Mark Is our Earliest Jesus Story--How We Know and Why it Matters!

hi everyone I wanted to talk about an interview I did last week with Jacob Biermann he's the host of a YouTube channel called history Valley many of you might know of it if you don't uh really encourage you to visit it and if you haven't subscribed to subscribe to his channel he has a lot of material I've done five or six programs with him uh beginning last year when I began to after I retired began to do YouTube interviews and appearances and started my own channel that you're watching right now and Jacob had wanted me for some time to come on and talk about the conundrum really of these gospels in the New Testament Matthew Mark Luke and John but particularly what Scholars call the synoptic gospels Matthew Mark and Luke because they have some relationship I'm convinced that Mark is the earliest story of Jesus that we have it's certainly a mixture of myth and history it's developed a theology already I think it's heavily influenced by Paul and Paul comes to us in the 50 CE and I think Mark probably in the 70s so 20 25 years later but it is our first story I do think there was a collection of the sayings of Jesus that might have been circulating but to get the story you've got to really go to mark and as many of you know because you've signed up for it and are taking it I have this course that I decided to call creating Jesus because if Mark is the first story of Jesus then there's a sense in which it is creating the Jesus story and then the subtitle of the course is why Mark's gospel was forgotten so that introduces a new element of intrigue because it's not as though Matthew and Luke just use mark but I believe and it's not even like a second edition of Mark a revised version of Mark like Mark wrote and then Matthew kind of improved it or added to it and then Luke came along I don't think that's it I think there are rivalries in competing stories between these accounts and if Mark is the first I would say that Matthew has overwritten Mark and that Luke has overwritten Mark they both use it as their main narrative source the order that they follow and the main events that they narrate they're all from Mark so he's the source so it's really important to look at mark first and that's what the course does uh let me just share my screen here because you know when you just hear about a course before you sign up for it you don't really get to see what it's like but here you can see um on the screen what it looks like once you sign up for it it's got the introduction to the course you can see as you go on down you get all kinds of maps and all kinds of other things uh this uh reading recommendations let me click on that this live q a of just about a week ago it was Sunday March 5th so just over a week ago when I'm making this recording we had a couple of hundred people in a zoom room and we spent two hours doing Q a and here's the recording of it if you get the course you get to hear that recording and these are students that have taken the course and they have questions and I'm going to schedule another of these in April I've got to go to Israel at the end of March I'm doing another tour and then I've got some other things in April but towards the mid to the end of April we're going to schedule another of these sessions so if you sign up for the mark course you'll have time to take it and be able to attend that course and I've got a whole backlog of questions you can then also begin the lectures and you can see that they're just video lectures I think this will play for you let me just give it a try skip ahead more than Aristotle in many ways more than Paul in all of his letters if you go toward the Christian so that's one of the lectures there's seven lectures in all all kinds of study guides outlines extra material I'll put in the description the link to order the course it's reduced right now in price and uh it's a bargain I think but I'm putting this as an introduction to what I did with Jacob let me stop the share here you got the idea because uh I think you're going to find it pretty fascinating I showed slides and began to show how Mark emerged and got overwritten and Rewritten so it's not a whole course it's just an hour interview but with the slides and I the slides were on a PDF uh Visual and I'm gonna also upload that and put that in the link to this particular video so you can actually download the PDF and have the slides because sometimes unless you're on a big screen they might be a little hard to follow but I think it's going to kind of blow you away if you've never really delved into the gospels harmonizing the gospels will destroy them some of you realize that so you put them all together but you lose something in terms of Marcus Mark Matthew as Matthew Luke is Luke and I want to go back to Mark as Mark and see what that first story was all about and you're going to be fascinated I think with these slides because we can really show what's going on with Matthew and Luke and I also touch on what Scholars call Q covella the source which is a collection of the sayings of Jesus whether it was a document or oral tradition or different theories but it is true that if you take Matthew and Luke the material they have in common not what they have uniquely like Luke has a birth story Matthew has a birth story so that's not what we're talking about but everything they have in common the Beatitudes The Sermon on the Mount a lot of the teachings of Jesus it tends to be somewhat like the Gospel of Thomas in that it's saying after saying after saying and if you pull that out that also forms a source for trying to get back at the Historical Jesus but in the course I concentrate on the story and what I try to show is it is a carefully constructed literary production or presentation and if you don't get that you're going to miss what it's all about you know imagine Mark Writing somewhere around 70 and he puts no birth of Jesus sin that has to be conscious maybe he was aware of Virgin birth stories such as Matthew and Luke relate maybe he was aware of genealogy he didn't put any of that in what about the ending of Mark the authentic original ending of Mark where the women Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus and others go to the tomb and they're told that it's empty not by an Angel but by a man in a white robe and he says he's not here he's been lifted up as he said you'll see him in Galilee but no appearances are given I mean you have to respect that meaning that if Mark tells the story like that there's a meaning and an impact to it uh it's not just like he had all of this material and he put this in and put that in and put the other thing in but nobody would leave out the Virgin birth of Jesus if it was an important part of the story and nobody would leave out the resurrection appearances the way they're narrated in Matthew and Luke so again I said it the first I think Mark is following Paul Moore many of you heard my videos and maybe read my blog I have a lot of posts about the difference between mark and Paul in the other gospels as far as the nature of faith in Jesus resurrection Mark does believe in Jesus being lifted up but whether Resurrection is the exact word the way it comes across in English in Christian theology I think is a question so listen to this interview I'll put the slides in a link so you