Markus Vinzent's Blog

Monday 17 November 2014

What is the relation between Mark, 'canonizer of Paul', and Marcion's Gospel?


In his comment to one of my blogs, Giuseppe noted, as follows:
The strongest doubt is shortly: if the Gospel of Mark, being proto-orthodox (in your view), is anti-Marcionite, then why Mark is so pro-Paul just as I would expect instead from the Gospel of Marcion? Why does Mark look so marcionite in his denigration of 12 disciples & Peter? For example, Tom Dykstra says that the author of that Gospel “deliberately created a literary Jesus whose words and actions parallel the words and actions of Paul” (“Mark, Canonizer of Paul,” p. 149).


Besides, Mark is shorter than other Gospels.
Why Mark presents the story of the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida while the other gospels didn't have that episode? I see in that episode a midrash from Judges 9:8-15: There the trees allude to riotous people of Israel.

The blind man sees ”men as trees walking”, and soon after Jesus rebukes Peter (”vade retro satana”) ”seeing his disciples”(Mark 8:33), then Jesus and the blind man see the same thing: blind people that want a king-messiah for themselves (you can see the allusion to Judges 9 about seditious trees).

The miracle in two steps to regain the sight is parallel to the process in two steps to identify Jesus as Christ by Peter & co (Mark 8:27-30).

In this way, the blind man becomes more close to God (and more similar to Jesus) than the same disciples, the true blind men of allegory (who has a name, is indeed blind, and who is anonymous, sees better). All this would make more easily the same point of Marcion's Gospel: Paul is the unique true Apostle. How do you explain all this?

Very Thanks for a satisfactory reply to all these questions!

Dear Giuseppe,
Thanks for your enlightening questions on some issues I had not thought about before. Let me start with your strongest doubt. This is based on the common perspective which I tried to correct in my Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Leuven, 2014) that the early responses to Marcion, including the later canonical Gospels, are anti-Marcionite in the sense of them regarding Marcion’s text heretical. If they had regarded it as heretical, they would not have used it. Yet, we have to differentiate. On the old synoptic model, scholars assume that Matthew and Luke have used Mark – although they all admit that the way Matthew and Luke make use of Mark by rewriting him, re-ordering the material, leaving things aside, adding others, poor Mark would certainly not have recognised, let alone endorse these aemulationes of his own work. Was Matthew and Luke anti-Mark? In some sense certainly yes, they did not simply subscribe to his text, yet, on the other side, they adopted it and made it their own.
When I did invite Matthias Klinghardt to give a paper at a Marcion seminar at the 2011 International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford, he repeated his view which he had published before, namely that he believed Mark to be the oldest Gospel, from which the others, including Mcn (his short cut for Marcion’s Gospel – although maintaining that this text has not been written or even redacted, but only used by Marcion). Now that he has done the reconstruction of Mcn (his reconstruction is announced to be published in due course), he has corrected is older view and takes Mcn to be the source even of Mark.
My view is that Marcion’s Gospel, like that of Mark in the early dating theory, was regarded as both – attractive and contentious. It was good enough to be borrowed, used, adapted and corrected. With the adoption, however, the original impacted on those who copied the text, even if they heavily re-wrote it. This we can see with the Pauline influence that has always been noticed in Luke. Thanks, also for drawing my attention to Tom Dykstra, Mark, Canonizer of Paul. His book does not only show (against earlier works like that of Martin Werner of 1923) that Mark is indebted to Paul, but, what he has not spelled out, Mark goes beyond Paul, specifically in areas where – in my view – he is dependent on Marcion (such as his criticism of Peter, see Dykstra, 119ff). And you are right, he might even have taken Marcion’s criticism of Peter a step further, you indicate the relation between the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida with the following pericope of Jesus rebuking Peter. Mark, however, is also deviating from Marcion’s position, particularly in altering Marcion’s antithetical position to an interaction between Jesus and Judaism that ‘presents Jesus as a rabbi among rabbis’, as By Robert McFarlane ‘The Gospel of Mark and Judaism’ put it:the interactions between Jesus and the others concerns establishing his way as the legitimate reading of the Torah. In this sense it must be said that Mark can not be characterised by anti-Judaism. Rather, Mark appears to have the qualities of a sectarian group, seeking to establish a new interpretation of Torah.’ Hence, it is no surprise that you are rightly reminded of a midrash from Judges 9:8-15 and make the connection to the story about Peter. As often in Marcion’s Gospel, the weak, the ill, the marginal and the excluded people are closer than any of the disciples, especially than Peter. and, as in Marcion, Paul is the unique true Apostle.
Put the other way around and follow the traditional model – why, if Marcion’s copied Mark on this, did he leave out the story of Bethany which would be so close to his chest? The opposite can be easily shown that Mark redacts Marcion’s Gospel and gets rid of the antithesis of Christianity and Judaism, although he still shows and maintains a number of other Marcionite features.

