[foldr]

Who has suggested that the golden rule is a novel aspect of Christ's teachings? Christ himself provides a citation for it.

Walter Wink's interpretation of "turn the other cheek" is kooky and obviously wrong. You could only think otherwise if you'd never read it in context in the Sermon on the Mount. Luke doesn't even bother mentioning that it's the right cheek in another report of a similar statement by Jesus.

I am not a Christian myself, though I don't see what difference it makes here.

[georgespencer]

> Who has suggested that the golden rule is a novel aspect of Christ's teachings

You could Google this. Christianity.com[1]

> One of Jesus' most famous and impactful teachings, the Golden Rule can be found in the Bible verses Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31

> Walter Wink's interpretation of "turn the other cheek" is kooky and obviously wrong.

Let's pretend for a moment that I grant you that. It doesn't change the fact that there is absolutely nothing novel about the notion of pacifism or "love thy neighbour".

Perhaps given that you've ignored the other 3,000-odd words I provided in evidence of the inanity of Jesus you might offer us a quick summary of why you think his teachings were so radical?

> You could only think otherwise if you'd never read it in context in the Sermon on the Mount.

Not sure I follow the logic here. I've read it in context. I would assume that Walter Wink did too. That rather undoes your argument, so I'm sure there must be a way to reframe it more meaningfully. (E.g. "You could only think otherwise if you don't understand X, Y, and Z about the prevailing culture of the time.")

> Luke doesn't even bother mentioning that it's the right cheek in another report of a similar statement by Jesus.

I assume that you subscribe to Marcan priority and don't contest that the author of the gospel of Luke worked 15-30 years after Mark, using Mark + Q as source.

It's hard to understand how much you know about this topic (particularly as you've ignored and failed to engage with much of the substance I've offered and have instead offered generalisations without any corroboration), so apologies if this is teaching you to suck eggs: one way to consider Luke is as a more optimistic rewrite of Mark. He's significantly less interested in details, and significantly more interested in narrative.

For example, consider Mark's description of the crucifixion (Jesus is silent, despairing, surprised, questions/curses God), and then read Luke's description of a prayerful, talkative Jesus who knows that this is all part of the plan. He pardons the criminals and tells them they'll hang out in paradise.

Another example: Mark does not talk about the virgin birth. He begins with Jesus as an adult. Matthew quotes Isaiah when he discusses this obviously apocryphal part of the story (i.e. making it the fulfilment of a Jewish prophecy, just like he does when he hilariously has Jesus simultaneously riding a donkey AND a colt), but Luke doesn't talk about it as a prophecy at all.

There is an appreciable evolution of the gospels as distinct books written for distinct phases of the early Church. I think it is fair to consider Mark to be a somewhat more realistic and detailed portrayal of Jesus than the later gospels, and by the time the final gospel (John) is being written, the apocalyptic message of Mark is clearly not coming to fruition, and the entire text needs to be rewritten heavily. But either way it's not really in support of your point that the heavily editorialised rewrite of Mark by the author of Luke omits one detail. You can see here[2] that such concessions to simplicity are a frequent problem for the author of Luke.

I'm happy to keep discussing this but I think it would be sensible to re-frame the discussion in simpler terms:

1. What do you consider Jesus's teachings to be (helpful to stick to the gospel of Mark and/or John if possible)?

2. What do you believe to be radical about them?

> I am not a Christian myself, though I don't see what difference it makes here.

Because generally Christians are alone in believing that Jesus had anything interesting to say. Most scholars can't even figure out what the Bible wants us to believe that he said given the hopeless rewriting, editing, and mythologising.

[1] https://www.christianity.com/christian-life/what-is-the-gold...

[2] https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/egt/luke-6.html

[foldr]

You write a lot and go off on a lot of tangents. I'll try to keep this brief.

The christianity.com page just says that the golden rule is one of Christ's most famous teachings (which I guess it is), not that it's original. And what does it quote Jesus as saying? "...for this sums up the Law and the Prophets". Anyone who's skimmed the Bible can tell you that Jesus didn't invent the golden rule out of nothing. If people haven't even read the Bible, are their views on the originality of Jesus's teachings worth paying attention to?

