...THE SYNOPTIC APOCALYPSE (MARK 13 PAR): A DOCUMENT FROM THE TIME OF BAR KOCHBA Hermann Detering* he thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark belongs to those texts of the New Testament which have been examined particularly often in recent times. Despite many differences in detail, a certain consensus is apparent between exegeses in so far as they all assume that the text in question, the so-called “Synoptic Apocalypse” (hereafter abbreviated as the SynApoc), arose either in the first or the second half of the first century. This investigation, however, will show that there are a number of factors which exclude such a dating and that numerous of clues indicate rather an origin in the time of the Bar Kochba uprising (132-135 CE). To be sure, the possibility of assigning such a date, which diverges considerably from what is usually taken for granted, does not even occure to most scholars, since the conclusion of their investigation is clearly determined by a prior methodological assumption: since the common assumption is that both Mark and Matthew were written in the second half of the first century, the SynApoc must also belong to this period or even precede it. In my opinion, however, for various reasons, it is highly questionable whether the customary and generally accepted dating of Mark's gospel around 70 CE is correct. Whoever concerns himself with the question of when the Synoptic Gospels arose quickly notices that he has hit upon a genuine weak point in the scholarly study...
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