Gary & Rhinestone's Thread on Burial and Resurrection of Christ

[psstein]

No. Sparko. You are still wrong. Plenty of well-respected NT scholars doubt the traditional authorship of the Gospels. Ask Stein. STein may not believe that a majority of NT scholars doubt the traditional authorship of the gospels, but I'm fairly certain he will say that your claim that this position is only held by a "fringe" is false.

I'm on the way out the door, but here's the situation as it currently stands, at least in my experience:

Almost nobody believes that Matthew the disciple wrote Matthew.

Mark is up for debate, there are scholars who hold to the traditional authorship. I think there are some good reasons to hold to it, though I don't believe the entire gospel is based off of Peter's teachings.

Luke-Acts is a wreck in current scholarship, though I would contend that the majority of scholars still hold to the traditional authorship.

Few scholars hold to the traditional authorship of John. John of Zebedee probably didn't write John, though Richard Bauckham and Martin Hengel have suggested John the Presbyter as the author.

[Gary]

A) It was Joseph's to do as he saw fit.
2) Jesus only needed it for the weekend.

But why give the body to a follower of Jesus, when Jesus had just been executed for treason against Caesar? If Pilate had concerns for Jewish sensitivities as Christians claim, why not give the body to the leadership of the Sanhedrin to dispose of as they saw fit?

[psstein]

I absolutely agree, but it's probably going too far to say then that "No serious professional NT scholars dispute that the Gospel authors are...". There are some very good professional NT scholars that dispute the authors, and many scholars simply sidestep the topic altogether, agreeing that all we can really know is that they are anonymous.

Frankly, most scholars don't care about questions of authorship. They're not particularly important for the kinds of questions that are usually asked.

[Gary]

Sorry for hijacking your thread Gary. Sometimes I get a little carried away.

No, problem, RC. I like your comments.

[Gary]

And John pointed out (chapter 19) that he was a 'secret disciple'.

Ok, but why would Pilate give the body to Arimathea instead of to the leader of the Sanhedrin, the high priest? If the leadership of the Sanhedrin sent Arimathea to ask for the body, why in the world would they have asked Pilate for permission to bury Jesus' in Arimathea's expensive tomb? Why not ask Pilate for the body in order to dump it into an unmarked dirt trench? Why wouldn't they have had a dirt trench dug and ready in case Pilate said yes? And if it was the custom of the Romans to leave the bodies up for a few days and then toss the remains in an unmarked, common dirt hole in the ground that would make sense that the Sanhedrin would need to request permission to have the body. But why wait to ask permission right when the Friday afternoon sun is going down? Why didn't they ask for this privilege at the time they were at Pilate's residence demanding his crucifixion? Why create a situation, where they had to send Arimathea scrambling down to Pilate's residence inside the city, while the sun was rapidly approaching sunset, get permission for an audience with Pilate, ask Pilate for permission to bury the body, and then have Arimathea high-tailing it back out to Golgotha, get the body down from the cross, transport it to the tomb, wrap it according to Jewish law, and roll the heavy stone in place???

Why all the twists and turns? It just seems too contrived.

Here is a much more plausible scenario:

-Sanhedrin asked for Pilate to try Jesus.
-Crowd pushed Pilate to find Jesus guilty.
-Pilate condemns Jesus to be crucified.
-Jews ask permission to dispose of the body.
-Jesus crucified.
-Body tossed into an unmarked dirt trench---the typical form of burial for a peasant---prior to sunset Friday evening, the beginning of Passover.
-Done.



If Arimathea acted on his own, that presents other difficulties for the story.

[Cow Poke]

But why give the body to a follower of Jesus,

Joseph was a "secret disciple" - He was a wealthy man

when Jesus had just been executed for treason against Caesar?

Pilate had declared Jesus innocent.

If Pilate had concerns for Jewish sensitivities as Christians claim, why not give the body to the leadership of the Sanhedrin to dispose of as they saw fit?

He kinda did. "Joseph of Arimathea was a respected member of the council...."

[Adrift]

You're the one arguing for the distinction, therefore the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it.

I'm under no such burden. I'm merely in agreement with Faber that it is possible.

According to Mark, he shows no knowledge of a Great/Lesser Sanhedrin.

See post #44.

He says the "whole Council".

See post #51.

And even still, Joseph could just have likely have been a member of the "Great" Sanhedrin so this evasion still doesn't work.

Looks like we're at a stalemate.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

Claiming stalemate, that both possibilities are viable options, is not tu quoque.

Haha! His gentile audience probably didn't know of the two Sanhedrins precisely because of the fact that they were Greek! Wow, you sure are a genius aren't ya?

