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http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/anointing/Clive wrote:But priests are a different role to soldiers, until someone invents priest kings. There are three beasts here - priests, kings, priest kings.
Christs, Jesuses, (Messiahs), Christ Jesi.
Does Messiah ever mean anointed?
Messiah means "anointed one".Clive wrote:But priests are a different role to soldiers, until someone invents priest kings. There are three beasts here - priests, kings, priest kings.
Christs, Jesuses, (Messiahs), Christ Jesi.
Does Messiah ever mean anointed?
Thank you for the link to all those scholars who share the same opinion as me.Ben C. Smith wrote:Yes. Refer to Peter Kirby's notes and links here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1839&p=40601#p40600.Michael BG wrote:It is possible that Rom 13:1-7 is an interpolation. (Do any scholars suggestion this?)
I have found Romans 13.1-7 to be an intractable problem so far. It comes across as so impossibly naïve that I have trouble imagining anyone having written it. Paul is hard to imagine for many reasons, some of which you have listed here. But would a forger have been unaware of the kinds of trouble that produced warnings of persecution all across the New Testament and the early patristic texts? Was there some pocket of Christianity that was nearly completely untouched by conflicts with the authorities?
Is it possible that by "authorities" Paul (or whoever) means only the Roman authorities, which during this time could at least hypothetically be counted on to stave off the excesses of local magistrates and religious rulers?
It appears I have not understood your position.neilgodfrey wrote:Mark 13 warns of false messiahs; Mark's Jesus admonishes Peter for holding on to a conquering-only Messiah concept; Mark's Jesus is addressing his polar opposite, a Davidic conquering messiah idea, everytime he stresses that he must, on the contrary, undergo suffering and service. He doesn't just teach suffering and service, but he teaches these in contrast to their opposites -- and the narrative tells us that the opposites are what his disciples expect in a messiah.Michael BG wrote:What evidence can you present that Mark is concerned with a rebellious Messianic figure?neilgodfrey wrote: That's correct. The Gospel of Mark was rejecting the notion of those "world/Roman conquering" types of messiahs. Paul knew nothing of them. Paul's message was being adapted for the new situation.
What you seem to be saying is that Mark’s Jesus often states he is not a military heroic Messiah, but is a Messiah of a different type. And it is in this sense that Mark is concerned with this type of Messiah. It also appears that for you this is not historical, but there was a tradition that expected a nationalist Messiah as a new king of the Jewish people as the first stage of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. It is possible that Jesus did have to explain he was a suffering figure and not the expected divinely imposed figure.neilgodfrey wrote:The messiah idea (as in a conquering Davidic hero to take over the political rule) only emerged during the Jewish war of 66-70 itself, and up to or again in the 130s with the Second Revolt. This concept of the messiah was not part of mainstream turn of the century Jewish thought, nor of Paul's, till then.
I really don’t understand how you can see Mark believing that a past event was the event that ended time and created heaven on earth. It has been argued that Matthew is still early enough like Mark for an expectation of the end of time and the creation of God kingdom on earth still to be seen in the near future, but that both Luke and John no longer see the second coming as coming soon and have put it into a distant future.neilgodfrey wrote:I don't think it's necessarily either/or. The events of the first coming are the reason for the "real" coming. The parable of the wicked tenants sets out the theme. God sends his servant, servant is killed, God sends his army to slay them as punishment. As for the language used by Mark to speak of the coming of God or his Christ/Son of Man .... it is drawn from the Jewish scriptures, so it is reasonable to apply to it a similar interpretation as we find there. I have set out some of the arguments here and here.Michael BG wrote:What evidence would you produce that Mark is saying that God came to Jerusalem in 70 CE, rather than Jesus was there between 26 and 36 CE when Pilate was Prefect?neilgodfrey wrote:If the gospels (esp Mark and Matthew) are written in the tradition of the Jewish scriptures then it makes most sense to me to interpret them as saying Jesus or God "came" or "visited" Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Thank you for this list.neilgodfrey wrote:Good point. Yes it is possible. Sturdy compiled a list of scholars who argued it was an interpolation:Michael BG wrote:It is possible that Rom 13:1-7 is an interpolation. (Do any scholars suggestion this?)
13:1-7, Pallis (1920); Loisy (1922: 104, 128; 1935: 30-31; 1936: 287); Windisch (1931); cf. Barnikol (1931b); Eggenberger (1945); Barnes (1947: 302, possibly); Kallas (1964-65); Munro (1983: 56f., 65-67); Sahlin (1953); Bultmann (1947).
I do not wish to turn to Acts or the Pastorals. I must admit that I hadn’t considered that the rods were applied by Jewish authorities. I have this idea that Jews could only impose whipping and beating with the agreement of Roman authorities but maybe the evidence for this is disputed.neilgodfrey wrote:2 Cor 11 is describing punishments by the Jewish persecutors. Without turning to Acts or the Pastorals I don't know what reason we have to think Paul was accosted by Roman powers. He also said some of his sufferings were even a god-send to keep him humble.Michael BG wrote:Rom 12:1-7 seems strange in the context of Paul’s own sufferings 2 Cor 11:23d-25b, “with far greater labours, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. [24] Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. [25] Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.” I assume that the lashes and the rods would have been administered by those in authority.