Marcan priority only underlines the point. Luke obviously didn't pick up on the right hand having any special significance. And he was much better placed to judge such alleged cultural subtleties around directionality of slapping than we are.

[georgespencer]

> You write a lot and go off on a lot of tangents.

That's certainly true! One reason for this is that you present literally nothing of any substance to engage with, or to indicate any sort of understanding of the topic we're discussing. Another is that we're literally discussing what I perceive as your lack of appreciation of the context, criticism, and apologetics of the synoptic gospels: I'm certainly more than capable of waffling, but this level of exposition wouldn't be required if you were actually engaging with the questions and points raised ;)

A quick summary of our discussion -- hopefully you think I've been fair in representing your contributions:

Me: [Christianity] is almost entirely unremarkable [...] it contains few novel ideas or suggestions. One example: many Christians believe the golden rule to be novel, but it isn't.

You: Christ's morality is quite different from the golden rule and much more radical. "Turn the other cheek" is not the golden rule. (Translation: Turn the other cheek is a canonical example of Christ's teachings, and is novel.)

I assume you are using 'radical' to mean that it was a new and unusual idea. If not I don't really see any basis for your reply in the first place.

We should note here that I use the golden rule as an example of Christianity, not Christ. You seem to be distracted by the fact that Christ said it with a citation and it therefore is self-evidently not novel. My point is different: it's one of the few concrete ideas suggested by the Christian faith, and it's just an axiom of every organised group of people, predating Christianity significantly.

Me: 1) Clarification: I use the golden rule as an example, because many Christians erroneously believe the golden rule to be novel. 2) The scholarly consensus on the passage you cite as being a good example of Christ's radical morality is frequently misunderstood. 3) I think you're probably a Christian because you say "Christ's morality", which is an excruciatingly uncomfortable phrase given the ambiguous genesis of the synoptic gospels and the heavy emphasis which early Christians placed on mythologising and legitimising Jesus. 4) Nonetheless we can discuss the morality prescribed to Christ by the authors of the gospels and see that it is not anything one would view as anything more than immoral today, and 5) We can infer from the contemporary reaction to Christ (very muted, and requiring centuries of rewriting and editing before it became popular) that few who bothered to write about him in the years immediately following his death considered him to be an especially radical figure.

That takes us up to…

You: Who believes that the golden rule is a novel aspect of Christ's teaching? Jesus himself provides a citation for it. The interpretation Wink offers of "turn the other cheek" is obviously wrong. Luke's re-telling of this event supports this.

So far so good I think?

I'll quickly deal with your latest bad faith (ha!) reply:

1. I think trying to speak your language ("Christ" instead of "Christianity") has gotten me into trouble, but I've cleared it up above. Hopefully you can now move on to address the far more significant points and maybe actually contribute some exposition on your belief that Christianity contains novel ideas.

2. "If people haven't even read the Bible, are their views on--" rare to see no true Scotsmen alive and well in 2020. But in any case: yes, if Christians erroneously believe something (e.g. that Christianity created the golden rule) then they are still Christians, and their views on the originality of Jesus's teachings are worth paying attention to as an indication of just how confused most people are about the novelty of Christianity.

3. "Marcan priority only underlines the point." Yeeeeah. I mean I've provided you another citation which shows that the author of Luke (or the person who translated it from Aramaic to Greek) was pretty casual when discussing literally the same passages as you think Wink is wrong on ("extra mile" means something literal). I get that you think he's guilty of eisogesis but it seems like quite a basic misunderstanding of contemporary (to mean: the last 100 years) gospel scholarship if you think that Luke's author omitting something Mark's author included actually adds to the authenticity of Luke's version.

I'm super happy to keep talking to you because you seem genuinely interested in this area, but it really is time for you to answer the questions I outlined in my previous post.

[foldr]

I don't think Luke misunderstood what Mark reported Jesus as saying. I think he omitted 'right' because it wasn't central to the point. That seems the simplest explanation, and I don't see anything in your comment that provides a more compelling alternative.

