in
  • "him speak[ing] blasphemous words against Moses [and God];' and
  • "this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us"

This narrative continues in Acts 7, culminating in Acts 7:51-53 and the stoning of Stephen, then coats being laid at the feet of a young man named Saul:

.
7:51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!

52 Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— 53 you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.”

54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
.

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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by Secret Alias »

Ken,

So what's the explanation Luke removed it from his gospel? All it says is that Stephen said these sorts of things in Jesus's name. But why remove the understanding that Jesus said them or that Jews also said that Jesus said them?

I think Jesus said it or it was originally understood Jesus said it.
I also think it was 'Marcionite' viz. it was fundamental to the Marcionite understanding of Jesus, the gospel, Paul and the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.
But Mark says that 'false witnesses' attributed this to Jesus and the Jews believed it and reminded Jesus of what he said (or thought he said) when he was crucified.
Matthew more or less repeats Mark.
John introduces the curious idea that Jesus said 'something like this' but at a different time and meaning something other than 'actually destroying' the physical temple.
Acts makes it seem that Jesus destroying the temple was compatible with Stephen's vitriol against physical structures like the temples. Stephen could be a Christian witness for Jesus having said this. Notice also the Solomon theme - "But it was Solomon who built a house for him. However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands."

But why does Luke (if he wrote ur-Acts) tuck this indirect reference to Stephen - 're-contextualizing' what I have identified as Marcionism with Dositheanism (see my friend I R M Boid's various monographs on the Dositheans and the aversion to physical structures)? Why ignore Mark when copy out his gospel and then tuck this story about Stephen which makes it seem as if Christians acknowledged Jesus might have said this? All very weird.

As we see from Lactantius and others Christians could walk away from the fourfold gospel and understand that Jesus said something like 'I will destroy the temple' and that the destruction of the temple was punishment for killing Jesus. All in all it's a very very wishy washy denial of Jesus having said something like what Thomas said Jesus said about destroying the temple. That's why I think it was original.
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by Ken Olson »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 2:03 pm So what's the explanation Luke removed it from his gospel? All it says is that Stephen said these sorts of things in Jesus's name. But why remove the understanding that Jesus said them or that Jews also said that Jesus said them?
I don't know, other than that the author of Luke-Acts (the final author if you prefer a two or three stage Luke theory) wanted to make Stephen a model for Christian martyrdom (as Jesus himself is in Mark) and borrowed material about Jesus from the gospels to use of Stephen:

Acts 7.54 When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. 55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”[cf. Mark 14.62] 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” [cf. Luke 23.46] 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” [cf. Luke 23.34, which I accept as authentic] When he had said this, he died.

I think Jesus said it or it was originally understood Jesus said it.
All of the synoptics have Jesus proclaiming that the temple would be destroyed.

Mark 13.1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

I also accept Richard Hays' argument that Jesus' quotation of Jeremiah 7.11 in Mark 11.17 is meant as a proleptic reference to the following passage from Jeremiah, in which God says he will destroy the temple and Jerusalem just as he had done to Shiloh:

Jeremiah 7.13 While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. 14 Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your ancestors. 15 I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your fellow Israelites, the people of Ephraim.’

viewtopic.php?p=121403#p121403

Why does Mark call the testimony against Jesus false in Mark 14.57-58, when Jesus had in fact proclaimed the destruction of the temple?

57 Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’” 59 Yet even then their testimony did not agree.

I think it's false for two reasons. First, Jesus did not say "I" will destroy the temple, he said God would. Second, it's likely that the witnesses were indeed false, they are not quoting Jesus accurately. Nonetheless, as is the case in several places in Mark's trial and passion narrative, the mocking or false testimony of outsiders is ironically true in some sense, but not in the sense they understood it. In three days, a temple not made with hands would indeed arise.
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by Secret Alias »

Ken

You of course like any member of the forum have the right to interpret evidence in whatever way you want. But the idea that
Jesus did not say "I" will destroy the temple, he said God would
because of:
Richard Hays' argument that Jesus' quotation of Jeremiah 7.11 in Mark 11.17 is meant as a proleptic reference to the following passage from Jeremiah, in which God says he will destroy the temple and Jerusalem just as he had done to Shiloh
doesn't make sense to me. I haven't read Reading Backwards but Hays' Echoes of Scriptures in Paul is one of the oldest books in my library. I highly doubt that Hays argues that Jesus stood in Jerusalem citing Jeremiah 7.11. From what I know of Hays the argument would be that the individual evangelists filtered Jesus through references to scripture. In fact as I look at the description of the book I find the statement "Richard B. Hays maps the shocking ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture to craft their literary witnesses." So really Hays likely doesn't address the issue of what Jesus said. You may argue that Jesus never said anything of the sort and that the gospel writers developed Jesus into a prophetic witness to the destruction of Jerusalem. But then we are left with the popular problem here at the forum - what exactly DID Jesus to be famous or to deserve to have supposedly four different evangelists craft him into this prophetic witness? The accomplishments of Jesus are meager at best undeserving of being the subject of such a literary warping.

