Did the Author of Mark Invent The Empty Tomb?

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The crux of the Easter faith is the empty tomb. Atheists and sketics believe they have proved that Mark made up the empty tomb.Peter Kirby once defended the idea, claiming a huge number of scholars agreed with that. I'm not sure if he still holds to that or not. The paper is still up and the argument was made so I will  refute it. Peter Kirby once wrote:
Several schoalrs doubt the historicity of the empty tomb. I intend to set out the reasons for disbelieving the empty tomb story. I will argue that the empty tomb narrative is the invention of the author Mark. This conclusion will be supported by showing that all the reports of the empty tomb are dependent upon Mark, that there are signs of fictional creation in the empty tomb narrative, that the empty tomb story as told by Mark contains improbabilities, and that traditions of the burial and appearances support a reconstruction of the events that excludes the discovery of the empty tomb.[1]
 In response I am to focus just one aspect, the idea that the empty tomb is the invention of Mark. I will demonstrate that the empty tomb existed in Christian preaching before Mark was written.

 We know there was more than one version of Mark. The Version we have today is not the original version. There are at least three we know of by the end of the first century. The concept of the Ur Mark, a pre-Mark version of Mark that was latter corrected and verged into two versions, one used by Matthew and one by Luke. Neil points out that the study for an "UrMark" the Gospel behind Mark, is really very old, stretching back into the 19th century.[2]But Helmut Koster traces the actual textual criticism to show that there is clearly a Gospel behind the Gospel of Mark. This primary material is much older than the version of Mark as we know it, and there is good reason to believe that it is of great historical significance.

The Gospel of Mark as we know it, draws upon many sources. One such source already mentioned is the Passion Narrative which all the Canonical and the Gospel of Peter draw upon. But Koseter also shows that there was another whole version of Mark that was apparently not known to Matthew and Luke. Whether or not this is the same source as that of the passion narrative we cannot say. In addition to this other version, there are several other sources which can be seen in the Gospel. These may be sources used by the original or they may be those drawn upon by the redactor who put the work into the form in which we know it.
"External evidence for two different versions of Mark circulating at an early date can be derived only from the observation that Luke does not reproduce the section Mark 6:45-8:26. Luke 19: 19= Mark 8:27 follows directly upon Luke 9:17= Mark 6:44. Luke may have used a copy of Mark that had accidentally lost a few pages. However there are some special features which differentiate this particular from the rest of Mark's Gospel. It begins with Jesus going to Bethsaida (Mark 6:45) and ends with the healing of a blind man from Bethsaida (Mark 8:22). Thereafter Jesus goes to Cesaria Philippi and the town of Bethsaida never occurs again the Gospel. This section is also of a number of other doublets of Markan pericopes. 6:44-54 the walking on the water is a variant of the stilling of the tempest (Mark 4:35-41). 8:1-10 the feeding of the 4000 is a secondary elaboration of the feeding of the 5000 (Mark 6:30-44)...The cumulative evidence of these peculiarities may allow the conclusion that an earlier version of Mark, which was used by Luke did not yet contain the Besiada section (Mark 6:45-8:26) whereas Matthew knew the expanded version which must have come into existence very soon after the original composition of the original gospel."[3]


Koester doesn't' argue for a complete UrMarkus ..as a more permeative version of the Gospel, but this evidence does suggest different versions of the same Gospel. While we can't find an UrMarkus, we can see clearly that the redactor who first formed the Gospel used several sources. The passion narrative has been mentioned, moreover, a miracle story source that is compatible with John, two written documents of saying sources are also recognizable. These include a collection of parables and one of apocalyptic material. (p.287)

But does this mean that Mark [the primary redactor] is merely a "cut and paste" which destorts previous sources and collects rumors and legends with no historical value? Where the skeptic sees this aspect, Koester does not. What Koester sees is a faithful copyist who has collected materials known to be of value to the community, and forged them into a certain order for the purposes of edification to the community.
"Mark [the primary redactor] is primarily a faithful collector. In so far as he is also an author he has created an overriding general framework for the incorporation of traditional material but he has still left most of his material intact.His Gospel is therefore a most important witness for an early stage for the formative development of the traditions about Jesus. The world which these traditions describe rarely goes beyond Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem, which is not the world of the author [primary redactor] or the readers for whom the book was intended. Mark's information about Palestine and its people is fairly accurate whenever he leaves his sources intact. But from his redaction of the sources it is clear that the author is not a Jewish Chrstistian and that he does not live in Palestine."[4]

That would explain that frightened, reverenced, alarming rushed quality that one gets reading those passages. The mysterious men in white (angles?) and the lack of sightings. Not becuase there were none but perhaps becasue they didn't know which group to believe. If James was claiming to be the first to see him,[5] (scholarly consensus holds that this is a very early creed)[6] then the claim is made about the women there may have been confusion about which group had primacy. You have two groups of women, the women who stayed at the tomb and Mary Madeline who apparently left early to get John and Peter then came back after then and had one of the sightings.[7] That would explain the confusion about naming which women went to the tomb.[8] My argument is that v8 could well be the proper ending, but this is not proof that Mark made up the tomb, a better reason for the brevity of the chapter is the copy that ends there reflects the Ur Mark which did end there. The longer version may have started with one of the other two versions that are quoted in the synoptic.

The major arguments for Mark inventing the empty tomb, are the brevity of his ending, and it's lack of presence in other sources, both Gospels (except for those dependent upon Mark--Matt and Luke) and it's absence from Paul's work.[9]Paul's lack of mention I exlpain in a similar way to Mark's lack of attention to post resurrection sightings, which offer above (this is my own original argument): there were two different factions, or maybe even more than two, one of them associated with James as the first witness to risen Jesus, and the other being the communities that produced Mark, Matthew, and John. Paul spent time in the James community when he was in Jerusalem following the three years he spent in Asia after his stay in Damascus when he was first converted.

I'm not saying that these different communities disagreed about James and the women. I'm not saying the community that produced Matthew said "no James did not see him." Nor am I contending that James said "Mary didn't see him." But each community lauded the witness of it's members. So the community with Mary in it emphasized that Mary was in on the discovery of the empty tomb. while the James community focused upon James's experience of seeing his risen brother, presumably first. After all this was two decades before the Gospels began to be made known to people in written form. Without having a Bible to read it in, the James followers probalby just said "some women saw him too, I don't know who they were just women, but James saw him!" The community with the women in it probably said "Hey our women saw him, and btw James saw him too!"

Helmutt Koester

The key question is, is there a literary tradition that is not dependent upon Mark that includes the empty tomb? Yes, there is one. It's not only independent of Mark but it existed before the Gospel of Mark was written.The Gospel of Peter was discovered in Egypt at Oxryranchus in the 19th century. It was probably written around 200 AD and contains some Gnostic elements, but is basically Orthodox. There are certain basic differences between Gospel of Peter (GPet) and the canonically, but mainly the two are in agreement.

Gpet follows the OT as a means of describing the passion narrative, rather than following Matthew. Jurgen Denker uses this observation to argue that GPet is independent and is based upon an independent source. In addition to Denker, Koester, Raymond Brown, and John Dominick Crossan also agree.[10] It is upon this basis that Crossan constructs his "cross Gospel" which he dates in the middle of the first century, meaning, an independent source upon which all the canonical and GPet draw,(also see my article dating the tomb story in the passion narrative). But the independence of GPet from all of these sources is also guaranteed by its failure to follow any one of them. Raymond Brown, who built his early reputation on study of GPet, follows the sequence of narrative in GPet and compares it in very close reading with that of the canonical Gospels. He finds that GPet is not dependent upon the canonical, although it is closer in the order of events to Matt/Mark rather than to Luke and John. Many Christian apologists think it’s their duty to show that GPet is dependent upon the canonical gospels, but it is basically a proved fact that it’s not. Such apologists are misguided in understanding the true apologetic gold mine in this fact. The fact that GPet is not dependent enables it to prove common ancestry with the canonicals and that establishes the early date of the circulation of the empty tomb as a part of the Jesus narrative. GPet is neither a copy of the canonical, nor are they a copy of GPet, but both use a common source in the Passion narrative which dates to AD 50 according to Crosson and Koester. Brown follows the flow of the narrative closely and presents a 23 point list in a huge table that illustrates the point just made above. I cannot reproduce the entire table, but just to give a few examples.[11]

Helmutt Koester argues for the “Ur Gospel” and passion narrative that ends with the empty tomb. He sees GPet as indicative of this ancient source. Again, the argument is not that GPet is older than the Canonicals but that they all five share common ancestry with the Ur source. There is much secondary material in Gpet, meaning, additions that crept in and are not part of the Ur Gospel material; the anti-Jewish propaganda is intensified, for example Hared condemns Jesus rather than Pilate.
Gospel of Peter (GPet) follows the OT as a means of describing the passion narrative, rather following Matthew. Jurgden Denker uses this observation to argue that GPet is independent is based upon an independent source. In addition to Denker, Koester, Borwn, and the very popular Charles Dominik Corssan also agree[12]

One might be tempted to argue that it's just one source, but Mark takes it form the Passion Narrative so it's still just one source. Not so, Raymond Brown proved there are two independent sources. The Passion narrative does not follow the synoptics are John, they all share a common ancestor, but Mark and Passion narrative are copied as idepndent sources. Neither depends upon the other. Mark is original and Passion narratives follows patterns from the OT. We are talking about reading that are preserved in latter documents. So while the form in which we have Gospel of Peter is latter than Mark the readings that survive in it or of a form that show they are older than Mark. They are not just copying the OT they are telling the story in the from of certain OT renditions.
      