can blow them up and you could even print them out and read them yourself and enroll for the course check out the course and I'd love to see some of you in April if you take the course you get a personal invitation and you know I really have been amazed at the response I've gotten to this course and I see the many many people that are taking it as kind of this very enhanced uh classroom so to speak and as I am going to offer more courses and other courses down the line I'm going to use myth Vision podcast courses as the vehicle I've got a whole lot in mind I'm gonna do one on finding the real Paul and how you do it I've spent about what 40 years studying poll I'm gonna do one on Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I'm gonna do one on apocalyptic movements all through history and what they have in common the actual history of them I've studied them for years some of you know I was even involved in Waco and by the way if you haven't seen the Waco film uh I think it's on Showtime right now we're coming up to the 30th anniversary of the Waco tragedy April 19 1993 and there will be a memorial gathering in Waco I plan to be down there for that so I didn't intend to talk about Waco but hey this is YouTube we can be informal but sign up for the course listen to this interview with with Jacob he he he's one of these interviewers that has really good questions and observations but he also lets me talk I told him that I just I wanted to do a presentation just like a class that if I went into a classroom at the University and I would spend an hour laying out the parameters of the gospels and the relationship to each other and that's just what I did so take care enjoy the video Hello everybody welcome to another recording for history of I podcast today I'm joined by Professor James Tabor and today we're going to be discussing his views on P2 document hypothesis the idea that Mark is the First Gospel Matthew Luke independently borrowed from Mark but they also borrowed from another document called Q which is supposed to explain but double tradition passages in Luke and Matthew and their alternating primitivity with that being said welcome back to the podcast uh James saber okay so you ready to go we'll do it yeah what I like to do Jacob is present the data not the theory so I do have I'm going to show some slides I do have a slider to on the theory many of your viewers will know this anyway because you had Matthew priority probably had Luke you've had every possible Theory and you've had a lot of people with different views so what I want to do first is to show the data I'm actually presenting what I often do in my own University classes to introduce students who don't know anything and then I will go into these actual texts that I've chosen so um so I'm gonna if it's okay with you I'll go ahead and share the screen and we'll get going okay so before I even get into the slides uh you can see me even though I'm probably a little thumbnail I really recommend this book I don't have the cover on it but it's called gospel parallels by Throckmorton it's one of the cheaper ones you can get it just about anywhere and as you can see there it gives you Matthew Mark and Luke in parallel it puts uh Matthew on the left Mark in the middle and Luke on the right and I insist all my students have that because it really does and so if you see the two Source tradition it's right there you know too if sometimes Mark is also shouldn't be parallel to the two Source if we're going to have a pure Theory but sometimes there's a little bit of Mark and you go how did that get there uh so we'll see examples of that the other one that is actually still pretty reasonable because it's subsidized by the American Bible society and as you can see this is all four so even though John is not going to be always parallel you get John you know as you go along there's John as well and it becomes pretty interesting but I I like concentrating on what are called a synoptics I think most of your viewers know we're talking about Matthew Mark and Luke and then John being usually the fourth gospel the traditional views as you know a lot of them come from eusebius the church historian I highly recommend this version of eusebius it's Trent it's University of California press and it's translated by Jeremy shot uh s-c-h-o-t-t you can get it on Amazon or any Bookseller and it's really really nicely done as a translation you know some of those old translations online or even below that a lot of people use they're very archaic at a date used to be at Charlotte I hired him actually when he got his PhD he came right out of grad school and was in our department at UNC Charlotte but he got picked up by a bigger school because he said she's a brilliant guy I guess so anyway eusebius says uh you know it's it's just a very traditional view that makes you feel good as a Believer or something you know so you see this is promoting his Christianity Matthew is written by Matthew one of the 12 apostles Mark is written by a guy named Mark but he's Peter's interpreter this is based a lot on papius as you know and Lucas Paul's interpreter so there you go you've got you know the true word coming from an apostle who was there eyewitness Mark who basically got it from Peter so that's sort of eyewitness and then we get Paul uh doing Luke X uh obviously Scholars today uh don't buy into those generally speaking and the basically all the theories have all the possibilities have been tried so uh we usually the theory I'm going to present to you is often called the two source but there is the idea that Matthew wrote first you've had programs on that and people do defend it and Mark would be a kind of reduced or cut down version of Matthew derivative of Matthew and Luke would also use Matthew I'm also interested in the Jerusalem School Robert Lindsay who's gone now but uh passed away a few years ago but lots of followers Hebrew University connected and they really defend uh Lucan priority uh to it's a complicated Theory but just I put it here because you could go like Markham priority methiopian priority and Lucan priority and you can find pretty intense arguments by all three positions so I think that's important to recognize none of us have a Monopoly on saying oh this is the view and you have to have this view or you know you're stupid so one thing I want to point out though is that when Scholars do the kind of critical work I'm going to suggest to you and what I do with my students um harmonizing is what a lot of people think when they buy these books like Throckmorton or the four Gospels uh parallel is a better word you know harmonizing implies that you're putting things together and making one and I would argue very blatantly that if you harmonize you destroy the ticks because if you put them all together you no longer have Mark now there's a this I'm mentioning an author here Kermit zarle you see at the top he has a book I think it's I think it's still in print but if it isn't you can find copies I recommend it I even have my students get it why because I want to show them why we're not doing this and I need to see it why we're not in my class so you can see here here's a page 29 of his book and he's doing uh John the Baptist preparing the way opening of Mark and what he does is he puts in John in anything Luke has and anything Matthew has and if you go under