All three Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, Luke) have Jesus telling his followers they aren’t allowed to bring purses or money to minister.
This naturally would have prevented monetary collections.
But then in around 54 CE, 20 years after Jesus is killed, a guy who never met him and was known to be persecuting his followers shows up in areas outside his jurisdiction telling people he’s one of them now and to ignore any versions of Jesus he doesn’t approve of. He even acknowledged that people were saying he was doing evil in the name of good (Romans 4:8).
He argued with the church in Corinth that their belief “everything is permissible” was wrong and on top of it argued that he was entitled to make a living off his ministering, while then asking for monetary donations “for the poor in Jerusalem” (but in other letters we see he was also enriched himself with donations).
Eventually the gospel of Luke had Jesus at the last supper straight up like “Hey guys, remember when I said you can’t carry purses? Let’s 180° that.”
I say eventually because the likely earliest version of that text we have was the one preserved by ‘heretics’ following Marcion, and their copy of Luke is missing that part at the last supper.
Christianity as canonized was in at least one way exactly opposite what had likely been the actual command of a historical Jesus. Out of all the various sects, the one which succeeded was not the one with divine editorial oversight, but simply the one with the most adaptive policies for sociopolitical success (such as fundraising to the point they eventually became endorsed by the emperor of Rome).
Additionally, other sects deemed heretical (with their texts eventually banned on penalty of torture and death) were also vehemently against profiteering by religious officiants:
Jesus said, “The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, ‘When will they come and take what belongs to them?’”
The Gospel of Thomas saying 88
TL;DR: It’s so much worse than most people realize, especially Christians, who arguably should be made the most aware.
So many of Paul’s teachings were shitty, too. My wife and I have a joke that if you’re reading something shitty from the new testament it’s probably Paul. Basically told people to only get married if they couldn’t control their horniness too.
After I saw a paper on increased personal reference (i.e. talking about yourself) in writings by vulnerable narcissists, I analyzed the relative personal reference across all the Epistles and the undisputed Pauline letters cluster together significantly higher than the undisputed non-Pauline ones.
So it’s worth considering if Paul was a vulnerable narcissist, prone to expressing both shame and grandiose intermittently as long as the focus was on him.
You can also see the charming multiple places he swears he’s not lying, such as Galatians 1:20 or my favorite in Romans 9:1 where he swears to the Holy Spirit (though I must note all of Romans 9 is missing in Marcion’s version, and this kind of swear he’s telling the truth is repeated in 1 Timothy which is almost certainly a 2nd century forgery).
Paul even declared himself lawless in 1 Cor 9:20 and acknowledged converting by signs and wonders - which is a curious degree of overlap with the description of the “lawless one” in 2 Thessalonians 2 (projection much?).
There were other traditions of early Christianity that were much, much more interesting - particularly with the hindsight of modernity. But they lie buried under the efforts of Paul and those following after him.
Also, tangentially I get the creepiest vibe from Paul’s language around being ‘Father’, his oft conflicts with towns he’s residing in, and his described relationship over time with the much younger Timothy. It’s worth remembering that as early as the 2nd century the Roman satirist Lucian is positioning the early church as providing refuge for someone who was in trouble for molesting a young boy.
I’m not much of a fan of Paul, to say the least. (Though I do think he was brilliant at manipulation, like most narcissists.)
Synoptics were written decades after the authentic letters of Paul, so it’s quite more complicated than what you imply. But yeah, there were debates about this subject in early Christianity.
The Synoptics as we have them today are from at least around 15-20 years after Paul’s letters.
But particularly for Mark the picture is - as you said - a fair bit more complicated.
Not only is there the case for a proto-Mark, which complicates the post-70 CE dating given the key feature that depends on (the description of the fall of the temple) occurs in what’s termed a Markan sandwich or didactic scene (basically where Jesus is expanding on something he just said publicly in a private conversation with only a handful). Was this a part of the original Mark, or was that scene a later interpolation bringing what was a statement about eventual impermanence of manmade things (Mark 13:1-2) in line with events that had then transpired?
Further complicating this picture is the relationship between Mark and Paul. While the simple assumption is that the author of Mark was familiar with Paul’s letters (the case in Dykstra’s Mark, Canonizer of Paul), considering this in light of a possible proto-Mark raises questions around certain curious language in Paul’s letters.