Brown, who built his early reputation on study of GPet, follows the sequence of narrative in GPet and compares it in very close reading with that of the canonical Gospels. He finds that GPet is not dependent upon the canonical, although it is closer in the order of events to Matt/Mark rather than to Luke and John.
GPet follow the classical flow from trail through crucifixion to burial to tomb presumably with post resurrection appearances to follow. The GPet sequence of individual episodes, however, is not the same as that of any canonical Gospel...When one looks at the overall sequence in the 23 items I listed in table 10, it would take very great imagination to picture the author of GPet studying Matthew carefully, deliberately shifting episodes around and copying in episodes form Luke and John to produce the present sequence.[13]

Brown follows the flow of the narrative closely and presents a 23 point list in a huge table wich illustrates the point just made above. I cannot reproduce the enire table, but just to give a few examples:
In the Canonical Gospel's Passion Narrative we have an example of Matt. working conservatively and Luke working more freely with the Marcan outline and of each adding material: but neither produced an end product so radically diverse from Mark as GPet is from Matt." [14]
Koester demonstrates agreement with many scholars as he puts the date for the Passion narrative mid first century. However, "there are other traces in the Gospel of Peter which demonstrate an old and independent tradition." The way the suffering of Jesus is described by the use of passages from the old Testament without quotation formulae is, in terms of the tradition, older than the explicit scriptural proof; it represents the oldest form of the passion of Jesus.Philipp Vielhauer, Jurgen Denker argues that the Gospel of Peter shares this tradition of OT quotation with the Canonicals but is not dependent upon them. [15] Koester writes, "John Dominic Crosson has gone further [than Denker]...he argues that this activity results in the composition of a literary document at a very early date i.e. in the middle of the First century CE" (Ibid). Said another way, the interpretation of Scripture as the formation of the passion narrative became an independent document, a ur-Gospel, as early as the middle of the first century! This means the source for the Passion narrative is much older than our version of Mark, it's only 18 years after original events. It constitutes two independent sources testifying to the empty tomb early on, Mark (Ur Mark) and Pre Mark passion narrative. Even if we want to say it's just one source which stands behind all of these different Gospels it removes the onus that Mark invented the tomb and it places the tomb well witin living memory of eye witnesses.

PS: Bonus post, "Did Brown Believe in Pre Mark Redaction?


by this question is also included the assertion some have made that Brown thought the guards were fiction,


Some have argued that Brown did not believe in a Pre Mark redaction that he only attributes the difference n GPet and Matthew to Gepet copying from Emery not from the real Ms. He does say he thinks the author copied Matt from memory not that there is no pre mark source.
A disinterested party (Jason Pratt Looked it up for me in his copy of Brown here are his findings :
Joe, per our phone call before lunch,


I went back to pp.1305-1310, which discusses the GosMatt tomb-guard story (or stories) in relation to the singular tomb-guard story in GosPete.

The general gist of Father Brown's argument here remains the same (including with his own reference to Appendix 1's overall discussion of GosPete): GosPete's author imported the guard story from (at least) two sources, those being his remembrance of reading/hearing GosMatt (but not having a copy at hand), and his remembrance of hearing someone else talk about a form on the tomb guard story independent from GosMatt's.

The citation you're probably thinking of, comes from pp.1305-1306, as Fr. Brown introduces this subsection.

"I have argued that Matt [i.e. GosMatt's final author/redactor/editor/whatever] broke up a consecutive guard-at-the-sepulcher story to interweave it with the women-at-the-tomb story, while _GPet_ PRESERVED THE ORIGINAL CONSECUTIVE FORM OF THE GUARD STORY. [my all-caps emphasis] That does not mean, however, that the _GPet_ story is more original.

[...soon afterward on p.1306...]

"In this particular instance, in my judgment, what is found in _GPet_ [concerning the tomb-guards] is best explained in terms of the author's knowing the canonical Gospels (perhaps by distant memory of having heard them), especially Matt, as well as an independent form of the guard-at-the-sepulcher story, and of his own activity in combining these two sources of material."

This suggests that Fr. Brown thinks GosPete's other source for the tomb-guard story traces back orally behind GosMatt to a shared source of some sort, thus that some form of the tomb-guard story predates both authors.

Footnote 50 ends with something similar: "I would suspect that these [verbal similarities to usages of terms found only in GosMatt's tomb-guard story but nowhere else in GosMatt] are elements that Matt found in the original guard-at-the-sepulcher story and that therefore the author of _GPet_ could have also found them there without depending on Matt." This sentence makes no sense unless Fr.B is thinking of GosPete's oral tradition accurately reporting a shared prior tomb-guard story prior to GosMatt.

This has nothing at all to do with a pre-Markan Passion Narrative so far, however. At most he's detecting, through source criticism (via some redaction and form criticism), a tomb story predating GosMatt. Which no one anywhere denies, even among hypersceptics, so far as I know. Even the most radically late JMythers don't think "Matthew" invented the empty tomb! (Although who knows, maybe there are Griesbach or Farrar proponents among them somewhere. That would be sort-of amusing. {g})



Sources








 [1] Peter Kirby, The Case Against the Empty Tomb, fall 2002. 176 Online materiel pdf  http://depts.drew.edu/jhc/kirby_tombcase.pdf
accessed 4/12/14

[2] Stephen Neil, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1961, Oxford: Oxford University Press. see UR Marcus.

[3] Koester, 285

[4] Ibid.Koester p.289

[5] 1 Corinthians 15:5.

[6] Peter May, quoting Gary Habermas, "the Resurrection of Jesus and the Witness of Paul." Be Thinking blog. on line
May is a retired GP who held layman's rank of leadership in the Church of England.Peter May served on the General Synod of the Church of England from 1985 to 2010 and was Chair of the UCCF Trust Board from  2003 to 2010. He is a retired GP.He cites  C.H. Dodd The Founder of Christianity Fontana 1971, and Gary R. Habermas The Risen Jesus & Future Hope Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 2003, Chapter 1.

[7] Joseph Hinman, "Resurrection Harmony Page 1," The Religious A prori, no date given. on line:
http://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2010/05/resurrection-harmony-page-1.html  accessed 4/13/2014

Please read my page on The Religious a priori and follow my sense of harmony of the events. we see Mary leave when they first see the tomb stone is ajar. She goes to get Peter and John, returning after them, and seeing Jesus.

[8] Peter Kirby, Op cit. 176.

[9] Helmutt Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, Their History and Development. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990, 208.

[10] Ibid, 217

[11] Ibid. 218

[12] Raymond Brown, Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, A commentary on the Passionnarratives in the Four Gospels. Volume 2. New York: Doubleday 1994, 1322


[13] Ibid., 1325

[14]  Koester, Op cit, 218

[15] Ibid

Comments

The Pixie said…
Joe: In response I am to focus just one aspect, the idea that the empty tomb is the invention of Mark. I will demonstrate that the empty tomb existed in Christian preaching before Mark was written.

That is a disappointment. You said you were going to address some of the issues we were debating last week. Instead, you have posted about something we do not disagree on. I was assuming the Empty Tomb was invented around 50 AD, well before Mark, but too late for Paul.

Joe: We know there was more than one version of Mark.

It would be fairer to say that there were various versions of the gospel, getting added to and to some degree edited. The texts were pretty fluid (see Koester). We get some snapshots of them in the canonical gospels; these four got preserved for whatever reason.

Joe: What Koester sees is a faithful copyist who has collected materials known to be of value to the community, and forged them into a certain order for the purposes of edification to the community.

Fair enough. I think we can assume Mark believed it was all true (if presented for apologetics), but let us not make the mistake of assuming it had to therefore be true.

Joe: If James was claiming to be the first to see him,[5] (scholarly consensus holds that this is a very early creed)[6]

Not true. The original creed has Peter seeing the risen Jesus first, as the verse in reference [5] indicates. Maybe a simple mistake on your part, but you need to re-think this.

Joe: You have two groups of women, the women who stayed at the tomb and Mary Madeline who apparently left early to get John and Peter then came back after then and had one of the sightings.[7] That would explain the confusion about naming which women went to the tomb.[8]

Mark 16 gives no indication of any confusion. Three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who after seeing the man, fled the tomb and never told anyone.

The confusion is because later authors changed the story.

Joe: Paul's lack of mention I exlpain in a similar way to Mark's lack of attention to post resurrection sightings, which offer above (this is my own original argument): there were two different factions, or maybe even more than two, one of them associated with James as the first witness to risen Jesus, and the other being the communities that produced Mark, Matthew, and John. Paul spent time in the James community when he was in Jerusalem following the three years he spent in Asia after his stay in Damascus when he was first converted.

Paul was very clear that James saw Jesus after pretty much everyone else (possibly even a year or so later), so right off the bat this is wrong. Also, you neglect to say if you think Paul is in Peter's camp or James', which would seem fundamental to your argument. So really I have no idea what your argument actually is.

The account in 1 Cor 15 is generally considered a creed, a belief recited frequently within the church. It is highly unlikely Paul would edit the Empty Tomb out of the creed - that was the basic thrust of your last blog post remember! Your reasoning certainly gives no motive to do so because Paul goes on to recount exactly who was first to see Jesus. Including the Empty Tomb in the creed would not alter that.

And the same applies to Mark. Last time you were arguing that the authors would not modify the story at all. Now you are arguing the Mark omitted whole chunks - and very significant chunks at that - for political reasons.
The Pixie said…
Joe: Helmutt Koester argues for the “Ur Gospel” and passion narrative that ends with the empty tomb.

He also argues that the Empty Tomb was made up. Odd how you cite him as an expert when he says what you want to hear and ignore him otherwise.