the baptism you'll even see more for example in Matthew John protest oh I I can't possibly baptize you you should be baptizing me you know Mark doesn't have that John doesn't even have the baptism although the figure of John refers to the holy I saw the Holy Spirit coming down on this guy uh so I would point out to my students and to all of your viewers that this could be helpful because you get everything and I've talked to Kermit he's my friend he's a professional golfer by the way I think he's retired but he's a great guy I love him as a person he's wonderful and he sees this as a benefit because if somebody's reading the Bible and they get Matthew Mark and Luke kind of all together so that's the traditional Harmony of the Gospels and what critical Scholars do let me Define critical as careful rather than like tearing down like I'm not tearing down anything what I'm going to do as I show you these next slides is look carefully at what one says what another says how they compare and so forth and I think that's the method we use in the academy for me it yields more as you know because you've promoted it for us I have a course on the gospel of Mark it's just mark yeah I want to hear Mark as Mark almost like you have somebody and stand up and say okay tell me your story then we go to the next guy or the next girl uh what what's your story it could be about the same thing but we're listening to different accounts and some might know the others but you know it's their turn they're going to be speaking so that's a kind of a lame example but you see the idea so you can call this either the two Source or the four Source because we're going to end up with four but essentially it argues in these dates by the Ray are just traditional dates I often point out to my students you know because they ask how Dr Taylor how do you come up with these dates and it's it's frankly pretty arbitrary most Scholars think if there was a collection of the sayings of Jesus which referred to as Q meaning in German The Source Cabela that maybe it would be around 50. okay and then you think oh Mark wrote first this is the theory he probably wrote around 70. and then they just jump usually like oh Matthew would be 80. and Luke would be 90 and John would be a hundred but if you say well wait a minute you say Matthew's 80. what in Matthew says it's 80. well it does seem to be later than Mark according to the the content in my opinion because it mentions things like the church the Ecclesia which Mark never mentions the Primacy of Peter which marked far from mentions in fact Peter's almost the least important and myths understands Jesus the most and so forth so I just put the dates in where people can see these are the traditional dates so here's the theory that in the beginning someone collected together the sayings of Jesus in like a papyri or whatever you know I've actually uh written it out before for my students on a long scroll paper just to see how long it is because depending on your print I mean I printed it not by hand in English it's probably about 10 feet long so think of a rolled up Papyrus and it's mainly the sayings of Jesus maybe a couple narratives but primarily sayings of Jesus so we got Jesus teaching and then uh the author of Mark and I'm just using the names not for the authors but the books whoever that was whether it's somebody named Mark or not uh he decides to give the narrative or the story so you've got the teachings and the story and then you can see the logic of Matthew building on that and essentially thinking wow Mark you know I've got Mark it's it's got a really good framework you know of the basic gospel story and I've also got these sayings which he groups together in five blocks primarily that's his structure so you see how he's he's thinking well I'll put all this together and then right here M that means all the material that is not from Mark or the or the Q Source the saying source that uh he wants to add as well so how do you get Q you get Q by taking Matthew and Luke and removing what they got from Mark and removing what's unique and what's left is cue so that's actually a tight definition of q whether it existed or not that's how you get the two Source it's got to be two so it has to have because we don't have it so the logic is pretty good I I always tell my students here's how to define q it's the material that Matthew and Luke have in common that is not from Mark and I haven't repeat it like a mantra because they never heard this stuff many of them think of like you know I've just read the Bible what is it so the average Bible reader often has the impression because it's Matthew Mark Luke and John and this is an intuitive impression that almost everybody gets I I definitely had it as a kid reading the Bible growing up uh 10 12 years old I don't remember the age but you know I thought I'll read the New Testament so I read Matthew everybody makes it through Matthew it's the first one right and then I got to Mark and I thought uh this is like repeating I've already heard this well guess what 95 of Mark is put into Matthew so healing of the paralytic walking on the sea the two feedings of the multitudes I've already read it in Matthew now I'm reading good in mark so it's no surprise to me that until people look in detail they would assume met the end priority or Lucan priority because it seems like Mark is a cut down version a kind of a synopsis really you know like okay Matthew you're 28 chapters but could you give us that uh without the sayings that you and Luke have but just the basic story and that's what Mark supposedly did but it doesn't really hold up uh as I see it and as we're gonna see because when you start looking at uh well that doesn't go off the screen I think I can see your screen too make it as big as we can um when you see them side by side you begin to see that um how it flows and that's what we'll get into but let me start with uh just like opening of Mark an opening of Matthew a good place to start uh now in Matthew it's already chapter three because Mark does not have any virgin birth Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem the wise men none of that is there let's start with math Mark he just says the beginning of the Gospel Jesus Christ the son of God at his as it is written in the prophet Isaiah and you can and then he introduces John the Baptist and the Wilderness preaching a baptism of forgiveness for the mission of sins and everybody coming out and being baptized okay if you go with my theories so kind of work with me on this and see if it works for you so Matthew's sitting down he's already told the Virgin birth the wise men the birth of Jesus the genealogy in chapter one so he's ready to start his narrative because he's added this new material that's only in his gospel the birth of Jesus Luke has the birth of Jesus but it's a totally different story Matthews Matthew is more from Joseph's Viewpoint so anyway he so he like he likes this it's like okay let's start Mark has a good opening but you can see that he's already editing a little bit because he says uh as it was spoken by the prophet Isaiah and he only gives the Isaiah quote this is Isaiah 40 verse 3. so he realizes when he reads Mark the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way that is Isaiah but if I leave it like this as it is written in Isaiah behold I send my messenger