Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
11. Transmitting the Jesus Traditions
In this and the next chapter Bauckham presents his case for the manner in which the Jesus traditions were transmitted by the eyewitnesses of Jesus, in particular by the Twelve as represented by Peter. He claims that: Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 11”
The following notes are taken from pages 74-76 of Mary Ann Tolbert’s Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (1989). A wonderful collection of ancient novels can be found in Reardon’s Collected Ancient Greek Novels (1989). Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus and others make fascinating reading as they bring us closer to the literary culture in which our gospel authors themselves were embedded. Modern novels are about psychological motives and development. Not so ancient novels. They were about plot and action and the principles of character illustrated through the action. (Tolbert also cites Kermode, whom I feel a little embarrassed to mention again here for who knows how many times now.)
Following is a summary of the characteristics of ancient novels that must affect our views of the gospels, and after the summary I will list a few possible implications. Continue reading “Ancient Novels and the Gospels”
(P.S. on chapter 9: another interesting thing I learned in the previous chapter was that the notion of “translating” a text among some ancients was nothing like our concept. Josephus says he was going to make a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, no more or less, but of course he does do much more and less in his complete retelling of them. That point pretty much allows anyone to interpret Papias’s claim of Matthew being a translation from an original Aramaic as meaning anything.)
10. Models of Oral Tradition
Bauckham attempts in this chapter to place the eyewitnesses within the context of the scholarly models of the processes of transmission of gospel traditions. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 10”
9. Papias on Mark and Matthew
In this chapter Bauckham investigates the words of Papias to further test his claim that Peter’s teachings were indeed the direct source of Mark’s gospel. I found this chapter the most “meaty” so far in Bauckham’s book and enjoyed the wide-ranging discussion and up-front way he addressed the arguments of other scholars rather than relegating contrary thoughts to footnote citations. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 9”
I have completely re-written the last section of my chapter 8 review (the discussion of the fleeing naked youth) after discovering I had initially misread B’s citation of Brown re symbolic interpretations.
8. Anonymous Persons in Mark’s Passion Narrative
I enjoyed Backham’s opening paragraph. Until reading this I had not had opportunity to discover some of the more detailed reasons scholars have wondered if the Passion Narrative pre-existed independently before being incorporated into Mark’s gospel. It is logical to conclude that if an author writes the bulk of his book as a chain-like series of loosely connected episodes, but then concludes with a complex of episodes in which each episode presupposes some other episode, and the presence of one hangs on the webbed links to the others, — it is logical to conclude that the latter was not original to the author who composed the first part. (Unfortunately the logic is not conclusive since one sees exactly the same type of two-part book mirrored in Homer’s Odyssey — a loosely chained sequence of discrete events followed by a highly integrated complex of events.)
Bauckham sums up the main thrust of his “argument” till now as attempting to explain why some characters are named when the norm appears t be for characters to be unnamed. In chapter 8 B considers those contrary cases where the fact that some characters are UNnamed appears to be unusual. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 8”
The Acts of Paul show a remarkable series of affinities with the pastoral epistles, particularly 2 Timothy. There are differences as well, but they are the sorts of differences that one expects to find in stories repeated orally. Someone is labelled as a coppersmith, now was that Alexander or Hermogenes? Paul always teams up with “two’s”: now was it Demas and Hermogenes or Phylelus and Hermogenes in this particular scene? That sort of variation.
In both the Acts of Paul and 2 Timothy we find:
A full list of the differences and citations can be found online at Acts of Paul and the Pastoral Epistles.
Most commentators have concluded that the Acts of Paul draws on the Pastorals as a source for its narrative details. If so, as MacDonald discusses in The Legend and the Apostle, one is unable to explain the differences between the details in the Acts of Paul and 2 Timothy. Why the different names for the 2 missionaries who are undermining households by preaching the resurrection is a past event? for example.
The explanation that does explain both the similarities and the differences, and is consistent with the types of differences we find (mentioned above), and that is discussed in MacDonald’s book and in part sourced to Harnack in Hennecke’s New Testament Apocrphya, is that the author of the Acts of Paul was relying on oral traditions. MacDonald argues that the author of the Pastorals was likewise drawing on the same or similar oral traditions.
Historicity of canonical Acts?
One sometimes hears that evidence for the historicity of our canonical Acts lies in part in its accord with names, places and events in the “genuine Pauline epistles”. If the mere fact that names, places and events appear in two genres of literature by different authors is testimony to historicity, then the same argument would inform us that the Acts of Paul and Thecla is also historical. Unless one says that comparing the “genuine” Pauline letters with the Pastorals is “no fair”. 2 responses:
Hoo boy, looks like Simon of Cyrene is as mutable as Proteas, and like the man in the raincoat at the funeral in James Joyce’s Ulysses — not to mention the young man fleeing naked in Mark (Kermode), with no end of attributable meanings.
Paul Naradin Tarazi in Paul and Mark sees a play between the Greek words for Cyrene and two other words, one of which is Gologotha (this seems so obvious when he points it out I suspect he’s not the first to notice this — but someone please correct me if I’m wrong).
“Of Cyrene/a Cyrenian” is the Greek Kyrenaios. Tarazi links this with the Hebrew qeren meaning horn, connoting power and leadership, including that of a messiah, and cites a string of verses from 1 and 2 Samuel, Job, Psalms, Jeremiah, Lamentation, Ezekiel and Daniel.