Joe: Gpet follows the OT as a means of describing the passion narrative, rather than following Matthew. Jurgen Denker uses this observation to argue that GPet is independent and is based upon an independent source.

And that independent source is the OT! If it was an eye witness, you might have a point, but if the source is a text written centuries before the event, not so much.

Joe: Raymond Brown, who built his early reputation on study of GPet, follows the sequence of narrative in GPet and compares it in very close reading with that of the canonical Gospels. He finds that GPet is not dependent upon the canonical, although it is closer in the order of events to Matt/Mark rather than to Luke and John.

Quite to the contrary of your claim, Brown believes Peter is dependent on the canonicals, and the reason for the different ordering is that he was working from memory.

Brown: After working with the table and lists above (...), I am convinced that one explanation makes better sense of the relationship between GPet and the canonical Gospels than any other. I doubt that the author of GPet had any written Gospel before him, although he was familiar with Matt because he had read it carefully in the past and/or heard it read several times in community worship on the Lord's Day, so that it gave the dominant shaping to his thoughts.
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah vol 2, pages 1334-35

As you say, Brown built his reputation on Peter, he very much is the world expert. If he says Peter is based on Matthew first and foremost, seems a good bet it really is. And as you say, this was written around 200 AD. If the author was using other sources - which is entirely possible, as there were a lot of texts out there, then we have no idea what that text was, how reliable it was, when it was written, etc.
The Pixie said…
Joe: by this question is also included the assertion some have made that Brown thought the guards were fiction,

Some have argued that Brown did not believe in a Pre Mark redaction that he only attributes the difference n GPet and Matthew to Gepet copying from Emery not from the real Ms. He does say he thinks the author copied Matt from memory not that there is no pre mark source.


With regards to the guards on the tomb, Brown takes the view that the story developed independently of the gospels we have. The author of Matthew adopted an early version in his gospel. The author of Peter adopted a later - and more water-tight - version in his story.

That does not mean that the guards story pre-dated Mark, and Brown makes that very clear:

Brown: I have argued that Matt broke up a consecutive guard-at-the-sepulcher story to interweave it with the women-at-the-tomb story, while GPet preserved the original consecutive form of the guard story. That does not mean, however, that the GPet story is more original. ... While I disagree firmly with Crossan's contention that much of the GPet passion account antedated the canonical passion accounts...
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah vol 2, pages 1305-06

Joe: This suggests that Fr. Brown thinks GosPete's other source for the tomb-guard story traces back orally behind GosMatt to a shared source of some sort, thus that some form of the tomb-guard story predates both authors.

Pre-dates Matthew and Peter, but does not pre-date Mark.

Note that Brown rejects the guards as historical:

Brown: Yet there is a major argument against historicity that is impressive indeed. Not only do the other Gospels not mention the guard at the sepulcher, but the presence of the guard there would make what they narrate about the tomb almost unintelligible. The three other Gospels have women come to the tomb on Easter, and the only obstacle to their entrance that is mentioned is the stone. ... There are other internal implausibilities in Matt's account (e.g., that the Jewish authorities knew the words of Jesus about the resurrection and understood them, when his own disciples did not; that the guards could lie successfully about the astounding heavenly intervention); ....
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah vol 2, p1311-12

Please note that Brown does NOT goes on to knock down the argument after saying "there is a major argument against historicity that is impressive indeed".

To the contrary, he goes on to say that that this "does not mean the story is without value", and that "its main thrust was an apocalyptic eschatology dramatization of the power of God to make the cause of he Son successful against all human opposition".

He adds: "Truth conveyed by drama can at times be more effectively impressed on people's minds than truth conveyed by history". He is very clear that the guards are a drama and NOT a history.

You need to read it without your Christian-tinted glasses and see what he really says.
Joe: We know there was more than one version of Mark.

It would be fairer to say that there were various versions of the gospel, getting added to and to some degree edited. The texts were pretty fluid (see Koester). We get some snapshots of them in the canonical gospels; these four got preserved for whatever reason.

"Mark" is a reference to the Gospel so really no difference in your comment and mine. I was going to deal with some of the issues but I don';t have tine this week,i will get to them; a lot of those you take the position just to deny the empty tomb,
With regards to the guards on the tomb, Brown takes the view that the story developed independently of the gospels we have. The author of Matthew adopted an early version in his gospel. The author of Peter adopted a later - and more water-tight - version in his story.

NONONONONO!!!! not it, GPet follows a second tradition that is not based upon the Specks,that does not mean it disagrees with them. It establishes guards on the empty tomb,So it;s just backing up Matthew,,



Joe: If James was claiming to be the first to see him,[5] (scholarly consensus holds that this is a very early creed)[6]

Not true. The original creed has Peter seeing the risen Jesus first, as the verse in reference [5] indicates. Maybe a simple mistake on your part, but you need to re-think this.

1 cor: 15:4"that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve." what did I say? James? yes Pete, I wonder why he uses Cephus?

Joe: You have two groups of women, the women who stayed at the tomb and Mary Madeline who apparently left early to get John and Peter then came back after then and had one of the sightings.[7] That would explain the confusion about naming which women went to the tomb.[8]

Mark 16 gives no indication of any confusion. Three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who after seeing the man, fled the tomb and never told anyone.

It doesn't specify what Magdelon did, does;say she stayed, John specifies that she left and came to Peter and John probably because she was in the John group.

The confusion is because later authors changed the story.

there are no significant story changes, minor changes are due to who went with what group, the women wet to different communities,

Joe: Paul's lack of mention I exlpain in a similar way to Mark's lack of attention to post resurrection sightings, which offer above (this is my own original argument): there were two different factions, or maybe even more than two, one of them associated with James as the first witness to risen Jesus, and the other being the communities that produced Mark, Matthew, and John. Paul spent time in the James community when he was in Jerusalem following the three years he spent in Asia after his stay in Damascus when he was first converted.

Paul was very clear that James saw Jesus after pretty much everyone else (possibly even a year or so later), so right off the bat this is wrong. Also, you neglect to say if you think Paul is in Peter's camp or James', which would seem fundamental to your argument. So really I have no idea what your argument actually is.

That's just a minion detail of the theory, my argent still flies without that detail, it's not based upon that one passage. There are many reasons to think there was a schism between James and Pete, I don't mean to over emphasize,I doubt it wasa real schism,


The account in 1 Cor 15 is generally considered a creed, a belief recited frequently within the church. It is highly unlikely Paul would edit the Empty Tomb out of the creed - that was the basic thrust of your last blog post remember! Your reasoning certainly gives no motive to do so because Paul goes on to recount exactly who was first to see Jesus. Including the Empty Tomb in the creed would not alter that.

You are assuming they have a reason to make the empty tomb into a point of faith.
from the beginning,there had to be an empty tomb if he rose,they did believe he rose so the empty tomb had to be part of the Earline version. But it did not have to be an article of faith or a major issue. It is really more a product of apologetic


And the same applies to Mark. Last time you were arguing that the authors would not modify the story at all. Now you are arguing the Mark omitted whole chunks - and very significant chunks at that - for political reasons.
12/10/2018 03:23:00 AM

No I never said they would never change anything. My original presentation of the argument allows for minor changes, they wouldn't make major changes,



The Pixie said…
Joe: Helmutt Koester argues for the “Ur Gospel” and passion narrative that ends with the empty tomb.

He also argues that the Empty Tomb was made up. Odd how you cite him as an expert when he says what you want to hear and ignore him otherwise.

the historical critical method doesn't use big names as objects of faith. the fact that Koester can be right about some things and wrong about other things is assumed in any undersigning of historical critical methods,

Joe: Gpet follows the OT as a means of describing the passion narrative, rather than following Matthew. Jurgen Denker uses this observation to argue that GPet is independent and is based upon an independent source.

And that independent source is the OT! If it was an eye witness, you might have a point, but if the source is a text written centuries before the event, not so much.

No. you don;t understand the issue, There is a carrier of GPete's idea someone he consulted that gave him the version that follows the OT. He is quoting an intermediary docent that recorders the passion and lines it up with the OT, The GPet Author is not doing it of his own original writing,



Joe: Raymond Brown, who built his early reputation on study of GPet, follows the sequence of narrative in GPet and compares it in very close reading with that of the canonical Gospels. He finds that GPet is not dependent upon the canonical, although it is closer in the order of events to Matt/Mark rather than to Luke and John.

Quite to the contrary of your claim, Brown believes Peter is dependent on the canonicals, and the reason for the different ordering is that he was working from memory.

No that is false

Brown: After working with the table and lists above (...), I am convinced that one explanation makes better sense of the relationship between GPet and the canonical Gospels than any other. I doubt that the author of GPet had any written Gospel before him, although he was familiar with Matt because he had read it carefully in the past and/or heard it read several times in community worship on the Lord's Day, so that it gave the dominant shaping to his thoughts.
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah vol 2, pages 1334-35

you just keep refusing to see the bit I quote where he says there is another tradition Pet uses, even if he quoted it from memory he;s still using and it is not his brain not Matthew,

As you say, Brown built his reputation on Peter, he very much is the world expert. If he says Peter is based on Matthew first and foremost, seems a good bet it really is.

Nowhere dose he say it;s based upon Matthew hesay sit;s not dependent on any synthetic

I QUOTED IT UPFRONT IN THE OP AND YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE IT


1305-1310, which discusses the GosMatt tomb-guard story (or stories) in relation to the singular tomb-guard story in GosPete.

