Per Google maps:
From sea to shrinking sea – I stopped short a couple miles since the Dead Sea was significantly larger than recently. (It would have been TMI to query ChatGPT and ask how much smaller. And no, 63 miles is not the length of the arrow – the little black circle is the south end of the distance vector. ; - )
That’s a long way as the raven flies and a huge distance over rugged terrain to haul salt! All very salty tongue in cheek, of course.
I can’t find a single example of Θάλασσα (thalassa) used to mean the seashore, though I’ll admit that my TDNT isn’t accessible at the moment so I don’t have the ultimate tool at hand. There’s a perfectly good word for seashore that all the Gospel writers use, αἰγιαλός (aig-ee-ah-LOS), and it isn’t used here. If the text had περί (pe-REE) instead of ἐπί (eh-PEE) a case could be made here since περί can indicate “along” or “around”, .e.g. “περι τὴν πόλιν” (pe-REE tayn PO-lin), “around the city” and thus “περι τὴν θάλασσαν”, “around the sea”, which could mean along the edge.
I did find one that could be construed as “sea bottom”, but not “seashore”.
Oh, indubitably! Just from the Psalms – 65, 77, 89, 95, 107 – there would have been plenty going through the disciples’ minds, and the Jews who were the majority in the church for a long time would have recognized them as well.
A number of scholars have observed that in the Incarnation, as one of my professors put it, “the veil is removed”, i.e. miracles are done more openly. Given that God Himself is present in the flesh that makes sense. “You are a God Who hides Himself”, the Psalmist says, but when walking about on His own feet, breathing with His own lungs, He is not so hidden.
If you can’t find it just go to Biblehub and look it up.
Some have noted that in the Roman version of βίος, (BEE-ohs) – from which we get “biography” – having someone walk on water is the sort of “marvel” a writer might include to indicate some connection to the gods. On the other hand, no Roman Bios ever included so many marvels, so even it this one was thrown in as a nod to Roman notions it is overwhelmed by the others; further, there is plenty of attestation from non-Christian sources that Jesus was regarded as an actual “wonder-worker”, so even if only the Signs and other miracles just recorded by John are authentic it is more than enough to make the case that He was Who He repeatedly declared Himself to be: Ruler of the Storm, Lord of the Sabbath, Greater than the Temple, and I AM.
It depends on what you mean by “literary device”. If you mean a fiction meant to make a point, then no, it isn’t a literary device; but if you mean an analogy, an illustration, a model of something that was actually done, then yes – because while He did far more than “pay for our sins”, but He most assuredly never did less than that.
Yes.
Indeed the sacrificial system of the Temple was a masterful example of symbol in the ancient meaning – something that conveys what it portrayed. It portrayed the forgiveness of sins by the shedding of blood, the making of peace by reconciliation, and the rest, and it conveyed those not because the symbols had any power in themselves but because they were founded on Christ and the Cross. “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin”, but that should be written, “Without the shedding of His Blood there is no forgiveness of sin”: it was not the blood of bulls and sheep, but the Blood of Christ that stood behind them as the Promise that forgave sins.
Indeed the ultimate ceremony of Israel, the Passover, is the same: it is a symbol that conveyed what it portrayed – the sacrifice not of a lamb, but of The Lamb. [So those theologians who ask if the Lord’s Supper is based on the Passover have it backwards: the Passover was based on the Lord’s Supper!]
Interestingly, almost all people believe that! Humans recognize deep down in our being that we are utter screw-ups and that there must be an accounting; indeed we hope for it because without an accounting life doesn’t make sense. We need an accounting or we cannot be whole; we long for a purging because we know that we cannot make ourselves clean. When Paul says we have the Law written on our hearts it isn’t just ordinances and rules he means, it’s the fact that we know we have fallen short not just of the glory of God but of our own expectations and that it has to be made right.
We know also that we cannot make it right – we are still screw-ups, so all our efforts to be right just dig the hole deeper. People I’ve known who became Christians did so because they recognized in the message something they already actually knew but lacked the courage to admit to – because where was there to go? A Rescue was needed, but who could be the Rescuer when we are all equally screw-ups? The Rescue has to come from outside.
Amen!
And let all the people say, “Amen!”
They were symbol, so of course they had substance since the ancient meaning of symbol is that which conveys what it portrays.
Though the substance wasn’t their own; it was the Blood of Christ.
Due to the bizarre editing system here, I’m having to append the following to this answer. I think that means no one will get notified because the system won’t let me post this as its own answer (which is what it should be).
