Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

MrMacSon wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 11:10 pm Litwa, elsewhere, has said these texts were constantly changing in their early days, accruing accretions, and doing so in waves. He says they were variably but increasingly being edited in conjunction with each other: "the gospels are not stable entities: they are [like] waves [or] snowballs accruing tradition, [so] it is very difficult to pin down a stable tradition, and very difficult to pin down who exactly would be an author."

The Marcionite Evangelion captures but one step in one version of the eventual-Lukan trajectory.

I disagree about the whole idea of "tradition".

There was no tradition. The Gospels were innovations. New Gospels were invented to add new innovations. There isn't a single dammed tradition in any of them.

These were all creative writing projects introducing new ideas. You know how ancient people introduced new ideas? They wrote stories that cast those new ideas back in time to their ancestors. When you have a new idea to introduce what you do is you claim that it came from some ancient originator.

That's what was going on with the Gospels.

The Pauline corpus is the oldest set of ideas. To introduce new ideas one had to go back before Paul.

That's why the birth story is the most recent addition. In terms of chronology it goes like:

1) Pauline letters
2) Narrative about Paul's vision of Jesus, ministry and trial
3) Narrative about ministry of Jesus, trial and crucifixion
4) Narrative about birth of Jesus
5 ) (Revision of the narrative about Paul's ministry and addition of a narrative about the ministry of the other disciples)

And everything is built from #1. The only "real" writings in the bunch are the letters. Everything after the letters is fabricated invention based on the letters with creative writing to flesh it all out. Each addition builds upon the prior additions.

The core theology expressed in the original Pauline letters is the idea that God the Father sacrificed his Son Jesus in order to pay a ransom price to the Lord of this World to purchase the freedom of the souls of mankind from the Lord of this World. God the Father exchanged the soul of his own divine Son for the non-divine souls of all humanity. That's the oldest idea.

Who is the Lord of this World? The answer to that question determines who God the Father is. If the Lord of this World is Satan, then God the Father is the God of Moses and Abraham. If the Lord of this World is the God of Moses and Abraham, then God the Father is a higher Unknown God.

The original Gospel narrative tells us that the Lord of this World is Satan. But that doesn't mean that the original Gospel narrative actually reflects the original theology.

The original Gospel narrative tells us that the true identity of Jesus was NOT KNOWN to those who originally knew him (or those who figured it out abandoned him).
a) John, a Jew, foretold his coming, but was driven away and did not follow him
b) Peter recognized who he was, but abandoned and forsook him out of fear of Judaiszers
c) James and John were too thirsty for earthly power to follow him
d) The Jewish leaders never understood who he was
e) The Roman leaders thought he was not important enough to care to learn his identity
f) The women who followed him were too afraid to tell anyone about him

Ultimately, everyone abandoned him.

When everyone had failed him and thus failed to deliver his message to humanity, he revealed himself to one who had not previously known him - Paul, who became the Apostle that told the world about him.

Now, when we read ancient stories about "secrets" and "hidden identities", this is typically because what the writer is doing is providing an explanation for why the ideas they are introducing were previously unknown. The goal of the writer is to simultaneously plant their own new ideas back in time and put them in the mouth of the founders, while also at the same time providing an explanation for why these new ideas were previously unknown. One has to be able to say, "These ideas are original and came from the founder" and also explain how it is that no one had previously known about these ideas.

This is sometimes done in ancient stories through the use of puzzles, cryptic prophecies that only make sense in later hindsight, tropes like lost writings and buried treasures, etc. I.e. the founder wrote something down that made some claim, but what he wrote got lost and was then later found, at which time the true beliefs of the founder were "revealed", etc.- these types of tropes.

In this case, the new claim being introduced is the claim that Jesus was "the Messiah". This is not really a Pauline claim. This is what's behind the "Messianic Secret". The reason for the "Messianic Secret" is to frame the NEW CLAIM that Jesus was "the Messiah" as something that was not understood and/or not passed on by those the "original disciples", who all end up abandoning Jesus and not actually passing on his teachings. By making this a "secret" the writer of the first Gospel can present his new idea as something that was an original mystery being put forward by Jesus himself, which people just didn't understand or if they did then they forsook him (the centurion recognizes him as the "son of God" not "the Messiah").

The Gospel writer seeks to go beyond Paul and to recontextualize Jesus according to the circumstances of his time, which are not addressed by the Pauline writings. The Pauline writings don't deal with the Jewish wars and collapse of Judaism. The writer of the Gospel is presenting Jesus within the context of the Jewish wars and the collapse of Jewish leadership and destruction of the Temple.