23 comments:

  1. Very interesting.

    About your Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (2014), it talks in detail about the relationship between Mark and Marcion, between Luke and Marcion, etc. (all topics I like a lot) ? Or all of this will be discussed in more detail later in your future commentaries on the Gospel of Marcion, episode after episode of it put in parallel with the Synoptics ?

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  2. I have booked your monograph of 2014, and my library ensures me that the book will arrive in Italy after five weeks (I hope!).

    Meanwhile, I have a new doubt based on my knowledge of old dating of the Gospels.

    I point out, in the old dating of the gospels (Mark--> Matthew--> Luca -->John) this trend:

    Mark is so demonstrably allegorical that unlike the later Gospels it never represents itself as a biography strictu sensu. It seems to be constructed in a consciously allegorical mode from beginning to end. Matthew, meanwhile, is even more grandiosely symbolic/allegorical. Luke is the only Gospel that was actually trying to sound as if it were a biography (and not itself a symbolic/allegorical text like previous Gospels).

    Assuming your new dating with Mcn first, how the Gospel of Marcion fits into this trend above described? Did it look more like our Mark (thus more allegorical/symbolic than biographical) or more similar to our Luke?
    There is not the risk that, in some way, the priority of Marcion stops or breaks that tendency from allegorical to biographical?

    Thanks for any reply,

    Giuseppe

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    1. Dear Giuseppe,
      as before - the answer turned out to be too long for a response, so please see the new post,
      thanks for your fantastic question and doubt
      yours Markus

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  3. Just a point about the blind man...if his name is BarTimaeus...then there's a tie to Plato. The translation of that from Hebrew is "Son of Timaeus, which would refer to Plato's work of the same name." That would indicate 1) Mark had read Plato (as had Philo) and 2) was trying to make some point related to Plato or philosophy there. What do you think, Markus?

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  4. I couldn't help but be struck by Giussepi's comment on Mark 6:37 being a midrash on 2Kings 4:43-44. And one thing after another seems to fall into place. I leave my comment here as a thank you.

    Mar 6:37-8:17 is a parable section created from a midrash on 2Ki_4:43-44, the DSS and Oral Tradition about the historical Jesus, and on Paul's mission to the Gentiles, First there is the feeding of the Jewish rebels Mar_6:1 followed by the feeding of the Gentiles Mark Mar_7:27 Mar_7:31 Mar_8:4, but then Jesus [like Paul] warns them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees Mar_8:14-17, the hypocrites of the Jerusalem Church who "separated" themselves from the Gentiles in Antioch Gal_2:12-13. But the parables don't end there. Read on to the end!
    2Ki 4:42 And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the LORD, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the LORD.
    Mar 6:1 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country [of the Jews]; and his disciples follow him....Mar 6:37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them [the Jews] to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat? He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes. And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties [the same organization as in the DSS "War Scroll"]...Mar 6:43 And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men [of war] (in the original Jewish version -- compare John 6:15).
    Mar 7:24 And from thence [his own country] he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon [to the Gentiles]....Mar 7:27 But Jesus said unto her (the Gentile), Let the children [Jews] first be fed: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs [of the Gentiles]....Mar 7:31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis [of the Gentiles]...Mar 8:4 And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men [of the Gentiles] with bread here in the wilderness? [midrash on Moses and manna]
    Mar 8:14 Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf. And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees...And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread. And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven. And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?
    Gal 2:12 For, before that certain came from James, with them of the nations (Gentiles), used he to eat [break bread]; whereas, when they came, he used to withdraw, and keep himself separate [like a Pharisee], fearing them of the circumcision; And the rest of the Jews also used hypocrisy with him, so that, even Barnabas, was carried away by their hypocrisy.

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  5. But the parables don't end there at Mark 8:17, as Mr. Hall hints at.
    Mark immediately follows the blindness of the disciples with the parable of the healing of the blind man. What is strange about the healing of the blind man though is that at his first attempt Jesus does not completely succeed in healing the man. Instead the man sees men walking as trees! What is the meaning of this? Mark knows the same feeding tradition as John, and Mark knows that these Jewish men [of war] had attempted to make Jesus king by force. Scholars have pointed out that this parable of seeing men as trees seems to be a midrash on another king making parable Judges 9:8-14. Jesus does not approve of this understanding of the "anointed", sees it as a type of blindness, and then proceeds to heal the man completely of his blindness. But then again, immediately, Mark 8:27-34 follows this with Peter's own blindness and not understanding of the "anointed" as the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 who must suffer for the Gentiles.