They are only “anonymous” to scholars who love to despise tradition. That they originally may have been without attribution does not make them anonymous: each was written for a specific community where the author resided, so there was no need for a label because everyone knew the author because he lived among them. So when Mark originally wrote there was no need to put his name on the outside; everyone there knew who wrote it – but then when Matthew’s version showed up people realized they couldn’t just say “the Gospel story” any more, they had to specify which Gospel story, so the scrolls got taken out and the authors’ names put on the outsides.
The Synoptics would have been easy enough to label since they were written when there were still eyewitnesses along with others who knew the authors so they knew who wrote each one. And John’s would have been even easier; the Synoptics were already being read all over the churches, so when a new one came along they would have asked (especially seeing as how different it is), “Who wrote this one?” and the messenger who had brought it would have said, “Oh, that came from the Elder” or “That came from the Apostle” (a title used because he was the only one still living), so since the others had names on their scrolls the custom was followed and the Fourth Gospel was noted as being from John (indeed it’s likely that had it not been from “the beloved disciple” that it wouldn’t have been accepted; the churches were already getting picky about what was “read in church” – three words that weren’t just an adjectival phrase but were already a technical term for readings that had authority).
So no, the Gospels were written before 70 A.D. with the possible exception of John – almost a generation, not “at least”.
The issue from my perspective is that it has been pointed to as the sort of thing that Roman authors put into a Bios account to indicate connection with the divine. I’ve commented on that already, how it actually wouldn’t have made a difference, but I’ll add that with the one exception though the Gospels used the Bios format the authors were certainly not Romans and to expect Jewish writers to throw in a bit of “wonder worker” material to conform to that format is more than a little silly. Luke, OTOH, is clearly writing for a Gentile (most likely “God-fearers”, Gentiles who believed in the Old Testament God but who weren’t willing to submit to the entire Law, only to the moral part) audience – and notably he does not include the walking-on-the-water account. This is important because if it was a literary device following the Bios format Luke is where we should expect to find it, versus (especially not!) in Matthew or John.
So on literary grounds the account is probably something that actually happened.
You mean scholars who take academic history seriously and are not motivated by apologetical needs? You are correct. Critical scholars are critical when it comes to doing history. You incorrectly sling made and accuse them of despising tradition, however. They spend their lives evaluating it. They just don’t blindly believe tradition when it agrees with them. Likewise, “some guy said such and such” 40 years after Mark was written is not valid historical evidence in and of itself. Since none of that author’s writing survive and we only have hearsay from hundreds of years later, it is quite difficult to assess that evidence. How many people agreed with it? How many disagreed? How many Christians used other gospels or different versions of the Gospels? Not to mention, Papias’s comments are not a really good fit for Matthew. When doing history one has to question the laurels of the author, potential the lines of transmission, countering claims, rival beliefs, political motivation etc. Critical scholars don’t actually despise tradition. This is the absurd claim of conservative exegetes who try to poison the well in their insecurity. Critical scholars are simply that: critical. They have standards of evidence that need to be satisfied before giving intellectual assent to a tradition.
Of course not. Whoever first received them probably knew who wrote them unless they were distributed anonymously intentionally. Each work has its own composition history. But we have 100s of spurious works in antiquity. Clearly the neat little theory about “everyone would have checked everything” you want me to believe is a total fabrication on your part.
Unless they were more communal documents that developed over time based on earlier traditions? You assuming one author sat down and penned the work in one shot is just a baseless assertion that fits the conservative narrative. It may be true, it may not. That there were difference versions and stages of composition for some of the works is quite plausible. We know quite a bit about the Gospels. Mark wrote first. Matthew and Luke copied him, making changes and supplementing material as they saw fit. John probably rewrote synoptic traditions more wholesale.
Do you apply the same logic to the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Judas, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Protoevangelium of James or many other dozens of other falsely attribute works from the 1st and 2ndd century? Or do you just want me to blindly believe the tradition around canonical gospels is accurate whereas all the other works used by rival Christian communities are wrong just because you say so and you want to believe some tradition while rejecting other tradition?
You are assuming an early date. Assumptions are not arguments.
You are assuming a rapid dissemination of the canonical Gospels. This is terribly naive and each work would need to be treat individual and examined carefully. A good case can be made for Mark since it is believe to hav been used by Matthew and Luke within 20-30 years of its composition by several other authors. But exactly how far, wide and spread is difficult to know. We don’t have that complete a knowledge of the time.
Did they ask that about the many dozens of works outside the New Testament that many Christian groups used? Or do we just blindly accept the version of events that “won” in history?
