|
Post by timoneill on Aug 6, 2013 10:43:11 GMT
Yes, he does. And what we see is Jesus addressing people who most likely were literate (scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees) and saying " ... do you not read ... " (Mark 12:10; Mark 11:26). Note the pronoun. He doesn't ever say "But I read in the scriptures ... " nor does he ever say "Do we not read in the book of ..." It's always the (more educated) opponents who should be reading what Jesus expounds orally. When Herod consults with the chief priests, scribes and experts in the law concerning the birth of Messiah, they say 'It is written...' and quote the OT (Matthew 2:3-6). Jesus uses the same expression to preface his own quotes from the OT (e.g. Matthew 11:10; Mark 14:21 and many others). He also uses 'Is it not written...?' (Mark 11:17; John 10:34). Both phrases presuppose personal familiarity with the written word. The phrase simply says what it says - that something is in the text. That tells us nothing about whether the person using the phrase has read it themselves or has heard it recited/read and learned it by rote.
|
|
|
Post by timoneill on Aug 6, 2013 10:51:20 GMT
1. Could it not be (Shock! Horror!) that the event actually happened, and Luke had more information than Mark, or chose to edit his information less? Have you got any evidence or argument that indicates this is the case? Or just wishful thinking? No, I'm fairly sure he, like me, is referring to Mark 6:1-5. This is the only time in the gospels Jesus goes to Nazareth. Its synoptic cognates are found in Matt 13:54-58 and Luke 4:16-30. In all of them he goes to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue and in all of them there is a variant on the "a prophet is not honoured in his own country" proverb. gLuke differs in that its writer depicts Jesus claiming the fulfillment of Isaiah and so depicts Jesus reading the prophecy. This seems to be his narrative addition. And this is the only depiction of Jesus reading anything in all of the gospels.
|
|
|
Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 6, 2013 11:40:56 GMT
For what it is worth (and I think it is a worthwhile argument), in his notes Aslan cites John Meier on this issue, who comments that it would be wondrous that Jesus could read from a scroll of Isaiah following the Septuagint version, but in the order "61: 1a, b, d; 58: 6d; 61: 2a, with the omission of 61: 1c, 2d". It's on pages 229 and 230. I suppose it could be possible that this would be a parabiblical adaptation of Isaiah, but that is a weighty conclusion on a thin thread.
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Aug 6, 2013 13:56:10 GMT
Have you got any evidence or argument that indicates this is the case? Or just wishful thinking? No evidence, no argument, just a question and some scepticism about some conclusions of some scholars. (I am allowed to be at least as sceptical about scholars as I am about the NT!) Yeah my silly mistake, I was thinking Capernaum, and he visited there in Mark 1. But of course Luke 4 is Nazareth. I plead temporary insanity your honour! I still don't know. Yes it might be wishful thinking, I think Luke 4 is a very significant passage, but I don't think the accounts are all that similar. In Luke it is pretty much the first thing he does in Galilee (though I know the Gospels are not strictly chronological) and the initial reception is different. I accept what the consensus of scholars says, as a starting point, but I don't feel the need to accept their rather conservative and critical views as a final position every time. I don't care about Jesus reading or not, but I think it is pretty clear that he thought of himself as the fulfilment of a number of OT themes, and Luke 4 shows one of these. If he didn't actually say those things in the synagogue at Nazareth on that occasion, he must have believed something like that - see for example Luke 7:21-23. Biographers of that time didn't have the means of recording long speeches, so they tended to summarise them or report just the start and end, and they sometimes apparently combined genuine sayings into what looks like one longer speech, as in the sermon on the mount. So I see no reason not to accept Luke as a reliable reporter, especially as he said he gathered together the reports of a number of eyewitnesses. In the end, I trust Luke because he proves to be trustworthy on many occasions. I understand you will think differently, but as a christian I start from historical evidence, but faith comes in later too.
|
|
|
Post by sandwiches on Aug 6, 2013 15:14:13 GMT
Just on the literacy aspect it seems to me that the emphasis on literacy in Judaism and the portrait in The Gospels makes it more probable than not Jesus was literate, as Craig Evans concludes in this particular essay Jewish Scripture and The Literacy of Jesus which appeared in the 2007 book:.From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith: www.craigaevans.com/evans.pdfIn the end it is a question of probability, not proof. I agree with Foster, with his inferences from the sources. The decisive factors in the debate are not found in generalities touching the world of Jesus, but in specific and distinctive features found in Jesus himself. I urge Botha and other like-minded scholars to take into account these specific features—a rabbi who instructs disciples, engages in theological and scriptural debate with religious authorities, frequents synagogues, appears to be familiar with certain parts of the Jewish scriptures, founded a movement that produced literature, not least a body of writings that comes to be called the New Testament. In my judgment probability favors the conclusion that Jesus was literate, not of course in the professional or scribal sense, but in a functional sense. Jesus was no typical Galilean Jew, and, further, the Jews may not have been typical Mediterranean people, especially when it came to literacy.
|
|
|
Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 6, 2013 15:23:28 GMT
There seems to be some debate among scholars whether the additions in the relevant Lucan passage is either the result of the author's redaction or part of the L material. Supposed incongruities in the passage are used to argue for L. I think it is fair to say that it seems a legitimate view. At risk of being a nagger I'd like to bring naggara' up again. A quick lookup in a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic lexicon confirmed what Fortigurn quoted, that all attestations in the sense of "scholar" date from the (Jerusalem) Talmud, but the meaning was absent from a Syriac lexicon. Interestingly, though, Riesner seems to support the notion that Jesus was literate.