Moreover if Mark and the rest crafted Jesus through this prophetic lens we're still left with Jesus living before the temple predicting that the temple would be destroyed. The idea that the Marcionites and the Mandaeans each developed an 'antinomian variety' of the canonical gospels prophetic reworking of this do-nothing Jesus's ministry doesn't make sense. I don't want to get into the dating of Marcion. But the dating of Marcion to 140 CE has its problems. The idea that someone would come along LONG AFTER the destruction of the temple and take the original 'prophetic reworking' of the canonical evangelists and FURTHER WARP them into Jesus being a supernatural being coming to destroy the temple made of stones by the destruction of the temple of his body is unlikely IMHO. The idea of the one who destroys Christ's body - the true temple of the true god - will be destroyed is from Paul. It existed before the canonical gospels developed the Jesus story with prophetic influences like Jeremiah. So too the flying Jesus narrative outlined by Baarda where the supernatural Jesus comes at the beginning of the gospel and goads the inhabitants of a synagogue at Bethsaida (according to the Marcionite version) to charge at his body (which is immaterial) and pass through and fall over chasm to their death.

This narrative at the beginning of the lost gospel has enough of a 'warning' from the aforementioned Pauline logic:
if any man destroys the temple of God, he shall be himself destroyed
Again the 'temple' - the true temple according to early Christianity is Christ's body. The Jews tried to destroy Christ's body (push it over a cliff) and were themselves destroyed by it. I think this foreshadows the ending of the gospel where the Jews try to destroy Christ's body again - through crucifixion - and this leads to the destruction first of the veil in the temple and then ultimately the false temple itself. I think Paul's understanding of the gospel was prior to the canonical 'prophetic reworking' of the gospels. The Marcionites believed Paul wrote the original gospel. I think even from the earliest rabbinic portraits of the Christians goading Jews to hit them with hammers preserves something of the 'martyr logic' of antiquity. In short, the more I get you to hit me - me, the true temple of God - the more you are destroying yourself. Why? Because it happened when Jesus did it to the Jews, and - they would say - the Jews lost their temple because it was destroyed. I am not sure this logic is derived from the prophets. It was a weird para-suicidal logic at the heart of earliest Christianity which might have been an outgrowth of the Jewish War. I really don't know where it came from.
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by Ken Olson »

[Duplicate post]
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by Ken Olson »

Ken Olson wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 6:40 am
Secret Alias wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 11:23 pm Ken

You of course like any member of the forum have the right to interpret evidence in whatever way you want.
Oh, good. Thank you. Or, rather, thank Peter Kirby.
But the idea that
Jesus did not say "I" will destroy the temple, he said God would
because of:
Richard Hays' argument that Jesus' quotation of Jeremiah 7.11 in Mark 11.17 is meant as a proleptic reference to the following passage from Jeremiah, in which God says he will destroy the temple and Jerusalem just as he had done to Shiloh
doesn't make sense to me.
I should want to see a better argument than that it doesn't make sense to you.

Also, you skipped over my quotation of Mark 13.1-2, in which Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple, though he does not explicitly say it is God who will destroy it.
I haven't read Reading Backwards but Hays' Echoes of Scriptures in Paul is one of the oldest books in my library. I highly doubt that Hays argues that Jesus stood in Jerusalem citing Jeremiah 7.11. From what I know of Hays the argument would be that the individual evangelists filtered Jesus through references to scripture. In fact as I look at the description of the book I find the statement "Richard B. Hays maps the shocking ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture to craft their literary witnesses." So really Hays likely doesn't address the issue of what Jesus said.
You could read the three pages of Hays that I quoted in the link I gave.

viewtopic.php?p=121403#p121403

Hays is not discussing what the historical Jesus actually said (nor am I); he is discussing what the evangelists (Mark in this case) report Jesus to have said and why.
You may argue that Jesus never said anything of the sort and that the gospel writers developed Jesus into a prophetic witness to the destruction of Jerusalem.


