So, “trying to lie” depends on what you mean. Mark was absolutely lying. But it’s an insider-outsider lie, which is anthropologically and psychologically typical of honor-shame societies like Mark likely came from. Mark even says this (by having Jesus say it) in Mark 4. Plutarch says it, too, in his On Isis and Osiris, regarding it being a typical practice for mystery cults (citations in On the Historicity of Jesus).

For more discussion of the double truth tactic see my article here Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians.

But for the anthropology underlying it (explaining why they saw this as acceptable behavior) see Ch. 10 of Not the Impossible Faith (where I discuss the studies of Bruce Malina and others).

The short answer is Jesus’s answer in Mk 4: “if you join the club, we’ll tell you the truth, if you promise to keep it secret and continue the public lie; but if you don’t join the club on those terms, fuck you, we owe you nothing but lies.” Which they bury in an obscure scriptural footnote, since that’s necessary to maintain the lie.

And that describes all ancient Christianity until at least its imperialization but likely beyond. This is why the Vatican has always been a shameless house of secrets and lies. That’s righteous from their POV. And it has its basis in Plato’s Republic where he literally argued for this (a fascist “myths to control the masses” model), setting up the entire blueprint that established the Catholic Church and all its unruly children since.

Arguably the Reformation broke this model, which is why it seems weird to us now (when it used to be the norm). But we sort of see its return in the rise of secret Neoconfederatism underlying a lot of modern American Evangelical churches today, which has only recently started spilling into the public with more overt calls to take the vote away from women and disenfranchise black voters and restore white power. You used to not be able to say that out loud, so you had to build a system of dogwhistle lies around it. But Trump’s success essentially gave social permission for more and more of these jokers to just say the quiet part out loud. Which is breaking the model again.

So Mark wasn’t trying to lie — in his mind he was simply putting skin on the bones of Paul’s teachings. But when Matthew saw Mark’s Jesus denigrating the Jewish law he took offense and sought to correct him? Similarly to how John sought to correct Luke’s Lazarus story?

I guess what I’m getting at is how cynical must we be about all this? I like the idea that Mark was sincerely trying to help Paul’s case rather than deliberately lying about a historical Jesus in order to rebrand a fledgling religion.

It’s a good kind of hypothesis to ask about.

The answer is, alas, no.

Not only was volcanology an advanced scientific subject well before then (the most famous volcanologist was the pre-Christian polymath Posidonius, who was then the most famous scientist in the Western world), it was already on the radar of the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, all seeking to explain why things are melting hot underground. An entire poem on it was constructed in the 60s, a study of Mount Aetna, which was a constantly flowing volcano on Sicily. Seneca has a whole section on volcanoes in his Natural Questions, where we learn the names of other prior volcanologists, like Asclepiodotus (student of Posidonius). So this knowledge goes back hundreds of years.

The idea of conflagration as purgation originates thousands of years before in Persian Zoroastrianism. It gets imported west with the conquests of Cyrus the Great. And thus enters Judaism in the Second Temple period—and simultaneously pagan worldviews, e.g. the idea of a great furnace inside the Earth that burns the sins off the deceased souls there is a famous feature of Virgil’s nationalist Roman epic The Aeneid (Book 6), which directly influenced Luke-Acts and other New Testament authors. The view there is believed to be a component of Stoic theology at the time (which in turn gave Judaism, and thence Christianity, the entire metaphysics of the Holy Spirit and Logos Theory).

Fire theory especially became attractive in Judaism (and thence Christianity) because Scripture said God would never destroy the world with water again, so to get apocalypses back they had to switch to fire (hurricanes and freezing were less familiar to the commons, and fire was the opposite of water which gave it resonance as what God would use “next time”).

That said, many scholars believe (and I concur) that Revelation is directly paraphrasing reports of Vesuvius in its apocalyptic narrative, and got the idea of cities laid waste by volcanoes from the Vesuvius event. But that’s about it.

In 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted, wiping out Pompeii and surrounding areas. It seems that part of the tragedy was that the people at first did not understand nor take the early signs seriously – apparently because they had NO concept of volcanic eruptions.

Pliny the Younger watched the eruption even as his uncle, Pliny the Elder, went with some ships across the bay to try and rescue inhabitants, but was overcome by the poisonous fumes and died there. PtheY is credited with the first descriptions of pyroclastic flow, etc. when writing about his impressions for the emperor.

Then in “Mark” and Revelations, Hell starts to be described as an underground burning lake of fire, with brimstone (i.e., “burn-stone, in other words foul-smelling sulfur). Did this shift occur because of the 79 eruption. And if so, does this perhaps indicate that “Mark” was not written in the 70’s but after 79? (Of course, a minor post-redaction of earlier writings could also explain this, too.)

Their position on the OT was the same as on the NT (as just described): they took most of it literally, even if also typologically (history signifying other things besides); and there were exceptions (e.g. Paul may have been an allegorist, although we can’t tell for sure, e.g. he thinks Adam and the Exodus are real, and though he thinks Sarah and Hagar are allegories, he never says whether they are not also historical). But that position was drummed out of the dominating church fairly quickly (even Origen was more literalist and he was still declared a heretic, as here described).

Hence we get the forgery of 1 Timothy attributing to Paul the belief that the whole Eden story is true. Hebrews 11 argues the OT stories really happened. And Jude references apocryphal tales about angels arguing over the body of Moses as history. And Paul believes Eden is in the third heaven which suggests he believes The Life of Adam and Eve is not only scripture, but true. And so on.

I had forgotten that. Thank you. I have now added a link to that video by O’Connor in my article That Jordan Peterson Is a Crank: A Handy Guide.

(1) It’s unclear to me what your alternative thesis is. Best I can tell, it’s some sort of minimal historicity, which is exactly the theory I test against mythicism in On the Historicity of Jesus (where it does not matter who or when or where, only that).

(2) First, this is an example of English translations misleading people. The Greek does not say what you quote. In the Greek, Origen adds between “sins according to the scriptures” and “and that he was seen of Cephas” the phrase “and he rose.” And this is in Origen’s own voice; this is not a quote of 1 Cor but a briefing of it, skipping the irrelevant bit to get to the relevant bit. We can tell because Origen uses a different verb for “rose” here, and elides all the rest of the line. He’s thus abbreviating, because the question raised that he is answering was about the appearances, not the death and burial (see the beginning of §2.63). So he’s skipping over that bit as a needless distraction, briefing it all under a paraphrase of “he rose.”

1) Oral tradition that Jesus – died, was buried, and rose (as found later in I Cor. 15) without much details.

2) Paul – believes it was a crucifixion but never mentions Pilate (except the pseudo I Tim.) and gives no details. Maybe this tradition developed early and would imply Rome killed him but without knowing who.

3) Mark – fills in the ‘how’ of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection (whether historical, allegorical, or both for his audience).

Or something similar?

An additional question – why in Book II (63) of Contra Celsum did Origen not quote the part of I Cor.15 describing the burial and resurrection – verse 4?

“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto the present time, but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James, then of all the apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”