Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[Aractus]

I am still reading one of your cited papers, but what do you mean "based on an existing tradition, something similar to Acts 10:43" in this context ... that Acts predates Mark, and Mark is based in part on Acts? Most dating of authorship places Mark at least a decade or so ahead of Acts. Or are you saying both cite a yet earlier oral tradition?

I mean it's a witness to an earlier non-Marcan passion tradition. Yes it's written later than Mark, so is Matthew and Luke but they both used a source known as Q which contained earlier material - in the same way in a number of places the author of Luke-Acts has included a number of passion traditions from other sources (Acts 2:22-36, 3:13-15, 4:10, 4:27-28, 5:29-32, 10:39-43, 13:27-31). I would say those represent at minimum 3 or 4 "independent" passion-resurrection traditions. We don't know when Acts is written, but for argument's sake let's say about 95-105 CE and that Mark was written around 75 CE. That would put it about 20 or 30 years later - quite literally one generation later. Some of the traditions Luke is including in Acts could have changed in that time, heck he could have changed them himself if he wanted, but the fact that they're self-contradictory and they lack the themes of the Marcan/Lucan passions I think they represent a witness to a handful of pre-Marcan passion traditions.

It's actually a shame that in all of those there's only one burial tradition - however there are other burial traditions in the non-canonical material. This is what I expect there was because I accept what most historical-critical scholars think happened after the crucifixion - which is that the disciples and other followers of Jesus fled to Galilee and left him to die alone. Then after they have a christophany, or christophanies, they came to believe he had been risen. All of that is standard theory, and would be accepted by almost any historical-critical scholar today. I contend that because of this they wondered about how and where he was buried. This is the context that makes a tradition like Acts 13:29 make sense - buried by his persecutors - the disciples knew they were in Galilee, knew they didn't bury him so a legend has developed that after they fled his persecutors buried him. But this would have meant a dishonourable burial, so at least in some circles they said "in a tomb" which would give Jesus an honourable burial, however unlikely, in that tradition.

The reading I've proposed as mentioned answers other questions. Who would invent women's testimony? Well no one. Mark didn't have them testify at all. That was an accident of redaction that happens in the other gospels that are dissatisfied with the way Mark handled the followers of Jesus - both the disciples and the women.


In terms of the historical Jesus it means our knowledge about him ends once he's crucified. There's no good reason to accept Mark's theatrics and allegorical account of it that has him die of the course of six hours, the historical Jesus may have taken days to die and we can never know unfortunately.