I could, couldn't I? I can't prove that Jesus, or anyone else in Roman Palestine in the first half of he first century did not predict the destruction of the temple. I am saying, however, that we do not need the theory that he did in order to explain what we have in our texts.
But then we are left with the popular problem here at the forum - what exactly DID Jesus to be famous or to deserve to have supposedly four different evangelists craft him into this prophetic witness? The accomplishments of Jesus are meager at best undeserving of being the subject of such a literary warping.
You're putting forward a thesis about history that only people who did great and spectacular things in the first place would have more great and spectacular things attributed to them after death?

Are you going to try to prove that or are you just putting it forward as something any reasonable person ought to accept?

There's a paper by C.A. Evans in which he discusses a large number of non-Christian texts that potentially predicted the destruction of the Herodian temple. His argument is that, if they did it, why couldn't Jesus? The problem is that, with one partial exception (1 Maccabbees) they were all written after the destruction of the temple by Evans' own dating. That a whole lot of people wrote prophecies after the event predicting the destruction of the temple does not suggest that Jesus must have made a real prophecy before the event predicting the destruction of the temple. Quite the opposite, in fact. Everyone was doing it.

C.A. Evans. 'Predictions of the destruction of the Herodian Temple', Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 10 (1992).

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 9200001008
Moreover if Mark and the rest crafted Jesus through this prophetic lens we're still left with Jesus living before the temple predicting that the temple would be destroyed.


No, we're not. We're left with people (who see Jesus as the founder of their religion) writing after the destruction of the temple in 70 and claiming that Jesus had predicted it beforehand.

One of the difficulties in trying to discuss things with you is that you frequently assert claims you have made as having been proven and even that the other person has accepted them when in fact they are what is being contested.
The idea that the Marcionites and the Mandaeans each developed an 'antinomian variety' of the canonical gospels prophetic reworking of this do-nothing Jesus's ministry doesn't make sense.
Why not? Because it doesn't make sense to you again? The Marcionites and Mandaeans didn't have access to the historical Jesus, they had access to reports circulating about Jesus.

Also, your use of scare quotes, here and elsewhere, is odd. Scare quotes are used to distance oneself from what's being quoted. It's a way of saying that the term in the quotes is a term other people use without endorsing it oneself. Antinomian variety is not my term, and if it's not your term either, why are we talking about it? I think you are actually putting your own term in scare quotes.
I don't want to get into the dating of Marcion. But the dating of Marcion to 140 CE has its problems.
You don't want to get into the dating of Marcion, but have been involuntarily forced to do so? Did I do that?
The idea that someone would come along LONG AFTER the destruction of the temple and take the original 'prophetic reworking' of the canonical evangelists and FURTHER WARP them into Jesus being a supernatural being coming to destroy the temple made of stones by the destruction of the temple of his body is unlikely IMHO.
Again, I should want to see a much better argument than that you think it's unlikely.
The idea of the one who destroys Christ's body - the true temple of the true god - will be destroyed is from Paul. It existed before the canonical gospels developed the Jesus story with prophetic influences like Jeremiah.
Right. The Pauline idea that the Christian church is Jesus' body and the real temple was already circulating when Mark chose to use it in Mark 15.58.

1Cor 3.16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple


So too the flying Jesus narrative outlined by Baarda where the supernatural Jesus comes at the beginning of the gospel and goads the inhabitants of a synagogue at Bethsaida (according to the Marcionite version) to charge at his body (which is immaterial) and pass through and fall over chasm to their death.
Let's distinguish between what Baarda said from what you are saying please.

Baarda thinks Marcion's gospel is a revision of Luke. He also think that the story found in Ephrem (in the fourth century) that Jesus was actually thrown off a cliff and 'flew' away was based on a reading found in the Syriac of Tatian's Diatesseron in Ephrem's day. He runs through a number of options and seems to favor that Tatian misread ἐπορεύετο in Luke 4.30.

Baarda also considers that the text of Marcion's gospel which has Jesus descending from above at the beginning (=Luke 3.1) may have influenced Tatian in his retelling of the story from Luke 4.29-30, though he allows that 'we can only guess' that this was a factor.

(Baarda, 'Flying Jesus', VC 40.4, 1986)

You think Baarda is wrong about Marcion being a revision of Luke and about the 'flying' Jesus being based on Tatian's misreading of Luke.

