(December 7, 2012 at 10:44 pm)Jesus.of.Nazareth Wrote: Below I have summarized my evidence that there was an earlier version of the Gospel of Mark that has been dubbed, "gMark." As a matter of fact, it seems commonly held that all of the gospels all had an earlier version.Define "earlier version". To any sensible person like myself, the earlier version should contain something not found in the later versions. So far, all you've concerned yourself with are areas that have been "added to". The as-yet uncatalogued alleged first century Mark fragment should contain a new version of reading Mark if your theory is indeed genuine. If it doesn't - even if all it contains is a single paragraph - it shows that the theory doesn't have any evidence for it.
Furthermore consider this:
Quote:As far as I can tell, my particular reconstruction of the historical Jesus is idiosyncratic. I explain this oddity as arising from the main source I use to profile the historical Jesus. This source is not readily apparent as it is what has previously been labeled as "gMark." "pMark," "proto-Mark," and "Ur-Markus." These terms all refer to the theory that there is an earlier version of Mark that has been editorially expanded and so produced the final form of the gospel.Your main source is something you don't even have! It's something you've theorized, imagined, and constructed from taking textual criticism to the extremes. You can't get away from the fact that your source is actually the gospel of Mark, arbitrarily abridged wherever you feel you need. That's not real evidence, if you did that in science you'd be laughed out of the consortium; your peers would revile you. Atheists used to tell us that the only evidence for nails being used in crucifixion was in John's Gospel. The historical reliability was proven once we dug up remains with nails still embedded in them. You require there to be more versions of the text found when we find the earliest manuscripts, you're expecting it. Time will tell what you actually find.
Quote:The third line of evidence is found where I and at least one other contemporary scholar, Dominic Crossan, thinks that gMark ended in Mk 15:39 with the centurion's "epiphany" that Jesus was indeed a uios theou. For reason that I shall give below, I translate this phrase as, "a son of a god." Note that what immediately follows are the two episodes of Jesus' burial and resurrection, which are tied together by the actions of women. It is women who learn where Jesus was buried and women that come to the empty tomb. The continuity of these two episodes, linked by the action of women, begins immediately after the alleged conclusion of gMark, while the woman are not present before that. This difference provides an indication that it is a supplemental expansion.If it's an expansion why does it feature women? Women were not allowed to testify in court in Jesus' day, and their words would not be considered authoritative or trustworthy. Surely if someone tacked on the ending, they would do it using men to convince their readers that the witnesses were reliable and not unreliable, untrustworthy lesser citizens -women?