This is a minority position in scholarship today and it is mostly found in conservative seminaries.
Vinnie
Hi Vinnie and @St.Roymond .
I’m currently taking a course on New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver (taught by George Guthrie). We spent a bit of time on the dating/authorship of the gospels with the general conclusion that “one can’t know for sure”…and I’m agnostic on the matter with my current limited knowledge, at this point.
But FYI, Guthrie pointed the class to a very recent book published in 2022 which apparently uses strict historical and textual analysis to argue for early dating of the gospels. Guthrie said that he found many of the new arguments “persuasive” and personally had come around to think early dating is most credible. So, this seems to be a book that I need to read! Wondering if either of you has heard of this scholar or the book?
here’s the jacket cover blurb:
This paradigm-shifting study is the first book-length investigation into the compositional dates of the New Testament to be published in over forty years. It argues that, with the notable exception of the undisputed Pauline Epistles, most New Testament texts were composed twenty to thirty years earlier than is typically supposed by contemporary biblical scholars. What emerges is a revised view of how quickly early Christians produced what became the seminal texts for their new movement.
The best scholars will absolutely tell you we lack certainty. What scholars give is what they feel is the most probable dating range based on their assessment of the evidence. I have been convinced Mark dates just after the temple was destroyed. The temple just plays such a huge role in the second half of the gospel. Since I am also convinced that Matthew and Luke used Mark in their composition, they date from after this time period as well.
Irenaeus mentions all four gospels by name ca 180 and quotes them so we can be reasonably sure he meant our Gospels (the same can’t be said for Papias). Based on the crucifixion of Jesus we know he died ca. 30CE. So we can have almost 100% certainty that a form of our four canonical gospels date from 30-180CE. The more we narrow the range the less confidence we can have. We can obviously do much better than a 150 year range and have a high degree of confidence but the narrower the less certain it becomes.
I’ve heard of it and have a digital copy. Bernier puts Mark ca. 62 and Matthew and Luke shortly after. I would put Mark 70-75 and Matthew and Luke 80-100. His work created a stir in conservative circles online. Scholarly reviews have not been kind from my experience. I’ve read brief reviews by Edwards online (scathing and maybe even unprofessional), Olsen and a redditor on Academic Biblical. Its the first work really since Robinson’s Redating the NT (a work I have that) that goes this route on such a large scale. Or course, a very not conservative Crossley dated Mark to the late 30s or 40s somewhat recently as well which created a bit of a buzz.
I skimmed a few of his Epistle dates. He does give ranges for several cases. For example he gives dating ranges for 1 and 2 Peter based on whether or not Peter wrote them. That is a positive at least.
From what I am told Bernier also regurgitates the “Acts doesn’t narrate Paul’s death” argument which has not been convincing to most scholars in a long time. In fact, most believe Acts does reference Paul’s death (which means it clearly comes after it!) and a myriad of reasons have been put forth for when it doesn’t receive a long or detailed treatment. His treatment of it is odd from what I read.
It is not high on my list at the moment. But when I eventually gather all my thoughts on dating I will of course have to read and consider its appropriate sections. I think it will introduce a reader to some critical dating issues for sure by I wouldn’t only read that or read it like its some new game changer in NT studies. Its not. As Edward’s wrote:
Yet, this is less problematic than that there are passages he altogether ignores. Bernier says nothing on Mark’s story of Jesus exorcising the demon named Legion, despite the theory this story depends on post-70 knowledge of the role Legio X Fretensis played in the destruction of Jerusalem. He makes zero mention of Mark’s story of Jesus being asked about Caesar’s denarius, which has been argued as evidence the author knew the post-70 Fiscus Iudaicus. And though Bernier does tackle a few other passages in Mark regarding the destruction of the temple, insisting they could have originated before 70 CE, he fails to address the cumulative weight of all these texts when read as a unified thematic thrust by Mark’s author. Namely, why does the author spin the entire second half of his gospel around the certainty of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, if he was writing nearly three decades before the event happened?
But like any argument put forth in a scholarly manner, it deserves serious consideration. I would read Olsen’s treatment and even his follow up response to a very good comment on it.
Thanks for your detailed comments. When I read Bernier, I’ll keep a list of these points of debate and use them to help me frame the lay-of-the-land further. The text being used for the course I’m taking is Wright & Bird who list a “conventional” dating for Mark around 70 AD, with the other gospels being written sometime thereafter, but they leave the window open recognizing uncertainty in all arguments.