Where do you find this story about people in Bethsaida passing through Jesus and falling off a cliff to their deaths? Could you quote and cite it? Is it in some extant ancient source? Does Baarda, or some other scholar, say this? Or is this your own reconstruction of what you think was in an ancient source?
This narrative at the beginning of the lost gospel has enough of a 'warning' from the aforementioned Pauline logic:
if any man destroys the temple of God, he shall be himself destroyed
Again the 'temple' - the true temple according to early Christianity is Christ's body.
Christ's body, which is the church for Paul. The members of the church are Christ's body because Christ's Spirit lives in them (i.e., they have received the indwelling holy spirit through baptism). How do you know that this was more than raw material Mark used?
The Jews tried to destroy Christ's body (push it over a cliff) and were themselves destroyed by it.
Again, we need to see your source for this.
I think this foreshadows the ending of the gospel where the Jews try to destroy Christ's body again - through crucifixion - and this leads to the destruction first of the veil in the temple and then ultimately the false temple itself. I think Paul's understanding of the gospel was prior to the canonical 'prophetic reworking' of the gospels.
I know you think this and that you think my alternative theory is unlikely. Are you going to provide a justification for what you think?
The Marcionites believed Paul wrote the original gospel. I think even from the earliest rabbinic portraits of the Christians goading Jews to hit them with hammers preserves something of the 'martyr logic' of antiquity. In short, the more I get you to hit me - me, the true temple of God - the more you are destroying yourself. Why? Because it happened when Jesus did it to the Jews, and - they would say - the Jews lost their temple because it was destroyed. I am not sure this logic is derived from the prophets. It was a weird para-suicidal logic at the heart of earliest Christianity which might have been an outgrowth of the Jewish War. I really don't know where it came from.
I don't think the fact that the Christians saw the destruction of the temple in 70 retrospectively as God's punishment of the Jews for what they had done to Jesus and his followers seems needs much justification. Do you? Why? It seems like such a golden opportunity for Christian historiography that I'd have been much more surprised if the Christians had not claimed it.

Best,

Ken
Last edited by Ken Olson on Wed Dec 08, 2021 8:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by mlinssen »

Ken Olson wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 6:45 am
Ken Olson wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 6:40 am
Secret Alias wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 11:23 pm Ken

You of course like any member of the forum have the right to interpret evidence in whatever way you want.
Oh, good. Thank you. Or, rather, thank Peter Kirby.
But the idea that
Jesus did not say "I" will destroy the temple, he said God would
because of:
Richard Hays' argument that Jesus' quotation of Jeremiah 7.11 in Mark 11.17 is meant as a proleptic reference to the following passage from Jeremiah, in which God says he will destroy the temple and Jerusalem just as he had done to Shiloh
doesn't make sense to me.
I should want to see a better argument than that it doesn't make sense to you.

Also, you skipped over my quotation of Mark 13.1-2, in which Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple, though he does not explicitly say it is God who will destroy it.
I haven't read Reading Backwards but Hays' Echoes of Scriptures in Paul is one of the oldest books in my library. I highly doubt that Hays argues that Jesus stood in Jerusalem citing Jeremiah 7.11. From what I know of Hays the argument would be that the individual evangelists filtered Jesus through references to scripture. In fact as I look at the description of the book I find the statement "Richard B. Hays maps the shocking ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture to craft their literary witnesses." So really Hays likely doesn't address the issue of what Jesus said.
You could read the three pages of Hays that I quoted in the link I gave.

viewtopic.php?p=121403#p121403

Hays is not discussing what the historical Jesus actually said (nor am I); he is discussing what the evangelists (Mark in this case) report Jesus to have said and why.
You may argue that Jesus never said anything of the sort and that the gospel writers developed Jesus into a prophetic witness to the destruction of Jerusalem.


I could, couldn't I? I can't prove that Jesus, or anyone else in Roman Palestine in the first half of he first century did not predict the destruction of the temple. I am saying, however, that we do not need the theory that he did in order to explain what we have in our texts.
But then we are left with the popular problem here at the forum - what exactly DID Jesus to be famous or to deserve to have supposedly four different evangelists craft him into this prophetic witness? The accomplishments of Jesus are meager at best undeserving of being the subject of such a literary warping.
You're putting forward a thesis about history that only people who did great and spectacular things in the first place would have more great and spectacular things attributed to them after death?

Are you going to try to prove that or are you jut putting it forward as something any reasonable person ought to accept?