For example, note 1 Cor 9:19
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might gain all the more.
Compare to Mark 10:43-44
But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.
One possibility here is that the author of Mark is seeking to place Paul in first place in the “who gets to sit next to Jesus” competition. But the specific language Paul uses of “in order to gain all the more” seems almost like he’s actively employing the phrase knowing full well the implications.
This, in combination with his using the exact same forms of the Greek words for seed and sown seeds in 1 Cor 15:37-38 as the mustard seed parable in the Synoptics (itself related to the concept of bodily makeup by one of the sects declared heretical with overlapping concepts and sayings to elsewhere in Paul’s Corinthian letters) has me inclined to think Paul had access to written sayings of Jesus at least some of which overlap with Mark.
So while I did go into the later composition and continued editing of the gospels in the comment above, the question of composition is an extremely murky one and the late first dating around the gospels commonly thrown around is pretty much hogwash when you dive more deeply into it outside of perhaps Matthew which seems the least to have suffered layers of redaction. Most of that composition is certainly after Paul, but perhaps not all of it.
Unfortunately my best recommendation is reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical - though I’m hoping to eventually pull that community over to Lemmy.
It’s a pretty neat place where you have a range of bright minds from various degrees of experience discussing a lot of topics like this.
In terms of the topic of proto-Mark you can see Burkett’s book on the subject.
And then for the relationship between Paul and the gospel of Mark there’s the aforementioned book.
But one of the challenges with the book route is that you typically get a lot of a single perspective, whereas in communities debating the books you can quickly get to some of the interesting overlaps or differences between perspectives.
That sub is probably the only thing I really miss from Reddit.
Excellent, I was actually looking for a community like this earlier today after reading some of your comments. Hoping that the Lemmy equivalent does build up traction eventually!
This is so interesting… I’m far from a religious person, but I find history of the religions so interesting. Just how this all evolved to become what it is today.
Fun Christianity detail.
All three Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, Luke) have Jesus telling his followers they aren’t allowed to bring purses or money to minister.
This naturally would have prevented monetary collections.
But then in around 54 CE, 20 years after Jesus is killed, a guy who never met him and was known to be persecuting his followers shows up in areas outside his jurisdiction telling people he’s one of them now and to ignore any versions of Jesus he doesn’t approve of. He even acknowledged that people were saying he was doing evil in the name of good (Romans 4:8).
He argued with the church in Corinth that their belief “everything is permissible” was wrong and on top of it argued that he was entitled to make a living off his ministering, while then asking for monetary donations “for the poor in Jerusalem” (but in other letters we see he was also enriched himself with donations).
Eventually the gospel of Luke had Jesus at the last supper straight up like “Hey guys, remember when I said you can’t carry purses? Let’s 180° that.”
I say eventually because the likely earliest version of that text we have was the one preserved by ‘heretics’ following Marcion, and their copy of Luke is missing that part at the last supper.
Christianity as canonized was in at least one way exactly opposite what had likely been the actual command of a historical Jesus. Out of all the various sects, the one which succeeded was not the one with divine editorial oversight, but simply the one with the most adaptive policies for sociopolitical success (such as fundraising to the point they eventually became endorsed by the emperor of Rome).
Additionally, other sects deemed heretical (with their texts eventually banned on penalty of torture and death) were also vehemently against profiteering by religious officiants:
TL;DR: It’s so much worse than most people realize, especially Christians, who arguably should be made the most aware.
So many of Paul’s teachings were shitty, too. My wife and I have a joke that if you’re reading something shitty from the new testament it’s probably Paul. Basically told people to only get married if they couldn’t control their horniness too.
After I saw a paper on increased personal reference (i.e. talking about yourself) in writings by vulnerable narcissists, I analyzed the relative personal reference across all the Epistles and the undisputed Pauline letters cluster together significantly higher than the undisputed non-Pauline ones.
So it’s worth considering if Paul was a vulnerable narcissist, prone to expressing both shame and grandiose intermittently as long as the focus was on him.