The success of Paul comes from his outreach to the Gentiles. Those that were bound to Judaism - the original disciples - abandoned Jesus. They are actually, according to the first Gospel, left behind. As the writer of the first Gospel puts it, "they yield no fruit". It is only Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, who yields fruit.

Everything that all of the the Gospels present is hindsight, looking back on Pauline ideas from the perspective of the collapse of Judaism in the wake of the Jewish wars. The Pauline ministry was pre-First Jewish Roman War. The Gospels are reflections upon those pre-war teachings from the perspective of hindsight once the Temple had been destroyed and Judaism was collapsing. The reason that the writings of Paul had been picked back up and interest was taken in them is that they appeared to be prophetic in light of the events of the Jewish and Roman wars.

rgprice, above, Mon Jun 03, 2024 4:39 am, in part:
"There was no tradition. The Gospels were innovations. New Gospels were invented to add new innovations. There isn't a single dammed tradition in any of them."
~~~~
Why are you certain about that? Aren't traditions--reliable or not--commonly the case?

Yes, we can't say with 100% certainty that nothing in any Gospels comes from any "tradition" outside of the Pauline letters, because first of all its very difficult define what qualifies as such a "tradition", but generally, the Gospels functioned as vehicles for introducing innovations, not "recording traditions".

How can we know this?

First of all, there is the issue of early Christian disagreement. How is it possible that there was so much disagreement as to who Jesus was and the nature of his character? The best explanation for this is that there was essentially no religion of Jesus worship prior to the writing of the Gospels. The Pauline letters indicate there was, but whatever that was must have been tiny and insignificant. If any such cult existed at some point it would appear that by the time the Gospels came out it was all but forgotten. The Gospels were able to gain widespread adoption because they didn't run up against any meaningful existing traditions. There was widespread disagreement because the ideas about who Jesus was, where he came and what his message was, were all products of literary interpretation. Different people interpreted the stories differently, leading to the rise of different theologies, which resulted in the production of new versions of the story that then expounded upon the various interpretations of the first. "This is what he meant. No this is what he meant!"

Secondly, it is definitive that the first Gospel, very close to the Gospel of Mark, was a pure fictional invention. These scenes are all concocted from scriptural references. The whole narrative is fabricated. The first half of the story is patterned on the story of Elijah and Elisha from the books of Kings. None of that stuff really happened. Yet, every single Gospel follows suit and emulates the fictions of the first. This could only have happened if none of the later writers had knowledge of any traditions, which would of course have run counter to the fictitious story of the first Gospel. Likewise for the Crucifixion. The Crucifixion account is clearly entirely made up. No one was gambling to take portions of Jesus' clothing. That's a made-up detail that comes from Psalm 22. But every single account of the Crucifixion includes this detail, even non-canonical accounts. The reason that they all include this detail is because none of the Gospels writers has any knowledge of any real traditions about any real Crucifixion. The Crucifixion scene in the Gospels is a literary invention. No other Gospel writers possessed any knowledge of anything that contradictions any of the literary fabrications of the first Gospel writer. They have no traditions to pass on.

So no, the Gospels aren't records of traditions. To use the analogy recently posted by allegoria, its like the movie/book Fight Club came out and some readers/viewers of the story interpreted it differently. Who really was Tyler Durden? Who was the Narrator? And they created fan fiction that gave different back stories to the characters based on different interpretations of the story. And they wrote new versions of the story that were designed to clarify their own interpretations of it. If they thought that the Narrator really was Tyler Durden they added various details to support that interpretation. If they thought he was really Marla they changed the story to support that, etc., etc.

Its all fiction. Its all complete and total fiction that spewed from the minds of the writers.

**Sorry fixed all of the many typos**

That's a lot of assertions, rgprice.
Unproven, though.
"If any such cult existed at some point it would appear that by the time the Gospels came out it was all but forgotten."
Why?
Traditions sometimes disagree.
Most people then were illiterate, so not limited to transmission by writing.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 11:54 am That's a lot of assertions, rgprice.
Unproven, though.
"If any such cult existed at some point it would appear that by the time the Gospels came out it was all but forgotten."
Why?
Traditions sometimes disagree.
Most people then were illiterate, so not limited to transmission by writing.

The question is: were the writers of the Gospels aware of, and passing on, traditions about Jesus?

The answer is clearly no.

What we can see from the Gospel of Mark is that this story is an entirely fictional invention that was fabricated sometime after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

It cannot be that the story Mark tells is based on any traditions. First of all, the whole story is deeply tied to the destruction of the Temple. Secondly, every scene is derived from the Jewish scriptures. It must be the case that this story was invented by an individual after the destruction of the Temple, who sat down with the Pauline letters and the Jewish scriptures and invented a new narrative out of whole cloth himself.