Gal 1:22Tenorikuma wrote:The anachronism of "Christian" aside, I'm not sure. it depends on what the "churches of Judaea" Paul mentions were. I don't think there was a church of any significance in Jerusalem. If there were "Christians" in first-century Palestine, they should have left us some kind of physical evidence. Letters, religious texts, inscriptions, whatever.MrMacSon wrote:Is there evidence there were Christians in Palestine at the time of the War/s?
Whoever the "churches of Judaea" were, Paul was unknown to them by his own admission, and he didn't get his Gospel from them.
These seem to be people who believed something which was the same as the people Paul converted.And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea;
I don't see questions of historicity entering into it. All we have is the text so we are limited to interpreting the text. But texts are always and inevitably written from within the historical context of the author and sometimes this will come out in what he is writing. After all, what he is writing is presumably charged with relevance to people in his own day with certain historical experiences. The indications in Mark are that he was writing from the perspective of having seen the destruction of Jerusalem and the chaos related to that -- chaos that included false hopes in a figure who would come to defeat the Romans. Josephus tells us that there was such an expectation at the time of the War. (We have no evidence for such a hope earlier than the War.) So Mark is comparing the Jesus he is describing with those failed would-be hopefuls.Michael BG wrote:What you seem to be saying is that Mark’s Jesus often states he is not a military heroic Messiah, but is a Messiah of a different type. And it is in this sense that Mark is concerned with this type of Messiah. It also appears that for you this is not historical, but there was a tradition that expected a nationalist Messiah as a new king of the Jewish people as the first stage of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. It is possible that Jesus did have to explain he was a suffering figure and not the expected divinely imposed figure.neilgodfrey wrote:The messiah idea (as in a conquering Davidic hero to take over the political rule) only emerged during the Jewish war of 66-70 itself, and up to or again in the 130s with the Second Revolt. This concept of the messiah was not part of mainstream turn of the century Jewish thought, nor of Paul's, till then.
Mark does not say that the event "ended time" in our sense of that term. There is a wealth of scholarly material establishing the meaning of Mark's terminology within the understanding of the same terms in the OT. Daniel itself speaks of the Son of Man riding on the clouds and restoring the kingdom forever and ever to the holy people. That did not happen literally. That was typical metaphor for the restoration of Judea from the Seleucids. Same in Isaiah that speaks of stars falling from heaven etc. That didn't literally happen at the fall of Babylon but it is symbolic of the fall of kingdoms.Michael BG wrote: I really don’t understand how you can see Mark believing that a past event was the event that ended time and created heaven on earth. It has been argued that Matthew is still early enough like Mark for an expectation of the end of time and the creation of God kingdom on earth still to be seen in the near future, but that both Luke and John no longer see the second coming as coming soon and have put it into a distant future.
[color=#008040]Tenorikuma[/color] wrote: MrMacSon, in my view, Christianity didn't really adopt a "messianic" veneer until the Gospels were written.
MrMacSon wrote: the Synoptic gospels?
Cheers.[color=#008040]Tenorikuma[/color] wrote:
- Yes.
Cheers. I note Michael BG's subsequent comment (and I comment generally below it) -[color=#008040][b]Tenorikuma[/b][/color] wrote:The anachronism of "Christian" aside, I'm not sure. it depends on what the "churches of Judaea" Paul mentions were. I don't think there was a church of any significance in Jerusalem. If there were "Christians" in first-century Palestine, they should have left us some kind of physical evidence. Letters, religious texts, inscriptions, whatever.MrMacSon wrote:Is there evidence there were Christians in Palestine at the time of the War/s?
Whoever the "churches of Judaea" were, Paul was unknown to them by his own admission, and he didn't get his Gospel from them.
I am suspicious of references to 'Christ' alone in the 1st or early 2nd centuries, or claims of "churches of Christ", in the 1st century or early 2nd century (especially in Judea throughout the 2nd century). I wonder if these are references to a Christ other than Christ Jesus, or references to non-Jesus-following churches ie. churches of another 'Christ' or a 'Chrestus'.[color=#BF0000]Michael BG[/color] wrote:
Gal 1:22These seem to be people who believed something which was the same as the people Paul converted.'And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea'
There is a group of people in Jerusalem who Paul wants to accept him (“apostles” in addition to Peter and James [Gal 1:19] and “those of repute” [ Gal 2:2] and “those reputed to be pillars” [2:9]), but there were also “false brothers” [2:4]. He refers to them as “Holy Ones” the same term in uses for people he has converted and therefore it seems likely that they also believed something that his converts believed.
MrMacSon wrote:True, but do you think the "crisis point in their identity with their monotheistic God ... facing the end of their Jewish faith in their God" came then of after the put down of the Bar Kokhba revolt and the then absolute sacking of Jerusalem with no chance of rebuilding the Temple.eedipus wrote:
... the origin of Christianity was probably a result of the destruction of the 2nd. Temple ... by the Romans in the year 70AD.