You can also see the charming multiple places he swears he’s not lying, such as Galatians 1:20 or my favorite in Romans 9:1 where he swears to the Holy Spirit (though I must note all of Romans 9 is missing in Marcion’s version, and this kind of swear he’s telling the truth is repeated in 1 Timothy which is almost certainly a 2nd century forgery).
Paul even declared himself lawless in 1 Cor 9:20 and acknowledged converting by signs and wonders - which is a curious degree of overlap with the description of the “lawless one” in 2 Thessalonians 2 (projection much?).
There were other traditions of early Christianity that were much, much more interesting - particularly with the hindsight of modernity. But they lie buried under the efforts of Paul and those following after him.
Also, tangentially I get the creepiest vibe from Paul’s language around being ‘Father’, his oft conflicts with towns he’s residing in, and his described relationship over time with the much younger Timothy. It’s worth remembering that as early as the 2nd century the Roman satirist Lucian is positioning the early church as providing refuge for someone who was in trouble for molesting a young boy.
I’m not much of a fan of Paul, to say the least. (Though I do think he was brilliant at manipulation, like most narcissists.)
He was little more than a good PR operation. He was less concerned with getting the message right than he was with getting the *name* out there.
The final scene in the much-maligned Passion of the Christ illustrates this pretty beautifully.
Synoptics were written decades after the authentic letters of Paul, so it’s quite more complicated than what you imply. But yeah, there were debates about this subject in early Christianity.
Sort of.
The Synoptics as we have them today are from at least around 15-20 years after Paul’s letters.
But particularly for Mark the picture is - as you said - a fair bit more complicated.
Not only is there the case for a proto-Mark, which complicates the post-70 CE dating given the key feature that depends on (the description of the fall of the temple) occurs in what’s termed a Markan sandwich or didactic scene (basically where Jesus is expanding on something he just said publicly in a private conversation with only a handful). Was this a part of the original Mark, or was that scene a later interpolation bringing what was a statement about eventual impermanence of manmade things (Mark 13:1-2) in line with events that had then transpired?
Further complicating this picture is the relationship between Mark and Paul. While the simple assumption is that the author of Mark was familiar with Paul’s letters (the case in Dykstra’s Mark, Canonizer of Paul), considering this in light of a possible proto-Mark raises questions around certain curious language in Paul’s letters.
For example, note 1 Cor 9:19
Compare to Mark 10:43-44
One possibility here is that the author of Mark is seeking to place Paul in first place in the “who gets to sit next to Jesus” competition. But the specific language Paul uses of “in order to gain all the more” seems almost like he’s actively employing the phrase knowing full well the implications.
This, in combination with his using the exact same forms of the Greek words for seed and sown seeds in 1 Cor 15:37-38 as the mustard seed parable in the Synoptics (itself related to the concept of bodily makeup by one of the sects declared heretical with overlapping concepts and sayings to elsewhere in Paul’s Corinthian letters) has me inclined to think Paul had access to written sayings of Jesus at least some of which overlap with Mark.
So while I did go into the later composition and continued editing of the gospels in the comment above, the question of composition is an extremely murky one and the late first dating around the gospels commonly thrown around is pretty much hogwash when you dive more deeply into it outside of perhaps Matthew which seems the least to have suffered layers of redaction. Most of that composition is certainly after Paul, but perhaps not all of it.
How do I learn more about this ?
Unfortunately my best recommendation is reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical - though I’m hoping to eventually pull that community over to Lemmy.
It’s a pretty neat place where you have a range of bright minds from various degrees of experience discussing a lot of topics like this.
In terms of the topic of proto-Mark you can see Burkett’s book on the subject.
And then for the relationship between Paul and the gospel of Mark there’s the aforementioned book.
But one of the challenges with the book route is that you typically get a lot of a single perspective, whereas in communities debating the books you can quickly get to some of the interesting overlaps or differences between perspectives.
That sub is probably the only thing I really miss from Reddit.
Excellent, I was actually looking for a community like this earlier today after reading some of your comments. Hoping that the Lemmy equivalent does build up traction eventually!
don’t miss it, hypocrisy and consistency are spooks, enjoy both sides 😎
This is so interesting… I’m far from a religious person, but I find history of the religions so interesting. Just how this all evolved to become what it is today.
Fuck Paul. All my homies hate Paul.
This is all super interesting to me, do you know of any books I could read on this subject?