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Oldest gospel?
- Thread starter Marble
- Start date
Leaving aside 'Q', current scholarship appears to favor Marcan priority. Whether that text is 'closest to Jesus' is an entirely different topic.
Quiddity
UndertheInfluenceofGiants
I find the primitive language used by Mark fascinating in that it is assumed that the primitiveness is a good indicator that it is first among others. It's not always the case as people from smaller out-skirt cities tend to favor uncommon words and older languages. It's still like that to this day and I'm suprised scholars haven't considered that.
I probably should stop out of this DIR. If you'd like to chat about the Synoptic Problem maybe we should start a different thread.
Quiddity
UndertheInfluenceofGiants
Sure. More out of interest then actual debate for me. I'll be sure to read and contribute if you wish to pursue it.
SaintAugustine
At the Monastery
Mark is the earliest..the Greek crude....in Luke you have polished Greek, from a Greek physician no less. In Mark to the question "Are You the Christ?", Jesus gives the direct answer, "I am. The The phrase "and immediately" occurs forty-two times in Mark. It is the shortest gospel.
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Mark to my understanding, and Matthew and Luke seem to use Mark as it's frame work adding stuff at the beginning and at the end, both of which add heavy implications to the meaning of Jesus' life and The Mysteries (As in Birth and Resurrection/Ascension) as the earliest manuscripts of Mark don't contain anything past the women leaving the garden and speaking no more. That is verses 9-20.
sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Scholars have considered it. It only supports the common prevailing wisdom. Since Mark was written in primitive Greek, it's assumed that Mark's origin was from outside the large population centers. The stories of the movement would have begun and spread in outlying areas, where both Temple authority and Roman authority would have been sparse. That circumstance supports Mark, with its primitive language and Q to have begun as oral stories told in these outlying areas.
Interestingly, Thomas and Q share commonalities. Scholarship posits that the communities that created Thomas and Q shared a common origin. That first community would have split by 40 c.e., in order to give the Thomas community time to travel and settle in Syria. That means that Thomas and Q would have separated less than 10 years following the crucifixion.
Me Myself
Back to my username
Indeed. Marl is also the cruelst depiction of the crucifixion
In Mark, Jesus doesn´t talk while he carries his cross. When he arrives, BOTH criminals make fun of him (none of them defends him like in Luke) and instead of saying "God To you I surrender my spirit" like in Luke, he says "God, why have you forsaken me?"
Indeed, it ends with the women getting out and speaking to no one. Curiously, all the other gospels have different accounts of what the women saw and how and what they did and how and even add stuff afterwards if I am not mistaken.
Sad thing is that it is almost imposible to know the real story
Jeremy Mason
Well-Known Member
Could you please clarify.
Is that "The Coptic Gospel of Thomas" or "The Infancy Gospel of Thomas" or "The Acts of Thomas"?
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Could you please clarify.
(that would be the Gospel of Thomas")
note: http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/thq.htm
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
The wiki articles date these Gospels pretty well.
Jeremy Mason
Well-Known Member
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Thanks!
My pleasure.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Yes, but it contains some early Jesus traditions and/or Q parallels. Not Q itself.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Modern scholarship (Aron Milavec) places the Didache to the middle of the first century. It is instruction on training Gentiles in to the "way of life" of Jewish- Christian communities and originally completely oral. Eventually a Greek textual version was prepared.
Those who used it, show no evidence of being aware of any of the Gospels or the letters of Paul.
It would seem entirely possible that the Gospels also had precursor oral forms. At best we can only date their first written forms. It may be that none of the earliest Oral tradition still exists, but what we have is edited and re-edited textural collections of oral tradition.
If that is the case any concept of a "first Gospel" would be misplaced.
Those who used it, show no evidence of being aware of any of the Gospels or the letters of Paul.
It would seem entirely possible that the Gospels also had precursor oral forms. At best we can only date their first written forms. It may be that none of the earliest Oral tradition still exists, but what we have is edited and re-edited textural collections of oral tradition.
If that is the case any concept of a "first Gospel" would be misplaced.
sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Hmm.
I understood that the "gnosticness" of Thomas wasn't all that conclusive. Some scholars posit that it contains gnostic elements, but that the Thomas community was not Gnostic.