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Aug 6, 2013 15:43:22 GMT
At risk of being a nagger I'd like to bring naggara' up again. A quick lookup in a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic lexicon confirmed what Fortigurn quoted, that all attestations in the sense of "scholar" date from the (Jerusalem) Talmud, but the meaning was absent from a Syriac lexicon. Interestingly, though, Riesner seems to support the notion that Jesus was literate. I still haven't figured out what problem with the text the naggara' argument is supposed to solve. It looks sort of like this. 'Jesus said some stuff that a scholar was expected to know. Everyone was amazed that a scholar would know things that a scholar is expected to know, so they said 'Isn't he a scholar? So how does he know things a scholar is expected to know know?'. And they were offended that a scholar actually knew what a scholar was expected to know. And Jesus said 'No one respects scholars these days'.' I don't think that really advances our understanding of the text.
|
|
|
Post by sandwiches on Aug 6, 2013 18:10:53 GMT
At risk of being a nagger I'd like to bring naggara' up again. A quick lookup in a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic lexicon confirmed what Fortigurn quoted, that all attestations in the sense of "scholar" date from the (Jerusalem) Talmud, but the meaning was absent from a Syriac lexicon. Interestingly, though, Riesner seems to support the notion that Jesus was literate. I still haven't figured out what problem with the text the naggara' argument is supposed to solve. It looks sort of like this. 'Jesus said some stuff that a scholar was expected to know. Everyone was amazed that a scholar would know things that a scholar is expected to know, so they said 'Isn't he a scholar? So how does he know things a scholar is expected to know know?'. And they were offended that a scholar actually knew what a scholar was expected to know. And Jesus said 'No one respects scholars these days'.' I don't think that really advances our understanding of the text. Basically, He went to the wrong school/didn't get into the right university/came from the wrong area. Shakespeare had/has the same problem. (The problem isn't really with Jesus or Shakespeare).
|
|
|
Post by timoneill on Aug 6, 2013 18:13:42 GMT
At risk of being a nagger I'd like to bring naggara' up again. A quick lookup in a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic lexicon confirmed what Fortigurn quoted, that all attestations in the sense of "scholar" date from the (Jerusalem) Talmud, but the meaning was absent from a Syriac lexicon. Interestingly, though, Riesner seems to support the notion that Jesus was literate. I still haven't figured out what problem with the text the naggara' argument is supposed to solve. It looks sort of like this. 'Jesus said some stuff that a scholar was expected to know. Everyone was amazed that a scholar would know things that a scholar is expected to know, so they said 'Isn't he a scholar? So how does he know things a scholar is expected to know know?'. And they were offended that a scholar actually knew what a scholar was expected to know. And Jesus said 'No one respects scholars these days'.' I don't think that really advances our understanding of the text. No, it's more like this: 'Jesus got up a taught them. They were amazed that a peasant bloke they'd known since he was a little kid was acting like a scholar and said "Is this a scholar? No, it's just a bloke we've known since he was a little kid. We know his Mum and his brothers" And Jesus said "This always happens to prophets in their own country" and couldn't do many miracles there because they didn't believe in him.' The writer of gMark didn't get the meaning behind the "Is this a scholar/ naggara'?" question, so he made what sense of it he could in the context by translating it literally.
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Aug 6, 2013 22:11:19 GMT
1. Could it not be (Shock! Horror!) that the event actually happened, and Luke had more information than Mark, or chose to edit his information less? Yes but these issues are settled on the balance of probabilities, and Occam's Razor rules. I think that is a pretty thin argument in this case. Which is the simpler hypothesis that posits the least number of entities - that Luke made an episode up, or that he had a source for it? I think you could argue either way on that one. Which means I think my original comment was justified - it may or may not be true that Luke made it up, but it is far from certain.
