The Search for Bethsaida: Is It Over?

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This seems to be the case with Bethsaida, one of the cities mentioned in connection with the ministry of Jesus (Matt. 11:21; Luke 10:13). … And he took them and withdrew apart (i.e., by boat: Mark 6:32) to a city called Bethsaida” (Luke 9:10; cf. Mark 6:45).

Character Profiles: Gamaliel and Nicodemus

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Therefore, they were very nervous about Jesus’ prophecy of doom, since the people, who did not love them, were in this point on Jesus’ side: “all the people hung upon his words” (Luke 19:48)…. We even know the names of these high priests: “Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family” (Acts 4:6)…. Tomson, “Gamaliel’s Counsel and the Apologetic Strategy of Luke-Acts,” in The Unity of Luke-Acts (J. … Avot 2:6).

The “Hypocrisy” of the Pharisees

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Answer: the Pharisees (Luke 13:31). … (Acts 23:6-9)? …  20:200-203). … The expression “brood of vipers” appears four times in the New Testament, three times in Matthew’s Gospel and one time in Luke’s. … According to Luke’s Gospel (Luke 3:7), the expression is found in the address of John the Baptist to the “crowds” who came to him at the Jordan River.

My Search for the Synoptic Problem’s Solution (1959-1969)

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Luke, on the other hand, even when in parallel to Mark, presented no such difficulties. …

I further came to the surprising conclusion that Mark was not the earliest of the Synoptic Gospels, but that Mark followed Luke, rewriting and revising Luke’s wording, and that Matthew later followed Mark, but also had access to the earlier Hebraic-Greek account of the life of Jesus that was the basis of Luke’s Gospel. …

And rather than assuming that Luke used Mark as the basis of his Gospel, as is commonly held by most New Testament scholars, it appears that the opposite is true. Mark employed Luke’s Gospel, along with another early source, and the result is a Gospel that is almost as much annotation and comment as original story.

Measuring the Disparity Between Matthew, Mark and Luke

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I began to compare closely the parallels of Matthew and Luke to Mark. … Matthew and Mark agree on παράγων, εἶδεν, and λέγει against Luke. …

  • Matthew and Luke can agree in small words or phrases against Mark (e.g., giving διὰ τί for Mark’s ὅτι)….
  • Matthew and Luke never agree with each other throughout an entire sentence…. I discovered that students had long since come to call Matthew-Mark-Luke units the “Triple Tradition” and Matthew-Luke units the “Double Tradition,” for Matthew and Luke share 42 pericopae not found in Mark.
  • A Body, Vultures and the Son of Man (Luke 17:37)

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    In Luke 17 and Matthew 24 Jesus makes the oddest statement: “Where the body is there also will the vultures be gathered”; “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” (Luke 17:37; Matt. 24:28; NASB). … (Luke 17:37a); however, they differ on what the proverb means in this context. … — wp:paragraph –>

    From my experience, the most effective way to understand a saying of Jesus preserved in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark and Luke) is to translate it into Hebrew and then ask what the resultant Hebrew means. … One will be taken and the other left” (Luke 17:34-35). … — wp:paragraph –>

    Robert Lindsey reached the conclusion that the setting for this saying of Jesus was a meeting between Jesus and his disciples on the Mount of Olives just prior to his ascension (Jesus, Rabbi and Lord: A Lifetime’s Search for the Meaning of Jesus’ Words, 203).

    A New Approach to the Synoptic Gospels

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    Lindsey, “A Modified Two-Document Theory of the Synoptic Dependence and Interdependence,” Novum Testamentum 6 (1963): 239-263…. Luke did not know the text of Mark, but Mark normally followed Luke in pericope order and just as normally changed more than fifty percent of Luke’s wording. Luke used two sources. … It is best seen in the units Matthew and Luke share that are not parallel to Mark, and in the unique pericopae found in Matthew and Luke. …

    6.

    Character Profile: …To Bury Caiaphas, Not to Praise Him

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    Annas was appointed by the Roman prefect Quirinius and held this office from 6 to 15 C.E. when he was deposed by the prefect Valerius Gratus. … “Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and all who were of the high-priestly family” are explicitly named in Acts 4:6.

    Jesus’ Reference to Folklore and Historical Events

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    This cultural interplay is clearly depicted in Jesus’ references to commonly known fables of his day in Matthew 7:15, Luke 4:23, Luke 7:24 (cf. Matt. 11:7) and Luke 7:32 (cf. … We also see the mastery of Jesus’ teaching in his allusions to historical events in Luke 14:28 and Luke 19:11. …  Among them were the upper class (Luke 8:3), the Pharisees (Luke 11:37), the Sadducees (Matt. 22:23), members of the ruling Council, (Mark 15:43; John 3:1), tax collectors (Luke 5:27; Luke 19:2), sinners (Luke 15:1), fishermen (Mark 1:16), zealots (Matt. 10:4), men, women (Luke 8:2-3), Greeks (Mark 7:28), and harlots (Luke 7:37). … Matt. 11:7), and Luke 7:32 (cf.

