Category: Mark Goodacre

Mark Goodacre on historical Jesus criteria.

Mark Goodacre’s recent podcast explains and examines the criteria used by historical Jesus scholars. Take a listen here.

Mark Goodacre’s world without the Gospel of Mark.

Mark Goodacre

For the Erasure Conference wherein scholars imagined a world without particular documents or events Mark Goodacre of Duke University wrote a fascinating paper titled ‘A World without Mark’. In it he images three scenarios: (1) “I would like to erase Mark from the surviving manuscript record, imagining that Mark was indeed written, and that it was a source for Matthew and Luke, but that no witness to it survived antiquity.” (2) “Mark is erased from history only to resurface as a handful of manuscript fragments in the 1890s and 1900s, and a more complete textual witness in 1945.” (3) “Finally, and most drastically, we will imagine that the boy who would have grown up to be the author of Mark’s Gospel did not survive childhood and that his Gospel never existed.”

To see where Goodacre takes these scenarios read his paper here.

Mark Goodacre’s proposed reading of the Gospel of Peter 42

The Harrowing of Hell

Yesterday I listened to Mark Goodacre’s recent podcast where he rethinks the walking, talking cross of the Gospel of Peter 42. It is one of the strangest parts of the story where Jesus and two other super tall men come from the grave and then a voice speaks from heaven asking if the Gospel was preached to those who are “asleep” (i.e. dead). As the document reads the cross (tou staurou) responds “yes”.

Goodacre suggests that the earlier version of the Gospel may not have said this. He proposes that instead there was a nomina sacra in place of the full word for cross, the sta. If this is so a scribe may have read sta as being short for staurou but Goodacre proposes that the word may have been a form of staurothenta which means crucified one and appears in 56.

One proposal he makes to support this is that the “Harrowing of Hell” which is popular in early Christian imagination and mentioned in 1 Peter 3.19-20; 4.6. This event always has Christ as the one preaching to the dead. So it would make sense that Jesus is the one addressed in the Gospel of Peter and that an earlier version read “the crucified” rather than “the cross”.

Of course, Goodacre admits that our lack of MSS on the Gospel of Peter makes it impossible to prove this point. I found the argument interesting. You can listen to it here.

Harmonizing the gospels: good or bad?

In his book The Synoptic Problem, p. 14 (free online here), Mark Goodacre says this of reading the gospels in harmony:

“This way of reading the Gospels is not simply a recent and popular development. It is the way in which they have been read for most of their history. It proceeds in part from an embarrassment that there should be four Gospels in the Bible and not one. If we are to think of the ‘gospel truth’ and the reliability of Scripture, there might seem to be a problem in the fact that the first four books of the New Testament announce themselves as the Gospels According to [sic] Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

There is something to this. Bart Ehrman has critiqued Christians who ignore the differences between the gospels saying that doing this is creating one’s own gospel, a fifth gospel. On the other hand, I know in some traditions that the canon takes precedent so that the individual gospels find greater meaning together (e.g. so that the high Christology of the Gospel of John should impact how one reads the Christology of the Synoptics).

What do you think is the benefit of reading each gospel giving attention to its separate and distinct voice and what could be the benefit of reading them together? Do we do each gospel injustice by reading them together (making a fifth gospel)? Is there a time to read the gospels together (e.g. liturgy) and a time to read them separably (e.g. historical research)?

The Birthplace of Jesus: Bethlehem or Nazareth?

Mark Goodacre has argued on his recent podcast that Jesus was likely born and raised in Nazareth (listen here). It is his contention that it makes more historical sense. The authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke read in the prophet Micah (5:2) that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. This was the motivation for creating the birth narratives about Jesus being born in Bethlehem.

N.T. Wright is quoted in the podcast as arguing that we have two independent traditions in Matthew and Luke and therefore we have no reason to think that the tradition is not historical. This is dependent on the theory that Matthew and Luke are dependent on Mark. If Mark is not the earliest gospel, but rather Matthew it is possible that we do not have two independent traditions for Jesus being born in Bethlehem, but rather one (Luke being dependent on Matthew).

In addition, Goodacre notes that in the Gospel of John the author is concerned with Jesus coming from heaven. Therefore, he does not really care if Jesus came from Bethlehem or Nazareth. This is why the author can note that some did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah without being defensive. The author writes that some were troubled because Jesus came from Galilee when these people believed the Messiah had to come from Bethlehem (see John 7:42).

The Bethlehem tradition would have been a major hurdle for some Jews. If Jesus was born elsewhere he could not be Messiah. For these people Matthew and Luke present a story that has Jesus being born in Bethlehem before being moved to Nazareth later.

Doug Chaplin responds with reasons for why he thinks Jesus was born in Bethlehem (read here). He does not think that Luke is dependent on Matthew, so this would revive the two independent traditions argument. Also, he points out that there was no clear “Bethlehem tradition” in Second Temple Judaism messianic expectations. Finally, he provided some further points regarding The Infancy Gospel of James as well as the Pauline tradition (see Romans 1:3-4).

I’d encourage anyone interested to listen to Mark’s podcast as well as read Doug’s response. Each give good arguments for believing that Jesus was born in Nazareth and Bethlehem, respectively.

Update: NT Wrong chimes in here.