Re: the emphasis on the Temple in Mark. If a theme of the gospels was Jesus framing a “New Exodus” for Israel, and how Jesus as “A new Moses” would be doing in himself what the temple system had done previously, then it seems hardly surprizing that a “destruction of the temple” theme would feature prominently in the gospel, irrespective of whether the physical destruction of the temple had already occurred or not. Anyway, Wright and Bird point out that it is “plausible” that Mark was written around 70 AD in response to the actual event of temple destruction. However, they also say that political tensions around the temple, and conflict with the Romans over the temple were present already several years before 70 AD, so it would not have been surprising to see these Motifs turn up in Mark at the early date too.
Sigh…if only there were more firm data…
Sorry, but no: historians regularly accept assignment of authorship that comes from three, four, even five centuries after the events or after the documents were originally written. But when it comes to the Gospels, without having any manuscripts of the start of any of the Gospels that lack a claim of authorship, they assume that the Gospels were originally completely anonymous. If the Gospels were treated like other ancient documents there would 't even be a disagreement over the ascribed authorship. They’re arguing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and that’s blind.
LOL
In every single other case where authorship is ascribed a gap of merely forty years would be considered so short there’s no point in disputing the attribution! Scholars take the word of people a lot longer than that after the original writing was done as not bothering doubting.
Only when it comes to the Gospels. No one argues that Aesop’s fables were written by Aesop (which ones he wrote is sometimes argues about), but the first attribution of authorship comes two and a half centuries after the accepted time of composition – and that’s common with ancient Greek material.
Sorry, but I began learning Greek with texts far more ancient than the Gospels, and it’s standard that assignments of authorship from centuries after the composition of a work are accepted without question… until it comes to religious documents. When the Gospels are the topic, suddenly a gap of a century means the authorship was made up later on, but with secular literature three centuries is no barrier to accepting assigned authorship.
Authorship is only disputed when there is evidence against it – until it comes to religious literature, and then absence of evidence is treated as evidence of absence. When it’s secular, tradition is accepted as indisputable without evidence against it; when it’s religious, tradition is despised until there’s evidence for it.
That double standard has been going on for some two centuries now, so this statement is a joke:
They have two different sets of standards, but that’s a topic you don’t bring up if you want to get a master’s degree, let alone a doctorate. That’s a truth I ran into in graduate school – and got told to ignore if I was going to pursue a degree in the field.
No, it isn’t, because with the Gospels the material was written while eye witnesses were still around to protest. There are even examples of things written when eyewitnesses were still around and the writers got scorned for being dishonest.
I don’t give a fig for any “conservative narrative”. There’s nothing in the Gospels to suggest “community authorship”; that idea was a pure invention by critics who needed something to write about. This is confirmed by the fact that numerous topics important to early Christians well before the Gospels were written do not show up in the Gospels at all, they only show up in the epistles – and if they were written by “communities” those communities would hardly have missed the chance to insert paragraphs speaking to those concerns. The whole idea that the Gospels were the products of communities can only hold if the Gospels were completed before 50 A.D. when Paul was first writing.
Those are still argued; the debate has gone back and forth since Origen and Augustine and still hasn’t been settled, though it’s certain that neither Matthew not Luke “copied” Mark; they wrote their own material and for sections Mark had already written they often just borrowed that existing material – it was a fairly common practice among Roman historians including biographers.
None of those is earlier than the end of the second century, so they don’t even enter the picture – by the time they were written, the canon was mostly settled; roughly a dozen books were still argued about and seven were accepted. Thomas, Peter, Judas, etc. were never even on the radar – and that’s not guessing, it’s certain because people who would have mentioned them if they were even being considered don’t mention them even though they mention other works that got rejected.
No assumptions involved. Very few scholars any longer date the synoptics later than about 65, and I’m being generous by allowing for that late a date. Personally I hold that Matthew’s Aramaic version was complete by about 45, Mark wrote before 55, Matthew’s Greek version came shortly thereafter and lazily used Mark’s Greek whenever it covered a bit that was already in his account; Luke finished his work before Paul’s execution, around 58-60, and John weighed in about 65-68 (and is not the John of the Apostles but another John who lived in Jerusalem and didn’t travel with Jesus).
If I wanted to make assumptions I;d moved those all earlier by five to ten years.
No, I’m presuming that the Gospels were circulated a bit faster than we know that Paul’s epistles were and they were being swapped between churches almost as soon as he’d written more than a half dozen. From the evidence the church epistles now accepted as genuinely Paul’s were almost everywhere around the empire (and beyond) even before Paul’s death for the simple reason of travel back and forth between Palestine and Rome: traveling Christians stayed with the churches wherever they traveled, and the churches eagerly desired copies of anything of Paul’s a traveler might have, and the churches at both ends of this common circuit made a practice of sending along copies. So the moment any Gospel was available it would have joined the ongoing exchange, with the result that by the time John wrote it would have been a poor church indeed that didn’t have the other Gospels already.
