Kevin's Watch

Cybrweez wrote:Well, I could say I wrote TCOTC, and prove I didn't (a negative), I suspect you'd have some ways to do so. I'm not asking to prove something doesn't exist, I'm asking for evidence for certain claims. Claims like it's obvious there were edits (one even said purposeful edits) over the years. Ok, who made the edits, and what was the original? In order to know it was edited, we would have to know the original? Otherwise, we're guessing. And, to be clear, I don't mean to talk about misspellings, or changes that have no effect on the meaning, as there is such an abundance of manuscripts, you can cancel small issues like that by comparing amongst them all. (But even those, we know they are misspellings or errors b/c we have a weight of evidence for the correct word/phrase, whatever.)

Cybrweez wrote:Well, I could say I wrote TCOTC, and prove I didn't (a negative), I suspect you'd have some ways to do so.

High Lord Tolkien wrote:

Cybrweez wrote:Well, I could say I wrote TCOTC, and prove I didn't (a negative), I suspect you'd have some ways to do so. I'm not asking to prove something doesn't exist, I'm asking for evidence for certain claims. Claims like it's obvious there were edits (one even said purposeful edits) over the years. Ok, who made the edits, and what was the original? In order to know it was edited, we would have to know the original? Otherwise, we're guessing. And, to be clear, I don't mean to talk about misspellings, or changes that have no effect on the meaning, as there is such an abundance of manuscripts, you can cancel small issues like that by comparing amongst them all. (But even those, we know they are misspellings or errors b/c we have a weight of evidence for the correct word/phrase, whatever.)

Ah...I finally get what you're asking.
To be honest I wasn't sure up until this point.
You're saying that the only proof of edits would be by comparing it to older texts.
Makes sense.

SerScot wrote:F&F, Avatar,

Isn't another example of translation shift when Christ says, "It is finished." As he dies on the Cross. According to my priest, in the original Greek a better translation may be "It is complete." It has a very different connotation from the modern idea of "it is finished."

SerScot wrote:According to my priest, in the original Greek a better translation may be "It is complete." It has a very different connotation from the modern idea of "it is finished."

Scholarship believes Matthew was composed between the years c 60 and 85, but a small minority claim that there is absolutely no way that it could have been written in this time given the average lifespan of most people at that time. Ignatius seemed to have knowledge of four Pauline epistles and the Gospel of Matthew", which gives a terminus ad quem of c. 110. The author of the Didache (c 100) probably knew it as well. Many scholars see the prophecy of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem as suggesting a date of composition after the year 70. However, John A. T. Robinson argues that the lack of a passage indicating the fulfillment of the prophecy suggests an earlier date. Furthermore the Gospel of Matthew does not mention the death of James in 62 nor the persecutions of the early Christians by Nero.

This view has been challenged by two scholars almost a century apart, The Reverend C. B. Huleatt and Carsten Peter Thiede. In December 1994, Carsten Peter Thiede redated the Magdalen papyrus, which bears a fragment from the Gospel of Matthew, to roughly the year 60 on palaeographical grounds.

Avatar wrote:

Many scholars see the prophecy of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem as suggesting a date of composition after the year 70.

--A

Cybrweez wrote:

Avatar wrote:

Many scholars see the prophecy of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem as suggesting a date of composition after the year 70.

Ok, I think this is what it comes down to, for most types of evidence, even in OT. B/c of the prophetic bits, it must've been written after those events came to pass. Flimsy.

When we meet Jesus of Nazareth at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, almost surely the oldest of the four, he’s a full-grown man. He comes down from Galilee, meets John, an ascetic desert hermit who lives on locusts and wild honey, and is baptized by him in the River Jordan. If one thing seems nearly certain to the people who read and study the Gospels for a living, it’s that this really happened: John the Baptizer—as some like to call him, to give a better sense of the original Greek’s flat-footed active form—baptized Jesus. They believe it because it seems so unlikely, so at odds with the idea that Jesus always played the star in his own show: why would anyone have said it if it weren’t true? This curious criterion governs historical criticism of Gospel texts: the more improbable or “difficult” an episode or remark is, the likelier it is to be a true record, on the assumption that you would edit out all the weird stuff if you could, and keep it in only because the tradition is so strong that it can’t plausibly be excluded. If Jesus says something nice, then someone is probably saying it for him; if he says something nasty, then probably he really did.