The first half of the story is heavily based on Elijah and Elisha. Why? Because the ministry of Elijah and Elisha was the prelude to the destruction of the First Temple. The writer then proceeds to use many scriptures about the destruction of the First Temple as the basis for the scenes in his story. Unless we are calling the Gospel itself a "tradition" it cannot be that there was any narrative about Jesus that looked anything like, or contained any similar features to, the story in the Gospel of Mark prior to the writing of the narrative that we now find in the Gospel of Mark.

There could not have been an "oral tradition" about Jesus stilling a storm on the "Sea of Galilee" that floated around independently prior to to having been recorded by "Mark". There could not have been a story about Jesus feeding crowds of people using a small amount of bread and fish that existed prior to the invention of these scene by the writer of "Mark".

These scenes are explicitly based upon Jewish scriptures, and those scriptures are explicitly related to the destruction of the Temple. They fit into an overall pattern throughout the entire Gospel, including the Crucifixion itself. It must be that this narrative was conceived in the mind of an individual who worked from the Jewish scriptures as their starting point, along with the Pauline letters, to concoct a story.

But that doesn't tell us too much. What really tells us something is the fact that every single other story about Jesus contains all of the elements of the original story. Every single story about Jesus contains the majority of Mark. There is no story about Jesus that meaningfully deviates from Mark. Even stories like John are basically the same as Mark. A few things are re-ordered and rephrased, but it is all the same basic story. Jesus meets John the Baptist, acquires a set of disciples, engages in a miraculous ministry in Galilee, travels to Jerusalem (maybe once maybe mor than once), has conflicts with the priesthood, and is then arrested and executed. All of that stems from the first story, which is derived from Jewish scriptures related to the destruction of the First Temple.

Its not as if we have a separate story that says: Jesus was a Jewish man that lived in Ephesus and ran a school for blind philosophers. He taught them that the God of Abraham loved everyone, not just Jews. He lived until he was 63 years old, and was then killed when a tree was struck by lightning and fell on his house.

Ok, if we had something like that, then maybe we could think that there was an actually independent account of some real person. But that's not what we have. What we have is everyone copying Mark. And we know that Mark's story is an entirely concocted fiction that was invented after the destruction of the Temple, in which the whole narrative, from beginning to end, is based on scriptures about the destruction of the Temple. This means the whole story had to be conceived after the destruction of the Temple.

And since everyone else is copying this story and modifying it and adding to it, it means that none of those people are aware of any traditions about Jesus that pre-date the invention of this story. If any of those people actually knew anything, or were aware of traditions that pre-dated the invention of this story, then they would have known that the story they were copying from wasn't real and contained elements that weren't a part of older traditions that predated the story. But since everyone goes along with Mark's story, it tells us that none of the people who are going along with his made-up story actually know anything themselves either!

Everyone is making it all up!

rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 2:08 pm Its not as if we have a separate story that says: Jesus was a Jewish man that lived in Ephesus and ran a school for blind philosophers.

rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 2:08 pm Ok, if we had something like that, then maybe we could think that there was an actually independent account of some real person.

What an absurd standard.

the gospels seem self aware of traditions that predate them

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 6:38 pm

rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 2:08 pm Its not as if we have a separate story that says: Jesus was a Jewish man that lived in Ephesus and ran a school for blind philosophers.

rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 2:08 pm Ok, if we had something like that, then maybe we could think that there was an actually independent account of some real person.

What an absurd standard.

I'm not sure why you think so. It is clear that there are effectively only two sources of "information" about "Jesus Christ". The Pauline letters and the Gospels. There is not one single other source of any information about Jesus. Nothing at all anywhere shows independence from these two sources. The Pauline letters give essentially no information about any Jesus person.

The Gospels are all clearly copies of one original story. There is not one single writing that shows any form of independence from whatever the first Gospel was. It's all copies of one single story.

My point is that there is no information about Jesus the person that indicates that it derives from any source other than ultimately the first Gospel story that was written. We have one story, and many different variations of that one story. That's all there is and has ever been.

Other than that we have the Pauline letters and derivatives from that, such as Hebrews, letters attributed to Peter, etc. There are a few writings that mention the name of Jesus Christ and either provide no information about him, like the letters of James or 1 Clement, or vague statements like those of Tacitus which admittedly derive from Christians themselves.

