NT Pod 98: The Origins of Early Christian Literature: In Conversation with Robyn Walsh

NT Pod 98 is a conversation with Prof. Robyn Faith Walsh, Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Miami University.
This podcast discusses:
Robyn Faith Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament Within Greco-Roman Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Thanks to Ram2000, "Me and You" (ourstage.com/m...) , for the opening theme, released under a Creative Commons (creativecommons...) agreement.
(video made with www.headliner.app)

[@judycarlsen7707]

This is my 4 or 5th listening to RFW and I find her informative and easy to listen. She has some great insights and has certainly stimulated my thinking of NT literature and the Christian canon.

[@Minimmalmythicist]

I really enjoyed this. It´s always interesting to hear R.F Walsh talk about her work and it strikes me just how neglected the Greco-Roman influences on Jewish culture of that time are in Biblical studies.
Dennis Macdonald´s work is also really interesting and it´s a shame in my view, that there are still people who dispute what he is saying. Perhaps a couple his examples of mimesis are that strong, but the basic hypothesis has been proven beyond reasonable doubt in my view, I think he has shown that Mark is using the narrative structure of the Odyssey and there are so many parrallels that it cannot be a coincidence.

[@benjaminbritton4567]

This is so great. Dr. Goodacre are a great interviewer (I also just watched you being interviewed by Bart Ehrman about Gospel of Thomas. So I guess a double threat)

[@alanpennie]

I do think the "community" understanding of the gospels is well grounded, but clearly they are works of Graeco - Roman literature too.

[@tookie36]

I’m sure her scholarship is more exact but it’s hard to tell by the way she talks. Bc clearly there is more oral and communal influence in Mark and more Greco Roman influence in Luke. So it would be nice to hear more specifics rather than the broad categories that sound like “it’s all Greek myth”

[@pendragonddraig5741]

Extremely interesting, I will absolutely attempt to read Dr. Walsh's book. Only one question though, is her thesis something that qould be (mis)used by mythicists as a kind of new proof that that the figure of Jesus is a theological-litterary construction rather than a historical person?

[@podacre]

It's a great book. It could be of interest to mythicists, I would guess, though Prof. Walsh is not one.

[@DanieHattingh]

So many of her observations make a historical Jesus somewhat irrelevant in my opinion. ​Unnecessary maybe? @podacre

[@brainmoleculemarketing801]

RFW does great job of starting to analyze how literature gets sold as pop culture myth of the time. Am convinced Paul was best sales guy ever. Of course, he believed in what he was marketing, the best sales folks always do - sorta.

[@MissMentats]

I 💜 Robyn Walsh and Francesca sovrakaidkhowtospellthis

[@Thomasw540]