There's a paper by C.A. Evans in which he discusses a large number of non-Christian texts that potentially predicted the destruction of the Herodian temple. His argument is that, if they did it, why couldn't Jesus? The problem is that, with one partial exception (1 Maccabbees) they were all written after the destruction of the temple by Evans' own dating. That a whole lot of people wrote prophecies after the event predicting the destruction of the temple does suggest that Jesus must have made a real prophecy before the event predicting the destruction of the temple. Quite the opposite, in fact. Everyone was doing it.

C.A. Evans. 'Predictions of the destruction of the Herodian Temple', Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 10 (1992).

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 9200001008
Moreover if Mark and the rest crafted Jesus through this prophetic lens we're still left with Jesus living before the temple predicting that the temple would be destroyed.


No, we're not. We're left with people (who see Jesus as the founder of their religion) writing after the destruction of the temple in 70 and claiming that Jesus had predicted it beforehand.

One of the difficulties in trying to discuss things with you is that you frequently assert claims you have made as having been proven and even that the other person has accepted them when in fact they are what is being contested.
The idea that the Marcionites and the Mandaeans each developed an 'antinomian variety' of the canonical gospels prophetic reworking of this do-nothing Jesus's ministry doesn't make sense.
Why not? Because it doesn't make sense to you again? The Marcionites and Mandaeans didn't have access to the historical Jesus, they have access to reports circulating about Jesus.

Also, your use of scare quotes, here and elsewhere, is odd. Scare quotes are used to distance oneself from what's being quoted. It's a way of saying that the term in the quotes is a term other people use without endorsing it oneself. Antinomian variety is not my term, and if it's not your term either, why are we talking about it? I think you are actually putting your own term in scare quotes.
I don't want to get into the dating of Marcion. But the dating of Marcion to 140 CE has its problems.
You don't want to get into the dating of Marcion, but have been involuntarily forced to do so? Did I do that?
The idea that someone would come along LONG AFTER the destruction of the temple and take the original 'prophetic reworking' of the canonical evangelists and FURTHER WARP them into Jesus being a supernatural being coming to destroy the temple made of stones by the destruction of the temple of his body is unlikely IMHO.
Again, I should want to see a much better argument than that you think it's unlikely.
The idea of the one who destroys Christ's body - the true temple of the true god - will be destroyed is from Paul. It existed before the canonical gospels developed the Jesus story with prophetic influences like Jeremiah.
Right. The Pauline idea that the Christian church is Jesus' body and the real temple was already circulating when Mark chose to use it in Mark 15.58.

1Cor 3.16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple


So too the flying Jesus narrative outlined by Baarda where the supernatural Jesus comes at the beginning of the gospel and goads the inhabitants of a synagogue at Bethsaida (according to the Marcionite version) to charge at his body (which is immaterial) and pass through and fall over chasm to their death.
Let's distinguish between what Baarda said from what you are saying please.

Baarda thinks Marcion's gospel is a revision of Luke. He also think that the story found in Ephrem (in the fourth century) that Jesus was actually thrown off a cliff and 'flew' away was based on a reading found in the Syriac of Tatian's Diatesseron in Ephrem's day. He runs through a number of options and seems to favor that Tatian misread ἐπορεύετο in Luke 4.30.

Baarda also considers that the text of Marcion's gospel which has Jesus descending from above at the beginning (=Luke 3.1) may have influenced Tatian in his retelling of the story from Luke 4.29-30, though he allows that 'we can only guess' that this was a factor.

(Baarda, 'Flying Jesus', VC 40.4, 1986)

You think Baarda is wrong about Marcion being a revision of Luke and about the 'flying' Jesus being based on Tatian's misreading of Luke.