Tarazi sees in this the author of Mark calling on the apostle Peter (Simon) to accept the Pauline gospel of the cross in order to become the new leader of the true Christian community, the Pauline gentile churches. While I find the symbolic meanings and puns of interest in what I see as primarily a work of literature I have some problems with Tarazi’s interpretation here. Elsewhere in this commentary Tarazi sees Peter rejecting Paul’s theology. Tarazi writes that the fact that Simon here was “compelled” to carry the cross allows for the difference here. (I’m tempted to dismiss the Hebrew pun in a Greek text for a non-Jewish audience, but there are other places in this gospel where there seem to be rather telling links between the Aramaic and Greek and will have to shelve this question for a future “to look at” date.)
But there is another pun or consonant play. Golgotha, where the crucifixion with Simon’s cross takes place, is translated in Mark as “the place of the skull” — kraniou topos.
Now that one looks interesting. That is surely an intentional link (in adjacent verses) being pushed before the readers in the form of an explanatory note. Kyrenaios – kraniou.
Now they compelled a certain man, Simon Kyrenaios, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear his cross. And they brought him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, kraniou topos. (Mark 15:21-22)
Okay Michael Turton, where are you when we need you? You once had much to write about Golgotha being some sort of metaphor for the Roman Capitol (Head/Skull).
One can also see Schmidt’s article online that I understand was initially responsible for seeing Mark’s crucifixion procession as a mock Roman Triumph culminating at the Temple on the Roman Capitol.
I have in another post here suggested that Simon of Cyrene was described by Mark as “coming from the country” in order to more directly link him with the role of executioner in that triumph.
Revised last paragraph about an hour after first posting this.
In my previous post I commented that the Gospel of Mark is the least “petrine” of the gospels doctrinally. I have since turned to chapter 7 to find I must clear my mind of that presumption and reassess Mark’s extent of “petrine-ness” and read with an open mind.
7. The Petrine Perspective in the Gospel of Mark
Bauckham opens this 7th chapter by stating categorically in relation to the last,
We have seen that Mark’s Gospel has the highest frequency of reference to Peter among the Gospels, and that it uses the inclusio of eyewitness testimony to indicate that Peter was its main eyewitness source. (p.155)
So what began as a hypothesis has become a phenomenon of Mark that “we have seen”. Those who have read my discussion of chapter 6 will know I regard the validity of this assertion as questionable.
Bauckham now asks in chapter 7 if we can go “further than this” and see if there is evidence that the gospel of Mark is narrated from Peter’s personal perspective, and to what extent Peter appears as an individual and not just as a representative of the Twelve. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 7”
Richard in his first comment responding to my Bauckham 4a post took me to task for asking questions but not answering them: “You raise some interesting questions, but do not really answer them. It is not enough to wave a magic wand of doubt . . . ”
I have been looking back over old posts of mine that I am preparing to add here to my blog and cannot avoid the fact. Yes, it’s true, I plead guilty. Continue reading “Questions liberate. Answers bind.”
Mark 13 is often called the Little Apocalypse or the Mount Olivet Prophecy. Many scholars use its content to calculate that the gospel of Mark must have been written either during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 ce or shortly afterwards. (A minority see in this chapter evidence to date the gospel much earlier, to the 40’s ce, but I will be discussing this view in a later post.) Dr Hermann Detering has a different view that I find quite persuasive. He places this chapter in the time of Hadrian and the Bar Kochba war of 135 ce. He does not date the gospel of Mark so late, but sees this chapter as a later redaction.
I posted the following on the JesusMysteries discussion group in 2001 and, as previously indicated, am adding it here as part of my efforts to collate things I have composed over the years. Unfortunately I don’t read German and used a machine translator to work out the main gist of his article. Happily since then his article has been translated into English by Michael Conley and Darrell Doughty and is available online here. So if you have any sense you will dismiss the rest of this post and go straight to the real thing, here (again). Continue reading “Little Apocalypse and the Bar Kochba Revolt”
6. Eyewitnesses “from the Beginning”
On page 114 Bauckham writes:
If the Gospels embody eyewitness testimony, then some at least of the eyewitnesses must have been able to testify not just to particular episodes of particular sayings of Jesus but to the whole course of Jesus’ story. Broadly the four Gospels agree on this scope of this story: it begins with John the Baptist and it ends with the resurrection appearances.
(continuation of the series)
ii. Lydia, Lydia and Lydians
The first convert of Paul is a woman who has gained much wealth from selling “purple”. Purple is, of course, a colour that was indicative of rulership and worn by a select few, mostly Romans of authority.
The name Lydia was well-known to Romans as the ancestral kingdom of the Etruscans, the first inhabitants (and kings) of Rome. Virgil in the first century could write meaningfully of the Rome’s Tiber as the ‘Lydian’ river (Aeneid II.780-781) and call the early Etruscan people of Italy ‘Lydians’ (Aeneid IX.11; VIII.479-480 uses Maeonia, the Homeric name for Lydia). Continue reading “The We-Passages in Acts: a Roman audience interpretation. Pt 10”
I discussed the reference in Paul’s epistles to the Twelve in my more detailed discussion on the Bauckham review, but am also adding what Paul informs us about the Twelve and the apostles here in slightly more depth. If I find on further reading Bauckham that addresses anything I have placed here then I may revise it. Till then . . . . Continue reading “The Twelve: Paul vs Richard Bauckham”