The general gist of Father Brown's argument here remains the same (including with his own reference to Appendix 1's overall discussion of GosPete): GosPete's author imported the guard story from (at least) two sources, those being his remembrance of reading/hearing GosMatt (but not having a copy at hand), and his remembrance of hearing someone else talk about a form on the tomb guard story independent from GosMatt's.


And as you say, this was written around 200 AD. If the author was using other sources - which is entirely possible, as there were a lot of texts out there, then we have no idea what that text was, how reliable it was, when it was written, etc.
12/10/2018 03:25:00 AM

Brown makes it clear the other soruce was not late not second aneurysm it was early maybe before Mark,

The Pixie said…
Joe: by this question is also included the assertion some have made that Brown thought the guards were fiction,

Some have argued that Brown did not believe in a Pre Mark redaction that he only attributes the difference n GPet and Matthew to Gepet copying from Emery not from the real Ms. He does say he thinks the author copied Matt from memory not that there is no pre mark source.

Yes people like Skepie you are not talking about scholars but message board atheists,

With regards to the guards on the tomb, Brown takes the view that the story developed independently of the gospels we have. The author of Matthew adopted an early version in his gospel. The author of Peter adopted a later - and more water-tight - version in his story.


Noting brown says implies that it was latter

That does not mean that the guards story pre-dated Mark, and Brown makes that very clear:

Brown: I have argued that Matt broke up a consecutive guard-at-the-sepulcher story to interweave it with the women-at-the-tomb story, while GPet preserved the original consecutive form of the guard story. That does not mean, however, that the GPet story is more original. ... While I disagree firmly with Crossan's contention that much of the GPet passion account antedated the canonical passion accounts...
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah vol 2, pages 1305-06


taking him out of context still trying to turn him into an unbeliever,

page 1306 Footnote 50 ends with something similar: "I would suspect that these [verbal similarities to usages of terms found only in GosMatt's tomb-guard story but nowhere else in GosMatt] are elements that Matt found in the original guard-at-the-sepulcher story and that therefore the author of _GPet_ could have also found them there without depending on Matt." This sentence makes no sense unless Fr.B is thinking of GosPete's oral tradition accurately reporting a shared prior tomb-guard story prior to GosMatt.

this clearly says Matt and maybe Pete use an earlier tradition than Matt for the guards,




Joe: This suggests that Fr. Brown thinks GosPete's other source for the tomb-guard story traces back orally behind GosMatt to a shared source of some sort, thus that some form of the tomb-guard story predates both authors.

right that supports my argument

Pre-dates Matthew and Peter, but does not pre-date Mark.

we are only talking about five or 10 years, so what that just as easily proves my poit about Mark that he;s only leaving stuff out not nixing it,

Note that Brown rejects the guards as historical:

Brown: Yet there is a major argument against historicity that is impressive indeed. Not only do the other Gospels not mention the guard at the sepulcher, but the presence of the guard there would make what they narrate about the tomb almost unintelligible. The three other Gospels have women come to the tomb on Easter, and the only obstacle to their entrance that is mentioned is the stone. ...

He is making assumptions about the epiphanies we don't need to make. (1) No reasom to think the women knew about the guards, (2)of course they are guessing as to actual dialogue,in real life the women may have been going what about the guards?


There are other internal implausibilities in Matt's account (e.g., that the Jewish authorities knew the words of Jesus about the resurrection and understood them, when his own disciples did not; that the guards could lie successfully about the astounding heavenly intervention); ....
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah vol 2, p1311-12

what else are the guards going to do? that;s not a reason to doubt they were there,

Please note that Brown does NOT goes on to knock down the argument after saying "there is a major argument against historicity that is impressive indeed".

yes he does, you have to read the whole book

To the contrary, he goes on to say that that this "does not mean the story is without value", and that "its main thrust was an apocalyptic eschatology dramatization of the power of God to make the cause of he Son successful against all human opposition".

that is not saying they made them up, that;s just bible shcoalrtalk

He adds: "Truth conveyed by drama can at times be more effectively impressed on people's minds than truth conveyed by history". He is very clear that the guards are a drama and NOT a history.


you are confused about the concept of drama. Brown does not oppose drama to history,

You need to read it without your Christian-tinted glasses and see what he really says.

you need to read it with a theological,education because you don;t get what hes saying

I quoted Brown saying Matt used pare existing source for guards that gives me two sources of the guards both first century that is all my arguments needs to win,,




Brown 1306

"In this particular instance, in my judgment, what is found in _GPet_ [concerning the tomb-guards] is best explained in terms of the author's knowing the canonical Gospels (perhaps by distant memory of having heard them), especially Matt, as well as an independent form of the guard-at-the-sepulcher story, and of his own activity in combining these two sources of material."

that does not preclude pre dating mark
Anonymous said…
With regards to the guards on the tomb, Brown takes the view that the story developed independently of the gospels we have. The author of Matthew adopted an early version in his gospel. The author of Peter adopted a later - and more water-tight - version in his story.

NONONONONO!!!! not it, GPet follows a second tradition that is not based upon the Specks,that does not mean it disagrees with them. It establishes guards on the empty tomb,So it;s just backing up Matthew,,

You are reading more into it than Brown says. Yes there is a second tradition of some sort, but Brown does not say that it is true or comes from an eye witness. It is just another story circulating. It did not disagree with the canonicals (as far as we know), but all we know of it is it had the guards on the tomb, and that Matthew draws on it.

Joe: It doesn't specify what Magdelon did, does;say she stayed, John specifies that she left and came to Peter and John probably because she was in the John group.

The text goives no indication that they split up, that "they" does not refer to all three women. You are pressing your own intertpration on the text at the expense of what the author actually said.

Joe: there are no significant story changes, minor changes are due to who went with what group, the women wet to different communities,

Sure, if you pretend the author merant something else. But if you read what the author actually says, Mark says the women fled together and none of them told anyone, and that Jesus met the disciple in Galilee.

Joe: You are assuming they have a reason to make the empty tomb into a point of faith.
from the beginning,there had to be an empty tomb if he rose,they did believe he rose so the empty tomb had to be part of the Earline version. But it did not have to be an article of faith or a major issue. It is really more a product of apologetic


The fact that we spend so much time arguing about it shows its importance.

The fact that the Empty Tom,b was the climax of Mark shows how important it was.

Do you really think it is less important than the burial, which Paul does mention?

Joe: No I never said they would never change anything. My original presentation of the argument allows for minor changes, they wouldn't make major changes,

So omitting the appearances the risen Jesus in Jerusalem is just a minor changes?

Omitting the Empty Tomb is just a minor change?

It seems to me that what you consider minor and majjor is predicated on what is useful for your hypothesis.

Pix
Anonymous said…
Joe: the historical critical method doesn't use big names as objects of faith. the fact that Koester can be right about some things and wrong about other things is assumed in any undersigning of historical critical methods,

Okay. But the issue is whether you are cherry-picking. What are your criteria for accepting or rejecting Koester's claims?

Joe: No. you don;t understand the issue, There is a carrier of GPete's idea someone he consulted that gave him the version that follows the OT. He is quoting an intermediary docent that recorders the passion and lines it up with the OT, The GPet Author is not doing it of his own original writing,

I am going by what Brown says, and he indicates the ultimate source ewas the OT, not an eye witness.

Joe: you just keep refusing to see the bit I quote where he says there is another tradition Pet uses, even if he quoted it from memory he;s still using and it is not his brain not Matthew,

I already acknowledged that. The author used several sources, likely all from memory, and so what we have is a hodge podge, all out of order.

Joe: Nowhere dose he say it;s based upon Matthew hesay sit;s not dependent on any synthetic

Yes, Joe he does. He says exactly that in the text I quoted.

Joe: I QUOTED IT UPFRONT IN THE OP AND YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE IT

If you are refering to [13], then all that says is that the author did not have the book in front of him. That would be why he was obliged to work from memory.

Joe: The general gist of Father Brown's argument here remains the same (including with his own reference to Appendix 1's overall discussion of GosPete): GosPete's author imported the guard story from (at least) two sources, those being his remembrance of reading/hearing GosMatt (but not having a copy at hand), and his remembrance of hearing someone else talk about a form on the tomb guard story independent from GosMatt's.

Exactly. The author was basing his gospel mostly on Matthew, but working from memory. And he used other sources too (presumably also from memory), including the other canonicals and something with the more developed guard story.

Pix

Anonymous Anonymous said...
With regards to the guards on the tomb, Brown takes the view that the story developed independently of the gospels we have. The author of Matthew adopted an early version in his gospel. The author of Peter adopted a later - and more water-tight - version in his story.

NONONONONO!!!! not it, GPet follows a second tradition that is not based upon the Specks,that does not mean it disagrees with them. It establishes guards on the empty tomb,So it;s just backing up Matthew,,

You are reading more into it than Brown says. Yes there is a second tradition of some sort, but Brown does not say that it is true or comes from an eye witness. It is just another story circulating. It did not disagree with the canonicals (as far as we know), but all we know of it is it had the guards on the tomb, and that Matthew draws on it.

Brown is not an unbeliever, he believed in the resurrection. There is no reason to think a second trad ion was just made up and not connected to the witness of the community Brown does not say that, scholars rarely think that way.

Joe: It doesn't specify what Magdelon did, does;say she stayed, John specifies that she left and came to Peter and John probably because she was in the John group.

The text goives no indication that they split up, that "they" does not refer to all three women. You are pressing your own intertpration on the text at the expense of what the author actually said.