Where do you find this story about people in Bethsaida passing through Jesus and falling off a cliff to their deaths? Could you quote and cite it? Is it in some extant ancient source? Does Baarda, or some other scholar, say this? Or is this your own reconstruction of what you think was in an ancient source?
This narrative at the beginning of the lost gospel has enough of a 'warning' from the aforementioned Pauline logic:
if any man destroys the temple of God, he shall be himself destroyed
Again the 'temple' - the true temple according to early Christianity is Christ's body.
Christ's body, which is the church for Paul. The members of the church are Christ's body because Christ's Spirit lives in them (i.e., they have received the indwelling holy spirit through baptism). How do you know that this was more than raw material Mark used?
The Jews tried to destroy Christ's body (push it over a cliff) and were themselves destroyed by it.
Again, we need to see your source for this.
I think this foreshadows the ending of the gospel where the Jews try to destroy Christ's body again - through crucifixion - and this leads to the destruction first of the veil in the temple and then ultimately the false temple itself. I think Paul's understanding of the gospel was prior to the canonical 'prophetic reworking' of the gospels.
I know you think this and that you think my alternative theory is unlikely. Are you going to provide a justification for what you think?
The Marcionites believed Paul wrote the original gospel. I think even from the earliest rabbinic portraits of the Christians goading Jews to hit them with hammers preserves something of the 'martyr logic' of antiquity. In short, the more I get you to hit me - me, the true temple of God - the more you are destroying yourself. Why? Because it happened when Jesus did it to the Jews, and - they would say - the Jews lost their temple because it was destroyed. I am not sure this logic is derived from the prophets. It was a weird para-suicidal logic at the heart of earliest Christianity which might have been an outgrowth of the Jewish War. I really don't know where it came from.
I don't think the fact that the Christians saw the destruction of the temple in 70 retrospectively as God's punishment of the Jews for what they had done to Jesus and his followers seems needs much justification. Do you? Why? It seems like such a golden opportunity for Christian historiography that I'd have been much more surprised if the Chritians had not claimed it.

Best,

Ken
Just saving this for posterity. I count exactly 39, I think. Absolutely brilliant Ken
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by mlinssen »

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 10:48 am
Secret Alias wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 10:00 am The Gospel of Thomas and almost certainly the Gospel of Marcion HAD Jesus announcing he would destroy the temple. But Luke - the supposed Marcionite original - has no reference to Jesus's words. Clearly this is proof that Luke is secondary. End of debate:

* * *

Am I missing something?
An argument?

1) The Gospel of Thomas Logion 71 has: 'I will overturn this house and no one will be able to build it again.' If Thomas is based on the synoptics, or at least on a Jewish/Palestinian traditional setting it shares with the synoptics, then interpreting the house to be the temple in Jerusalem is a pretty strong inference. If Thomas precedes the synoptics and originally had nothing to do with Jewish Messianic expectations and fulfilled Jewish prophecy, it's hard to see how we can know what the house was.

2) What is your case for concluding that the Evangelion used by Marcion almost certainly had Jesus announcing he would destroy the temple?
Emphasis mine

The Gospel of Thomas Logion 71 has: 'I will ove[rturn this hou]se and no one will be able to build it [again].' - trying to match the lacunae there with the English translation, not quite successful

ⲡⲉϫⲉ ⲓ̅ⲥ̅ ϫⲉ ϯ ⲛⲁ ϣⲟⲣ[ϣⲣ̄ ⲙ̄ ⲡⲉⲉⲓ ⲏ]ⲉⲓ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲗⲁⲁⲩ ⲛⲁ ϣ ⲕⲟⲧ ϥ [ⲁⲛ ⲛ̄ ⲕⲉ ⲥⲟⲡ]
said IS : I will overturn [dop] this house and there-is-not anyone will be-able build he again the(PL) other occasion

Word-for-word match as usual, this is Grondin's restoration. Mine is slightly different these days but still unpublished, aiming for Q1 2022 there

overturn (upset, overturn) ϣⲟⲣϣⲣ occurs once, so it's a risky guess - if it weren't for the fact that this is the only Coptic verb starting with these 3 letters. It could be a form of ϣⲱⲣ, ϣⲱⲣϫ or ϣⲱⲣⲧ as well though: pile up / make thick, be early, be demented - those are the choices so yeah, I'm only joking

And while we're at the jokes: here are all Coptic words that end with ⲉⲓ. Enjoy:

ϣⲉⲉⲓ going to and fro, derangement, madness
ϩⲁⲃⲟⲩⲉⲓ wasp
ϩⲁⲙⲁⲛⲉⲓ meaning unknown
ϩⲉⲗϩⲉⲗⲉⲓ as a place-name
ϩⲣⲟⲉⲓ meaning unknown
ϩⲩⲡⲟⲩⲣⲅⲉⲓ to assist, help
ϫⲁϩⲁⲟⲩϫⲉⲓ a (metal?) object
ϫⲓⲗⲗⲉⲓ shield
ⲁϣⲉⲓ multitude, amount
ⲁⲉⲓ eternity
ⲁⲙⲁⲩⲉⲓ herdsman
ⲁⲡⲉⲓ a purple dye-stuff
ⲁⲣⲕⲁⲥⲉⲓ work, labor
ⲁⲣⲕⲉⲓ it suffices for s.th. (subject: conjunctive clause)
ⲁⲥⲫⲁⲗⲉⲓ (document of) guarantee (substantive; re: guarantee to pay or work for s.o., a superior or, most often: the creditor in a declaration of indebtedness))
ⲃⲁⲉⲓ branch of date-palm
ⲃⲉⲓ sky
ⲉⲓ coming, advent
ⲉⲓⲟⲩⲇⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲉⲓⲟⲩⲧⲁⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲉⲕⲧⲉⲕⲉⲓ vengeance, revenge
ⲉⲕⲧⲓⲕⲉⲓ vengeance, revenge
ⲉⲡⲓⲧⲏⲙⲉⲓ punishment
ⲓⲟⲩⲇⲁⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲓⲟⲩⲇⲁⲓⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲓⲟⲩⲇⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲓⲟⲩⲧⲁⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲗⲩⲡⲉⲓ to grieve
ⲙⲁⲥ ⲙⲙⲟⲩⲉⲓ young of lion, whelp
ⲙⲁⲧⲟⲉⲓ soldier
ⲙⲉⲥ ⲙⲙⲟⲩⲉⲓ young of lion, whelp
ⲙⲛⲧⲁⲧⲥⲉⲓ unsatedness, greed
ⲙⲟⲩⲉⲓ island
ⲙⲟⲩⲉⲓ lion, lioness
ⲛⲉⲓ time
ⲛⲓⲛⲉⲓ nothing
ⲛⲟⲉⲓ meaning unknown (place where loaves (?) and wine deposited)
ⲛⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓ rush, course
ⲟⲓⲇⲁⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲟⲩⲇⲁⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲟⲩⲓⲇⲁⲉⲓ Jew (substantive)
ⲡⲣⲁⲓⲧⲉⲓ loot, haul, stolen goods
ⲡⲩⲗⲉⲓ gate
ⲣⲁⲙⲡⲉⲓ ring
ⲥⲉⲓ fullness, surfeit
ⲥⲉⲓ a tree (oak ?)
ⲥⲕⲏⲟⲩⲉⲓ vessel, jar (morph: Greek collective (neuter plural))
ⲧⲁⲣⲉⲓ unknown meaning
ⲭⲁⲗⲃⲁⲛⲉⲓ galbanum, the resinous juice of all-heal (fragrance)
ⲭⲁⲗⲉⲓ bile, anger, wrath
ⲭⲣⲉⲱⲥⲧⲉⲓ that which is due, the right thing

I agree on all counts with Ken. On top of that, I could tell you what 'house' meant to Thomas but I can also tell you that none of that matters for how the text was used - either by Marcion or the synoptics.
10 counts in 8 logia: house, ⲏⲓ, Noun masculine 16, 21, 35, 48, 64, 71, 97, 98

Yes, Thomas uses the Akhmimic form for it, each and every time. That will expand the set quite a bit with regards to looking for a possible alternative. Ssssshhhhhhhh

Logion 21 contains the clue to its real meaning though, and the translation indeed is exactly that: 'his house of his kingdom'
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Re: How Do We Explain the Complete Absence of Jesus Being 'Falsely Accused' of Wanting to Destroy the Temple in Luke?

Post by Secret Alias »

Ken,

The most busy day of the year for me. I will answer your (numerous) points one by one later. But again, scholars live in a bubble with in depth analysis of intertextual relationships. This is not the Christian religion. This is the study of the Christian religion. The latter often gets in the way of the former. Christianity was a practice just like Judaism and Samaritanism were 'ways.' The fact that the canonical gospels layered prophetic passages and themes over the story of Jesus in the gospel wasn't essential to the gospel. The story of Jesus was at the heart of the religion and played out through the liturgical year.

I don't think you've sufficiently considered what lay beneath the 'prophetic layers.' The original understanding of course was that there was a historical life of Jesus - he did and said 'X' - and then Mark and company refracted these 'doings' through a prophetic lens. In recent times, as our culture is less bound to the significance of whether Christianity is 'truthful' or 'historical,' the question of whether actual historical data lay behind the gospel narrative has arisen.

