From Pharaoh Tut-tut's State Of Egypt speech:
"Do we really want to live in a society where there is a Mask Gap?"
Posted on 01/21/2015 11:34:40 AM PST by bkopto
Thanks but no thanks. Didn’t request a primer.
The Gospel of Mark is pretty well attested (several fairly early partial copies...). It is considered the oldest of the 4 canonical gospels.
I was not questioning the Gospel of Mark.
I was just whimsically playing with the notion that this new discovery MIGHT be a for-profit scam.... I was reacting to the secrecy of its contents ... and a promised unveiling far in the future. This sort of arrangement has been associated with a couple of scams (fake finds for profit-making purposes) in the past. I have no way of knowing if this one is real or fake, of course.
Secret Mark is an interesting tale. A respected scholar named Morton Smith reported a find of a partial manuscript. It contained some language that many read as implying a homosexual relationship ... well, I needn’t go further here. Except to note that the original was quickly “lost” and all we have had to go on was Smith’s notes and some photographs. PLUS, there were some questions raised that perhaps Smith (an acknowledged expert scholar) may have been playing an elaborate trick (or possibly had been duped by a forgery, but given Smith’s expertise that also seems unlikely).
At any event, you can start learning a bit more about this interesting little escape in academia, which possibly could have been a legitimate finding but many now believe it likely to have been otherwise.....
here (see also the contained links):
http://gnosis.org/library/secm.htm
And with that, I will try to extricate myself from this. Ha! I was really trying to at least raise a question about how this new discovery is, or rather really is not, being unveiled. I had not intended to resurrect Secret Mark for its own sake. Sorry if I typed too fast. But you may enjoy a few minutes following up on it if you’re curious. It is either real (I have my doubts) or else it is an entertaining fiction (but we still don’t know if any fakery was initiated by Smith or if he might have been a victim of someone else’s prank.) Best regards,
fhc
It’s not a primer. You asked what their relationship was to each other. It’s there in three paragraphs.
Thank you for the info and the link. It is good to factually refresh this sluggish mind as much as possible, depending on the source of refreshment.
Here’s what I posted in fact:
“Is it known or just presumed that Luke’s Gospel is what was preached by Paul? Did Dr. Luke learn from Paul or was it the other way around...or both?”
And yes, I question LDS “history” and “genealogies” muchly and do not wish to refer to them for Biblical analysis. And that’s the reason I declined your link to lds.org!
I’m not LDS, so it doesn’t hurt my feelings. What is written at that site is exactly what I learned in Catholic School, and was also what my uncle, a Lutheran Minister claimed: Luke was, among all of the Gospel writers, the most “journalistic” in his approach. He talked to a lot of people, not just Paul.
From Pharaoh Tut-tut's State Of Egypt speech:
"Do we really want to live in a society where there is a Mask Gap?"
You’re welcome.
Many of us would have liked to have the original document and not just Smith’s photos of it, but alas the Greek Patriarchy in Jerusalem quickly ‘lost’ the original... or at least saw to it that it has remained hidden from view
A secondary but I think fascinating issue has been the relative lack of serious scholarly study of Secret Mark ... most of the commentary has been of the nature of outright dismissives or else personal attacks on Smith. Both kinds of responses being very understandable (Smith probably had some issues, too). Nvertheless, we learn that academia is not all the dispassionate, objective arena of honest discourse and discovery........as perhaps had been imagined by some.
An interesting interpretation of this latter question is offered by this article, link:
http://gnosis.org/library/secm_commentary.htm
Conclusion: it is wise to always retain a little spark of skepticism when reading an academic report, particularly if it is one of first impression.
Academics are only human beings, the come complete with the full range of human frailties, and perhaps then some.
Best,
fhc
Well we have 300+ known, unread, lumps of charcoal that originated as books in Herculaneum, very precisely dated by their conversion by Vesuvius. And serious hopes of finding more in the never excavated parts of the mansion that held them. A relative few others have been painstakingly unrolled and read. And NYTimes reported yesterday that they can now image letters within the intact lumps. Given time they’ll probably develop that tech and software so that supercomputers can read all the text therein. In addition to potential recovery of lost literary and secular historical works, they might include then recent historical information regarding early Christianity. The faithful, by definition, don’t need such, but such might help convert others. The original lumps are unforgeable today, so their reality couldn’t be doubted, although errors existing in the Roman originals, accidental or intentional, would need to be considered.
Hi SC - sorry I missed that posting. Thanks much.
Yeah... so... doesn’t contract or add to anything I’ve said.
h/t to Grey Friar ... Catholic ping!
Luke was present at many of the events of his gospel, and Paul was not, so Luke didn’t learn from Paul. Paul preached before there was any written gospel, as early as 43 AD. He would have learned what he knew at Antioch, quite possibly from various of the eleven. He may have learned an unwritten “sayings” gospel which may be represented by the portions that Matthew have in common with Luke.
[On the other hand, much of his ministry was in Western Turkey and Greece. Western Turkey (Ephesus, precisely) was eventually John’s territory, so I don’t know if that would’ve meant he might have used the passages which eventually became the Gospel of John. But then I don’t even know if John didn’t go to Turkey until long after Paul had gone to Rome.]
Luke claims to have gathered all of his information from “eyewitnesses.” This would suggest that his infancy narrative must have been learned from the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his account of the Temptation in the Wilderness from Jesus himself (which makes sense since he was one of the 72 disciples).
Yes, but St. Paul was not an eyewitness to the events of the gospel.
Don’t trust in secret gospels from people named Smith. ;-)
Why?
Perhaps that’s the way it happened. Hard to know who to listen to, isn’t it?
It’s possible that a fragment of Mark was also found at Qumran (and hence, dated before 68 AD).
There are still some Catholics who cling to the belief that Matthew is really the first. See, for example: http://taylormarshall.com/2011/09/why-matthew-is-first-gospel-and-not.html.
I note, though, that the USCCB no longer regards Matthew as the first to be written, so things have certainly changed since I learned the New Testament history: http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/0
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