Sun 2 Jul 2006
James Tabor has entered the biblioblogging family with his own blog. Give it a look. His primary interests are archaeology and the historical Jesus.
Design Downloaded and Adapted from www.vanillamist.com.
Sun 2 Jul 2006
James Tabor has entered the biblioblogging family with his own blog. Give it a look. His primary interests are archaeology and the historical Jesus.
Design Downloaded and Adapted from www.vanillamist.com.
July 6th, 2006 at 10:16 am
I went to Dr. Tabor’s blog, and drilled down to the summary of his upcoming book “The Jesus Dynasty.” It appears that Dr. Tabor has a very low view of the Apostle Paul and his integrity. I don’t see any biblical evidence of a “schism” between the leader of the Jerusalem Church, James, and the Paul, the converted persecutor of the Church.
How does Dr. Tabor explain the Jerusalem council in Acts 15? Is this a fabrication? I don’t see a wedge being driven between James and Paul in their theology. I don’t think Paul started Christianity!
August 7th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
For the longest time I could not understand how the tone of the gospels could be so different from the letters attributed to Paul in terms of how Jesus is viewed. The only link seemed to be the attempt by Philo of Alexandria to explain Jewish philosophy in Greek terms. This attempt seems to include an intermediary between humankind and the divine. It is quite a jump to go from seeing Jesus as a messianic figure to being the only begotten son of God.
In the context of Judaism of the 1st century, the actions and reactions of Jesus’ followers after his cruxifiction make sense as Dr. Tabor outlines. What does not make sense is that there is this parallel development of Christianity that Paul creates in his letters to the Gentile churches. Paul is extremely protective of what he has been able to develop and there does appear to be a confrontation with the Jerusalem church between how Jesus is understood by the Jerusalem church and how he is understood by the Gentiles.
As for Dr. Tabor, what I find curious is realizing that the gospels probably were written after the letters of Paul, how is it that Dr. Tabor puts greater value in the gospels than in Paul’s letters? It is not just a question of who wrote what first, but who has the correct version of what we are to make of the events described and the implications of those events.
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:46 am
Jesus Dynasty and Marcan Priority?
One of the essential tenets of James Tabor’s book, the Jesus Dynasty is that the Gospel of Mark was the earliest written Gospel, but after the fall of Jerusalem. For example, throughout the book readers will encounter such unqualified statements as:
“Mark is our earliest gospel, even though it comes second in the New Testament. Mark was written around A.D. 70, and it provides us with the basic narrative framework of the career of Jesus” (42);
“Matthew and Luke . . . basically . . . follow Mark’s lead” (85);
“In Mark, our earliest account . . .” (135)
“Mark wrote first and Matthew and Luke used Mark as their basic narrative source” (136);
“Matthew and Luke follow his [Mark’s] lead” (138);
“Matthew . . . is an edited version of Mark and the Q source with a bit of his own material. Mark is our earliest gospel . . .” (140);
“Mark, our earliest gospel source, ended his Jesus story with the empty tomb” (230);
“Remember, Mark, our earliest gospel, . . .” (238);
It is noteworthy that these statements are dogmatic and are not open to any discussion within the text – no footnotes, no backup material, just an intrepid assertion that the reader is obliged to accept this fact at face value, albeit prefaced with the following: “For the past two hundred years scholars have analyzed and compared these texts and their relationship to one another. The results of this painstaking research have allowed us to read them more carefully, and to use them responsibly as we do other ancient historical sources, . . .” (p. 42).
The essential idea among many textual scholars (but not all) is that since Mark is a bare bones gospel, free of a lot of the extra material found in Matthew, then Matthew obviously is the one who embellished Mark. Thus, Marcan priority is a modern scholarly construct. This, of course, plays in neatly with Tabor’s reconstruction of the gospel tradition, since he believes that the New Testament is largely the literary legacy of the Apostle Paul (pp. 270, 272). In other words, the higher Christology of Paul and the teaching of the miraculous birth and resurrection of Jesus crept into the New Testament as a result of Paul’s circle of influence of what Christianity finally came to be. Mark seems to have come through much of this supposed later editing fairly untouched, except for the fact that “pious scribes” apparently later added verses 16:9-20, which report sightings of Jesus after his crucifixion (pp. 230-33).
Unfortunately, tradition is not on the side of this modern day theory. The earliest testimony that we have is that Matthew was indeed written not more than eleven years after the culminating events of Passion week.
Eusebius, in his Chronicon, places the writing of the gospel of Matthew in the third year of the reign of Caligula, which falls in the year of 41. And he does elsewhere place the author as, yes, the apostle Matthew: “Matthew had begun by preaching to Hebrews; and when he made up his mind to go to others too, he committed his own gospel to writing in his native tongue, so that for those with whom he was no longer present the gap left by his departure was filled by what he wrote” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.24.6).