I dislike 'mythicism' because it seems to latch on to 'whatever works' to overthrow the existence of Jesus. However I think the process is useful for the study of Marcionism which was a historical tradition as reported in the pages of the Church Fathers. More precisely, Hays arguments regarding the development of the gospel and the Pauline letters by means of prophetic 'layering' has a precedent in Marcionism. The Marcionites consistently argued that:
1. Paul wrote a gospel and a collection of letters.
but that
2. 'Judaizers' came along later and altered that canon of writings in Paul's lifetime
and that
3. Paul made reference to this process in the letter to the Galatians
One need only look at Irenaeus and Tertullian's treatment of Galatians to see the obvious parallels between modern scholarship's acknowledgement of prophetic development of the story of Jesus in particular and the Marcionite reading of THEIR LOST VERSION of Galatians which tells the story of Paul (or whatever he was named) discovering that the Jerusalem body of Christians has appropriated his written gospel and corrupted it with 'Jewish' = prophetic additions.

Clearly the fourfold canon written by Mark and then Matthew and then Luke (and John) AFTER the destruction of the temple in a form that appears 'Judaized' from the Marcionite POV fits within the aforementioned scheme. I don't think however that these four canonical gospels are the 'Judaized' gospel the Marcionites understood to have been 'Judaized' in their Galatians letter. I read Papias's acknowledgement of the primacy of a gospel of Mark and a subsequent 'Matthew' gospel which is better arranged owing to its compatibility with Jewish scripture as the missing step in the process to the canonical gospels with the addition remark:

“And so Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted [Or: translated] them to the best of his ability.”

As a reference perhaps to the canonical gospels. Who knows. But the point is that the reworking of the story of Jesus in terms of pre-existent prophets, prophecy and prophetic schemes (in Marcionite terms 'Judaizing') does not necessarily lead back to a simple 'real life story of Jesus.' If the Marcionites are correct it leads back to a story about a supernatural being called 'Man' or 'Jesus' (cf Justin's statements on this) who flew down from the highest heaven to Judea or Jerusalem and exhibited his supernatural abilities as Baarda has already begun to develop (I was very close with Baarda and always loved his technical ability viz. to work in so many languages but openly criticized his lack of imagination).

The reality is that once we get beyond the prophetic reworking of the story we end up with 2 not 1 ultimate possibilities. Either
a. the ur-Jesus story was a simple narrative about a man named Jesus who either said that he would destroy the temple or as you might have it that he predicted the temple would be destroyed (as a prophet)
or
b. the ur-Jesus story was a strange mystical text (note the parallel between Baarda's flying Jesus story and the scapegoat sacrifice of Yom Kippur) originally written by Mark (so Papias) re-ordered by 'Matthew' in terms of the logion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%2B/Papias_hypothesis and reused by the canonical gospels.
In short it might lead back to a historical Jesus or an ahistorical supernatural being. However I think the evidence for b is stronger because of Papias. If Papias is correct about a primary but subordinate Mark gospel corrected by Papias according to the 'κυριακῶν λογίων' (which I take to be the entire prophetic corpus dating back before the gospel as Irenaeus uses the terminology) then the Marcionite understanding of 'Judaizing' makes a strong argument for their use of the original gospel of Mark as the Philosophumena and other sources also hint at. The battle between Marcionites and the orthodox was strangely over the very issues the Marcionites complained about. The orthodox originally acknowledged that they used an secondary document which was a revised ur-gospel of Mark which they said was superior only in terms of its 'holiness' not however in terms of its historical primacy.

To that end, if it is acknowledged that the prophetic layers came after a lost ur-gospel of Mark which was used by the Marcionites and understood to have been written by the apostle called Paul in orthodox circles IT IS IMPOSSIBLE that this Jesus simply 'acted as a prophet' as you would have it. The Marcionites are repeatedly admonished for their hostility to 'prophesy.' The Marcionite Jesus announced that he would destroy the temple, was crucified and - according to the Pauline logic of the community - the assault on his body, the true temple of God, 'caused' the destruction of the Jewish temple, the Jews bringing about their own destruction through their 'blindness.'

More to follow ...

And a further note of procedure. I am not asking for the Marcionite understanding to be necessarily ACCEPTED as the right answer necessarily, I am asking for it to be fully considered. I think that its simplicity is a sign of its originality. (what is the orthodox position? actually no one knows other than 'the heresies are wrong and bad'). Just as Irenaeus is principally arguing for the incorrectness of his opponents rather than correctness of a particular point of view beyond a simply all embracing creed, I don't think there is an actual 'orthodox understanding of Jesus' from the earliest period. It was just 'the heresies are bad' more than 'we actually have a position.'
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