So literally every writing stems from these two sources: Pauline letters and the first Gospel story. And the first Gospel story also actually derives from the Pauline letters. So truly there is but one single source of "information" about Jesus - the Pauline letters - and every single thing else that has been written about Jesus is just imaginary invention from people based ultimately on the writings of Paul. And there isn't one shred of anything to give any reason to conclude that any claim beyond what is made in the (original Marcionite version of the) Pauline letters is based on anything other than pure fabrication. There are no "oral traditions", there are no "accounts", there are no "memories", there was never any apostolic era. There is nothing but creative writing and imagination. Whatever the cult of Jesus originally was, if there was indeed any meaningful original cult at all, it was all gone and forgotten by the time the first Gospel was written.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and Thomas and others have sources other than Mark or Paul, plausibly including some traditions.
To declare, absolutely, that there were no traditions (though saying there may have been a cult) is an extreme case of trying to prove a negative by personal fiat.
Also, for your hypothesis, convenient.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2024 4:20 am The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and Thomas and others have sources other than Mark or Paul, plausibly including some traditions.
To declare, absolutely, that there were no traditions (though saying there may have been a cult) is an extreme case of trying to prove a negative by personal fiat.
Also, for your hypothesis, convenient.

No they don't. There is no evidence of "sources". They have content, not "sources". There is no reason whatever to conclude that continent unique to any of these works is based on any "source" that was ever even attributed to Jesus or even believed to have come from Jesus, whether it actually did or not.

We can set Thomas aside for a moment. Not including Thomas, every other "Gospel" INCLUDES almost all of the Gospel of Mark.

This is what I keep going back to, and clearly not everyone understands the point. Let's grant for a moment the conclusion that the Gospel of Mark is 100% fictional fabrication. Not one single thing in the Gospel of Mark is true. Its a 100% invented story. That's my position and just grant for a moment that this statement is true.

Now assume that there was some community of people who worshiped "the real Jesus" and had traditions that dated back to "the real Jesus" and these traditions included written sources that documented what "the real Jesus" said.

If someone from this community that knew "the real Jesus" came into contact with the 100% fictional story put forward in the Gospel of Mark, they would know that the Gospel of Mark narrative was entirely not true. They would understand that this story isn't an account of what really happened. And if this community of people who worshiped "the real Jesus" had any actual interest in preserving the "real memories and teachings" of the "real Jesus", they wouldn't then use this 100% fictitious story as a foundation to build upon. They wouldn't then just add their traditions that date back to the real Jesus to this collection of lies.

They would know that the "Gospel of Mark" was a bunch of lies and they would reject it and instead produce their own account.

But that's not what we find. What we find is that EVERYONE adopted the "Gospel of Mark", or whatever Gospel you think is the first Gospel, *Ev, whatever. Even if *Ev were the first Gospel, the fact is that everyone story is basically the same and all clearly derived from some single original narrative. Whatever that original narrative was, it was 100% fictional.

That everyone else builds upon this fictional foundation PROVES that no one else knew ANYHTING about any real Jesus.

If I'm someone in 1800 who wants to record an account of the military command of George Washington and my father served in Washington's army and he told be stories about what happened and gave me accounts of the battles and I have copies of writings from George Washington, and after his death I come across a news paper article about the military campaign of George Washington and it says that George Washington had magical powers and he flew around the colonies and he could turn invisible to spy on the British and he won every battle he commanded and the British killed him and cut off his head, but he came back to life and fire came from his eyes and burned up all the British, etc., I'm not going to say, "Hmm, ok, well I want to record what my dad told me for posterity to make sure people know who George Washington really was, so I'll just add on knowledge of George Washington on to this story."

No, that's not what's going to happen. I'm going to say, "That's a load of garbage, I'm going to write my own account to set the record straight." But no one does that. The closest thing is the Gospel of John, which is very far from "setting the record straight". John instead doubles down. John is like taking the story about George Washington and adding in that Washington also made babies magically appear when he rode into town and raised skeleton armies to fight on his side.

So to claim that content added to Mark is evidence of "other traditions" is a total farce. Anyone adding on to Mark is accepting that what Mark said is true. Anyone that that knew anything real about Jesus, or even anyone who had knowledge of traditions that were independent from Mark, real or not, would not have appropriated Mark. The fact that everyone appropriated Mark means that no one else knew anything at all. They are all just piling on to an existing fiction.

And as for Thomas. Thomas, as we have it, is a hodgepodge collection of material built up over time. Any arguments that it pre-dates the narrative Gospels is purely speculative. By far the best explanation is that Thomas is derived from the works of the New Testament.