The first century Romans were imperialists in the modern sense. Many people interpret the Jesus Movement as anti-imperialist and as having ideas congruent with the anti-imperialism of today. I tend to doubt that.
I don’t think we should regard Mark’s explanatory glosses as secondary or interpolated. There’s no discrepancy of style or manner. We would then be appealing not to the text that we have but to a reconstructed first edition, which is not the topic of the article on which we are commenting, It’s true that Mark’s original editors couldn’t agree on the ending, which is a very special case, but the rest of the text is fairly homogeneous.
I don’t see how anyone could question that the Jewish world of Josephus’ time was full of division both theological and political or that the different ‘philosophies’ sometimes thought very badly of each other. Nor surely that Mark thought badly of Jesus’ Jewish opponents - and badly of his disciples, come to that.
I’m not of course offering any judgement of my own about who was good or bad in this context. I still agree that Mark considered himself and the Movement to be within Judaism but I still think that the strains which would lead to the greater division between Judaism and Christianity were already showing
The first century Romans were imperialists in the modern sense. Many people interpret the Jesus Movement as anti-imperialist and as having ideas congruent with the anti-imperialism of today. I tend to doubt that.
I don’t think we should regard Mark’s explanatory glosses as secondary or interpolated. There’s no discrepancy of style or manner. We would then be appealing not to the text that we have but to a reconstructed first edition, which is not the topic of the article on which we are commenting, It’s true that Mark’s original editors couldn’t agree on the ending, which is a very special case, but the rest of the text is fairly homogeneous.
I don’t see how anyone could question that the Jewish world of Josephus’ time was full of division both theological and political or that the different ‘philosophies’ sometimes thought very badly of each other. Nor surely that Mark thought badly of Jesus’ Jewish opponents - and badly of his disciples, come to that.
I’m not of course offering any judgement of my own about who was good or bad in this context. I still agree that Mark considered himself and the Movement to be within Judaism but I still think that the strains which would lead to the greater division between Judaism and Christianity were already showing