Like Richard Carrier, Dr. Walsh is arguing from anachronism,
The first time I encountered Richard Carriers critical historic method in action was a RUclips video of a lecture he gave on the Gospel of Mark and the thing that sticks in my mind was his comment that the ending of Mark an 16:8 "is no way to end a Gospel". what I expected to follow was an analysis of why it had to end the way it did, Instead, Carrier proceeded to describe how he would have ended it conform with the Greco-Roman novels at the time.
I mean, The Gospel of Mark creates the genre of Gospel. By definition, the Gospel of Mark is a perfectly formed example of the Gospel. But the whole Bart Ehrman-Jesus Seminar cottage industry of debunking Jesus shares this trope, including Dr. Robyn Walsh. '
Now, fitting within the clutter of Dr. Walsh's process of analysis, what she is missing is Caesar's Commentaries, which is the style and method of narrative of the Gospel of Mark, which was written by Cornelius, the centurion featured in Acts 10,
The Gospel of Mark is an expansion and explanation of the euangelion Pilate sent to Tiberius immediately after the resurrection of Jesus, which is the first written record of Jesus in 33 CE, which is the date of Jesus's crucifixion according to astronomy.
The 23 references to euangelion in the Gospels is a short hand reference to Mark 15:1 - 16:8 but refers specifically to the Gospel of Peter, We know from Tertullian that Tiberius received an intelligence report from Judea that included the Roman slang for Jesus Followers, "Christians" that he, Tiberius, introduced to Roman societ along with a proposal to elevate Jesus into the Roman Parthenon of legal deities. The Senate refused according to Tertullian because they weren't advised prior to the proposed legislation
It is my observation that the translation of euangelion as Gospel had shifted meaning from the specifics of the contents pf that communication to the generic understand that is characterized by the title of the 60s hippy stage play GodSpell., Dr. Walsh is proceeding more from the basis of Jesus Christ, Super Star, but the point is that the meaning of the actual employment of euangelion in Acts 15:7, when Peter is vetting Paul's version of the Resurrection, and by Paul 19 times in his Epistles is the Gospel of Peter meaning of the euangelion and in Mark 1:1.
What Cornelius is saying in this first line of Mark is that what follows is all the shit that came before Mark 15. For all intents and purposes. Cornelius is Quelle, He is the senior centurion in the region and he draws from the eye witness spy reports of the 10 Legion they capture about Jesus between the time He first appeared above the Roman military horizzon when He took command of John the Baptist's Followers until he was dropped in Pilates Lap three eyars later. There is no invention or literary conceit in the Gospel of Mark but details Cornelius expects Theophilus to take literally. Which he does.
And Cornelius is the common denominator in all four Gospels and Acts, and provides the eye witness portrait of Pilate with Jesus Because Cornelius was in the room with Pilate when Jesus was being interrogated. Cornelius knew Jesus personally and is the centurion justified by faith in Matthew 6:4 - 13. So, in effect, Cornelius defines the genre of Gospel of Mark as derivative of Pilate's euanglion and everything else is derivative of the Gospel of Mark.
Including Paul's theology,

[@Thomasw540]

​ @Minimmalmythicist
One problem with your argument is that Genres can be quite fluid and as Walsh and others have shown, the Gospel of Mark shares characteristics with other genres, including novels of the time. Dennis Macdonald has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the Gospel of Mark is using the narrative structure of the narrative.
Also that letter from Pilate is a fake.
@Minimmalmythicist
wrong,
Of course genres are fluid and literature contains all genre, The Post Modern Historic Deconstruction restricts the genres to the either/or paradigm of dueling dialectics of Idealism and Materialism (not to be confused with Empiricism)
The Gospel of Mark is a formal military intelligence appreciation of what Cornelius had assembled around the testimony of Peter and John Mark in a report up his chain of command to Theophilus, who has a role more or less identical to George Smiley in John LeCarre's MI6. The autograph was in Latin, which is why the Greek translation is so coarse. The genre specific to the Gospel of Mark is Caesar's Commentaries. It's a military idiom throughout, Cornelius is the common denominator of the Gospels and Acts and the curator of the intelligence archives of the 10th Legion generally understood as Quelle.
Which letter of Pilates is fake? Before I knew anything about Tertullian or the Gospel of Peter, I assumed Pilate would have reported the Resurrection, That's how the written documentation got started. The Roman soldiers had been keeping formal surveillance on John the Baptist before Jesus showed up, The demographics revealed in Mark 3:7 - 8. Cornelius calculates that approximately 30% of the Hebrew population was aligned with John the Baptist's Repentance movement before Jesus showed up and took command, The Roman soldiers called thsee Jesus Followers "Christians" because the common reference to Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. This is conveyed to Tiberius according to Tertullian and, at that point, Tertullian is the leading edge of systematic research into Christian origins, i.e. History,
An axiom of the Post Modern Historic Deconstruction is that Harmonization is the enemy of Truth, which is bullshit. Harmonization and Truth are The One, Everything begins at the Cross, going backwards and forwards in time,
Pilate's lost euangelion to Tiberius is outened in Mark 15:1 - 16:8, The literature tells us this is the first written record of Jesus as an official response to what else was contained in that letter, which has been preserved in the oral history of the Gospel of Peter. The Talking Cross is the subject of the report to Tiberius regarding the endorsement of the Jewish god of the Italian Regiment as an expression of Romans 13:1 - 7 and N/T. Wright's interpretation of Pauline Theology, This is what is available with the dialectical synthesis of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirt and the Historic Gestalt. The Post Modern Historic Deconstruction of the JEsus Seminar and the Pro-Life Solo Scriptura Calvinism excludes all those genres in order to control the narrative, Which offends me