John's text does, Mark doesn't say enough about it to draw conclusion. stop acting like the other Gospels are just knock offs and only Mark has a witness,

Joe: there are no significant story changes, minor changes are due to who went with what group, the women wet to different communities,

Sure, if you pretend the author merant something else. But if you read what the author actually says, Mark says the women fled together and none of them told anyone, and that Jesus met the disciple in Galilee.


That's because the women who went with his community told him that. that was probably true for them they didn't say MM split off first before they went into the tomb and perhaps others fled right after, So Mark is getting it second hand


Joe: You are assuming they have a reason to make the empty tomb into a point of faith.
from the beginning,there had to be an empty tomb if he rose,they did believe he rose so the empty tomb had to be part of the Earline version. But it did not have to be an article of faith or a major issue. It is really more a product of apologetic

The fact that we spend so much time arguing about it shows its importance.

It has that now because apologists turned it into an issue with books like Who moved the Stone,

The fact that the Empty Tomb was the climax of Mark shows how important it was.

No it doesn't if that were true he would have mad a bigger thing of it. His gospel really ends with the frightened women,,

Do you really think it is less important than the burial, which Paul does mention?

In that early period it may have been. I'm only saying that they didn't make the tomb itself the issue because they weren't doing apologetic,



Joe: No I never said they would never change anything. My original presentation of the argument allows for minor changes, they wouldn't make major changes,

So omitting the appearances the risen Jesus in Jerusalem is just a minor changes?


of course it's also necessary because Mark was probably in the Galilee waiting for Jesus to go there,He had no idea who was getting appeared to in Jerusalem.Then there may have been some feeling of conception with the fancily of Jesus, because Mark sided with Peter,who wet to Galelee


Omitting the Empty Tomb is just a minor change?

what is the angel talking about if there's no resurrection in mark? if there is a res there is an empty tomb, Bu the does't make a big thing of it,



12/10/2018 09:47:00 AM Delete
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Joe: the historical critical method doesn't use big names as objects of faith. the fact that Koester can be right about some things and wrong about other things is assumed in any undersigning of historical critical methods,

Okay. But the issue is whether you are cherry-picking. What are your criteria for accepting or rejecting Koester's claims?

he makes no argument or offer no fact to disprove the res, He explains it in a weak wiay with no proof,

Joe: No. you don;t understand the issue, There is a carrier of GPete's idea someone he consulted that gave him the version that follows the OT. He is quoting an intermediary docent that recorders the passion and lines it up with the OT, The GPet Author is not doing it of his own original writing,

I am going by what Brown says, and he indicates the ultimate source ewas the OT, not an eye witness.

No that is not what he;s saying. Fir one thing he does not think Matt copied the other source for the order of the narrate because if he had it would not be an original issue for the dinette source to follow the OT.

Brown says that GPet followed an nineteen source not dependent upon the synoptic,That means the synoptic are not dependent up it either other wise they would be the same,He never says Mat is dependent upon the indigent source it would not be independent if they were the same,


Joe: you just keep refusing to see the bit I quote where he says there is another tradition Pet uses, even if he quoted it from memory he;s still using and it is not his brain not Matthew,

I already acknowledged that. The author used several sources, likely all from memory, and so what we have is a hodge podge, all out of order.

which means there are two independent sources documenting the guards not just one,

Joe: Nowhere dose he say it's based upon Matthew he say sit;s not dependent on any synthetic

Yes, Joe he does. He says exactly that in the text I quoted.

Joe: I QUOTED IT UPFRONT IN THE OP AND YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE IT

If you are refering to [13], then all that says is that the author did not have the book in front of him. That would be why he was obliged to work from memory.

then why are you trying to say "he indicates the ultimate source e was the OT, not an eye witness." you don;t understand how the OT fits into it because it's not negating an eye witness,

Joe: The general gist of Father Brown's argument here remains the same (including with his own reference to Appendix 1's overall discussion of GosPete): GosPete's author imported the guard story from (at least) two sources, those being his remembrance of reading/hearing GosMatt (but not having a copy at hand), and his remembrance of hearing someone else talk about a form on the tomb guard story independent from GosMatt's.

Exactly. The author was basing his gospel mostly on Matthew, but working from memory. And he used other sources too (presumably also from memory), including the other canonicals and something with the more developed guard story.

the reason Brown says it is independent of mat is because the order the PN follows psalms not Matt,Baht means it neither is dependent on the other but it does not eliminate an eye witness,,

The Pixie said…
Joe: Brown is not an unbeliever, he believed in the resurrection. There is no reason to think a second trad ion was just made up and not connected to the witness of the community Brown does not say that, scholars rarely think that way.

So your argument is based on:

* Brown is a Christian
* Therefore Brown believes every word of the gospel is true
* Therefore Brown believes in the guards on the tomb

The implication of that is that he is a bad scholar! A good scholar would examine the evidence for each and every claim, and would certainly not assume something was true just because that is claimed in the gospel.

The reality is that Brown is a good scholar. The reality is that - despite being a Christian - Brown does not assume every claim is true. The reality is that Brown rejects the historicity of the guards on the tomb.

And if you read the text, you would know that!

Joe: John's text does,

Sure, because the author was trying to add the various claims of Jerusalem appearances, etc. to the original account, which had just the three women seeing the tomb and never telling anyone. He had ti twist the original account to suit his purpose.

Joe: Mark doesn't say enough about it to draw conclusion. stop acting like the other Gospels are just knock offs and only Mark has a witness,

The Markan account is almost certainly based on a pre-Markan passion narrative. We can be pretty sure Mark left nothing out from that account, as discussed last time around. Later authors added, they did not omit or edit. That account has three women seeing the empty tomb and then never telling anyone, and a man saying Jesus would be seen in Galilee.

That pre-Markan passion narrative is the only witness (if indeed it is a witness). All other accounts are based on that plus later embellishments. The other gospels really are just knock offs!

Joe: That's because the women who went with his community told him that. that was probably true for them they didn't say MM split off first before they went into the tomb and perhaps others fled right after, So Mark is getting it second hand

Yes, Mark gets it second hand, the other gospel authors get it from Mark, so are getting it third hard!

What do the think it said in the pre-Markan passion narrative about the women, Joe?

Joe: It has that now because apologists turned it into an issue with books like Who moved the Stone,

You seriously expect anyone to believe that the burial was more important to Mark than the Empty Tomb, the triumphant conclusion of his gospel?

Joe: No it doesn't if that were true he would have mad a bigger thing of it. His gospel really ends with the frightened women,,

Which is part of the Empty Tomb story!

Joe: In that early period it may have been. I'm only saying that they didn't make the tomb itself the issue because they weren't doing apologetic,

Of course they were doing apologetics. The guards on the tomb prove that; it was clearly a response to critics saying the body was stolen.
The Pixie said…
Joe: of course it's also necessary because Mark was probably in the Galilee waiting for Jesus to go there,He had no idea who was getting appeared to in Jerusalem.Then there may have been some feeling of conception with the fancily of Jesus, because Mark sided with Peter,who wet to Galelee

Sometimes I get the impression you think Mark was writing just a few months after the event.

The reality is that he was writing perhaps four decades later. He was Peter's scribe for much of that time. It is just not credible to suppose he never heard from Peter about the supposed appearances in Jerusalem, given Peter was supposed to be there, both witnessing the Empty Tomb and talking to the risen Jesus.

Why would Mark choose not to include this:

John 20:6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.

But did choose to include the family finding the Empty Tomb? This is the exact opposite of what we would expect if your theory is true; it totall destroys your theory. Why did Mark not include Jesus appearing to the disciples in Jerusalem?

John 20:19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Those disciples would have included Peter - and not the family - so Mark must have heard about and would want to promote it to promote Peter's position. Mark had every reason to include that, and no reason to omit it.

Unless it never happened and was not invented until after Mark was writing.
The Pixie said…
Joe: what is the angel talking about if there's no resurrection in mark?

Of course there is a resurrection in Mark!

Joe: he makes no argument or offer no fact to disprove the res, He explains it in a weak wiay with no proof,

As far as I know he believes in the resurrection, but rejects the Empty Tomb.

Presumably he believes you get a new body in heaven. This fits with what Jesus said in Mat 22:30. The resurrected will be in new angel-like bodies, and thinks like sex and marriage will be irrelevant. Further, it is the only scenario that makes sense, given so many people's bodies have disintegrated to nothing. What happens to people who are cremated?

Given the choice, would you want to be resurrected in your original body? Or a new one? When your car breaks down terminally, if money was no object, would you prefer to take it to garage to get it overhauled and refurbished? Or would you prefer to buy a new, top-of-the-range model?

Joe: No that is not what he;s saying. Fir one thing he does not think Matt copied the other source for the order of the narrate because if he had it would not be an original issue for the dinette source to follow the OT.

I am not sure he sees the source of the guard story to be written or not, and he gives no suggestion the author of Matthew simply copied it (and I think he does say the author interweaved it with another story, suggesting otherwise).

Joe: Brown says that GPet followed an nineteen source not dependent upon the synoptic,That means the synoptic are not dependent up it either other wise they would be the same,He never says Mat is dependent upon the indigent source it would not be independent if they were the same,

Brown says that Peter is for the most part dependent on Matthew, and to some degree the other gospels too.

Joe: which means there are two independent sources documenting the guards not just one,

No, it really does not.

What Brown proposes is a single source that pre-dates Matthew (and implicitly post dates Mark). Matthew draws heavily on Mark, but includes other works as well, including this guard story. Decades pass, and the guard story evolves outside of Matthew. Then the author of Peter writes his gospel, based primarily on Matthew (but working from memory), but also drawing on the now more developed guard story.

Just one guard story, Joe, invented between Mark and Matthew.

Seriously, you need to read Brown's book again on the historicity of the guards.