    Joh 6:9 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.
    Jdg 9:8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.
    Mat_11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

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    1. Seeing men walking as trees...would that to a degree ALSO hint at Plato's Cave allegory?

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  6. then leading into the blindness of Peter about Jesus as the "anointed"

    Mar 8:27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ (anointed). And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes [of the Jerusalem Church - a parable of Paul], and be killed, and after three days rise again.And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, whosoever will come after me [Paul's Jesus], let him deny himself, and take up his cross [Paul preached only the salvation of the cross], and follow me.For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. . .Mar 8:38 Whosoever [Peter and the other Jewish "hypocrites" and the scribes and the chief priests of the Jerusalem Church] therefore shall be ashamed of me [Paul and Paul's Jesus] and of my words [Paul's Gospel] in this adulterous and sinful generation[of the Jews]; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

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    1. Ah, Caesarea Phillippi...where Jesus has two conversations, one the bit you've quoted above...a discussion about who Jesus is. While I'm still thinking this is the quote as it's been ONLY since 190 c.e. and Irenaeus...I found taking a look via Google Images at Caesarea Phillippi/Banias was enlightening...and raised two questions. 1) What WAS Jesus (and disciples) doing practically on top of a HERODIAN PALACE? Or were they IN it? 2) Was the bit "On this rock I build my..." a PUN on the pagan shrines ALREADY there, like the one to Pan that had been there since B.C.E. times? I made a new discovery this past week...already knew about the Idumeans being forcibly converted by the Hasmoneans, and the impact that left with the Herods...but this week heard ALSO the ITUREANS. Checked where the Itureans lived...and realized it was from the shores of Kinneret (Galilee) up past Golan and Banias, a bit further north. So while "nominally" "Jewish", that region was still more Greek and Syrian in real character. Making Jesus being at Caesarea Phillippi even MORE stranger and really cutting any possibility he was a Torah-observant Jew.

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  7. One thing Stephen and I agree on is that an early form of ChrEstianity/Christianity would have been more strongly from Samaritan ideas...to which we could also add the Hellenicist-Jewish ideas of Philo...and that would be more realistic than developments of the mid-2nd century as told by aliases of one Peregrinus...and more realistic than anything Irenaeus ever told.

    There’s one thing Stephen may not have considered...i’ve yet to see his pondering examine Sanballat the Horonite in creating the Samaritan narrative. For me, Sanballat is core to the whole situation of variant forms of “Jewish thought” that permeated the whole Second Temple period and gave rise to elements very much in play for a post-2nd Temple destruction original Evangelion. For me also, the Good Samaritan Parable now reads as a “Samaritan ‘good’/ChrEstos-Jew ‘bad.’ Underlying message. So many competing streams, quoite a few of them based on narratives, but even Hellenicist-Judaism sharing a flaw...1900-200 common points between the Hellenicists’ favoured LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch...the SP having 6000 differences from Torah. I don’t see the Samaritan narrative realistically starting before Sanballat...but I can see it already had effected unity as more and more variants started to crop up. Perhaps Stephen and I will agree to a point that the Memar Marqeh Samaritan liturgical document might be the sole remaining artefact of a 60 c.e. Evangelion if it’s correctly dated to the late-st century instead of the fourth...and it would be more realistically more closer to what an Evangelion/70 c.e Marcion NT looked like than what Irenaeus gave us.

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  8. Looks like Stephen may be different from the one I usually am aware of. My mistake...it’s late night here...the Stephen I usually am most aware of is one who takes some interesting approaches to the whole Marcion thing.

    While Stephen above has brought up Caesare Phillipi...some research on it made the two key conversations of Jesus stand out weird. Two questions arose: “Why are Jesus and disciples having a conversations right on the front doorstep of a Herodian Palace?” And secondly: so did someone from that palace write something major and make a PUN on the huge rock wall there? There’s curiously two archaeological digs there. One for the remains of the earliest church/shrine of St Veronica...the other of the palace of Berenice, sister of Herod Agrippa II. ONLY a metres-wide dirt road separates them...in the 1st century, they were the SAME Royal estate. To me, this now makes the Caesarea Phillipi sequence, whether in Gnostic gospels/Evangelion OR the canonicals, a SIGNATURE of the writer and makes it more Herodian. If we ignore Irenaeus eat al about Marcion being a ship-builder from Pontus, you’d get the impression he was a King in 70 c.e as he turned pro-Roman and Two Powers in Heaven.

