Why do people try to change Christianity?

[Ahanu]

Originally Posted by Thomas

What d'you mean reverse order? The Psalm opens with the cry, and these are the words Mark puts on Jesus' lips? Both start at the same place.

Read V.K. Robbins' "The Reversed Contextualization of Psalm 22 in the Markan Crucifixion: A Socio-Rhetorical Analysis," for he writes:

"The Markan approach , which emphasizes the agony and reality of Jesus' death, produces a backward reading of Ps. 22. The reading begins with verse 19, the place in the middle of the psalm where the sufferer refers to the dividing of his garments by the casting of the lots. The reading continues by proceeding backwards to verses 7-8, where the sufferer refers to the wagging of heads and the mocking speech, 'let him save him'. Then the Markan text moves back to verse 6 of the psalm as the narratorial voice says that those crucified with Jesus 'reviled' him, just like the sufferer in the psalm refers to himself as 'reviled' of men. Last of all, the reading proceeds backwards to the first two verses of the psalm. The Markan reading ends with the death cry of Jesus, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'"

"The mockery of Jesus, then, creates the framework for the selection of the scenes from Ps 22, and the broader cultural discourse contributes to the understanding of the mockery. Narratorial emphasis on the death and burial of Jesus works in consort with the broader cultural discourse to create a reverse reading of Ps 22. Only accounts containing the ritual mockery of Jesus as king (Mark, Matthew, GPeter) place the first verse of Ps 22 on Jesus' lips at or near his death. In other words, the presence of the use of scenes from Ps 22 in reverse order occurs only in those accounts that exhibit the kingship ritual from the broader cultural discourse. The Lukan version, which does not have a sustained use of scenes in reverse order from Ps 22, also does not have the initial ritual mockery of Jesus as king of the Jews" (1180).

http://www.religion.emory.edu/facult...Ps22Mark15.pdf

I'mma need some time to respond to your other questions.

[Ahanu]

Mark's theme in the Gospel, as all scholars advert, is the Messianic Secret, and Psalm 22 sums up his Christology quite effectively — the king who suffers for his people, and who is eventually delivered ... I rather think Mark is using the Psalm to signal what is happening. Mark deploys it for effect, and the effect is the implication of the Psalm. For Mark, Christ's suffering is the same as the Psalmist's lament, 'all that see me mock me' (v7). He's drawing a parallel; he's pointing to a mystery, both of salvation, as voiced in the Psalm, and of the person suffering on the cross who, for Mark, is the subject of the Psalm. Bearing in mind the theme of Mark's gospel is the Messianic Secret, it's hardly surprising he would allude to such a text

Perhaps the writer of the Gospel of Mark desires to produce "a cathartic effect like that described by many of those who lament" (Standhartinger 570). Where does God answer the crucified in Mark? One could point to Mark 15: 38: "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." However, this could equally be viewed as expressing creation lamenting the dead Jesus. One could also point to Mark 15: 39, where we find the centurion saying, "Surely this man was the son of God!" However, this could equally be viewed as expressing the final jeer of a Roman soldier (569).

I'm wondering along with Standhartinger, "Why is there no narrative of the resurrection in this Gospel? To the very end, Jesus remains for Mark 'the crucified' (16:6) (569).

Well if he puts the Psalm in the mouth of Jesus on the Cross, how can it be anything other than a scriptural attestation?

Because, unlike the Gospel of John, Mark doesn't say: "This was to fulfill what the scriptures say" (John 19:24). Mark uses Psalm 22 for other purposes: to allude to lamentation and accusation and center his narrative on suffering (569).

the thanksgiving would then refer to the Resurrection, and it's implicit in the unfolding understanding of the Mystery of the Cross, and do you not see? If Mark's purpose was not such, then why reference the Psalm at all?

V. K. Robbins clearly shows Mark used Psalm 22 in reverse order. Therefore, Mark gives no consideration for the thanksgiving song at the end of Psalm 22. The proof is in the post above!