Joe: then why are you trying to say "he indicates the ultimate source e was the OT, not an eye witness." you don;t understand how the OT fits into it because it's not negating an eye witness,

There may have been an eye witness to the passion, but it is also reasonable to suppose there was not. Mark 14:27 suggests the disciples fled Jerusalem. Jesus meeting the Sanhedrin and Pilate certainly was not witnessed by a Christian, so we know at least some of the text was made up. I do not think they were lying, I think this was there best guess of what must have happened, given the manner the Romans treated political prisoners, enhanced with what they could tease from the OT.

Joe: the reason Brown says it is independent of mat is because the order the PN follows psalms not Matt,Baht means it neither is dependent on the other but it does not eliminate an eye witness,,

Not sure what your point is.
Blogger The Pixie said...
Joe: Brown is not an unbeliever, he believed in the resurrection. There is no reason to think a second tradion was just made up and not connected to the witness of the community Brown does not say that, scholars rarely think that way.

So your argument is based on:

* Brown is a Christian
* Therefore Brown believes every word of the gospel is true
* Therefore Brown believes in the guards on the tomb

He said he believed in the Res. I will do a post on Brown on Metacrock next Monday. I understand him you do not. He was a believing liberal like me



The implication of that is that he is a bad scholar! A good scholar would examine the evidence for each and every claim, and would certainly not assume something was true just because that is claimed in the gospel.


wrong, not only do you not understand liberalism you don't understand scholarship, There is no scholarship duty to abandon faith,

The reality is that Brown is a good scholar. The reality is that - despite being a Christian - Brown does not assume every claim is true. The reality is that Brown rejects the historicity of the guards on the tomb.

Yes he did assume the core doctrines are true what he did not assume is that they are so stated in the Gospels, I'll cover that my Monday post on Metacrock.

And if you read the text, you would know that!

you think you know because you don't know where he's comin from,I studied for four years with people like him, I understand his view,

Joe: John's text does,

Sure, because the author was trying to add the various claims of Jerusalem appearances, etc. to the original account, which had just the three women seeing the tomb and never telling anyone. He had ti twist the original account to suit his purpose.

the Gospels are produced by communities each one echoes the perspective of the particular people who wound up in each community, so they are different but agree on the basic facts,

Joe: Mark doesn't say enough about it to draw conclusion. stop acting like the other Gospels are just knock offs and only Mark has a witness,

The Markan account is almost certainly based on a pre-Markan passion narrative. We can be pretty sure Mark left nothing out from that account, as discussed last time around.

the canonical gospels and GPet are based upon pre mark redaction so say Koester and Crosson,I think Brown agreed,



Later authors added, they did not omit or edit. That account has three women seeing the empty tomb and then never telling anyone, and a man saying Jesus would be seen in Galilee.

Mark only new what peter told him. Peter probably didn't tell him much about the women he was too conflicted over guilt to notice them.If none of the women went to the Mark community then he had no choice but to just make a general sketchy statement guessing at heir mood and the role.



That pre-Markan passion narrative is the only witness (if indeed it is a witness). All other accounts are based on that plus later embellishments. The other gospels really are just knock offs!

No that is the Mark only BS construct you and message board atheists have worked out to avoid the full witness of all the gospels. All the communities had eye witnesses in them,,

Joe: That's because the women who went with his community told him that. that was probably true for them they didn't say MM split off first before they went into the tomb and perhaps others fled right after, So Mark is getting it second hand

Yes, Mark gets it second hand, the other gospel authors get it from Mark, so are getting it third hard!

false assumption!,the other gospels are just knockoffs of mark that is foolish. Mark is not just one gospel it's several different gospels, there are other written before and all the communities had witness,

What do the think it said in the pre-Markan passion narrative about the women, Joe?

don;t know


Joe: It [empty tomb] has that now because apologists turned it into an issue with books like Who moved the Stone,

You seriously expect anyone to believe that the burial was more important to Mark than the Empty Tomb, the triumphant conclusion of his gospel?

the tomb itself was not an issue if they wern;t questioning it, stop reasoning like Skepie, it;s not like i said the tomb wasn;t part of the record,it was there but that doens;t make it the focus,

Joe: No it doesn't if that were true he would have mad a bigger thing of it. His gospel really ends with the frightened women,,
The Pixie said...
Joe: of course it's also necessary because Mark was probably in the Galilee waiting for Jesus to go there,He had no idea who was getting appeared to in Jerusalem.Then there may have been some feeling of conception with the fancily of Jesus, because Mark sided with Peter,who wet to Galelee

Sometimes I get the impression you think Mark was writing just a few months after the event.

Several scholars locate the Ur Mark in the 30s. the author is recalling a mood from a time before in his life, but not as far back as you think because the final version of the gospel is after a long development of different books



The reality is that he was writing perhaps four decades later. He was Peter's scribe for much of that time. It is just not credible to suppose he never heard from Peter about the supposed appearances in Jerusalem, given Peter was supposed to be there, both witnessing the Empty Tomb and talking to the risen Jesus.

Peter wasn't there either,

Why would Mark choose not to include this:

John 20:6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.

those who think that scholarship means unbelief have a vested interest in think in the gospel really ends at v8. but what if it does not? that means the original could have gone into great detail about that, that is the problem with trying to make mark the only valid source of info, that assumes the author was really John mark the interpreter of Peter.



But did choose to include the family finding the Empty Tomb? This is the exact opposite of what we would expect if your theory is true; it totall destroys your theory. Why did Mark not include Jesus appearing to the disciples in Jerusalem?

the minimal participation of women in Mark could be part of his attempt to minimize the role of the family


John 20:19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Those disciples would have included Peter - and not the family - so Mark must have heard about and would want to promote it to promote Peter's position. Mark had every reason to include that, and no reason to omit it.

you are still assigning we know the ending of the GMark

Unless it never happened and was not invented until after Mark was writing.

12/12/2018 01:16:00 AM Delete
Blogger The Pixie said...
Joe: what is the angel talking about if there's no resurrection in mark?

Of course there is a resurrection in Mark!

Joe: he makes no argument or offer no fact to disprove the res, He explains it in a weak wiay with no proof,

As far as I know he believes in the resurrection, but rejects the Empty Tomb.


impossible, res empty tomb. He rose from the tomb so he had to leave it empty,

Presumably he believes you get a new body in heaven. This fits with what Jesus said in Mat 22:30. The resurrected will be in new angel-like bodies,

that is a made up idea based upon your need to avoid the empty tomb and to minize the reality of Jesus' resurrection.

and thinks like sex and marriage will be irrelevant. Further, it is the only scenario that makes sense, given so many people's bodies have disintegrated to nothing. What happens to people who are cremated?

that is Remus silliness, Nothing disintegrates into noting, any atoms can be restored if you are God,

Given the choice, would you want to be resurrected in your original body? Or a new one? When your car breaks down terminally, if money was no object, would you prefer to take it to garage to get it overhauled and refurbished? Or would you prefer to buy a new, top-of-the-range model?

you are trying to make Omnipotent God analogous to natural processes, Taht's absurd,

Joe: No that is not what he;s saying. Fir one thing he does not think Matt copied the other source for the order of the narrate because if he had it would not be an original issue for the dinette source to follow the OT.

I am not sure he sees the source of the guard story to be written or not, and he gives no suggestion the author of Matthew simply copied it (and I think he does say the author interweaved it with another story, suggesting otherwise).

of the women not the guards or the trial,

Joe: Brown says that GPet followed an nineteen source not dependent upon the synoptic,That means the synoptic are not dependent up it either other wise they would be the same,He never says Mat is dependent upon the indigent source it would not be independent if they were the same,

Brown says that Peter is for the most part dependent on Matthew, and to some degree the other gospels too.

which means a second source vouches for the gurds,

Joe: which means there are two independent sources documenting the guards not just one,

No, it really does not.

Obviously, Matthew and the ohter one

What Brown proposes is a single source that pre-dates Matthew (and implicitly post dates Mark). Matthew draws heavily on Mark, but includes other works as well, including this guard story. Decades pass, and the guard story evolves outside of Matthew. Then the author of Peter writes his gospel, based primarily on Matthew (but working from memory), but also drawing on the now more developed guard story.

you are merely reading not Brown whatever justification you need for doubt, I've quoted Him saying there are two sources time after time, you still refuse to read it,

Just one guard story, Joe, invented between Mark and Matthew.

Not according to Brown

Seriously, you need to read Brown's book again on the historicity of the guards.

I've read Brown;s book is for the first time prior to 2006. Ive studied it many times and I;ve studied this aspect several items and gotten others to check my work. I've published om it

Joe: then why are you trying to say "he indicates the ultimate source e was the OT, not an eye witness." you don;t understand how the OT fits into it because it's not negating an eye witness,

There may have been an eye witness to the passion, but it is also reasonable to suppose there was not.