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  9. Just an amateur here but a few things occur to me. The first one is the issue of the existence of a historical Jesus of Nazareth whom Paul did not appear to know at all. It seems to me, after reading numerous literary analyses of the gospel of Mark ("Mark: Canonizer of Paul", "Irony in Mark's Gospel", "Sowing the Gospel", Dennis McDonald, Tom Brodie, etc.), that it is entirely allegory, a dense rhetorical construction with multiple layers of meaning, many winks at the reader, full of irony and hidden messages. It seems to me that if there were much in the way of edits/interpolations, they would have destroyed the evident structure; that doesn't appear to have happened (or very little) because that incredible structure is still intact as we have it. It is really a marvel.

    So, it seems to me that a text that was written strictly as an allegory/secret message to those who "have eyes to see and ears to hear", that it may very well have been written extremely early, at a point when it was pretty well understood that there had been NO historical Jesus, but that this was a presentation of Paul's teaching in rhetorical form.

    And not just a teaching, but something of a history; that is, a means of conveying "what really happened" between Paul and the "James Gang", as I call them.

    Josephus refers to the nationalist–messianists as robbers, pirates, brigands, tyrants, etc., leading people to rebel against Rome and get themselves killed and Jerusalem destroyed. Yet, Josephus has a lot to hide. According to his autobiography, he tried joining the Essenes/Zealots/Zadokites himself when he was young and hung out with a John-the-Baptist type whose name, Bannus, is reflected in the character of John the Baptist. When the Romans demonstrated that they were going to win the war (or perhaps before), Josephus completely turned and became convinced that the Jewish god was on the side of the Romans because the Jews had been so wicked in rebelling. Further, he was convinced that the Roman emperor was the messiah who was to come out of Judea and rule the world. Or, of course, he could have just claimed these things because it was convenient to do so.

    Josephus tries to make a clear distinction between the “mainstream” Jewish sects and the “Fourth Philosophy” of Judas the Galilean, whom he blames most heartily for the revolt (in which he, himself, willingly participated decades later) and the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem and possibly half a million Jews. But at the same time, Josephus was busily dissembling and covering his own backside while more or less trying to clean up the image of the Jews as a whole and the Essenes and Pharisees in particular, not to forget his Flavian masters. Josephus was evidently familiar with the Essenes and their ideas, and our knowledge of this group (or at least one variation of it) has been greatly enhanced by the discovery of the hidden texts at Qumran. When one reads these texts, it seems that the community at Qumran was rather close in ideology to Josephus’ Judas the Galilean and his Fourth Philosophy. In addition, even Josephus can’t hide the connections between Judas’ movement with both the Pharisees and the Essenes. For example, they shared the Essenes’ attitude to death (Ant. 18.1.6 // Wars 2.8.10), all participated in the war and various rebellions (which Josephus attempts to downplay), and Judas’ original partner in crime, Sadduc, was a Pharisee. He even explicitly states their beliefs were indistinguishable from the Pharisees’. However, Josephus attempted to discredit the Galileans as either brigands or forced converts and downplay their “pharisaic” credentials.

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  10. Josephus more or less succeeds in keeping the Essenes clean of any revolutionary taint by simply separating out the revolutionary messianism and apocalypticism and assigning it to a “fourth” philosophy, which I think he just made up as a category to hold the violent elements of the various Jewish sects of the time. If you read some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, you can feel their brotherhood’s incandescent hatred for the Romans and all they represented. For example, the “War of Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness” scroll.



    Further, one finds that the sect referred to its members as “saints” and “the elect” and its totality as the true “Church of God” and “The Way”, all terms that show up in early so-called Christian literature, even Paul’s writings. That leads to the proposition that the so-called early Jerusalem church was nothing more than the support/recruiting arm of an Essene/Zadokite/Zealot/Sicarii group fomenting rebellion against Rome. That leads to the idea that what they were doing in their so-called evangelizing was gathering recruits, supporters, and funds to conduct their eventual war of liberation, and using messianic hopes to promote it and maintain the spirits and loyalty of the revolutionaries. Based on the historical evidence, that is the sum and substance of the early so-called Jerusalem church. It was certainly messianic and cultic, but not at all in the way the later Christian mythmakers and apologists imagined.

    If that is the case, Paul was undoubtedly familiar with the Essene groups, at least in terms of the chapters scattered around the empire to which Philo, Josephus, and Pliny give witness. When Paul went to Jerusalem, the men he met were probably the leaders of the coming rebellion: the three “pillars”, James, Cephas/Simon, and John.