Perhaps. Scholars believe that his audience was a mix of Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians living outside of Palestine. While Mark does take some time to explain a number of Jewish customs, I don't think it's unimaginable that he expects his audience to know of some things that are not explicitly spelled out (like that there were two Sanhedrins), and if not, it's always possible that he did not think it was important to his speedy narrative to point out.

Was working or buying/selling goods illegal on Passover or not?

See post #72.

[psstein]

Spark originally said: which is why Joseph went and asked Pilate for permission. derp.

I said: So the anonymous, written-decades-later, in a far away land, uncorroborated by contemporary sources, book, which is the current topic of discussion regarding whether or not it contains non-historical embellishments, says...

You said: Also, they are corroborated. The Bible didn't fall out of the sky as one canon, they were all originally separate sources (though they may have depended on one another for some details). So we have. Mark, Q, the L-source, the M-source, John, Paul's epistles, the Corinthian creed, and plenty of extra-biblical sources within the same century, both Christian and non.

I then said: Please provide a contemporary, truly independent source to the Gospel of Mark which corroborates the following events:

---the trial before Pilate.
---the burial in the rock tomb of a member of the Sanhedrin
---Mary Magdalene and other women finding an empty tomb on Sunday morning.


Therefore: My entire point of this thread and my above comments is that almost all of the details regarding Jesus' arrest, trial, crucifixion, and alleged resurrection first appear in the Gospel of Mark, written circa 70 AD. Do we have any contemporary sources of these events (that would mean a document written in the 30's)? Answer: No.

Yes, the later Gospels do mention many of these details, however, since the first Gospel, Mark, was written several decades prior to the writing of Matthew, Luke, and John, it is therefore very possible that these authors simply adopted and adapted these details into their story as most scholars do not believe that they personally were witnesses to any of the events described. Yes, the author of John did not copy whole sections of Mark word for word, but you have ZERO proof that John's story of an Empty Tomb is original and independent of Mark.

Gary, you might be interested in Maurice Casey's The Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel, which argues that there are Aramaic sources, written by eyewitnesses, behind the Gospel of Mark.

[Adrift]

Joseph was a "secret disciple" - He was a wealthy man



Pilate had declared Jesus innocent.



He kinda did. "Joseph of Arimathea was a respected member of the council...."

He must be experiencing a severe case of amnesia because all of these questions were answered exhaustively in his "The Empty Tomb is most likely not Historical" thread.

[rogue06]

Unless, of course, if Mark really did mean "all".

Sorta kinda covered this not long ago in a discussion with Jorge concerning the Flood account in Genesis

all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth" (Genesis 41:57). Did starving Australian Aborigines come to Joseph seeking food? How about Inuits? Similarly, the famine predicted by Agabus that "took place in the days of Claudius" was said to have occurred "over all the world" (Acts 11:28).

"And the fame of David went out into all lands, and the Lord brought the fear of him upon all nationswhole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom" (I Kings 19:11).

"And horses were imported for Solomon from Egypt and from all lands"(II Chronicles 9:28).

"All the kings of the earthall the world should be enrolled" (Lk 2:1). In this case "all the world" means only the Roman Empire.

Likewise, when Cyrus declares in II Chronicles 36:23 that God "has given me all the kingdoms of the earth" he meant only the lands controlled by the Persian Empire.

"For they covered the face of the whole earth

Like Jorge you are insisting on a woodenly literal, overly simplistic reading here

[rogue06]

He must be experiencing a severe case of amnesia because all of these questions were answered exhaustively in his "The Empty Tomb is most likely not Historical" thread.

I think it is more likely a case of

lalalalacanthear1.jpg

[psstein]

He must be experiencing a severe case of amnesia because all of these questions were answered exhaustively in his "The Empty Tomb is most likely not Historical" thread.

And as both you and I hammered on throughout that thread, the burial a) matches what we know of Jewish customs, b) fulfills the criterion of embarrassment, and c) fulfills the criterion of coherence.

I'd rather start discussing something more interesting on this website, honestly. Maybe somebody can argue with me about the dates of the gospels.

[rogue06]

And as both you and I hammered on throughout that thread, the burial a) matches what we know of Jewish customs, b) fulfills the criterion of embarrassment, and c) fulfills the criterion of coherence.

I'd rather start discussing something more interesting on this website, honestly. Maybe somebody can argue with me about the dates of the gospels.

Who did the gospels date?

[psstein]

Who did the gospels date?

The Gnostic Gospels, obviously.

[Cow Poke]

Maybe somebody can argue with me about the dates of the gospels.

Or how the Epistles were the wives of the Apostles!