If you are hell bent on rejecting belief in Christ,


Mark 14:27 suggests the disciples fled Jerusalem. Jesus meeting the Sanhedrin and Pilate certainly was not witnessed by a Christian, so we know at least some of the text was made up.

making up words for the trial is a far cry for making up the resurrection,Let's not forget no scholar believes Tahiti, They do not use that kind of thinking. But the tril itself could have been observed by a relative of Jesus who loitered a in the house of prehistoric, the author of who moved the stone I believe traced down that figure,

also Bauckham Jesus and the eye witnesses shows John is full of eye witnesses,almost all the figure refereed to are eyewitnesses, there could have been some at both trials,



I do not think they were lying, I think this was there best guess of what must have happened, given the manner the Romans treated political prisoners, enhanced with what they could tease from the OT.

the trial perhaps but not the tomb of the tomb, that;s universal to all talk of the story,

Joe: the reason Brown says it is independent of mat is because the order the PN follows psalms not Matt,Baht means it neither is dependent on the other but it does not eliminate an eye witness,,

Not sure what your point is.

what he says follows OT is the order of event sleading to the trial. not the tomb,

your view point is nothing but a Fabian of constructs specifically loaded to avoid any need to think abouit the resurrection,
Anonymous said…
Joe: He said he believed in the Res. I will do a post on Brown on Metacrock next Monday. I understand him you do not. He was a believing liberal like me

We both know he believed in the resurrection. If you do a post about him, do it about how Peter was authored or the guards on the tomb; they are what we disagree on, with regards to Browns position.

Joe: wrong, not only do you not understand liberalism you don't understand scholarship, There is no scholarship duty to abandon faith,

Did you not read what I posted? Bad scholarship is assuming something is true because your religion says it is true. I never said he had a duty to abandon his faith. In fact, I specifically said Brown is both a good scholar AND a Christian.

Joe: you think you know because you don't know where he's comin from,I studied for four years with people like him, I understand his view,

I think I know his position on the guards and the authorship of Peter because I have read what he wrote on those topics.

Joe: the Gospels are produced by communities each one echoes the perspective of the particular people who wound up in each community, so they are different but agree on the basic facts,

Okay, so the community invented the Jerusalem appearances, and then had to twist the account in Mark to make them fit, and that is what we see in John.

Joe: the canonical gospels and GPet are based upon pre mark redaction so say Koester and Crosson,I think Brown agreed,

Sure. Peter depends mostly on Matthew, Matthew and Luke depend on Mark, Mark depends on the pre-Mark, so ultimately all four depend on the pre-Mark.

Joe: Mark only new what peter told him. Peter probably didn't tell him much about the women he was too conflicted over guilt to notice them.If none of the women went to the Mark community then he had no choice but to just make a general sketchy statement guessing at heir mood and the role.

Really? Mark never over four decades in the community heard any of the other disciples discuss what they had seen? You think that is a serious hypothesis? And I suppose the community fragmented within hours of the Empty Tomb, so Mark had no contact with people outside his isolated community, right?

Do you actually think about this before you post?

I would suggest it was years before the community fractured into a Peter camp and a James camp. James was not even a believer at the time of the Empty Tomb, and cannot have become a believer and gone on to become head of a dissident community and a rival to Peter in a matter of days.

If there was some kind of fracturing of the community, there was still plenty of time for all concerned to talk to everyone involved. This was a small community and the events of the first Ester would have been the main topic of conversation. To think Mark somehow did not hear about someone's account makes no sense.

Joe: No that is the Mark only BS construct you and message board atheists have worked out to avoid the full witness of all the gospels. All the communities had eye witnesses in them,,

You know that how?

When the later gospels were written, Jesus' contemporaries would be 80 or older. Chances are there were no witnesses alive at that time. Furthermore, when we look at the additions that appear, there is very much a trend to make the events sound better. Jesus' burial becomes ever more fancy, Joseph of Arimathea becomes more Christian, the sightings of Jesus becoming greater, we get the dead saints walking around, the sky darkening, the Virgin Birth. We also see counters to the critics appearing with the guards and eating of fish. These things might be true, but the more likely scenario is that are later embellishments.

Pix
Anonymous said…
Joe: the tomb itself was not an issue if they wern;t questioning it, stop reasoning like Skepie, it;s not like i said the tomb wasn;t part of the record,it was there but that doens;t make it the focus,

The Empty Tomb was not part of the record. We know that because it is absent from the creed in 1 Cor 15.

Joe: Several scholars locate the Ur Mark in the 30s. the author is recalling a mood from a time before in his life, but not as far back as you think because the final version of the gospel is after a long development of different books

You said previously; "of course it's also necessary because Mark was probably in the Galilee waiting for Jesus to go there,He had no idea who was getting appeared to in Jerusalem". You think he was there waiting patiently for four decades as he wrote each iteration of the gospel, never speaking to any one but Peter?

Oh, and he omitted Peter's part in the Empty Tomb because he wanted to play down the family, and to enhance Pete's role?

Oh, and this was not just one guy, but the whole community that only ever heard Peter's side of the story. Er, except the bits where Peter saw the Empty Tomb and the risen Jesus. I guess Peter did not think they were important.

You think that makes sense?

Joe: Peter wasn't there either,

No he was not. But those later embellishments would have us think he was.

Joe: those who think that scholarship means unbelief have a vested interest in think in the gospel really ends at v8. but what if it does not? that means the original could have gone into great detail about that, that is the problem with trying to make mark the only valid source of info, that assumes the author was really John mark the interpreter of Peter.

Whether it ended at verse 8 or not, it is clear the author of Mark believed the risen Jesus was seen in Galilee.

Joe: the minimal participation of women in Mark could be part of his attempt to minimize the role of the family

He would have been better served omitting the women, and just have Peter, if that was his objective. He chose not to. Instead, he omitted Peter. The only reason to do so was he had not heard about Peter seeing the Empty Tomb. It had not been made up when he was writing.

Joe: impossible, res empty tomb. He rose from the tomb so he had to leave it empty,

Not if it was a new body. Crossan is famously a Christian and famously thinks Jesus' corpse was just tossed away for dogs to eat. You think he believes Jesus was risen in that dog-eaten corpse?

Joe: that is a made up idea based upon your need to avoid the empty tomb and to minize the reality of Jesus' resurrection.

It is based on what Paul said. It is based on what Paul saw. It is based on what Jesus said. It is based on common sense.

I note you cannot fault the logic.

Joe: that is Remus silliness, Nothing disintegrates into noting, any atoms can be restored if you are God,

And God can just as readily give you a new body.

Pix
Anonymous said…
Joe: of the women not the guards or the trial,

I think he says the two are interwoven (end of page 1305).

Joe: which means a second source vouches for the gurds,

Obviously, Matthew and the ohter one


But Matthew is dependent on the other one. I would call that a single source.

Joe: you are merely reading not Brown whatever justification you need for doubt, I've quoted Him saying there are two sources time after time, you still refuse to read it,

That is not what he says at all. He says one source, which evolved between Matthew and Peter.

Joe: making up words for the trial is a far cry for making up the resurrection,

Sure. I think they really saw something in Galilee, which they understood to be the risen Jesus, and that was the start of it all.

Joe: Let's not forget no scholar believes Tahiti, They do not use that kind of thinking. But the tril itself could have been observed by a relative of Jesus who loitered a in the house of prehistoric, the author of who moved the stone I believe traced down that figure,

We can conjure all sorts of imaginative ideas. Back in reality, anyone who cared would have stayed well away for fear of getting arrested themselves. There is no account of a relative loitering in the area - and his family lived three days away remember.

Joe: also Bauckham Jesus and the eye witnesses shows John is full of eye witnesses,almost all the figure refereed to are eyewitnesses, there could have been some at both trials,

We have nothing to suggest any of those supposed eye witnesses ever wrote anything. And as far as I know, the trials were not public affairs. Are you really suggesting Pilate allowed followers of the Jewish rebel in the courtroom? Are you really saying they would dare to be there?

Joe: the trial perhaps but not the tomb of the tomb, that;s universal to all talk of the story,

The Empty tomb was made up later, around 50 AD. It is universal because once it was accepted in the narrative it was taken "as gospel".

Pix
Joe: He said he believed in the Res. I will do a post on Brown on Metacrock next Monday. I understand him you do not. He was a believing liberal like me

We both know he believed in the resurrection. If you do a post about him, do it about how Peter was authored or the guards on the tomb; they are what we disagree on, with regards to Browns position.

you just said he didn't believe in the Resurrection

Joe: wrong, not only do you not understand liberalism you don't understand scholarship, There is no scholarship duty to abandon faith,

Did you not read what I posted? Bad scholarship is assuming something is true because your religion says it is true. I never said he had a duty to abandon his faith. In fact, I specifically said Brown is both a good scholar AND a Christian.

I think we are really on the same page here just getting cought up in rhetoric

Joe: you think you know because you don't know where he's comin from,I studied for four years with people like him, I understand his view,

I think I know his position on the guards and the authorship of Peter because I have read what he wrote on those topics.


you are misinterpreting it because you are making assumptions.

Joe: the Gospels are produced by communities each one echoes the perspective of the particular people who wound up in each community, so they are different but agree on the basic facts,

Okay, so the community invented the Jerusalem appearances, and then had to twist the account in Mark to make them fit, and that is what we see in John.

that;s a totally ridiculous view it assumes the John community had the other gospels and they would read them like modern peripatetics and that they care about modern asceticism

Joe: the canonical gospels and GPet are based upon pre mark redaction so say Koester and Crosson,I think Brown agreed,

Sure. Peter depends mostly on Matthew, Matthew and Luke depend on Mark, Mark depends on the pre-Mark, so ultimately all four depend on the pre-Mark.

that doesn't wipe out the authority of each community

Joe: Mark only new what peter told him. Peter probably didn't tell him much about the women he was too conflicted over guilt to notice them.If none of the women went to the Mark community then he had no choice but to just make a general sketchy statement guessing at heir mood and the role.

Really? Mark never over four decades in the community heard any of the other disciples discuss what they had seen? You think that is a serious hypothesis? And I suppose the community fragmented within hours of the Empty Tomb, so Mark had no contact with people outside his isolated community, right?

If the women where not in the community they would not go look them up,why do you think Paul doesn't mention them? Because they were in their own communities and not in documents being discussed all over,

Do you actually think about this before you post?