    However, the church as understood by the later mythmakers also has a foundation in historical elements. It seems that Paul had very different ideas about what a messiah should be. In this context, we can gain an understanding of the conflict between Paul and the “Jerusalem James Gang”. The Three Pillars were intent on provoking a war and Paul was intent on preventing one. They preached two radically different messiahs, as is clear from Paul’s writings.

    There were several Jewish messiah figures who were exactly that – Jewish messiah types of Jews, for Jews, and by Jews – and who expected to wipe out the Romans. There was Simon of Peraea, the “king of the Jews” slain by Gratus and commemorated on the Jeselsohn Stone; “Athronges” and his brothers; and Judas the Galilean, who appears to have been the most important and influential, because Josephus devotes an extraordinary amount of text to him and members of his family throughout Wars and Antiquities. Maccoby and Hilsenrath both highlight the fact that elements of these figures made their way into both the Gospels and Acts, which tells us that the authors of these texts certainly were aware of what they were doing to some degree. Maccoby and Hilsenrath are convinced that the Jewish messiah was all there was and Paul just perverted it, so they go on to cast Paul in the role of betrayer and mythmaker. I think there was much more to it than that.

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  11. As those early Christian authors searched Jewish texts – including Josephus – for clues to create their Jesus of Nazareth, they found a number of characters whose actions were incorporated into the tale, including several with the name “Jesus”, the saddest being Jesus son of Ananus, whom Josephus identifies as a plebeian and a husbandman.

    The chances of a real Jew named Joshua (“God saves”, i.e. “savior”) becoming the savior are slim. More likely is that the name was a symbolic one: the new Joshua, messiah – “anointed savior”. According to Paul, God “gave him [Jesus] the name that is above every name”, i.e. Jesus Christ Lord, presumably. That leads to the question: what was his name before?

    In any event, with a comprehensive knowledge of the texts of Josephus, it becomes glaringly obvious that the Gospel writers had certain knowledge of Judas the Galilean as a messiah figure, and were deliberately and consciously writing their texts with his historical reality in mind, but heavily overlaying it with the Pauline Christ, who was an altogether different figure. It constitutes deliberate fraud and I don’t think this realization can be avoided when all the pieces and context of the times are considered. The Gospels were rhetorical works consciously designed to be religious propaganda.

    Paul was obviously aware of the Jerusalem ecclesia’s conception of the messiah, but just as obviously, he wasn’t much impressed by it, or them. He tells the Corinthians that they appear to be easily taken in by “a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached” and in the next breath, he refers to those “super-apostles” whom he then goes on to excoriate as “false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” It becomes even more evident who he is talking about: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I.”

    No, Paul’s Son of God was not Judas the Galilean or any other Jewish figure, despite the fact that later redactors have tried to make it appear that they were one and the same.

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  12. In Galatians he announces clearly, “Paul, an apostle – sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father”, and then accuses his readers, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!” He continues, “I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” Further on, when talking about his second trip to Jerusalem, he mentions the leaders of the Jerusalem ecclesia specifically, making the side comment: “As for those who were held in high esteem – whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism – they added nothing to my message.” His opponents finally come into focus: “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that these statements, along with Paul’s repeated focus on crucifixion, indicate that the Pillars’ gospel did not include any focus on crucifixion. If it did, their interpretation of it couldn’t have had much in common with Paul’s, because he repeatedly contrasts the two, and highlights their differences. For instance, the image of a crucified rebel could have been a symbol for their suffering-servant messiah, but it clearly meant something much more to Paul.

    Based on the way this group spied on Paul, hounded him, interfered with his work and his groups, and the way he responded to them, it is obvious that Paul was not preaching the same Christ and the Jerusalem group was becoming more and more hostile about it. It seems fairly clear from what we know so far, that Paul could not have been ignorant of Judas the Galilean and his Fourth Philosophy, or that he – and possibly other dead rebel leaders – was most likely the messianic figure preached or revered by the Jerusalem ecclesia. But this is obviously not the messiah who inspired Paul. The real character on whom the Jewish Jesus was loosely modeled was of absolutely no interest to Paul. That, in and of itself, is an astonishing thing. But that realization leaves us free to try to discover exactly what it was that drove Paul, because it is clear he wasn’t myth-making or running a con job; he was utterly devoted to his mission, body and soul. And since Paul is, ultimately, the author of the main Christian theology and Christology, we should very much want to discover what he was thinking.

    The highly developed angelology of Jewish literature of the time clearly influenced Paul, who not only believed in the angels but also the multi-layered universe. This was part of the intellectual environment of the Enochians, the Zoroastrians, and the Middle Platonists, who apparently influenced the development of gnosticism. Paul was engaged in a battle against these obviously terrifying forces, and his vision was one where a single being could stand against this series of worlds lower than God himself, and act as the defender and redeemer of humanity.

