The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[Aractus]

Then how are we to understand this line from Romans?

22 I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord.

Are you arguing that Paul wrote EVERY letter by hand personally and that if the letter does not contain Paul's "distinguishing mark" - a concluding passage in his own hand - then the letters are not authentic?

Simple, it was removed when copied. What you should be asking is why did scribes copy the any of the "autograph" sections in his other works?

A couple of examples would be helpful.

Mark says Jesus cast out "Legion" in Gerasa. Luke agrees. Matthew says it was in Gadara. Gerasa is nowhere near the Sea of Galilee:



This distance from Gerasa to the Sea is longer than a marathon. Yet Mark claims this:

Mk 5:11-13: Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him, “Send us to the swine, let us enter them.” So he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.

It would have taken the pigs hours (about 6-8 hours) to stampede into the Sea. If they could physically sustain that exertion, which of course they couldn't since they're not an athletic animal. Or do you believe pigs can run a marathon?

On the other hand though, if Mark and Luke are right, then it's Matthew that's wrong. See- they can't both be right at the same time.

But more to the point, this is an example of the geographical ignorance of the gospel writers. Not surprising given that Mark and Luke are gentile-Christians writing outside of ancient Palestine in the Syrian region (or some other gentile region).

I'm not following you here...my apologies. My understanding is that John Mark was a disciple of Peter and that he collected the sayings of Peter which became the basis for Mark's Gospel. If Mark published early (AD 50), then Peter was still alive at the time. If he published late (AD 70), then Peter had been martyred in Rome five years earlier. Either way, I guess I need some examples of what Mark got wrong in order to understand why Papias was incorrect when he attributed Mark to Mark.

As for Luke, where do you get the idea that he did not know any of the apostles? He is clear that He had investigated the matter of Jesus' life and death thoroughly since He admits as much in his prologue. He knew Paul for one, probably Mary and John (for two), and during the course of his travels, he could have easily met any number of disciples - either in Jerusalem or in Rome or wherever. I don't want to over-play the hand, so I'll stick with Paul, Peter, Mary and John.

John Mark is a character that we know very little about, other than the fact that in Acts he appears to be a companion of Paul's (and not of Peter's). Given this, let's look at Paul's work - he concerns himself with what's going on outside of Palestine. After Acts 15, he goes back to Jerusalem just once, at which time he is imprisoned and then executed. John Mark does not appear to have the opportunity to discuss anything with Peter. He didn't accompany Paul on his last visit to Jerusalem.

Do you have a different date in mind?

No I don't have any year in mind because to my knowledge his year of birth is not recorded anywhere. So again, where did you pull your date from?

[Aractus]

I'll being my response with a question: Which denomination of Protestant were you before you became an atheist?

Anglican, but it shouldn't matter because it's a matter of consensus among both New and Old Testament scholars that the Vulgate and "the" Septuagint are far less reliable sources for the original wording of the New and Old Testaments when compared with the Masoretic Text and the Greek text. Or to be more specific, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Novum Testamentum Graece. Those are the two primary texts that the majority of modern translations use. Of course they do make some use of "the" Septuagint and the Vulgate, but give them much less priority.

And the reason why I say "the" LXX, is because it is a collection of translations written over an unknown period, presumed to have been "completed" (as in all 66 books and Apocrypha) by the mid second century, it was systematically edited and altered though, and what exists today is a copy of the fifth column of the Hexapla written in the mid-3rd century which we know Origen substantially modified by removing whole sections of LXX text and replacing it with other text from the Theodatian (the Sixth column) and other Greek translations. He in fact removed the whole of the book of Daniel and replaced it with the Theodatian translation, so that almost all ancient manuscripts that contain "the" LXX (such as Sinaiticus & Vaticanus) contain the Theodatian translation of the book of Daniel. By the time that we get to Jerome, he had both versions available to him. He had the fifth column (which is now what most people mean when they say "the Septuagint"), and he also had the pre-Hexapla version, which no longer exists. He chose to use the fifth column - consciously as it happens because he even says he didn't want to use the LXX version of Daniel.

Oh, and until recently there was just one copy of "the" LXX book of Daniel, but another was discovered, so now among the 5800 Greek language manuscripts of the New Testament (many of which contain the Old Testament in Greek as you know) there is just two that have "the" LXX book of Daniel, and of those two only only one is complete.

Let's recap for a moment.

Earliest complete copy of the Hebrew OT: 11th century (Leningrad Codex - c. 1008 AD).
Earliest complete copy of the Greek NT: 4th century (Codex Sinaiticus - c. 350 AD).
Earliest complete copy of the LXX: NONE EXIST!!


Okay, so the book of Daniel. The only known complete ancient LXX version of the book of Daniel in Greek is contained in Codex Chisianus, written in the 9th century. As I mentioned, until recently this was not just the only complete copy - it was the only copy. That's not counting the Syriac translation, of course. The only other one one is p967, which was discovered in the 20th century and originally contained 59 folded parchment leaves (ie 236 pages), it exists in a fragmentary form (it's something like 60% complete going from memory).