Source:

Standhartinger, Angela. “What Women Were Accustomed to Do for the Dead Beloved by Them’ (Gospel of Peter 12.50): Traces of Laments and Mourning Rituals in Early Easter, Passion, and Lord’s Supper Traditions.” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 129, No. 3 (Fall 2010), 559-574.

[Ahanu]

but I don't see how its existence, or its reference by Mark, who like all the evangelists draws on Scriptural sources, offers any evidence of women composing laments about Jesus, or their content and message?

Rabinnic laments feature quotes from scripture. Here's an example:

"Ye palms, sway your heads
for he who was righteous as a palm [Ps. 92: 'the righteous shall flourish like a palm]
Let us lament by night as by day
for him who meditated by night as by day" (Feldman 58-59).

It is natural to assume that women could quote scripture too, not just scribes . . . and so perhaps Mark heard these laments sung by women; thus answering the question . . .

why reference the Psalm at all?

I need to quote Corley to make my strongest case of elements within individual oral performances of laments that are also found in the Gospels:

". . . these songs [of lamentation] contain an important narrative element, including details of the life and death of the deceased that can be compared to certain elements of the passion story that cannot be accounted for on the basis of literary and scriptural models. Laments recording events of a very distant past are less likely to contain valuable historical details than laments recording events within a generation of a death. Laments, as an oral genre inteded to fix memories for a community, fix the event of a death in time and space. They usually contain a reference to the mode of death, whether by murder, execution, failed medical operations, horsing accidents, or death by natural causes. They also often open with a phrase that sets the death in time: 'Early one Monday morning,' 'On a holiday,' 'on Sunday,' 'One Saturday at nine,' 'One night right at midnight.' The time of the year can also be mentioned, such as Eastertide, and so on. This custom of fixing the mode of death and setting it in time is common to laments from many cultures. Besides fixing the death in time, laments also contain many proper names and place-names, often set by the singer's or the dead's walk through a landscape. References to family members are also common. The blame for the death is often assigned to a specific individual or group. Embellishment of facts and romanticizing of the event, however, can begin early, such as the association in Christian cultures of a murder with the time of Jesus' death at Easter. These laments are worked at slowly, over a period of days or even months, before they are performed in public.

The passion narratives in the Gospels all betray a likely beginning in a lament in that they contain similar settings in time, place-names, proper names, and other details found in laments. The mode of death is uniformly crucifixion, the blame for which is given to Pilate or the Jewish authorities (Mark 15:24; John 19:14; Gos. Pet. 2:6), the times of day for Jesus' crucifixion, death, and burial are noted (Mark 15:25, 33-34, 42; John 19;14; Gos. Pet. 5:15), the day is the day before the Sabbath (Mark 15: 42; John 19: 31; Gos. Pet. 2:5), the Aramaic place-name of the site of the crucifixion is fixed (Golgotha, Mark 15: 22; John 19: 17), and the titulus remembered (Mark 15:26; John 19: 1-20; Gos. Pet. 4:11). Lists of family and friends present are supplied (Mark 15: 40-41; John 19: 25). The association of Jesus' death with the Passover and his death with the time of the slaughtering of a lamb in preparation for the Passover feast are similar to common embellishments of death stories found in popular laments. A more general association of Jesus' death with the Passover in an oral lament would better explain the many detailed discrepancies between John and the Synoptics, which vary considerably on the exact relation of the crucifixion to the Passover. The written versions of the passion story found in Mark, John, and the Gospel of Peter thus contain details common to oral laments" (Corley 126-27).

Source:

Corley, Kathleen. Maranatha: Women's Funerary Rituals and Christian Origins. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.

Feldman, Emanuel. “The Rabbinic Lament.” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New
Series, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jul., 1972), 51-75.

[Ahanu]

What do critics of Kathleen Corley have to say about that last quote?

[Thomas]

Hi Ahanu —

I came across this whilst looking at something else:

" ... the burden of proof, for any historical assertion, always rests upon its author." (Hacket, Historians' Fallacies, Harper: 1970, p 63.).

