Toto

Nomad -

I am asking narrow specific questions that you can't answer. There is no independent evidence for Jesus being a carpenter, or getting into a boat, before Mark made those facts details in his story.

You keep trying to change the topic back to the evidence for a historical Jesus. That's not the issue here.

In other posts you have tried to argue that Mark should be treated as historical, fact-based reporting, as evidence not only for a person named Jesus, but for various details and miracles.

I think that McDonald's work, which certainly will be critiqued by other scholars and may be modified, at least shows that there is a more satisfying explanation for the stories in the Gospels.

Is your Christian faith so flimsy that you need to believe that a certain view of history is factually correct, and you need to get everyone else to agree with you?

Toto,

I realize you keep ignoring my posts, but are you so desparate to find a parrallel that Jesus simply getting into a boat is now considered evidence of a Homeric source?

It is fairly well attested that Jesus was from Gallilee, a rather prominent geographical feature of Gallilee is the SEA of Gallilee, a significant industry in Gallilee was fishing, some of Jesus' disciples were fisherman, the tool of choice of fisherman to fish on a sea is a boat. It was also a rather efficient way for people to travel around Gallilee because of the number of fishing villages and towns on the sea coast.

So what would be unusual is if Mark never mentioned Jesus "getting into a boat." The traditions that he did actually cohere well with what we know about Gallilee.

Bede has already handled the carpenter reference quite adequately.

Toto

Don't take it personally. I have a hard time keeping up with this board.

Nomad claimed that Mark was based on prior sources, and I asked for examples. He had none. There are no prior sources tying Jesus to anything nautical, in Paul, or Q, or whatever. Mark could only have gotten the bare outline, of someone born of a woman who had a last supper, died by crucifixion, and was resurrected, from prior traditions that we know about. All of the rest looks like his invention.

The fact that there are no prior traditions connecting Jesus to boats is just the beginning of the Homeric analogy.

Actually, as McDonald points out, it is a lake.

But there are no traditions before Mark. It might be a reasonable assumption that Jesus had some connection to fishing or sailing, but it is only an assumption. It is not the sort of proof that you can berate a non-believer for refusing to accept.

He has? What did I miss? Bede said in answer to my question about what evidence there was that Jesus was a carpenter or any other sort of lower class type,

This is a completely bizarre standard. Does this mean you can say any sort of allegedly embarassing thing about someone and it is therefore true, with no other evidence? We have no evidence that Jesus was a lower class person, or a carpenter, before Mark. Nothing I have read in Paul, or that you have cited, would lead to this conclusion.

Peace to you.

Toto

Since there is no reference in Homer to Odysseus being a carpenter either, perhaps you could explain why you think that this is important.

Second, we do have a prior tradition to Mark on critical issues like the Passion Narrative (which MacDonald claims is a complete Marcan invention). On this basis alone MacDonald is going to have himself laughed out of the business, so again I ask, what is your point here?

As for the evidence for Jesus ever being in a boat, you must be joking. There were boats on the Sea of Galilee, and crossing this sea by boat was quite common (the only other option being a much longer walk around the edge of this sea).

Of course this is the issue Toto. If Mark was relating real events, and merely using Homeric structures and minor parallels, then MacDonald's stuff doesn't look all that interesting. On the other hand, if you wish to make the case that Mark invented all of these critical details out of whole cloth, then you have to actually make a case. Thus far we haven't seen such a case, and quite frankly it is getting less and less likely that we are going to see one any time soon.

I would love to see what you are talking about here. My point is that Mark could not have invented all of the things that MacDonald said he invented (like the Passion Narrative, that Jesus did various miracles, ect.) out of whole cloth. Thus far NO ONE defending MacDonald has even begun to address this objection (centred principly around the fact that Mark was not in control of the independent sources for Paul, John, Q, L and M).

If you want to address that objection, please do so.

Then this places you in a very small, and shrinking minority. As I have looked up reviews, I have yet to find anyone in the scholarly community that has found MacDonald's case to be very convincing. Even Doherty offers only the feeblest of endorsements (since like MacDonald he thinks that SOMEBODY made all this stuff up. The problem is, Doherty thinks that Paul did the inventing, and the Gospels only embellished it. If MacDonald is correct however, Doherty is going to look like a laughing stock for missing it).

Hardly Toto. You do not even appear to be aware of the amount of reading Bede, Layman and I have done on this subject, and how often we have had to deal with theories that are not entirely comfortable for the Christian. To be honest, if there was anything to MacDonald's theories, I would actually enjoy studying them. But as it stands right now, he is looking very uninteresting, and I am about at the end of my patience to even talk about this subject.