Even today it is impossible to get an Orthodox person to see any sense and recognise the LXX is a collection of translations, not one translation, and was systematically altered from the time that it was written up to and including the time that the Hexapla was written.

The Catholic church started changing their tune in the 20th century, when Pope Pius XII said it was OK to translate from the Greek and Hebrew instead of the Latin in 1943. As I mentioned in my previous post though, the guarding of the Vulgate since the middle-ages (and actually well before that) clearly served the purpose of protecting the RCC's doctrines which were based on the Vulgate and not the Greek New Testament. Such as the authority of the Church vs the Authority of the Scripture. For the Church to exhort its authority over Christians, it needed to be above the authority of the Scriptures.

[Nihilist Virus]

Another approach would be to simply not respond at all. You'd be doing everyone a favor if you took that route...especially in light of the fact that you dodged the first question above completely. Do you have any information concerning a written record, Rhythm?

If not, may I kindly ask that you just piss off?  

Really? Coming from you?

I seem to recall you giving me quite the half-assed answer on your other thread.


I said:


There is no commandment, "Thou shalt not rape." There is no commandment, "Thou shalt not fornicate." There is no commandment, "Thou shalt not molest children."

So please explain how one would not be Biblically justified in taking a gentile girl of age 7 or so from a conquered nation as a slave, raping her over the course of 49 years for your own amusement, and then setting her free on the 50th year.


You replied:


Biblically?

Oh, geez, I dunno...maybe:

Luke 6:31
31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.



I'm still waiting...

[Cato]

I'm still waiting...

Don't hold your breathe. So much time will pass between now and when you get a direct answer that the 2000 years between you and the wandering jew will be indiscernible.

[Minimalist]

One last attempt to pull this thread back to what was, in the OP a fairly good or at least reasonable question.  Where are these original anonymous gospels?

Hector Avalos writes:

A main problem continues to be the lack of documentation from the time of Jesus to establish his existence definitively. Jesus is supposed to have lived around the year 30. But there is no mention of him anywhere in any actual document from his own time or from the entire first century.
The best known stories about Jesus are the biblical gospels. Despite recent claims to the contrary, most biblical scholars recognize that none of the actual manuscripts of these gospels originated earlier than the second century.

The best efforts of textual scholars have failed to recover the so-called “originals” of any biblical text. Thus, it is difficult to know what has been added or subtracted from any original accounts.

- See more at: http://amestrib.com/sections/opinion/col...E5vAO.dpuf

Now, as an aside before any of the jesus freaks start shrieking that Avalos is not a "serious" scholar or a "real" scholar, or whatever character assassination you fall back on when someone dares to upset your little holy apple cart in lieu of arguing the issue,

Hector Avalos (born October 8, 1958) is a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University and the author of several books about religion.[1] He is a former Pentecostal preacher and child evangelist.[2]

He has a Doctor of Philosophy in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard University (1991), a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School (1985), and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1982.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Avalos

So let's let his degrees speak for themselves, shall we. 

Ehrman, among others, insists that the earliest copies are the closest to the originals.  Superficially that makes sense. Fewer scribes copying means fewer errors.  That still does not answer the OP's question.  Where is any evidence at all of the anonymous "originals?"  What if Ehrman is wrong?  Suppose the second and third century fragments we have are the originals?  The original written form anyway.  The vast bulk of the population was illiterate.  To most of them a written page was useful to wipe their asses.  It is actually far more likely that this stuff began as tales told around the fireplace and only later did someone start writing this stuff down.  After Marcion invented the idea of a canon.  Once the creative threshold is broken humans are very adept at imitation.

So the fact that there are no indications of the anonymous originals existing in writing until the 2d-3d centuries and that xtian sources themselves tell us that Marcion was the first suggests that we are dealing with oral traditions - which would have been very common at the time - leads to a couple of possibilities.

a) The originals were lost in spite of the fact that it was xtians themselves who were responsible for preserving and protecting them, or
b) that the original stories were tall tales told and retold and subject to the vicissitude of human memory - and worse than memory - the need to embellish and exaggerate, or
c) the whole story emerged only after the proto-orthodox ( to steal Ehrman's term ) were granted legal status as a reward for backing Constantine in his war with Maxentius, or,
d) the stories are true ( the least likely explanation but one which must be added in the spirit of completeness) including the silly miracle stories because we have no specimen of a gospel without them.... excepting the epistles of the so-called "paul" who doesn't know anything about "miracles."

[Aractus]

I'm begging to get the feeling that athrock is not genuinely interested in discussing these things at an academic level. All he/she does is quote from apologetic sources as "authoritative history".

[Jenny A]

I'm begging to get the feeling that athrock is not genuinely interested in discussing these things at an academic level. All he/she does is quote from apologetic sources as "authoritative history".

Ya think?

[Minimalist]

I'm begging to get the feeling that athrock is not genuinely interested in discussing these things at an academic level. All he/she does is quote from apologetic sources as "authoritative history".

So................. you're suggesting that he asked a good question by accident?   Something along the lines of a stopped clock being right twice a day?