To argue that there is a lament tradition, simply because there must be, because there is in other cases, is no case at all, especially in the case where resurrection would change everything.

Hacket again:
"... evidence must always be affirmative. Negative evidence is a contradiction in terms — it is no evidence at all... "

And to paraphrase him:
The existence of an object — (such as a specific Christian lament tradition) is not established by nonexistent evidence, but by affirmative evidence that demonstrates that it did, even if what once existed is now lost.

The Q-source theory, a solution to 'the Synoptic problem' comes from the German Quelle, meaning "source". It is a hypothetical text source for the "common" material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark.

This soon took on a life of its own, and some treat it as if it actually existed, whereas, it was always deus ex machina kind of fix to offer a solution to the problem that bugged scholars.

The existence of a such a document would have been mentioned by the Fathers and historians, and would have been recorded somewhere ... the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' we have from Papius, 'a sayings document', does not fit the bill, nor can scholars actually reconstruct what Q might have contained other than the bits that solves their problem.

What the scholars don't account for is oral tradition ... the idea that the material common to Matthew and Luke is from a common oral tradition makes the most sense, but it scuppers the scholar's insistence that everything has to come from a written source. Q never actually existed, other than a 'virtual document'.

Thomas

[Thomas]

Hi Ahanu, I've rolled your three posts into 1 response —

Originally Posted by Ahanu

"The mockery of Jesus, then, creates the framework for the selection of the scenes from Ps 22, and the broader cultural discourse contributes to the understanding of the mockery ... Only accounts containing the ritual mockery of Jesus as king (Mark, Matthew, Peter) place the first verse of Ps 22 on Jesus' lips at or near his death. In other words, the presence of the use of scenes from Ps 22 in reverse order occurs only in those accounts that exhibit the kingship ritual from the broader cultural discourse.

Thanks for this explanation. But it does rather argue the point that the authors of Scripture were utilising Ps 22 to point to the Messiah-ship of Christ?

Markan theology explains the Cross as "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom lutron for many anti pollōn." According to Barnabas Lindars, this refers to Isaiah's fourth servant song, with lutron referring to the "offering for sin" (Isaiah 53:10) and anti pollōn to the Servant "bearing the sin of many" in Isaiah 52:12. The Greek word anti means "in the place of", which indicates a substitutionary death. Mark speaks of Jesus' death through the metaphors of the departing bridegroom in 2:20, and of the rejected heir in 12:6-8. He views it as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy (9:12, 12:10-11, 14:21 and 14:27).

So the weight of evidence supports a direct Scripture-based reference, rather than introducing a mediate lament narrative.

POST 2

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Perhaps the writer of the Gospel of Mark desires to produce "a cathartic effect like that described by many of those who lament"

I rather think the 'cahartic effect' is the atonement for sin in the theme of Markan theology? Even so, this argument itself now seems to imply that the 'laments' are themselves not a source, but a type. If this is the case, it still means that actual laments did not influence Scripture in terms of content, but only as a literary form.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Where does God answer the crucified in Mark?

In the resurrection? But good point. The Gospel ends rather abruptly. Some suggest lost materials ... others that Mark intended a 2-part testimony, like Luke/Acts.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

One could point to Mark 15: 38: "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." However, this could equally be viewed as expressing creation lamenting the dead Jesus.

Not really – the Veil of the Temple had a profound meaning, and its rending points to a cosmic significance of the crucifixion, which again points to the death not just of a man, but the Son of God. The veil of the temple marks the separation between the human and the divine; its rending is a matter of great significance, and would not have been over-looked, as it is today, and again points to the mission of the Crucified Saviour. The audience of the day would not read it as you suggest.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

One could also point to Mark 15: 39, where we find the centurion saying, "Surely this man was the son of God!" However, this could equally be viewed as expressing the final jeer of a Roman soldier

Could be ... but it's presented otherwise, as most scholars agree.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

I'm wondering along with Standhartinger, "Why is there no narrative of the resurrection in this Gospel? To the very end, Jesus remains for Mark 'the crucified' (16:6).