    Beyond an Inheritance

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    For example, compare Luke 11:20 with 19:11.

    Sending the Twelve: Apostle and Sender

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    Matt. 10:40-42; Mark 9:41; Luke 10:16 (Huck 63, 130b, 139b; Aland 104, 167b, 179; Crook 119-120, 185b, 203)For abbreviations and bibliographical references, see “Introduction to ‘The Life of Yeshua: A Suggested Reconstruction.'”… Redaction Analysis

    6. … — /wp:html –> Story Placement

    Both the Matthean and the Luke 10 versions of the Sending discourse conclude with the Apostle and Sender saying (Matt. 10:40Luke 10:16)….

    Conjectured Stages of Transmission

    The Apostle and Sender saying has reached us in various forms. The version that appears as the conclusion of Sending the Twelve in Matthew (Matt. 10:40) and of Sending the Seventy-Two in Luke (Luke 10:16) was taken from the Anthology (Anth.), a source shared by the authors of Matthew and Luke.

    The Times of the Gentiles and the Redemption of Jerusalem

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    Mark’s Sectarian Redaction

    6. … (Luke 21:24)….

    Lindsey’s Hypothesis and Jesus’ Prophecy

    The prophecy we are discussing is found in the Gospel of Luke (21:20-28), and it is a part of Jesus’ oracle that is included in the first three Gospels (Matt. 24:1-36;

    LOY Excursus: Criteria for Distinguishing Type 1 from Type 2 Double Tradition Pericopae

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    Nevertheless, we find that only about 44% of Luke’s wording is identical to the Matthean parallel. … Overall, we agree with Lindsey’s assessment that the main cause of verbal disparity in DT pericopae is due to Luke’s use of FR. However, verbal identity is only one indicator of which source is behind Luke’s version of a DT pericope, it is not decisive on its own…. In doing so, we immediately discovered that the percentage of words Luke shares with Matthew in a given pericope is not necessarily (nor even usually) the same as the percentage of words Matthew shares with Luke in the same pericope. … On the other hand, Luke’s version has a total of 19 words, which gives us 57.89% verbal identity with the Ma

    Yeshua’s Immersion

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    — wp:heading {“textAlign”:”center”,”level”:3} –> (Huck 6; Aland 18; Crook 21)For abbreviations and bibliographical references, see “Introduction to ‘The Life of Yeshua: A Suggested Reconstruction.'”… Comment

    6. …

    In the Gospel of Luke, by contrast, a notice about John the Baptist’s imprisonment (Luke 3:18-20) intervenes between Yohanan the Immerser’s Eschatological Discourse (Luke 3:15-17) and Yeshua’s Immersion (Luke 3:21-22). Luke’s arrangement of the pericopae accordingly lacks the overt implication that Jesus is the Someone whose coming John announced. … — /wp:image –>

    Many scholars acknowledge that for Yeshua’s Immersion the authors of Luke and Matthew utilized a source other than (or in addition to) Mark, namely Q.

    Calamities in Yerushalayim

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    — wp:heading {“level”:3,”className”:”has-text-align-center”} –> Luke 13:1-5

    6. … It also seems unlikely that the Unfruitful Fig Tree parable (Luke 13:6-9) was originally related to Calamities in Yerushalayim, since the message of the parable, which emphasizes divine forbearance, hardly fits the predictions of doom found in Calamities in Yerushalayim…. suggests that the author of Luke took this pericope from the larger and more Hebraic of his two Greek sources, the Anthology (Anth.). … — wp:list {“ordered”:true} –>

    1. Was Pilate’s slaughter of the Galileans a real event or a fictitious story, or was the author of Luke confused?

    Sending the Twelve: Conduct in Town

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    — wp:heading {“textAlign”:”center”,”level”:3} –> Matt. 10:11-15; 11:1; Mark 6:10-13; Luke 9:4-6; 10:5-12

    6. … Luke 9:4-6 appears to reflect the First Reconstruction’s (FR’s) abbreviated version of the Anthology’s Conduct in Town pericope. Mark 6:10-13 represents the author of Mark’s reworked version of Luke 9:4-6. …

    Crucial Issues

    1. What is the meaning of “son of peace” in Luke 10:6?