An interesting proposition.eedipus wrote:
Where was the promised Messiah?
The answer to the problem was the opposite to what they had previously thought. The Messiah was not yet to come, He had already been but he had not been recognized for who he was.
It was probably a Hellenic Jew who fashioned the story of Jesus of Nazareth. He intuitively understood the real meaning of the Greek mystery cults, the Elusinian Mysteries, and wrote the story of Jesus as an allegory for how we should view life and death but, tragically, it was altered and interpreted literally. It is not that the Jesus story is untrue, but it was really intended to point to a greater truth.
eedipus wrote:
The Roman-Jewish Wars between 66 and136AD were a catastrophe for the Jewish people,
and in terms of religious significance I see the sack of Jerusalem and in particular the destruction
of the Temple in 70AD as the watershed between the beginning of Christianity and Rabbinic
Judaism.
The possibility of a large exodus of Jews from Palestine would have galvanized the Jewish intellectual elite to produce an answer that evolved through the centuries to what we have today.
The Bar Kokhba revolt from 132 to 135AD was certainly another crisis point but in making a choice
I would choose the destruction of the Temple in 70AD that produced the crisis in their faith and initiated the origins of Christianity.
Dennis Sutherland.
There are several factors that might change this - that the writings were redacted quite a bit later, or most of the text was written later and set in an earlier time-period.neilgodfrey wrote: I don't see questions of historicity entering into it. All we have is the text so we are limited to interpreting the text. But texts are always and inevitably written from within the historical context of the author and sometimes this will come out in what he is writing. After all, what he is writing is presumably charged with relevance to people in his own day with certain historical experiences.
such as Simon Bar Kochba(?)neilgodfrey wrote: The indications in Mark are that he was writing from the perspective of having seen the destruction of Jerusalem and the chaos related to that -- chaos that included false hopes in a figure who would come to defeat the Romans.
such as Simon Bar Kochba(?)neilgodfrey wrote: ... Mark is comparing the Jesus he is describing with those failed would-be hopefuls.
a Lourié, in the paper I cite and link to above, argues for "the dependency of the Markan recension of [its] Synoptic Apocalypse from the Matthean one" (and concludes they and other texts got it from another source - a Jewish one).neilgodfrey wrote:Mark does not say that the event "ended time" in our sense of that term. There is a wealth of scholarly material establishing the meaning of Mark's terminology within the understanding of the same terms in the OT. Daniel itself speaks of the Son of Manb riding on the clouds and restoring the kingdom forever and ever to the holy people. That did not happen literally. That was typical metaphor for the restoration of Judea from the Seleucids. Same in Isaiah that speaks of stars falling from heaven etc. That didn't literally happen at the fall of Babylon but it is symbolic of the fall of kingdoms.Michael BG wrote: I really don’t understand how you can see Mark believing that a past event was the event that ended time and created heaven on earth. It has been argued that Matthew is still early enougha like Mark for an expectation of 'the end of time', and [for] the creation of God kingdom on earth still to be seen in the near future, but that both Luke and John no longer see the second coming as coming soon and have put it into a distant future.
It is a mistake for us to interpret the metaphorical conventions of ancient mid east literature literally.
"The most important Jewish antecedent of the Messiah arriving at Pentecost is, to my knowledge, 2 Enoch (an Alexandrinian Jewish text preserved in Slavonic and partially in Coptic roughly contemporaneous to the gospels). Like Jesus but unlike all other Jewish messianic figures, Enoch arrives twice, both times at Pentecost"
The Jesus story could parallel what Ptolemy Soter did with Osiris/Apis (later to become Serapis) -ie. either co-opting or inventing a new god to placate the people after a major change (in Ptolemy Soter's case the need to unite the Egyptians and the Greeks after the death of Alexander-the-Great; in the 1st and 2nd centuries it was Jewish upheaval with the sacking of Jerusalem and eventually not hope of re-establishing Jewish primacy there ie. after defeat in the 2nd Roman-Jewish War).eedipus wrote:
.. The Messiah was not yet to come, He had already been but he had not been recognized for who he was.
... [whoever] fashioned the story of Jesus of Nazareth ... intuitively understood the real meaning of the Greek mystery cults, the Elusinian Mysteries, and wrote the story of Jesus as an allegory for how we should view life and death but, tragically, it was altered and interpreted literally. It is not that the Jesus story is untrue, but it was really intended to point to a greater truth.
[from the OP - http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 891#p54891 ]
It doesn't have to be 'either or'eedipus wrote:
The Roman-Jewish Wars between 66 and 136AD were a catastrophe for the Jewish people, and in terms of religious significance I see the sack of Jerusalem and in particular the destruction of the Temple in 70AD as the watershed between the beginning of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.
The possibility of a large exodus of Jews from Palestine would have galvanized the Jewish intellectual elite to produce an answer that evolved through the centuries to what we have today.
The Bar Kokhba revolt from 132 to 135AD was certainly another crisis point but, in making a choice, I would choose the destruction of the Temple in 70AD that produced the crisis in their faith and initiated the origins of Christianity.
Dennis Sutherland.