What seems a simple historical truth is that all the Gospels were written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the First Jewish-Roman War, in 70 C.E.—a catastrophe so large that it left the entire Jesus movement in a crisis that we can dimly imagine if we think of Jewish attitudes before and after the Holocaust: the scale of the tragedy leads us to see catastrophe as having been built into the circumstance. As L. Michael White’s “Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite” (HarperOne; $28.99) explains in daunting scholarly detail, even Mark—which, coming first, might seem to be closest to the truth—was probably written in the ruins of the Temple and spiritually shaped to its desolate moment. Mark’s essential point, he explains, is about secrecy: Jesus keeps telling people to be quiet about his miracles, and confides only to an inner circle of disciples. With the Temple gone, White says, it was necessary to persuade people that the grotesque political failure of Jesus’ messianism wasn’t a real failure. Mark invents the idea that Jesus’ secret was not that he was the “Davidic” messiah, the Arthur-like returning king, but that he was someone even bigger: the Son of God, whose return would signify the end of time and the birth of the Kingdom of God.

was probably written in the ruins of the Temple and spiritually shaped to its desolate moment.

...However, most contemporary scholars now regard [Mark] as the earliest of the canonical gospels (c 70), while other scholars now argue that the Gospel of the Hebrews actually was composed first and the basis for future gospels...

The Gospel of Mark was composed by an anonymous author, traditionally believed to be Mark the Evangelist (also known as John Mark), a cousin of Barnabas. There is external evidence that the Gospel of Mark may have been based on the preaching of disciple of Peter. However, this is an area of ongoing debate. (See also the Augustinian hypothesis and Augustine of Hippo)

As early as Papias in the early 2nd century, this gospel was attributed to Mark, who is said to have recorded the Apostle Peter's discourses. Papias cites his authority as being John the Presbyter. While the text of Papias is no longer extant, it was quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea:

This, too, the presbyter used to say. ‘Mark, who had been Peter's interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. Peter used to adapt his teachings to the occasion, without making a systematic arrangement of the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark was quite justified in writing down some of the things as he remembered them. For he had one purpose only – to leave out nothing that he had heard, and to make no misstatement about it.

Irenaeus concurred, as did Origen of Alexandria, Tertullian, and others. Clement of Alexandria, writing at the end of the 2nd century, reported that Mark was urged by those who had heard Peter's speeches in Rome to write what the apostle had said. Following this tradition, scholars have often speculated that this gospel was written in Rome. Among recent alternate suggestions are Syria, Alexandria, or more broadly any area within the Roman Empire. Other scholars argue that the Papias citation is unreliable, pointing out that there is no distinctive Petrine tradition in Mark.

Since the Gospel of Mark contains mistakes concerning Galilean geography and customs, the author was not native to the Holy Land, as was the historical Peter. It has been argued that there is an impending sense of persecution in the gospel, and that this could indicate it being written to sustain the faith of a community under such a threat. As the main Christian persecution at that time was in Rome under Nero, this has been used to place the writing of the Gospel in Rome. Furthermore, it has been argued that the Latinized vocabularyemployed in Mark (and in neither Matthew nor Luke) shows that the Gospel was written in Rome. Also cited in support is a passage in First Peter: "The chosen one at Babylon sends you greeting, as does Mark, my son."; Babylon being interpreted as a derogatory or code name for Rome, as the famous ancient city of Babylon ceased to exist in 275 BC. Jerome affirms that Mark the disciple and interpreter of Saint Peter, and the follower and Apostle of Jesus Christ. According to Eusebius, Mark composed a gospel embodying what he had heard Peter preach in Rome.

However, certain scholars dispute the connection of the gospel with persecution, identified with Nero's persecution in Rome, asserting that persecution was widespread, albeit sporadic beyond the borders of the city of Rome.