Gospel Christology and the Priority of Cephas.

[boneyard bill]

If you drop the last nine verses of the Gospel of Mark, which are not in early texts, it ends with Mary Magdalene discovering the empty tomb. She does not see Jesus. Instead, a boy is there who tells her that Jesus will meet the disciples in Galilee.

If Mark had Paul's letters, and there are other indications in Mark that he did, then he could very well have been familiar with Paul's claim that Jesus appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to the 500, etc. No mention of Mary Magdalene at all. So if Jesus appear to Cephas first, then he couldn't have appeared to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. Still, Mark puts Mary Magdalene at the tomb. Perhaps he had another tradition that said the Mary Magdalene was the first to learn of the resurrection and had to reconcile the accounts.

In any case, Luke follows the same pattern. Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb, but she does not see Jesus. Instead, Jesus appears to two followers on the road to Emmaus although they do not recognize him. But soon after they meet with other follows in a house where they learn that Jesus has risen and "Simon has seen him." So the priority of Cephas remains intact.

Now, if you look at what Jesus has to say about the Kingdom of God in Mark, it is always a state of mind. Jesus is the messenger conveying the message about the Kingdom of God. The same holds true for Luke.

But when you get to Matthew, things change. First of all, Mary Magdalene sees the risen Jesus, and this is before he appears to Cephas or the disciples in Galilee. Is Matthew unaware of Paul? Or does he just not care? Or is he related, perhaps, to a different school? I don't know, but for some reason he abandons Mark and Luke on this point.

With regard to the Kingdom of God, however, Matthew follows Mark and Luke in having Jesus as the messenger and the Kingdom of God as a state of mind until the very last mention of it. Then, suddenly, Jesus becomes the message rather than the messenger, and the Kingdom of God becomes a place rather than a state of mind.

The Gospel of Thomas, of course, has no resurrection narrative, but it follows Matthew in giving a mixed account of the Kingdom of God and of Jesus as both the messenger and the message.

And then with John, we come to the full high Christology of the Johannine tradition. Mary Magdalene is the first see the Jesus, and Jesus is the message, not the messenger.

On the basis of this I would suggest that Mark was the first gospel written, Luke was second, Matthew third, Thomas fourth, and John fifth.

This would also place Thomas probably in the 90's of the first century ahead of John, and the story of the Doubting Thomas would be a Johannine attempt to discredit a previous gospel as first suggested, I believe, by Elaine Pagels.

What are your thoughts on my thesis?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

That Thomas has no resurrection narrative makes it like the Gospel of Judas, Gnostic. That Mark's Jesus appears as a boy and has little of any resurrection narrative also makes it Gnostic. All the gospel references to the Kingdom Of God being within makes these references Gnostic.

Not sure what that has to do with your thesis, however. To me it just means there was big time Gnostic influence in what have become the canonical Gospels.

Most historians would place Gnosticism as coming after gospel christianity proper but I think Mark contains plenty of Gnostic influence.

 

[boneyard bill]

That Thomas has no resurrection narrative makes it like the Gospel of Judas, Gnostic. That Mark's Jesus appears as a boy and has little of any resurrection narrative also makes it Gnostic. All the gospel references to the Kingdom Of God being within makes these references Gnostic.

Not sure what that has to do with your thesis, however. To me it just means there was big time Gnostic influence in what have become the canonical Gospels.

Most historians would place Gnosticism as coming after gospel christianity proper but I think Mark contains plenty of Gnostic influence.

Not just Mark but Paul himself! Remember that the first "New Testament" was offered by Marcion and included ten of Paul's letters. But I don't see why the absence of a resurrection narrative necessarily makes a writing gnostic. Is there really anything more gnostic in the Thomas gospel than in the synoptics? I don't recall that there is, and it is probably less gnostic than John.

It doesn't appear to me that Paul is talking about a physical resurrection, and I don't think that the synoptic gospels are necessarily doing so either although Luke does see the need to explain what happened to the body so he gives us the story of the Ascension.

But what I am suggesting is that the Christological development seems to suggest a gospel chronology of Mark, Luke, Matthew, Thomas, and John, and that sequence is also consistent with the resurrection narrative in which Jesus is not, initially, present and then in later descriptions he is present as the priority of Cephas comes to be seen as unimportant. At the same time, the Kingdom of God gradually transforms from a state of mind into a physical place.

But is there any place here where the gnostic view enters? I don't think so. It is present from the beginning. At least it is present in Paul who describes resurrection in a "spiritual body" and even says, suggestive of Docetism, that Jesus appeared "in the likeness of flesh." Of course, Gnosticism is more pronounced in John where Jesus is the logos i.e. "reason," and no one comes to the father except through the logos. So now Jesus IS the message even more than in Matthew or Thomas. So Gnosticism is present from the very beginning of the New Testament but in John it takes over. However, it does so by personifying the logos and transforming the psychological liberation in Gnosticism into a supernatural power.

But isn't that Paul's message all along? We lack the ability to understand through our own powers alone. That is what makes the crucifiction and the resurrection necessary. It is only in the book of Romans, where Paul is addressing a Jewish Christian audience that he brings in the doctrine of vicarious atonement. In his other letters, primarily to a Greek audience, he doesn't mention it. In those gospels, faith in Christ brings knowledge as we "take on the mind of Christ."

 

[Clivedurdle]

Was a woman treated as a witness? Might the Islamic rules be older?

 

[boneyard bill]

Was a woman treated as a witness? Might the Islamic rules be older?

I don't see how Islamic rules could be older than the gospels. Are you suggesting that there might have been Jewish rules that prohibit a woman from being a witness? A lot of Islamic rules came from the Talmud.

It could be, but if that is the case, Mark could have left Mary Magdalene out of the story altogether. He's the only source for Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. The other gospels follow him on his. So I would think that he must have been aware of some oral tradition that connected her with Jesus' resurrection.

Could she have been inserted as a literary device? I don't see how that would serve any purpose.

 

[boneyard bill]

That Thomas has no resurrection narrative makes it like the Gospel of Judas, Gnostic. That Mark's Jesus appears as a boy and has little of any resurrection narrative also makes it Gnostic. All the gospel references to the Kingdom Of God being within makes these references Gnostic.

Not sure what that has to do with your thesis, however. To me it just means there was big time Gnostic influence in what have become the canonical Gospels.

Most historians would place Gnosticism as coming after gospel christianity proper but I think Mark contains plenty of Gnostic influence.

I don't see why these references necessarily must be gnostic. What is your standard for deciding what is gnostic. I know that historians have tended to divide all heresies into either gnostic or ebionite, but I think that has changed in recent years. Some researches have insisted, for example, that Thomas is not a gnostic gospel. I think it was Dominic Crossen, although I'm not sure, who claimed that the synoptic gospels reflected Cynicism. That's seems to me to be closer to what they say than Gnosticism.

 

[boneyard bill]

Was a woman treated as a witness? Might the Islamic rules be older?

So Paul discounts Mary Magdalene's testimony? I don't know. I don't think he mentions Mary Magdalene even once in any of his letters.