Wednesday, February 17, 2010

I Think I Have the Breakthrough Where Most Scholars Didn't Even Imagine There Was a Wall

I have said this a thousand times - being a Jew in the middle of the study of earliest Christianity is peculiar. I feel like I am surrounded by a thousand blind men who criticize me for seeing vistas that don't exist.

Of course you don't see the 'link up' with Judaism in Alexandria. You can't see it because you blinded yourselves by looking too closely at the minutae.

But Smith understood the problem as did many any other scholars - the surviving form of Christianity doesn't have a Jewish soul as such it has to be counterfeit.

You can't bring destiny, God, the Holy Ghost and the like into the explanatory process of early Christianity.

The problem is that there is nothing Semitic about the surviving tradition and the forms of Judaism and Samaritanism THAT THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO FLOURISH AND PROPAGATE are not the forms of the Palestinian tradition which gave birth to Christianity. That's what made them 'safe.'

The point is that when we hear what Clement has to say about an exoteric and esoteric gospel and a spiritual and carnal Law of Moses it becomes immediately apparent to anyone with discernment that Alexandrian Christianity developed ORGANICALLY from its Alexandrian ancestor - the religion of Philo or better yet the Therapeutae.

It is apparent from Philo's description of the sect that they used the Book of Jubilees. But now with To Theodore we can look at the shadow that is cast by the two gospel system of the Alexandrian Church (i.e. the exoteric and esoteric texts) and realize that the Therapeutae MUST HAVE USED the Pentateuch as the equivalent of the thing Clement says Mark wrote for Peter and the Book of Jubilee as the equivalent of the Gospel of Mark.

And then the thought strikes me - maybe the word 'gospel' was only reserved for the text that Mark wrote in Alexandria. Maybe THERE IS NO CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TEXT IDENTIFIED IN CLEMENT'S WRITINGS AS THE KERYGMA PETROU and the text Mark wrote for Peter in Rome. Look carefully at what is written in To Theodore. I already noted in a previous post that Clement never refers to the Petrine text as 'the Gospel of Mark.' I just realized that there is also no direct evidence that the text was ever identified as a 'gospel' or a 'gospel of Mark' for that matter:

As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected

I have thought about this so much but I still haven't seen the 'big picture' yet. Scholarship to use the football analogy is a game of inches. I just realized that the same text that LATER became identified as 'the Gospel of Peter' might well have been ORIGINALLY CALLED the 'kerygma Petrou' by Clement in his day.

Look carefully at what is written. There is not only no reference to the world 'gospel' - it is an 'account of the Lord's doings ... for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed.' This perfectly fits the standard theological definition of kerygma as we read in the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the subject on kerygma and catechesis:

in Christian theology, respectively, the initial proclamation of the gospel message and the oral instruction given before baptism to those who have accepted the message. Kerygma refers primarily to the preaching of the Apostles as recorded in the New Testament. Their message was that Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament, was sent by God, preached the coming of the Kingdom of God, died, was buried, rose from the dead, and was raised to the right hand of God in heaven. To those who accepted this proclamation, the reward was deliverance from sin, or salvation.

So I don't have to argue any longer that the thing that Mark wrote for Peter is our surviving Gospel of Peter (even though I happen to think it is still true). The better argument - the one which connects to Theodore with the existing writings of Clement - is that when Clement mentions an exoteric text written by Mark on behalf of Peter described as 'account of the Lord's doings ... for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed,' the idea that Clement means the kerygma Petrou here is an almost irrefutable argument.

Don't you see? Scholars for and against the authenticity of the text have been wrestling with the problem of why Clement doesn't mention ANOTHER GOSPEL OF MARK. This is the title of Scott Brown's book after all. It is a central concern.

Yet as I have noted many times Clement does not say that the text that Mark wrote for Peter is 'another Mark.' Scholars have been misled by the Hypotyposeis which were not written by Clement. If they had been looking for an "account of the Lord's doings for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed" attributed to Peter in the surviving writings of Clement -the actual words which appear in To Theodore - they would have realized at once that Clement does reference this very text - the kerygma Petrou ...

As I said, scholarship - even more than football - is a game of inches ....


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