that's not Isaiah now I don't know if he thought it was a mistake or would confuse the reader in Judaism and among the rabbis you do this all the time the main thought is Isaiah prepare the way in the wilderness but there's another passage in the Hebrew Bible about Malachi sending a messenger who prepares the way so that the phrase that joins us prepare the way so you see what he's doing it's kind of complicated but what he's saying is Isaiah basically talked about preparing the way and we also have a passage from Malachi but he doesn't say Malachi even though he obviously knows it's from Malachi and Matthew is like yeah I'm not going to put that in no it could go the other way you could have this is Matthew writing first and Mark says you know Malachi talks about that too I think I'll put that in so this one just shows how they cross edit one way or the other I think it makes more sense to see Matthew as correcting mark because he's thinking this is going to confuse people they're going to go to Isaiah and they're not going to find it and he says it's written in Isaiah quote Behold a similar messenger that's not what I said he puts it later and identifies it see so he moves it okay here's another one this is just the typical three sources and it has to do with the baptism of Jesus so um you can notice here the first thing I always tell students is just get a visual of the parallel so we start in Mark over at the left and it's pretty straightforward Jesus comes from Nazareth and he's baptized and by John and when he comes out of the water he hears the dove comes down he hears a voice from Heaven you're my beloved Son and you I am well pleased now Matthew begins to have a problem with that because two things first of all did the voice only speak to Jesus you are my beloved Son spoke to him uh or did it speak maybe to the crowd as well in his tradition or at least the way he writes it it's a voice from Heaven that's like an announcement you know remember math Mark has a Messianic secret where nobody's supposed to know who Jesus is Matthew's really not particularly interested in that he starts with the Virgin birth and the wise men and Herod and so there's no sacred about Jesus he even gives his genealogy and calls him the Christ so so he but he does have a problem with um wait a minute if John baptized Jesus then who's the greater so he puts in this objection now someone could say what do you mean he made it up I'm not talking about whether he made it up whether it was in his tradition that's not the point the point is Mark doesn't have it now it's getting lengthened and this would be something would occur to followers later on because there are John the Baptist people running around who don't who didn't go to Jesus you know we know the mandeans down to our time as well and so you have well I need to be baptized by you well see that's not in mark and then Luke as you go on if you follow this Theory and I'm going to try to convince you that it's the best theory he doesn't really even have the baptism of Jesus he's he says now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying now it could be that he's in the water praying when the Holy Dove comes down the holy spirit is a dove and he does follow you are my beloved Son not this is so he could be aware of Mark but you see the ideas um when I say it's not mentioned it's not a scene of his baptism like here he's in the water he comes up he see it's more of a narrative of what happened you know Jesus came down and he was baptized and when he was praying uh he had this revelation so he he would uh kind of fit more with with Mark now here are here's the best example of the two sources these are word for word the same basically in English and in Greek so you have Luke's tradition and Matthews notice the introduction is different uh he said to the multitude you brutal vipers Matthew is more against the religious establishment so he doesn't say the multitudes he says when he saw the Pharisees and the Sadducees he said you brutal vipers see how is he sharpening the polemic um you're gonna see in the two Source tradition most of us are convinced that Luke preserves it without embellishment as much he might embellish a little we wouldn't know because we don't have another but when we compared to Matthew Matthew is always this is very close but you can see uh Matthew is if it originally was the multitudes he's saying yeah but the people he really would denounce would be the Pharisees and Sadducees and that's very typical of Matthew in chapter 23 he takes one verse of Mark and turns it into an entire chapter it's one of the longest chapters in Matthew about denouncing the Pharisees woe to you woe to you you do this you do that it's like a rant and that that obviously is not in mark so that's the two Source here's another example of the two Source that's very interesting um and Luke you've got the idea of the this is the blessing sometimes called the Beatitudes okay um blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom bless that are you that hunger now for you will be satisfied blessed are you that weep now for you shall laugh blessed are meant when men hates you and so forth Rejoice so basically you got the poor the hungry and the persecuted and you can see that Matthew's version of this is not just poor like no money but poor in spirit and not just mourn they will be comforted uh I mean not just hungry but he has more and he has Meek he has hunger and thirst after righteousness he has merciful he has pure in heart it's extremely expanded um was it what was in cue what wasn't in queue I mean Matthew obviously has other tradition where he can expand this but one of the things that Luke has right after that but woe to you that are rich like rich like poor no money Rich money what are you that are full now hunger not hunger and thirst after righteousness but hunger like you don't have any food you're full you don't have you know you eat a full meal three times a day or whatever what are you that laugh now for you a weep and what are you when men Speak oh well of you so the blessings of Luke are followed by three woes is it three or four no four one two three four yeah whereas Matthew doesn't have that so this is a problem with the two Source tradition it seems like Matthew just like he did with the baptism is taking a very tight core that Luke has blessing blessing blessing blessing whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa meaning you know denouncing you and he's and it's very literal like no money no food getting persecuted and so forth and Mourning and he's more giving us spiritualism size you know you hunger and thirst for righteousness you so that would be unique to Matthew so when you read the two Source tradition you have to get used to that now here's another example same thing and notice what's happening it I mean this is a trend I didn't just pick these you know I mean I pick ones that are well known because people know the Beatitudes they know the Lord's Prayer so here's the Lord's Prayer Luke nobody ever quotes this by the way Jacob when the King James translators came to Luke they put in Matthew's prayer why because people would say that's not the prayer everyone in the church had memorized Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom to this day this is the prayer Matthew is the prayer okay Luke has