Well, if Mark is the earliest, then perhaps he was mindful of the disciplina arcani. Bearing in mind that the theme of his gospel is the Messianic Secret, maybe he was preserving the revelation of that secret for oral instruction and the entrance of the initiate into the Mysteries of Christ?

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Because, unlike the Gospel of John, Mark doesn't say: "This was to fulfill what the scriptures say" (John 19:24).

But he does cite Scripture elsewhere without the need to underline it ... because it's unlike John in style does not mean it's unlike John in content.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Mark uses Psalm 22 for other purposes: to allude to lamentation and accusation and center his narrative on suffering.

And identify the sufferer as the sufferer of Psalm 22 — both King and servant; both God and man.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Therefore, Mark gives no consideration for the thanksgiving song at the end of Psalm 22. The proof is in the post above!

OK ... but this does nothing to support a 'lament' argument ... in fact it stands against it. If the Christian Church picked up the lament of the Psalms, they would not need to write new ones, and if they did, surely they would have been discussed as elements for inclusion, or otherwise, in the nascent Scriptures? The simple fact that there is no mention whatsoever of any such tradition rather points to the probability that there wasn't one.

POST 3

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Rabinnic laments feature quotes from scripture.

OK. But, if Christ rose on the third day as all the evidence we possess implies, then the songs would not be laments as presumed ... nor do we have any actual laments to work from. So the evidence suggests the authors of Scripture worked direct from their Scripture, and not contemporary sources, to make allusions.

I could even propose that if the songs existed, they themselves proclaimed the events sung of fulfil the prophecies contained in the Hebrew scriptures, and that the risen Christ is the Son of God.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

It is natural to assume that women could quote scripture too, not just scribes . . . and so perhaps Mark heard these laments sung by women; thus answering the question . . .

And perhaps not ... you can't overthrow a tradition on a 'perhaps' ... any more than you'd accept my orthodoxy on a 'perhaps' ...

Surely the point is:
1: We have no evidence of contemporary Christian laments other than speculation;
2: We have no evidence of a specifically female body providing materials that form the foundation of a Christian theology — whilst we have plenty of evidence pointing at another source;
3: We have no evidence to suggest that even if such a group existed, that they did not profess the Resurrection.

So there might well have been women who sang the death of Christ ... but we have no grounds on which to make any assumptions as to what these laments might have contained.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

I need to quote Corley to make my strongest case of elements within individual oral performances of laments that are also found in the Gospels:

OK ...

Originally Posted by Ahanu

". . . these songs [of lamentation] contain an important narrative element ...

But what actual songs of lamentation ... does Corey evidence a contemporary Christian lamentation song that made its way into Scripture? What proof does she have that it is a lamentation song? What proof does she have that it came from a group of women? Who were these women, and where did they get their information from?

Originally Posted by Ahanu

... including details of the life and death of the deceased that can be compared to certain elements of the passion story that cannot be accounted for on the basis of literary and scriptural models.

Why not? I can think of many models that could equally provide the materials. Luke is structured on a journey motif, and beside laments there are epics, eulogies, biographies, testimonies ... all sorts of literary forms. The lament might be recognisable as a literary form — presumably as a song or poem — but there is a difference between form and content.

The anonymous women who composed the songs would have had to get the details from somewhere – and obviously the dsciples — so why write a gospel from a secondary source, when you can go to the first? Luke, for example, points out he's drawing from various oral traditions from "eyewitnesses and ministers" (Luke 1:2).

Corey's argument is that because laments exist, the Christians must have lamented. There is no actual reason to suppose that.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Laments, as an oral genre inteded to fix memories for a community, fix the event of a death in time and space.

So do all traditions, oral and literary.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

Embellishment of facts and romanticizing of the event, however, can begin early, such as the association in Christian cultures of a murder with the time of Jesus' death at Easter. These laments are worked at slowly, over a period of days or even months, before they are performed in public.