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  13. We find what was driving Paul in the book of Isaiah. Messiah simply means “anointed” and could apply to priests, kings, and prophets. Interestingly, in Isaiah we find the only non-Jew in the OT who was identified as the messiah, or anointed one of Yahweh. Isaiah tells us that Yahweh spoke “to his messiah, to Cyrus, whom I [Yahweh] took by his right hand to subdue nations before him” (Isa. 45:1, “Second Isaiah”). It seems clear that, to the author of this text, “Yahweh’s anointed” is something more than a title; it is a theological construct expressing that this individual is appointed and protected by God, the God of the Jews, for a special role in relation to them. Josephus appears to have understood the term in a similar way, because he was easily able to switch sides and announce that Vespasian was the messiah. Did Paul do something similar?

    Something profoundly moved Paul to envision a man on a cross as a sign: “I will set a sign among them”, not an “accursed” thing, but rather a symbol of triumph: “he ‘made a spectacle of the cosmic powers and authorities, and led them as captives in his triumphal procession.’” How did Paul get from an image of abject failure to one of cosmic triumph?

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  14. To come back to my point: it seems to me that Mark almost had to be first, and to be early – not long after 70 AD.

    Who wrote it? Somebody who clearly was “canonizing” Paul’s version of the gospel as well as making clear the fact that Paul was the one with the true gospel and the so called disciples of Jesus were nothing.

    Turning back to Paul, First Clement 5:2 says rather specifically: “By reason of jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars of the Church were persecuted, and contended even unto death.” If we recall that Paul referred to Cephas, James and John as the “pillars” in Jerusalem, I don’t think it is stepping too far out on a limb to say that this sentence may very well refer to the deaths of those individuals.

    So, having made a statement about the pillars, the author then moves on to apostles, and here he names Peter first of all. The way this is presented is as if Peter is not one of the pillars, which might mean that Cephas and Peter were not one and the same person as I have already suggested a couple of times. Clement writes (5:4): “There was Peter who by reason of unrighteous jealousy endured not one not two but many labors, and thus having borne his testimony went to his appointed place of glory.” The question we might wish to ask here is: was it Peter who was unrighteously jealous, leading to his many labors (a metaphor for death?), or was he a target of unrighteous jealousy? It very much sounds like Peter came to an ignominious end.

    The next case is Paul, who “by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.” I don’t think this passage at all conveys that Paul was martyred, but rather that after many trials, his life turned around completely, he hobnobbed with the elite and died an old and honored man, having become notable even to rulers. He may have done this in Spain, which was the Empire’s “farthest bounds of the West”, or Rome or both. Richard Carrier, in fact, agrees with this idea. He writes:

    “The fact that this contradicts all later legend (which has Paul executed by Nero in Rome) suggests, first, that that was indeed only a later legend and, second, that Paul did in fact die in Spain – as otherwise there would be no reason for Clement to make this up  [But even if Clement was extrapolating based on Romans], Paul’s martyrdom at Rome is proved to be a myth (that tale not existing yet, or it being known at Clement’s time that in fact Paul was martyred in Spain).”

    I don’t think Paul was martyred in Spain, either. I think he lived to a ripe old age and died naturally and the later myth of St Jacques de Compostela was a Catholic creation to cover over that fact.

    Having said that, is it possible that Paul himself wrote the gospel of Mark as his “secret teaching” to the world? And Marcion missed the boat, so to say?

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  15. Pontius Pilate is the chronological hook for the entire Christian creation of Jesus of Nazareth. It has always been assumed that his presence in the Gospels is proof of their historicity. Further, the chronology has been tied to the statement in the Gospel of Luke that John the Baptist began his ministry in “the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar” (Luke 3:1). If Jesus began his ministry shortly after, and was then tried and executed under Pontius Pilate, Pilate must have been governor at that time, so the logic goes. According to a remark in Josephus, he ended his term with the death of Tiberius, which we know occurred in 37 AD. Another remark in Josephus says Pilate was there for ten years, so it is simple! Count backwards from 37 AD and you have Pilate coming to Judea in 26/27 AD, and that gives you the window for the activities of Jesus, which began after the fifteenth year of Tiberius, i.e. 29 AD. It all fits so beautifully! Unfortunately, there are big problems with these conclusions.

    These questions also apply if we accept the historicity of Jesus, because even if Christianity started because of a man named Jesus, the later Gospels were still arguably later fictionalizations. Their authors wouldn’t necessarily be writing based on actual facts and might draw useful elements from the available historical material.