the staccato prayer I call it it's like Father Hallowed be your name let your kingdom come give us each day our daily bread forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who's indebted against us and so forth and lead us not into temptation so once again Matthew is the more liturgical I would also call this more liturgical notice what has gotten memorized and quoted in churches I've never heard this quoted I've heard it quoted in fragments where people would say oh we need to feed the hungry because Jesus said you know blessed are the poor almost always if anybody's memorized the Beatitudes in your audience my guess is they know this they don't know this by heart you follow okay and certainly they wouldn't know the woes by heart so once again Matthew is the liturgical gospel he's expanding he's embellishing he's making it more spiritual in that sense and elaborated and so forth now this one is real this these are all the two Source just to show you I'm trying to show you how Matthew handles material if we assume there was a cue out there and we don't have it we got two versions of the queue my argument here is that Matthews is probably not the original version of Q because he's constantly expanding and embellishing it spiritualizing it and making it more liturgical which is a later kind of thing to do whereas Luke even though I think he wrote later just like he does with Mark he seems to be more careful did you remember at the baptism you are my beloved Son Mark Luke you are my beloved Son you see Luke doesn't change things in Mark he takes things out that he doesn't want to put in like failure of the disciples but Luke if he's following what I think is the two Source solution this is going to be closer to what it was now how do I know we'll take a look at this I can't tell you how many times growing up I grew up in a church an Evangelical Church uh if anyone comes after me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters yes even his own life he cannot be my disciple and whoever it is not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple now notice the rhetorical feel of that you hear it it's got this it's got this Rhythm you don't need to say again cannot be my disciple it reminds me of some of the ways that John Kennedy used to speak uh and other uh great speakers that know how to ask questions you know and notice if anyone comes to me and then using the word hate so what did I hear growing up uh some kid raises their hand in the back teacher did Jesus mean who are supposed to hate our parents and family right did you ever hear that and what does the teacher say no no no it it hate it doesn't mean hate it means to love God more okay interpreted right well in the original version of Q I think Q's not interested in making it easy it's like poor hungry persecuted and here it's like hate hate in Greek Museo means to hate it is I think it's hyperbole but look what Matthew does he immediately interprets it as what a Sunday school teacher would tell the kids he loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me he loves son or daughter is not worthy of me and he who does not take up his cross and follow is not worthy and so forth he doesn't even list this has a when I say who does not hate his own father mother wife children brothers sisters yes even his own life you hear the rhetoric there it's like a drum beat it's oral Matthew is more what did he say like here's what he said in Matthew what did he say boy that's shocking uh he said that you should love God more than your family oh okay I got that see the difference is I don't think you go from this to this I just can't see it I did think you go from this problem and to this okay here's another one um this isn't the same thing but I want to show you how often Matthew if Luke has three things Matthew will just cut it to two because it's like hey we've made the point come on so scribe comes up to Jesus I'll follow you wherever you go he says the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head and then another said Lord let me go first and bury my father I'm not going to stop and talk about what that means but I think it has to do with uh waiting till my father dies but anyway or maybe the your site because you have to pray for a year and anyway we won't get into that because I'm making another point but Jesus said follow me okay that's here's Luke same thing uh although he says you know leave the dead to bury the dead notice Jesus said follow me leave the dead to bury the dead leave the dead to bury their own dead as for you proclaim the kingdom and then another said I will follow you but let me first say farewell to those at my home and he talks about don't put your hand to the plow and look back so this happens quite a bit where you will have Luke having three examples where Matthew just has two again I think the way it's flowing is that Luke is the Fuller more original version and Matthew's giving you more of this synopsis this one I think is really really clear that way if we start with Luke notice the rhetoric Jacob do you think that I've come to give peace on Earth now here I I think he would pause and go uh yeah yeah you're the Prince of Peace right and notice no I tell you but rather division for henceforth in one house there will be five divided three against two and two against three they'll be divided why say it again you just said there'll be divided say it again it's rhetorical it's got this pound to it you see it's like you're you're you're shouting it out they will be divided farther against Sons son against father mother against daughter daughter against mother mother-in-law again sir daughter Lord I mean you can hardly read it with one breath okay the points the same but look what Matthew puts don't think that I've come to bring peace I've not come to bring peace but a sword for I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law a man's post will be those of his own household see this summarizes all of this this is rhetorical this is edited so I'm trying to uh demonstrate how Matthew works with a source that we have in terms of the two sources okay here I'm just going to do the highlighted part uh the I didn't want to not give you the context but just for sake of time I tell you my friends do not fear Those Who Kill the body and after that have no more they can do but I will warn you in the fear fear Him whoafter He has killed has power to cast and to hell or gehenna yes I tell you fear him so just taking that verse what is that notice the rhetorical part again Jacob I tell you my friends do not fear Those Who Kill the body and after that have no more they can do but I will warn you whom to fear fear Him who you don't need to say that just say I you don't even need to say I will warn you he should just say he should just say this do not fear Those Who Kill the body but can't kill the soul but rather fear Him and constr who can destroy body and soul and Hell see that I call it the cliff notes now as you read the long version that's rhetorical orally powerful because it pounds home with these repetitions that aren't needed for the meaning and then I always picture it like Luke Luke's Jesus talks and then somebody in the cover what did they just say give me the summary I I didn't hear all that oh he said Don't Fear men fear fear God oh okay thanks see let's see okay now this one is