Tharmas
Veteran Member
Allen Brent, a noted scholar of early Christian history whom Poli recommended to me, is the author of A Political History of Early Christianity, which I started reading several weeks ago. I mentioned this in the “What Are You Reading Thread.” Needless to say, one of my hobbies is exploring early Christian history.
At the same time I started reading Burton Mack’s Who Wrote the New Testament? as a sort of companion piece. I thought I had read Mack before, but it turns out I hadn’t – I had confused this book with another one of his.
The comparison is fascinating. Both are noted scholars of early Christianity, fluent in Latin and Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament), and I would bet that Mack can add German, Aramaic and Hebrew to that list, but I can’t say for sure. Mack started out as a conservative evangelical preacher whose scholarship led him to become an extremely liberal theologian if not an agnostic, whereas Brent’s scholarly career took him from being an Anglican to becoming a Catholic priest.
So they both emphasize The Gospel of Mark in their books, Mark, along with the epistles of Paul, being a foundational text in the development of Christianity. Brent, obviously the more conservative of the two, places Mark in the mid 60s CE, and reads it as the anguished response of the Roman Christian community to their persecution by Nero combined with their sense of doom for Israel as the political scene there deteriorates. Mack places Mark in the 70s and written by someone in Tyre or Sidon, saying “the older assumption that Mark lived in Rome makes absolutely no sense at all.” Incidentally Mack is writing 13 or so years before Brent.
Wikipedia in no help, identifying the “probable” location of Mark as Rome but adding that “although Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), and southern Syria have also been suggested.”
So, what’s an inquiring mind to do? Find a book devoted to Mark. And, it turns out there is one*: A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, by none other than Burton Mack. So that’s next up on my reading list.
I created a new thread for this topic because I didn’t know where to put it. If you’re interested feel free to comment. In any case I’ll add to it as I feel so motivated.
*Actually I’m quite sure there are many
At the same time I started reading Burton Mack’s Who Wrote the New Testament? as a sort of companion piece. I thought I had read Mack before, but it turns out I hadn’t – I had confused this book with another one of his.
The comparison is fascinating. Both are noted scholars of early Christianity, fluent in Latin and Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament), and I would bet that Mack can add German, Aramaic and Hebrew to that list, but I can’t say for sure. Mack started out as a conservative evangelical preacher whose scholarship led him to become an extremely liberal theologian if not an agnostic, whereas Brent’s scholarly career took him from being an Anglican to becoming a Catholic priest.
So they both emphasize The Gospel of Mark in their books, Mark, along with the epistles of Paul, being a foundational text in the development of Christianity. Brent, obviously the more conservative of the two, places Mark in the mid 60s CE, and reads it as the anguished response of the Roman Christian community to their persecution by Nero combined with their sense of doom for Israel as the political scene there deteriorates. Mack places Mark in the 70s and written by someone in Tyre or Sidon, saying “the older assumption that Mark lived in Rome makes absolutely no sense at all.” Incidentally Mack is writing 13 or so years before Brent.
Wikipedia in no help, identifying the “probable” location of Mark as Rome but adding that “although Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), and southern Syria have also been suggested.”
So, what’s an inquiring mind to do? Find a book devoted to Mark. And, it turns out there is one*: A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, by none other than Burton Mack. So that’s next up on my reading list.
I created a new thread for this topic because I didn’t know where to put it. If you’re interested feel free to comment. In any case I’ll add to it as I feel so motivated.
*Actually I’m quite sure there are many