I don't particularly care if there are some Christians who erroneously think that the golden rule originated with Christ or that it's unique to Christianity. If this bothers you, please go talk to them about it, not me.

If you reread the thread, you'll note that I never actually claimed that Christianity contains "novel ideas". (I think it probably does, but I'm no expert on the subject and will not try to defend that position here.) Maybe this misconception is what is leading to you introducing lots of irrelevant material.

[georgespencer]

> I don't think Luke misunderstood what Mark reported Jesus as saying. I think he omitted 'right' because it wasn't central to the point. That seems the simplest explanation, and I don't see anything in your comment that provides a more compelling alternative.

Do you really believe that to be the simplest explanation considering the authorship of Luke, its position in the canon, the unusually heavily fragmented and interpolated nature of the papyri our translations come from, the additional 20 yrs of oral tradition it went through from Matthew, the fact that it frequently contains content which is not only uncorroborated in the other gospels (red flag) but also directly contradictory to them?

I’m trying to think of a single secular scholar working today who would treat Luke — glossy, editorialised, written to persuade a later audience of different things to earlier gospels, still being revised well into the second century — as being accurate on the details in this regard. Do you know of any?

> I don't particularly care if there are some Christians who erroneously think that the golden rule originated with Christ or that it's unique to Christianity.

I can appreciate that you don’t like the answer to the questions, but when you ask “Who has suggested the golden rule is a novel aspect of Christ’s teachings” and “If people haven’t read the Bible are their views on its teachings worth paying attention to?” it seems really truculent to criticise the answering itself. Pick a lane dude.

> If you reread the thread, you'll note that I never actually claimed that Christianity contains "novel ideas". (I think it probably does, but I'm no expert on the subject and will not try to defend that position here.) Maybe this misconception is what is leading to you introducing lots of irrelevant material.

Ah I get it now! When I wrote my original comment to say that there’s nothing novel in Christ’s teachings and you replied to say that Christ’s morality is “much more radical” than I had outlined, and that "turn the other cheek" is different to the maxim of reciprocity, you were… agreeing with me? Got it ;)

[foldr]

To me, it seems like a very simple explanation that 'right' got omitted in Luke because it's not central to the point being made. One does not have to believe that Luke had no agenda of his own, or that Luke's sources were complete and fully accurate, to believe this explanation. Of course, it may not be literally 'Luke' who is responsible for the omission; the point is just that it seems to be a simple editorial change that occurred at some point in the history of the text(s) because it had no material effect on the sense of what Jesus is saying. You've not actually pointed to any evidence that casts doubt on this simple explanation.

All this is a bit of a tangent though. Even without taking Luke into consideration, Wink's interpretation is outlandish when you read the passage in context. If we're going to talk about agendas and ulterior motives, it seems to me that Wink himself is the one who is most amply furnished with those. He was trying to paint Jesus as an advocate of his particular approach to nonviolent resistance. And in doing so, he arrived at an interpretation of the text that (to my very limited knowledge) has no precedent, even among theologians who lived in societies that were culturally much closer to 1st century Palestine than ours.

>it seems really truculent to criticise the answering itself.

The point of my question was to determine whether anyone had seriously made the claim that the golden rule originated with Christ. So much has been said about Christianity by so many people that you can attribute almost any wild claim about it to some random idiot or ignoramus. But it seems highly unlikely that anyone would make this claim who has even read the Bible passages where Jesus commends the golden rule.

>Ah I get it now! When I wrote my original comment to say that there’s nothing novel in Christ’s teachings and you replied to say that Christ’s morality is “much more radical” than I had outlined, and that "turn the other cheek" is different to the maxim of reciprocity, you were… agreeing with me? Got it ;)

No, I was saying that Christ's morality is more radical than just the golden rule (i.e. it is more extreme and more difficult to adhere to). I did not say that it was novel. I have no very strong opinion on the extent to which it is novel. As an aside, it's not clear to me that the novelty of Christ's ethical maxims is even a central tenet of Christianity. Focusing on the novelty of Christ's teachings makes more sense if you are a non-Christian who is evaluating his intellectual contribution as an ethical teacher, rather than a Christian who sees him as the saviour, the son of God, etc. etc.