Well you would have to prove that the facts were embellished or romanticised.

Originally Posted by Ahanu

The passion narratives in the Gospels all betray a likely beginning in a lament in that they contain similar settings in time, place-names, proper names, and other details found in laments.

I'm sorry, but drawing up a list of elements that occur in laments that occur in every other literary form is a specious argument.

Corey's whole argument demonstrates she's trying to explain away orthodoxy in favour of her own agenda, rather than offer a serious material challenge to it. It's a negative theology based totally on speculation and assumptions and flies in the face of what evidence we do hold.

Thomas

[wil]

I could even propose that if the songs existed, they themselves proclaimed the events sung of fulfil the prophecies contained in the Hebrew scriptures, and that the risen Christ is the Son of God.

This is one of the lovely ones.

The whole thing that somehow we understand the Hebrew Prophecies better than the Jews...

If Christ fulfilled the prophecies, our buddy BB would be a Christian.

Now in the Majii book I heard of...this troop of Chinese Maji that traversed to see the baby Jesus indicate that Jesus being the connection to G!d spoke to all religions...to all prophets....simply the interpretation was different.

I find that interesting....and convenient that it fits my paradigm. That each is attempting to explain and say the same thing....their perspective and understanding was simply different, just as yours and mine are.

So in my thesis, Moses is enough for Jews to understand their connection to G!d, for Christians we need Jesus, Muslims need Mohamed, and on and on, and Lao Tzu and Krishna....

[bob x]

Originally Posted by Thomas

The existence of a such a [Q] document would have been mentioned by the Fathers and historians, and would have been recorded somewhere ... the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' we have from Papius, 'a sayings document', does not fit the bill

Yes it does, quite precisely. Papias does not mention a "gospel of the Hebrews" (that phrase occurs in other sources talking usually about the Ebionites' versions of the gospels) but rather the "gospel of Matthew", which according to him, in his day contained no narrative (he contrasts it in this respect with Mark), only sayings which were originally written in Hebrew but were now circulating in multiple variant Greek translations.

The Q material contains word-play which only makes sense in Hebrew or Aramaic, not in Greek: "cast not your pearls to chazeriym [swine] lest they chazeruwk [rend you]" and "out of these abaniym [stones] I can make baniym [sons] for Abraham". There are other peculiarities which are best explained as copyist and translator glitches as the sayings collection went from Semitic to Greek: Thomas has "consider the lilies, who neither card nor spin" referring to two steps of preparing woolen clothing, where the Synoptics have "neither toil nor spin", the Greek "toil" easily miscopied from the rarer "card" by missing a letter; Thomas has "a wild grape has sprouted in my Father's vineyard", a reference to a passage in Isaiah where the narrator complains against his vineyard, "I planted grapes but only beushiym [rare word of uncertain meaning] sprouted", where the Synoptics have "a phyta [plant] has sprouted" using the most generic Greek word for "plant" in an evident punt, confronted with a difficult word in the Hebrew. Although in other places, the text of Thomas is worse, in these places Thomas preserves the better translation.

What Papias describes, a Semitic underlying text from which multiple translators created Greek texts, fits what we see quite well. By contrast, the "Fulfillments" material in Matthew (citations from the Old Testament following little stories which are said to "fulfil" them) is written by someone who knows only the Septuagint, and apparently knows no Hebrew at all as the passages are often given meanings which the Hebrew cannot possibly support. The "F" author is thus someone very different from the "Q" author, and is probably the same as the redactor who combined the Markan narrative with the Q material to form "Matthew" as we now have it (that is, I see no reason to believe that "F" ever existed as a stand-alone document; its pieces were written to fit in the places where we now find them). The author of "Q" was probably the actual disciple named Matthew/Mathias; the F-redactor is working sometime after Papias wrote ~100, but probably before the bar-Kochba revolt against Hadrian (which pretty much ended any prospect that Jews and Christians might reconcile, something the F-redactor seems to be aiming at).