    Of course, there’s the nagging problem of whether the Gospels can agree on whether that ministry was one year or three and whether Jesus was crucified in 29, 30, 32, 33 or 36 AD; not to mention that pesky John the Baptist not sticking to the schedule and dying in 35/36 when he’s supposed to die before Jesus’ ministry begins. Then there is the problem of the almost immediate conversion of Paul, who supposedly was a persecutor of the early “church”, which hardly had time to form or grow or spread, and how to fit his chronology in with the chronology of Jesus and Pilate. It’s really a mess and the amount of ink that has been spilled on it would float an aircraft carrier.

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  16. The crucifixion of Jesus under the governorship of Pontius Pilate is considered a historical fact by almost universal consent. Bible scholar Bart Ehrman states that the crucifixion of Jesus on the orders of Pontius Pilate is the most certain element about him. John Dominic Crossan says that the crucifixion of Jesus is as certain as any historical fact can be. Scholars may agree on the historicity of the crucifixion, but they differ considerably on the reasons and even the exact date, not to mention how historical the Gospels are in respect of whether or not Jesus really knew he was going to be crucified. Discussing this crucifixion of a Jesus under Pontius Pilate is a huge industry. It reminds me a lot of something that Egyptologist/archaeologist Donald B. Redford once said about debates over the history of early Israel, and I think it applies here:

    Scholars expended substantial effort on questions that they had failed to prove were valid questions at all. Under what dynasty did Joseph rise to power? Who was the Pharaoh of the Oppression? Of the Exodus? Can we identify the princess who drew Moses out of the river? Where did the Israelites make their exit from Egypt: via the Wady Tumilat or by a more northerly point?

    One can appreciate the pointlessness of these questions if one poses similar questions of the Arthurian stories, without first submitting the text to a critical evaluation. Who were the consuls of Rome when Arthur drew the sword from the stone? Where was Merlin born?

    Can one seriously envisage a classical historian pondering whether it was Iarbas or Aeneas that was responsible for Dido’s suicide, where exactly did Remus leap over the wall, what really happened to Romulus in the thunderstorm, and so forth?

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  17. In all these imagined cases none of the material initially prompting the questions has in any way undergone a prior evaluation as to how historical it is! And any scholar who exempts any part of his sources from critical evaluation runs the risk of invalidating some or all of his conclusions. Tom Brodie writes:

    The first thing to be sorted out about a document is not its history or theology – not the truth of background events or its ultimate meaning – but simply its basic nature. For instance, before discussing a will – its possible many references to past events, and its provisions dor distributing a legacy – the first thing to be estavlished is whether it is genuine, whether it is a real will.

    Biblical scholars often forget that truly historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth are non-existent, and that their views, long established by cultural norms in which they were born and trained, are not even strong enough to be considered hypotheses.

    For a trained scholar to come right out and say that the existence of a Jewish wonder worker called Jesus, for whose historical reality there is not a shred of evidence, is a more plausible hypothesis than a mythical cult figure created by human needs out of the heroic elements of various individuals following a well-understood mythicization process, just boggles the mind.

    From a strictly methodological point of view, biblical scholarship – as a rule – does not meet the minimum norms of historical study. Indeed, there exists a non-zero possibility that a Jesus of Nazareth was real and lived and died at the place and time given in the Gospels, but serious and careful examination of the evidence does not give the statement even a minimum probability. That, of course, does not mean that there was not somebody – or several somebodies – in the general vicinity of the place and time doing something significant and whose lives and deeds were conflated following the standard mythicization process.

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  18. Part of this myth creation process included selecting an appropriate time and place for the setting of the mythical life of the cult figure. It seems to me that the time of Pontius Pilate in Judea was selected for very important reasons regarding one element of the composite character, and then the time period of another of the composite characters was deemed to be very important, and the two were combined resulting in the dreadful chronological muddle we are left with. The problem was noticed fairly early and required some very creative – though sometimes slight – editing of sources, which has only further exacerbated the historical problem surrounding the Jesus question. But that doesn’t mean we ought to give up! I think that mystery can be solved.

    A critical study of Josephus suggests Pontius Pilate was not the governor of Judea from 27 to 37 AD, nor was he even there for ten years. I will argue that the text of Josephus indicates clearly that Pilate was sent to Judea upon the accession of Tiberius in 14/15 AD, and that he was there for only around five years – being censured at the time that Germanicus was sent to straighten out the affairs of the Syrian province, and recalled in disgrace shortly after. Later Christian redactors/copyists of the Josephan text noticed the problem – a conflict of chronologies – and sought to adjust things by adding governors to the reign of Augustus and a couple of very small but well-placed text adjustments regarding the chronology, which forced the Josephan text into at least partial congruence with the Christian timeline. John the Baptist may have been added to the text earlier, or by a different faction, and the problem was not noticed in time and thus slipped through the net. It could also be that there were so many hands in the redacting process that the muddle was created simply because of that.