too long to go word for word but we'll leave it up on the screen and here we have uh a man being brought to Jesus I'm going with Mark and priorities so look at and notice the size of the print look how long this is great detail you know how people say well Matthew's a uh sorry Mark's a cut down version of Matthew this is a cut down version of this I believe this would be the long version this would be the cut down version so what happens is people don't get the parallel and notice Matthew's the one who cuts down Mark he also you saw in the Q Source he cut down you know I've come to ring not peace but a sword uh who hates your father mother and so forth he's the reducer he's the summarizer this is the best example in the entire synoptics I think this is one of the longest stories it's so long I'm not going to read it but it's basically Jesus is in a house it Capernaum and it's so crowded they can't get in and they have to go in the roof and let a guy down four men carrying a pallet and they break the roof open it comes down and finally Jesus sees their faith because they he got to the front of the crowd and he says uh son your sins forgiven and people object and then he says oh well I have authority to forgive sins here how about this rise and walk and the guy gets up and so forth okay so look Luke has all of that too so this is telling me that when Luke has a source he tends to keep it right when Matthew has a source he tends to summarize it it's very clear so look at this uh they brought to him a paralytic doesn't say it's in a house it doesn't say anything about the roof doesn't even say the crowd and he says they brought him a paralytic and he goes your sins are forgiven it's so different that some people think it could even be a different story but when you start looking at the parallels they're so close that it has to be the same story and if you follow through mark this is where he is uh when Matthew's rewriting mark this is where you are in this Narrative of Mark so it's clearly the same story so why doesn't he expand it because all he really cares about is Jesus has the authority to forgive sins remember the last verse of Matthew all power and authority is given to me on heaven on Earth that's what Matthew cares about you say well wasn't it crowded that day and they had to go to a lot of yeah but that's not what I'm telling I'm telling you that Jesus can forgive sins and if only God can forgive sense Jesus is some form of divinity okay same thing here uh notice the size of the print but here Matthew doesn't reduce because he wants to expand it for theological reasons if you remember this this is picking Grain on the Sabbath it's a Markham story Matthew and Luke both have it because I think they're following Mark I agree with Mark and priority in Mark let me just summarize the story and people can read it I'll put it down where you can read it later while you're listening um and Mark they're picking Grant on the Sabbath again we're not going to get into the holakic stuff of Judaism about that that's a different subject like what was wrong with that but it's basically doing work they're threshing right and they didn't prepare the meal ahead of time which you're supposed to do so two counts against them and he notice what Jesus says he goes uh oh really so you say they're breaking the law huh you know so he's almost like a jokester well let me see I think in the Hebrew Bible David broke the law so I guess it's good to break the law because David's good right now why did David break the law human need if you read the story of how he went into the tent of meeting the Tabernacle and took the holy bread that only the priests could eat it strictly says in the Torah that nobody else can eat that I I don't know if it says there's a death penalty but it's really strong like you cannot eat this bread David's not a priest his true these are troops they're not priests those against the bread why because they're so famished from walking in the desert that they're going to faint and die and that can happen I've been out in the desert where I have to be really careful anybody that's worked in the desert knows you don't have the right food and water you can get in real trouble within an hour or two so anyway and then he says the Sabbath is made for people I'm going to say people instead of man this is the RSV the Sabbath is made for people not people for the Sabbath so the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath notice he puts in a new story about the priest's work the priests work on the Sabbath okay and he says why did they work on the Sabbath because of the temple they're serving the temple but a greater than the temple is here so the reason it's okay is because Jesus is so great again the authority of Jesus they're serving him and he's greater than the temple therefore they can do what they want on the Sabbath if they're serving him see the idea and then he takes out the Sabbath is made for people not people for the Sabbath because that kind of opens up a situational ethics idea that's just a little bit too tough for him and even Luke takes that out because I think he's like whoa you know so there he uh he he apparently is is uh more interested in Matthew's version let's see uh this is a case where you gotta ask does it go this way or does it go this way this is the confession of Peter and Mark and Matthew where Jesus asks who do people say that I am and I present in the mark course that Peter when he rebukes Jesus and says uh you know get behind me I mean he says no no you can never do that and Jesus rebukes him and says Get Behind Me Satan it's pretty rough I think Peter has a false understanding of Jesus and Mark here Matthew sees that and he doesn't really take it out but he puts a blessing to Peter look blessed are you Peter like you do understand and God's revealed it to you Mark is like I don't think you're getting it and he rebukes him and says he's on the side of Satan so this is when Matthew reads Mark he's like whoa this is pretty tough and didn't Peter later believe and become the leader of the twelfths so you know be better to go ahead and reflect that um let's see this one's one of my favorite uh the in Mark James and John sons of Zebedee come forward and asked to sit on the right and left hand and notice in Matthew it's the mother of the sons of Zebedee now this would be a good example of harmonization you if you harmonize you just say well James and John wanted to do it and their mom went up and did it for them you know put it together but this mitigates the guilt of the brothers you know by saying the mother asked for it rather than they asked for it and also if you keep reading there's this whole idea about uh don't even ask that because if you're the first you're going to be the last and if you're the last you're going to be the first and so forth this one is very interesting as far as Mark and Matthew together uh this is the only guy in mark amended for understanding the kingdom the only kind in fact I think he's the only one in mark That's commended for understanding anything others are committed by faith for faith and the poor Widow for sacrifice giving all she has remember the two mites guess what uh look at Matthew he has a guy come but it's to test him and basically says what is the great commandment and Jesus tells him and that's it he's not committed