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Aug 7, 2013 1:16:29 GMT
No, it's more like this: 'Jesus got up a taught them. They were amazed that a peasant bloke they'd known since he was a little kid was acting like a scholar and said "Is this a scholar? No, it's just a bloke we've known since he was a little kid. We know his Mum and his brothers" And Jesus said "This always happens to prophets in their own country" and couldn't do many miracles there because they didn't believe in him.' The first issue (as I've pointed out previously), is that this doesn't answer the issue of 'What problem was Mark trying to solve in the text?'; the text reads perfectly intelligibly with the word 'carpenter'. The second issue is that the text we have in front of us does not say 'Is this guy an X? No, it's just a bloke we've known since he was a little kid'. The text we have in question says 'Is this guy NOT an X?', with the meaning 'This guy is an X, so why is he acting like a Y?'. The word in question is used to identify the fact that he is acting in a manner incongruent with an X, but your interpretation is that he is acting in a manner congruent with an X. That isn't congruent with the context. Mark doesn't say 'Is this guy a carpenter? No, it's just a bloke we've known since he was a little kid'.
|
|
|
Post by timoneill on Aug 7, 2013 8:05:00 GMT
[ 'What problem was Mark trying to solve in the text?'; the text reads perfectly intelligibly with the word 'carpenter'. We don't know what the Aramaic text the writer of gMark was using said, however. It could, of course, be a total coincidence that we have the phrase/s "carpenter"/"son of a carpenter" being used as a Talmudic euphemism for "scholar" and here we find exactly the same phrases being used in a pericope where people are wondering about Jesus' scholarship but never used or even mentioned about him anywhere else. Or it could be that the writer of gMark read "Is this a naggārā?", didn't understand the euphemism for "scholar" and so tried to make sense of it by changing the question to "Isn't this the carpenter?", because that worked in the context. As with all these possibilities, take your pick.
|
|
|
Post by sankari on Aug 7, 2013 8:30:05 GMT
We don't know what the Aramaic text the writer of gMark was using said, however. Do we have any evidence that the author of gMark was using an Aramaic text in the first place?
|
|
|
Post by timoneill on Aug 7, 2013 8:54:11 GMT
We don't know what the Aramaic text the writer of gMark was using said, however. Do we have any evidence that the author of gMark was using an Aramaic text in the first place? Casey gives quite a few examples that indicate exactly this. The text of gMark contains some linguistic and grammatical oddities that have long since been noted. In fact, some of them were noted even back in the First Century, since the writers of gLuke and gMatt noticed them when using gMark as one of their sources and they tended to amend them or avoid them in their versions of the same story. And early scribes of gMark also noticed them and many of them did the same, creating variant readings at these points in the text of gMark in many manuscripts. For example, in Mark 12:4 in the parable of the vinyard: "Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully."The odd bit here is the Greek word translated above as "struck (him) on the head". In the text of gMark it is ἐκεφαλίωσαν which is a strange word which is found nowhere else in the NT and found nowhere else in any Greek text of the time. It is clearly constructed from the Greek word for "head" ( κεφαλή) and it seems from the context to mean something like "to strike the head", but the word is unique and so sticks out to anyone fluent in Greek. As I noted, it certainly stuck out for the later writers of gMatt and gLuke, since both avoided using this weird word when they retell this story, even though other linguistic correspondences show they were both using gMark as their source. Early scribes copying this part of gMark also found it strange and either replaced it with something more familiar or added something to try and make it more explicable. So why did the writer of gMark use this word, which seems to have been one he made up? It seems to be because he was working from a source of his own and one written in Aramaic. There is a (rare) Aramaic verb r'shīn which means "to pound, to beat, to grind", usually used in reference to milling grain, but which could be used figuratively in the context of a physical assault. If the writer of gMark did not recognise this word in his Aramaic source, it makes sense that he might mistake it as a verb based on the common Aramaic word for "head" which is r'sh. Thus his coining of a new word also based on the equivalent Greek word for "head" but which is found nowhere else in Greek. Another example is found in a strange element in Mark 1:14; one that has often given Christians grief. Here a leper asks Jesus to heal him and Jesus does so, but before hand the text has Jesus react to the request with anger ( ὀργισθείς - "(he) became angry"), which doesn't seem to make much sense. Again, it didn't make sense to the writers of gMatt and gLuke who used this story in gMark as their source but left this odd element out completely. Some of the early scribes of gMark also couldn't reconcile this "anger" with the rest of the story, and so replaced ὀργισθείς with a more explicable σπλαγχνισθεὶς ("[he] had compassion"). So where did the weird "(he) became angry" element come from? Again, from an Aramaic word regaz, which had a broad range of meanings from "to be moved, to tremble (with emotion)" through to "to become enraged". The writer of gMark's Aramaic source clearly meant the first meaning, but the gMark author didn't understand the range of meaning used a narrower Greek work which only means "to become angry". In these examples the writer of gMark seems to be having trouble with aspects of his Aramaic source. In one he struggles with a rare word. In another he knows the word but is unaware of its range of meaning. So a scenario where he knows the literal word but isn't aware of its euphemistic usage makes sense in this context.
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Aug 7, 2013 12:03:35 GMT
Casey gives quite a few examples that indicate exactly this. The text of gMark contains some linguistic and grammatical oddities that have long since been noted. I was fairly impressed by this part of Casey's book. It is also interesting that Casey argues that the text of Mark was a first draft that Mark would have intended to polish, but for some reason never did. Speculation, sure, but a reflection of how Casey finds the text, and adding to the thought that parts at least of it were translations that might have been improved in the final draft.
|
|