    There are actually more problems with the Josephan text than just the chronology of Pilate: As noted, Josephus was very busy confabulating and writing what he thought was good copy for Roman/Jewish apologetic purposes. He wrote Wars not only to justify his Flavian masters and scare the bejeebies out of anybody else who might think about rebelling against Rome, but also to depict the Jews themselves as victims of ideologues and demagogues whom he refers to regularly as robbers, brigands, tyrants, pirates, and so forth. What he is busy trying to cover up is the fact that he was one of them, only the strength of his convictions was less than skin deep.

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  19. Meanwhile, Paul was off in his own world, for the most part, busily creating his own cult with elements borrowed from many sources. From his fevered Old Testament exegeses, he developed a cult figure who was an atoning sacrifice. From the Hellenistic mystery religions and Roman mythology, he appropriated a divine savior in whom followers can become mystically incorporated, by participating in his death and rebirth.

    For the next 15 years, the James Gang became dedicated to making sure they would have revolutionary support for the upcoming messianic war with Rome. During this time, Paul was out and about, merrily evangelizing. He was persecuted during this time, possibly because he was suspected of being one of the revolutionaries – after all, he used their terminology. But it wasn’t until shortly before writing the majority of his letters that, all of a sudden, things started to go south. It seems that all of Paul's letters are combative against one thing or another, and while the pressures appear to have been from several sources, the main one was the apocalyptic, revolutionary gang that passed as the Jerusalem church.

    Then, around 48 AD – perhaps around the time of the conflict in Corinth ¬– James and Simon, the leaders of the James Gang and the “sons” of Judas the Galilean, were executed. In Acts 12:2, the story about James (the brother of John) being executed and Peter (i.e. Simon-Peter) seized, may have been reported in a passage in Josephus. Paul considered that he needed to disconnect himself from these people and their sicarii-type activities, all of which is well depicted in Josephus. Perhaps he departed for Spain via Rome.

    Acts has Peter going to Rome, not getting killed in Jerusalem, as happened in real life. The nascent church needed Peter in Rome to stake the claim of the Jewish messiah and the Judaizing form of Christianity there.

    It should be noted that the first person to place Peter there is Dionysius, ca. 170 AD. Once again we see in Acts a deliberate conflaction and “evening out” of the history and actions of Peter and Paul.

    I think that Paul went directly to Rome after all the persecutions he experienced from the James Gang in their drive to gain supporters and funds for their revolution. He probably was making the collection to bring the wealth of the Gentiles to Jerusalem so as to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah, but at some point, I think he realized that it was not going to be possible to fulfill every jot and tittle. Paul was working as hard as he could to reconcile people under the Jewish god; perhaps he was consciously trying to prevent the disaster that he could see coming if the Jews stood up against Rome and if the Gentiles continued to perceive the Jews as exclusivist and xenophobic.

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  20. There are several correspondences between the activities of Paul and the mythical life of Jesus; so many “words of Jesus” in Mark and elsewhere are right out of the letters of Paul. If it was actually Paul who began his ministry in the “fifteenth year of Tiberius,” 29 AD, we may conjecture that he was about the same age as ascribed to Jesus. If he was born around the time of the death of Herod (1 BC/AD), he would have been 29 at the time of his “call”. He would have been around fifty by the time he made it to Rome. Perhaps he was exiled from Rome for a period as Clement suggests in his brief recap of the career of Paul. Perhaps he did go to Spain.

    And perhaps the James Gang, the putative apostles of the mythical Jesus of Nazareth, who were actually the revolutionary followers of Judas the Galilean, all perished, along with their delusive hopes of messianic salvation, in the fires of Jerusalem. Sadly, that delusion is one that has survived in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

    But it still comes back to the idea that Mark must have been the first "gospel", and it was written allegorically and pretty much as we have it today.

    Marcion may very well have been the person who "historicized" the allegorical/mythical Jesus utilizing the letters of Paul as support for his creation.

    Yes, Paul may very well have been dualist in his doctrines taught privately (as Jesus is depicted doing), and he may have been referring to a "higher god" than Yahweh/Jehovah as the father of Jesus, but it is just as well to posit that he was simply trying to bring gentiles and jews together under the fatherhood of the Jewish god, sharing the love, so to say. It may be possible to find answers to such questions in small clues or hidden in the allegory of Mark.

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