There weren’t “dozens” until much later – if there had been they would have been mentioned in the early lists but they weren’t.
That may have been true thirty years ago but it isn’t any longer. The trend in scholarship has been to recognize that the traditional accounting is much closer to the truth than the old critics guessed – and “guessed” is an accurate description, because the first late dates assigned to the Gospels were made up out of thin air.
It would be nice. But we’re given what we need for true belief. Sometimes I think that we’re given the Bible in the form that we have it is as a test of humility (not gullibility ; - ).
I would guess that that is because it really doens’t matter. Who knows if there really were a historic Aesop or if that was a pen name or a latter attributed name. Even some of Shakespeare’s writing has been questioned, but we still refer to the plays as his despite any uncertainty. With New Testament writings, some have made their being written by an eye-witness or an Apostle to be an integral part of their being authentic. Evidently, just being inspired and preserved by God regardless of who put pen to paper is not enough for some. This results in the gymnastics used to somehow hold to the Apostolic authors, even when that evidence is scant. then there is Luke, who makes no pretense.
Yes, for me I think there is enough there (i.e., “the reliability of scripture for what it intends to convey”) to warrant my rational commitment to the person of Jesus. I think faith = trust/commitment, however, not “belief with no uncertainty”. So there is always that tension between my faith in the presence of doubts. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
I was just now welcoming @RoyC back with a reference to his aphorism, which I think is important (his aphorism, not my reference ; - ).
Indeed. Interesting conversation!
I hadn’t seen that one yet. I’m wondering if he goes with the rather over-optimistic view I’ve heard that puts Mark at like 40 A.D. which I haven’t bothered to examine because I really don’t seen any motivation for such a date – I suppose I’ll have to check that and this out.
Well, that answers that!
Both of those are ludicrous – they’re nothing more than attempts to push the date later than 70 A.D. Does he really think that no one had heard of a legion before?
And for the coins, Roman coins had Caesar’s image on them since about 40 B.C.
That isn’t scholarship, it’s justification of bias.
In order to assess an argument you actually have to understand it so you can dialogue with it. Otherwise you are just being disingenuous.
From a summary post on academic biblical on Reddit:
————————————-
Zeichmann thinks the story is best explained as an allusion to the fiscus Judaicus (literally “Jewish basket”), which was a tax on Jews levied by Vespasian in 71 to pay for the Capitoline temple to Zeus in Rome. That tax was 2 denarii and those coins had “Caesar” Vespasian on them (“Caesar” had by then become a title for the Emperor, no longer just a family name).
The “Jewish Tax” was controversial for Jews because it collected money to pay for a pagan temple. Zeichmann is arguing that Mark is commenting on how to handle the question of whether it was kosher to pay it. The answer given to Jesus suggests that the coins should be seen as already belonging to Caesar and therefore not a per se breech of Jewish law. They were just giving back what Caesar already owned and it did not imply any idolatrous intent.
The main thesis, though, is that the seeming allusion to the Fiscus Judaicus has to mean that Mark was writing later than 71 when that tax was imposed, and that no other Roman tax would have fit the details of the story before the Jewish War.
Zeichmann does qualify his argument to say that it would only be valid if Mark was written in the region of Palestine or the Lower Levant. If it was written in Rome, the anachronisms would no longer obtain.
————————————-
You claim “Roman coins had Caesar’s image on them since about 40 B.C.” but my understanding is the argument says “Denarii were not commonly used in Judea before the Flavian period and neither were any other coins with “Caesars” on them.” The argument is not “No Roman coins had Caesar’s on them until post 70CE.” Please note the “in Judea” as well. The devil is in the details and the argument is also qualified in that it is contingent upon a non-Roman provenance. Professional scholars often have highly nuanced and well researched views.
Whether it is accurate or not, you can read Zeichmann’s 2017 article from the Catholic Biblical Quarterly (an extremely reputable and peer reviewed journal—AKA not an Internet forum filled with untrained opinion) here:
That comment is embarrassing since you clearly are not even dialoguing with the actual argument being made. Maybe you or @Dale (since he liked your post), would care to offer a critique of the actual argument?
In the end, if you were looking in a mirror, you would be correct about “justification of bias.”
Vinnie
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.