It is in the 10th chapter of the gospel of Matthew that Jesus gives his twelve disciples a commission to go to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” to preach the “Kingdom of Heaven” (God). And the earliest tradition is that the twelve apostles remained together in Jerusalem for twelve years (30-42) before going out on this worldwide evangelistic campaign (Acts Pet. 5:22. See Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, p. 119).
John Wenham summarizes the position of the early church:
“Eusebius (writing probably at the very end of the third century) … says of Matthew: ‘when he was on the point of going to others he transmitted in writing in his native language the Gospel according to himself, and thus supplied by writing the lack of his own presence to those from whom he was sent’ (HE 2.24.6). There is a suggestion here that the writing of the gospel preceded the departure of Matthew from Palestine. …there was a widespread belief that the apostles were dispersed from Jerusalem twelve years after the crucifixion. Acts may perhaps hint that this had taken place by the time Peter was released from prison in 42, James the apostle having been killed and James the brother of the Lord having become head of the church there (Acts 12:2, 17). In his Chronicon Eusebius places the writing of the gospel in the third year of the reign of Caligula, that is, in 41 (John Wenham, Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 239).
The year 41/2 C.E. was a significant one. It was a Sabbatical year. Claudius succeeded Caligula as Emperor of Rome. Claudius then installs Herod Agrippa I as king of Judea. Immediately the disciples of Jesus became the target of persecution. James, the brother of John, is beheaded and Peter is thrown into prison, awaiting public execution.
In chapter 12 of the book of Acts, concerning the incarceration of Peter, and his escape from prison through divine intervention, Peter goes to John Mark’s mother’s house, where many were gathered. Peter tells them to go to James in Jerusalem who now has assumed the leadership of the Jerusalem Church, whereas Peter flees into hiding out of the immediate grasp of Herod “into another place” (Acts 12:17).
Saul and Barnabas begin their evangelistic tour right after this, taking John Mark with them, and going first to Antioch, then sailing to Cyprus, then into Asia Minor, etc. On this tour, John Mark decides to return to Jerusalem, an incident not pleasing to Paul.
Although the New Testament does not relate this, tradition tells us the Peter also went out on an evangelistic campaign of his own at this time, and that John Mark went with him. He first went to Antioch, where he ordains Euodius as bishop there, then onto Rome, and finally as far as Britain (where some of the ancient tribes of Israel had settled), before returning back to Judea. This was in 42 C.E., exactly 12 years from 30 C.E., when all of the twelve apostles were to spread out all over the known world to preach to the lost sheep of Israel where they were scattered. This meant that Peter, who also was one of the twelve, would go out on this worldwide evangelistic campaign as well. Up to this time Peter was the acknowledged head of the Jerusalem based Church. But now he had installed James, the brother of Jesus, as the leader of the Jerusalem Church, while the rest of the apostles went out as Jesus had instructed them to do. This is why Peter told the brethren at John Mark’s house to go to James and relate to him what had happened.
James, and the apostle Matthew, had been co-authoring a gospel account of Jesus also at this time. Matthew supplied the eye witness material for this account, whereas James supplied genealogical information, as well as the account of the Parthian Magi, the slaughter of children of Bethlehem and maybe all of the many scriptural references of Jesus fulfilling prophecy. This is the account that the Apostles were to take with them on their journeys into to foreign lands. And as a cover letter to this effort, James writes an epistle specifically addressed to “the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1). The gospel would go under Matthew’s name, since he was an apostle of Jesus, as well as a Levite. The Jews held strongly to the belief that Levites were the only ones who could write sacred literature at this time. To be sure, the Gospel of Matthew was written while James was alive, and this is the gospel that James would have certainly sanctioned. It has all the earmarks of what we could call James’ gospel. To believe that this gospel was written by some unknown author in the eighties ignores the fact that 1) the Temple, which was destroyed in 70 C.E., was still functioning, and 2) that after the destruction of Jerusalem, such a “Jewish” gospel would never have been composed in the light of the latter teachings of Peter, Paul and John.
Eusebius also preserves a tradition that the gospel of Matthew was discovered far a field from Jerusalem, in India, indicating that this was due to the fact that Matthew’s Gospel was indeed used by the apostles in their worldwide evangelistic campaign:
“At that time (ca. 185) the school for believers in Alexandria was headed by a man with a very high reputation as a scholar, by name Pantaenus… He went as far as India, where he appears to have found that Matthew’s gospel had arrived before him and was in the hands of some there who had come to know Christ. Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them and had left behind Matthew’s account in the actual Hebrew characters, and it was preserved till the time of Pantaenus’ mission” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.10.1-3).
Peter must have also taken a copy of Matthew’s gospel with him on his evangelistic campaign. If Peter went to Rome armed with the gospel of Matthew, however, this message would have had to have been tailored to the Greek and Latin speakers there, wherein Peter preached to them the basic outline of Matthew’s template., but from his own eyewitness point of view. Mark, apparently took sermon notes on Peter’s discourses, then later assembled them into an account that was, in effect, a gospel according to Peter. This occurred, apparently, after Peter had left the city of Rome.