It is obvious you given this no thought

I would suggest it was years before the community fractured into a Peter camp and a James camp. James was not even a believer at the time of the Empty Tomb, and cannot have become a believer and gone on to become head of a dissident community and a rival to Peter in a matter of days.

that is stupid, You said I talk like Mark wrote his gospels the night after. now you are talking like that. We are dealing with the nature of the Gospels then of course these are the result of rivalries that took years to develop. But it still comes down to Peter (Mark)didn't have those women in his community to talk to, nor would he have cared
since they were women. He probably didn't care about their experiences,


If there was some kind of fracturing of the community, there was still plenty of time for all concerned to talk to everyone involved.

you don't know that,you reassuring modern attitudes and modern logistics

This was a small community and the events of the first Ester would have been the main topic of conversation. To think Mark somehow did not hear about someone's account makes no sense.

assuming things you don't know what,you don;t even know where peter was staying, or Mark,

Joe: No that is the Mark only BS construct you and message board atheists have worked out to avoid the full witness of all the gospels. All the communities had eye witnesses in them,,

You know that how?

from studying in a major seminary then arguing with thousands of atheists for 20 years

When the later gospels were written, Jesus' contemporaries would be 80 or older. Chances are there were no witnesses alive at that time.


in one ear and out the other,gets eatten by the atheist echo chamber in the middle between the ears. The Gospel was set in stone by the time the final versions were written, It was shaped by the eye witnesses when the preMark redaction was formed and th UR Mark reflected that


Furthermore, when we look at the additions that appear, there is very much a trend to make the events sound better. Jesus' burial becomes ever more fancy, Joseph of Arimathea becomes more Christian,

n Gospel account makes him out to be a Christia,


the sightings of Jesus becoming greater, we get the dead saints walking around, the sky darkening, the Virgin Birth. We also see counters to the critics appearing with the guards and eating of fish. These things might be true, but the more likely scenario is that are later embellishments.

in all of that still only one story was ever told and they never departed from that one story
Pix
Anonymous said...
Joe: the tomb itself was not an issue if they wern;t questioning it, stop reasoning like Skepie, it;s not like i said the tomb wasn;t part of the record,it was there but that doens;t make it the focus,

The Empty Tomb was not part of the record. We know that because it is absent from the creed in 1 Cor 15.

that is so fucking stupid, i can't think of anything stupider, Argument from silence and your assumption that makes the silence significant is an ideological bromide adopted to free yourself from the tyranny of the empty tomb. in true circular fashion you use your set up assumption as proof of it's self,

Joe: Several scholars locate the Ur Mark in the 30s. the author is recalling a mood from a time before in his life, but not as far back as you think because the final version of the gospel is after a long development of different books

You said previously; "of course it's also necessary because Mark was probably in the Galilee waiting for Jesus to go there,He had no idea who was getting appeared to in Jerusalem". You think he was there waiting patiently for four decades as he wrote each iteration of the gospel, never speaking to any one but Peter?

Some start the Ur mark in the 30s. we dont know enouh about it to say, we don;t knoe if Mark even wrote Mark

Oh, and he omitted Peter's part in the Empty Tomb because he wanted to play down the family, and to enhance Pete's role?

It's imn the lost ending

Oh, and this was not just one guy, but the whole community that only ever heard Peter's side of the story. Er, except the bits where Peter saw the Empty Tomb and the risen Jesus. I guess Peter did not think they were important.

Peter would have put that into the community through oral trading,that would not invovle the women, Mark wrote the


You think that makes sense?


given what little we know. U guess I;ve given you the impression that I think I have it all worked out,I am aware this is all speculation ,we don't know, one thing we do i know Jews dud believe in resurrection by ghosts,they bleie ed in boidies,the same old bodies makde new not totally different bodies,

I might come back and pick up the rest of this latter, but for now Im Letting yoy have the last word on this because I need the time to deal with blog posts,
I don't have Death of the Messiah and I can;t get it, I have studied it prove these things before, so I worked all of it out years ago what I;m using now is the result of those studies.

I guess I get carried away with speculative ideas


The Pixie said…
Joe: you just said he didn't believe in the Resurrection

No I did not. You seem to have got that from me objecting to the claim that Brown must think every word of the gospels is true. He does believe in te resurrection, but he does not think every word is true.

Joe: you are misinterpreting it because you are making assumptions.

I am the one who has looked at his book whilst we are having this discussion. I have re-read what he said on Peter and the guards, to find the quotes. I can be confident I am right.

You are re-cycling quotes from old posts made years ago, and have not read the text for years.

Joe: that;s a totally ridiculous view it assumes the John community had the other gospels and they would read them like modern peripatetics and that they care about modern asceticism

It may have been the pre-Mark they had rather than Mark. We know there was a developing story in the community because John shows signs of redaction at various times. Extend that back in time, and we have a community with pre-Mark that slowly rewrites the book to incorporate new information as it comes to light (i.e., add embellishments).

Joe: If the women where not in the community they would not go look them up,...

No, they would not. They would just believe, without checking the evidence for themselves. Think about what that implies!

Joe: ...why do you think Paul doesn't mention them? ...

Because the Empty Tomb had not been invented when he was writing.

Joe: If the women where not in the community they would not go look them up,why do you think Paul doesn't mention them? Because they were in their own communities and not in documents being discussed all over,

Which makes it all the more bizarre that Mark mentions them. He states they told no one, you claim they then had no contact with the community. Where did Mark get his information from? Well, he (or someone else) made it up. The women had no contact with the community so were not going to say otherwise.

Joe: that is stupid, You said I talk like Mark wrote his gospels the night after. now you are talking like that.

Because I am pointing out it makes no sense.

If there was a rift between Peter and James, it must have been years after the crucifixion to give time for James to convert, to rise within the community to rival Peter, and then for the rift to develop.

During that time, Mark, the scribe of Peter, would have heard about Peter's experiences numerous times. He would have heard about the experiences of all the disciples, whichever camp they ended up in.

Joe: We are dealing with the nature of the Gospels then of course these are the result of rivalries that took years to develop. But it still comes down to Peter (Mark)didn't have those women in his community to talk to, nor would he have cared since they were women. He probably didn't care about their experiences,

And yet he included the women seeing the Empty Tomb, despite them being merely women, despite them being unavailable to tell him it even happened, despite them being in the rival camp.

He omitted Peter seeing the Empty Tomb, despite him being a superior witness, despite him being available to tell Mark it happened, which he undoubted did repeatedly, despite him being in the same camp.

Joe: you don't know that,you reassuring modern attitudes and modern logistics

Modern attitudes? I am assuming they talked about what had happened. This was a religious community. I really do not think it is a stretch to say they talked about a huge religion event that happened just years earlier. How much logistics does it take for Peter to talk to his own scribe?

Joe: assuming things you don't know what,you don;t even know where peter was staying, or Mark,

So talk us through it Joe. Where do you think Peter was? Where do you think his scribe was?
The Pixie said…
Joe: from studying in a major seminary then arguing with thousands of atheists for 20 years

So not from any documents, as I suspected.

Joe: in one ear and out the other,gets eatten by the atheist echo chamber in the middle between the ears. The Gospel was set in stone by the time the final versions were written, It was shaped by the eye witnesses when the preMark redaction was formed and th UR Mark reflected that

If the gospel was set in stone, Matthew, Luke and John would be the same as Mark. As KNOW that that is not true. We KNOW later authors added to the narrative because Luke and Matthew have things in them that are absent from Mark.

Joe: n Gospel account makes him out to be a Christia,

Wrong! And I have pointed this out before:

John 19:38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away.

Joe: in all of that still only one story was ever told and they never departed from that one story

What we see is that later authors added much to the story. We do not have the original, we only have Mark, from around 70 AD. We do not know what got added to the story up to that point.

Joe: that is so fucking stupid, i can't think of anything stupider, Argument from silence and your assumption that makes the silence significant is an ideological bromide adopted to free yourself from the tyranny of the empty tomb. in true circular fashion you use your set up assumption as proof of it's self,

I am going with the evidence.

FACT: Paul omits the empty tomb, when we would expect him to include it if it was known to him

FACT: Later accounts included significant embellishments

Link them together, and the most likely scenario is the Empty Tomb was made up between Paul and Mark.

Joe: It's imn the lost ending

You know that how? Why even suppose there was a lost ending?

Joe: Peter would have put that into the community through oral trading,that would not invovle the women, Mark wrote the

Which would lead us to think Mark would include Peter seeing the Empty Tomb, not the women.

Joe: given what little we know. U guess I;ve given you the impression that I think I have it all worked out,I am aware this is all speculation ,we don't know...

You reallky do NOT given the impression you have it all worked out. I appreciate it is speculation, but that is no excuse for not having a fully-fleshed out hypothesis about what happened when. Your hypothesis seems to rely on people communicating when it suits, and living in perfect isolation at other times.

Joe: ... one thing we do i know Jews dud believe in resurrection by ghosts,they bleie ed in boidies,the same old bodies makde new not totally different bodies,

The Jews had a lot of different beliefs. The Sadducees rejected the resurrection altogether.

Paul's belief would have been determined by what he saw on the Road to Damascus. A bright light and a voice, not a corporeal body. What he saw was enough to convert him to Christianity, so even if he originally believed in bodily resurrection, we can see that that changed. Indeed, the point of 1 Cor 15 could have been to convince Jews who were expecting a bodily resurrection that instead the nature of the resurrection was quite different. This is why he goes on at length at how the earthly cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
Pix you have been taking your arguments for that know nothing Gary

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