for any understanding here you get the whole key to the mark and gospel when the Scribe says you are right teacher you've truly said that he is one God is one and there's no other the Shema and love him to love him with all the heart and all the understanding and all the strength and loved one's neighbor as yourself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices what does Jesus say you're not far from the kingdom of God look what's missing here because Matthew doesn't want to show any Pharisees or scribes that had an understanding and he's certainly not going to make them the hero of his book I mean this guy is actually the key to the Book of Mark because he says you're not far from the kingdom well what's the kingdom well if this guy is not far from the kingdom it must have to be an under it has to do with an understanding of what God really wants right love your neighbor love God love your neighbor as yourself and that would bring the kingdom so once again Jacob I don't see this being the original and then Mark completely rewrites it and makes up a hero I see this as being the original and Matthew says okay that guy might have been one that was good but I'm not telling that story because we're being persecuted by the Pharisees and Sadducees that's why we generally think Matthew's from the 80s because there's a lot of persecution of the Jesus Movement by the Pharisees that have survived uh Jerusalem here we see Mark and Luke I didn't put Matthew but notice on the prayer in Gethsemane look how long this is three times Jesus asked the disciples to watch with him and pray three times they fall asleep look at Luke and Luke he just says pray that you may not enter into temptation he withdrew he prayed when he arose he came to his disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow that's not really a failure they're just tired maybe you know here uh it's just you know and and if this was only here and I only picked one example Luke removed the rebuke of Peter that we've referred to early get behind me site and take set out he basically takes out all the misunderstanding of the disciples you know in Mark in chapter 6 when he says you don't understand this Parable how are you going to understand any Parable takes that out Chapter 70 takes out chapter eight when they're in the boat takes that out and so uh you can see how they're being revised and finally the ending everybody knows this who would write a gospel and have appearances of Jesus Mary Magdalene at the tomb and everything and then if you keep reading going to Galley seeing Jesus and then we have the ending of Mark and they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had come upon them and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid that alone and demonstrates to me that Mark is first of all I don't have the Virgin birth or any of that birth of Jesus he just said Jesus show up if you knew the Virgin birth tradition that is so important to early Christians to believe in Jesus as the Divine Son of God born of a virgin no human father uh you would leave that out Mark leaves it out you knew that Jesus yeah the tomb was empty but then just a few hours later he shows up and it appears to the disciples and eats with them and according to Luke for 40 days he's then and among them meeting with them and so forth again embellishment reinterpretation uh turning something more liturgical mitigating the the pointedness of some statements I didn't put the poor Widow in but Matthew takes her out and it's one of the greatest stories and I think it's because right after the disciples go look Master what beautiful buildings and he just told them these buildings don't even matter when the Scribe goes this is more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifice you picture him waving his hand to the you know all this stuff we're doing in the temple doesn't even matter the temple can go and Matthew's like yeah wait a minute take that out okay so that's the last slide I'm gonna stop the share and we can uh just kind of you basically got the point so the idea would be that if I look at Q I see Matthew taking Luke's version which I think is more original and interpreting it uh dulling the pointedness of it like hate your father mother brother sister making it less rhetorical it seems to be a Rewritten version for his audience and if I look at Mark and we do have Mark as the source Q we don't have we just have Luke but with right with Mark we have Mark so it's not it's not like we have to wonder what would he do with the American passage we can see what he does with American passage and what does he invariably do shorten it to the main point or expand it if he has a different point so pick and Grant on the Sabbath if you say the Sabbath is made for people not people for the Sabbath I'm going to translate that into God's laws are for people for human good and so if something's not for human good it's not don't follow it well that could lead to situational ethics like somebody says I will not lie and I always use extreme examples so Anne Frank is hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam in the Attic right everybody knows the story that I have Anne Frank and the Nazis knocked on the door and this is a good Christian couple Sheltering they don't believe in lying and they go like someone said in the neighborhood that you have Jews may be in your attic you go yeah I can't lie because you know it's against the against it's a sin to lie so yeah we would have never told you but you've asked us we've got to tell the truth they're upstairs go get them of course they're not going to do that they're going to go oh no in fact we don't even like Jews we're gonna lie lie lie to protect life okay well that's mark laws are for people not people for laws so how do you decide how to keep the Sabbath whatever promotes human good and the Sabbath many who observe the sabbath will tell you on many levels and everybody kind of observes that it's called the weekend you know where you go thank God it's Friday and so forth we all need rest and there's this sort of seven day cycle that our culture has and we need to take breaks we need we call it vacation vacate you need that's the word Sabbath to have a rest so but let's say you're in a situation where it's not going to cause rest or peace or tranquility like somebody's uh attacking you on the Sabbath to say well can't defend myself because you know uh got to keep the Sabbath that happened as you know in First Maccabees where they figured out these Judas one day they won't fight why don't we attack them on that day do you remember the Yom Kippur War 1973 October it's the one time that most Jews in Israel go to the synagogue even if they're secular I mean their mom and dad's gonna come on it's Yom Kippur at least go with us on the holiest day of the Jewish year so everybody's there fasting and what happens I think five or six nations Egypt Jordan Syria attack Israel I'm smiling just because it's like making the point that like well they're not they're going to be really caught off guard so uh the Mark II thing would say well obvious and obviously as Israel did forget Yom Kippur you go fight the war and yes you're gonna eat something because you're gonna need some strength but it says in the Torah that whoever eats anything will be cut off from the people then fine cut me off