Eusebius writes:
“And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter’s hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark. And they say that Peter, when he had learned, through a revelation of the Spirit, the zeal of the men, and that the work obtained being used in the churches. Clement in the eighth book of his Hypotyposes gives this account, and with him agrees the bishop of Hierapolis named Papias” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.15.1).
Eusebius also gives us Papias’s direct testimony, based upon the testimony of the Apostle John, who was his mentor:
Papias gives also in his own work other accounts of the words of the Lord on the authority of Aristion who was mentioned above, and traditions as handed down by the Presbyter John. …“This also the presbyter [John] said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.15).
Like Matthew, the internal evidence shows us that Mark was written with the anticipation of the “abomination of desolation” being set up in the temple and that the church in Jerusalem was to flee upon seeing that event (Mark 13:14). This alone places it in a pre-66 C.E. timeframe.
It should be noted that not all scholars subscribe to Marcan priority. The nineteenth century German scholar, Johann Jakob Griesbach, supported Matthean priority and since he was the first to so strongly advocate this position, his theory became known as the “Griesbach hypothesis.” His thesis is alive and well today in such works as the late William R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1981); The Gospel of Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1994) [his arguments can also be seen online at http://www.maplenet.net/~trowbridge/farmer.htm]; Bernard Orchard, Matthew, Luke and Mark, 2d ed. (Manchester, Eng.: Koinonia Press, 1977) and H. H. Stodt, History and Criticism of the Markan Hypothesis (trans. and ed. D. L. Niewyk, Macon, Ga.:1980).
The majority of critical scholarship dominates the Marcan priority position, however. But in so doing they had to invent a previous forerunner document called “Q.” This theory tells us that first there was an unknown “sayings” document under the sobriquet of “Q” (German: Quelle = Source). Then there came out of this the gospel of Mark, and then thirdly we have Matthew as supposedly the ultimate copy-cat. All of this, of course, is extremely hypothetical, if not totally imaginary.
A better scenario, based on the earliest testimony, is the following: Peter first arrived in Rome in the year of 42 C.E., with Mark by his side. Peter preaches there and then moves on, leaving Mark behind in Rome. Mark, at the bequest of the people in Rome, writes down the sayings of Peter in a gospel format, basically following Matthew’s outline. This was the first draft of Mark’s Gospel. (It is most likely that it was edited later on by Peter himself when Peter returned to Rome in the fall of 66 C.E. to confer with the Apostle Paul concerning the matter of the canonization his letters. It is at this time that Peter most likely added the last verses of Mark (Mark 16:9-20). Therefore, Mark was written around the year of 43 C.E. and redacted by Peter in 67 C.E.
Matthew was written in Jerusalem in 41 C.E., and Mark was written in Rome in 43 C.E., while Luke wrote when Paul was in Prison in Rome from 56-8 C.E., and could be considered Paul’s gospel. John wrote his gospel and epistles right after Peter’s death in 68 C.E. If we look at this another way, the three “pillar apostles” (Gal. 2:9) are represented by Matthew, Mark, and John, which are essentially the gospels of James, Peter, and John. However, John, who had the final say in assembling the New Testament, decided to wedge his gospel in between Luke’s two volume account in order to keep the synoptic narratives together, (a decision that only John could have made and would dare do). Astonishingly, in the epistles section, we see the very same sequence of authority, viz., James, Peter, and John, followed by the epistles of Paul (reverting back to the original arrangement of the books as found in Codex Vaticanus and other mss.).
Rather than the New Testament being a literary production of the apostle Paul, it is first and foremost, the testimony of the Pillar apostles, and then, the testimony of the apostle Paul. No one in post apostolic times would ever have assembled a New Testament in such a way, nor with such a Jewishness to it. No one in post-apostolic times would ever have left out First Clement (which, by the way was written in 68/9, not 96), and many other later works. If the New Testament was a product of the second century, the New Testament would have been vastly different from what we have today.
It is unfortunate that there are people today who think that they can write history without bothering to get their facts straight. Instead of researching the internal and external evidence, these history revisionists go to textual scholars to give them a dating of the biblical books who are nothing more than modern skeptics with pessimistic theories that are not based on historical fact. Then, armed with these phony dates, these modern writers make up history as they go along.
Why Tabor is given a pass on this is a discredit to modern scholarship for being complicit in a modern hoax. This is not a trivial matter. It is not a “well, that’s your opinion,” and then just go along your merry way. It is a make or break issue that demolishes the entire context of Tabor’s central issue, that Paul is the inventor of modern Christianity and that it is his influence that added the miraculous accounts long after the generation of the apostles.
It’s a shame that scholars today can write books that dogmatically state highly controversial matters as if they need no longer any explanation. In the final analysis, history has to address the internal evidence, the oldest traditions, and finally, make sense. Marcan Priority fits none of these conditions.
October 16th, 2006 at 5:05 am
i personally believe in the markan priority