because I'm gonna go you know defend my my family and my homeland so you get the point I think I find it very convincing uh I have gone through for years now taking this book here in fact I've owned this very book for 30 years and looking at everyone every example and there are a few problems Mark goodacre mentioned some he holds to Mark and priority but he's not convinced that Q is a separate document um I'm very fond of uh Robert Lindsay's idea that you might find embedded in Luke not only a more original cue the two source but things around it that could have been a gospel that even would have preceded Mark now there won't be any Mark in it by definition because we're talking about oh there's the two source that we can extract is not all all of it like I showed you the three examples of you know I want to follow you so you would add that the woes are not in Matthew you would add that and I have done that actually if you want to see it you can go to my website James tabor.com and it's called restoring the original Gospel of cue and I've created about a 20 Page uh it was a graduate course I did years ago and everyone in the class we had about eight students their whole job at the end of the class was try to recreate queue as Luke knew it not just what Matthew used but compare them carefully and see if you can figure out and you know people came up with different things but we it was surprising how similar and I published mine because I I did it as the teacher just because everybody else's has to do it so I have to do it too and uh it I'm gonna teach more on that in the future but who knows it might be something that is earlier than mark and if so it wouldn't just be a collection of the things of Jesus it would actually be the earliest gospel account and then we've got to look at marcian which you know all about and your guests so uh and we can't do that today but anyway I hope that gives people a summary you can go back to the slides think about what I said I hope a lot of times when you talk real fast I was trying to hurry and get it within an hour you'll say Matthew when you made Mark or Mark when you made Matthew but you'll be able to figure out what I was saying I think generally I said it correctly but a couple times the slides were switched around but those are the characteristics that I see uh do you have any questions or you just want to let people digest it and we could do a question and answer sometime in the future you know oh yeah I like that very much where people could come on and say well what about this like you said this and you know a marketing priority makes a great deal of sense to me um does it yeah yeah I I'm yeah I I'm still persuaded by it I never uh uh I don't recall we want to listen to to all of the views I think it Lindsay's complicated but I just admire him so much uh because he was so fluid in Hebrew he studied with David Flusser at heave University he got that whole school of Jerusalem research Dwight Pryor and all of these guys there's a bunch of them with phds they're really sharp uh Randy Randy Booth uh I'm not going to try to name them all because I'll miss some of them but um I don't I think they have a different way of explaining q and Mark and priority but it has to do with something Luke is kind of emerging first and then the other material developing but I can't see I definitely can't see Mark coming from Matthew could I be convinced that Mark came from Luke you could see how sometimes they're pretty close you could make a better case from that Mark is getting his from Luke but I think for me it fails time and time again because even though Luke follows Mark more closely he also at times does not want what Mark has and just takes it up did you know he removes three chapters of Mark at one point it's such a scissors job that people even said you think his copy could have been missing some pages but they well look what goes on in 6 45 through 8 14. hammering the disciples over and over again for not understanding and even saying things like you don't understand then how are you going to understand anything and then rebuking them and then the other rebukes of the disciples in chapter 8 of Mark chapter 9 of Mark and chapter 10 of Mark he takes all those out uh it's really it's just the most fascinating thing we are so enriched as as uh Scholars to have three ancient texts probably all written within I mean some people go into the second century with Luke and John but within a 50-75 year period all about an ancient figure like I I took a course in grad school the life of Alexander the great and we have three sources you know Richard Carriage talked a lot about that and we studied all three and did our comparisons of all the traditions and so forth but they're far removed from one another they're far removed from Alexander in time so you got pseudo calistanis and things like that and um it just doesn't allow us to do what we can do with this because there seems to be this tight literary relationship that's why people get so fascinated with it and you get really really smart people wrestling with this because it's just this puzzle you know three ancient texts that are overlapping and related but can you figure it out and uh I feel pretty satisfied with where I've come on that but always willing to listen what do you think of the idea that Mark might have been familiar with Q himself um like when for example he brought brings up the bilzi bowl yeah a thing briefly he certainly knows some language and traditions that are in queue or the two Source let's call it maybe they're floating around or something um in my imaginary scenario he does know Q it's circulating he's read it it's important it's out there and he thinks well Q is good you know we have q so picture in this hand I have the sayings of Jesus we don't really have the story of Jesus the narrative and there's a story to be told there that he was not accepted by the people he was not accepted by his disciples and he did not just preach glory and power and authority he also preached rejection and forsakeness so I think we need that story as well so I could see how he would sit and compose the story knowing that people had been reading the sayings I can't prove that but if you put it at 50 and again how do you put Q at 50. well partly because it doesn't have any of the later theological stuff it really doesn't and of course there can be layers of queue as well I haven't read Dennis McDonald's new book I've ordered it hasn't come yet I don't know if I need to go check my Amazon order but uh I've heard him talk about it you know he's putting his whole thing together and I do know that he he says that he thinks he's just really solve the cube problem and there are other Scholars out there now that are still working on this and coming up with various things so I'm gonna enjoy now that I've finished my teaching career as far as classroom teaching in a university to have time not just to teach students you know what I've done for years but to read some of these other works you've had some of the people on that I'm interested in Reading uh and uh because I want to know you know more and I want to learn and I want to change if I'm wrong so [Music] [Music]

Channel: James Tabor

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Length: 73min 36sec (4416 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023