So, unless you offer something fresh and interesting to this discussion, I would say that I am about done here.

Thanks,

Nomad

Toto

I am not sure what you are talking about. Odysseus was in fact a carpenter, which was central to the plot at several places in the Odyssey.

But otherwise, I agree that this discussion has about reached its end. I have made the points I wanted to, you continue to mischaracterize McDonald, so we will leave it to the eternal sifting and winnowing by which the truth is found.

Peace and understanding.

Bede

Toto,

I think what was being asked was where in Homer it says so. It may well do so but we'd like to see it.

Thanks

Bede

The problem is, Doherty thinks that Paul did the inventing, and the Gospels only embellished it.

Well, actually, no he doesn't.

In fact, that may be the opposite of what Doherty thinks.

Doherty thinks Paul was a convert to a pre-existing Christian community, one that believed in a mystical, spiritual Christ. By no means does he ever propose that Paul started it.

Preexisting Markan Tradition.

This is an excerpt from my Jesus, The Miracle Worker post. It touches on the different sources Mark relied on for his gospel.

"It is clear that Mark's miracle stories are not fictionalized accounts created by its author, but rather inherited miracles stories "from many different streams of first-generation Christian traditions." Meier, at 618. Of 666 total verses in Mark, 209 deal with Jesus' miracles. These verses are varied in form and content. There are blocks of miracles stories (4:35-5:43), individual, distinct miracle stories (9:14-29), miracle stories intertwined with broader narratives (6:7-8:21); and individual miracles embedded in the pre-Marcan passion narrative (10:46-52). Id.

Furthermore, Mark's miracle stories are not uniform. Their style, tone, and form are very distinct. They are long and circumstantial, as well as short and pithy (1:30-31). They are detailed, including names of places and people, and they are nondescript, giving neither names or places. They are physical healings, nature miracles, exorcisms, and miraculous knowledge. Jesus is portrayed both as performing miracles and in other sources as speaking about his miracles (3:20-30). In short, "when one looks at this vast array of disparate streams of miracle traditions in the first Christian generation, some already grouped in collections, some still stray bits of material, Mark alone--writing as he does at the end of the first Christian generation--constitutes a fair refutation of the idea that the miracle traditions were totally the creation of the early church after Jesus' death." Meier, at 620.

Some of Mark's accounts of miracles retain aramaisms (untranslated phrases from Jesus' native tongue). Because the gospel writers were attempting to reach a Greek speaking audience, most of the sayings and narratives are in Greek. The existence of an aramaism, therefore, is generally regarded as evidence of early formation of the relevant tradition. At least two of Mark's miracle stories contain aramaisms: the raising of Jairus' daughter from the death (5:41) and the healing of the deaf man (7:34)."

And I'll ask you a question I asked turtonm. Does MacD claim that the Last Supper, Jesus' execution by Jewish and Roman authorities, his burial, resurrection, and resurrection appearances are derived from Homer? If so, then Paul, John, L, M, and Hebrews stand as independant attestations to many of those events. And I have yet to see any argument that any of those authors also borrowed from Homer.

Toto

If this keeps up, I will have to reproduce the entire book for you. You might as well just read it for yourself.

McDonald states "Jesus may indeed have been a carpenter, but Odysseus too, was a tektwn; he had invented the Trojan horse and built his own palace." p. 18

Homer describes Odysseus's carpentry when he builds a ship on Calypso's island.

McDonald notes a later scene where the word tektwn is used for Odysseus.

In a footnote, McDonald goes through the evidence of embarassment - that Matthew changed Jesus from a carpenter to a son of a carpenter, that other gospels omit the carpentry bit. But there are no prior or independent sources that label Jesus a carpenter. Does Jesus ever refer to himself as a carpenter, or do any work with his hands?

As you can see, (please note, Nomad) McDonald is not a mythicist. He is a Christian who believes Jesus actually existed, and is open to the possibility that Jesus actually was a carpenter.

Bede

Hi Toto,

Never mind. I was hoping for a quote from Homer rather than MacD. According to myth the idea of the horse was from Oddy but it was actually built by a certain Epeos. "Ipse doli fabricator Epeos." according to Virgil. It rather seems to me that if Virgil thought that Oddy didn't actually built the horse himself it is unlikely to say it in Homer. Sounds to me like more false parallels and drawing unwarrented conclusions by MacD.

Also, when I say Louis XIV built the Palace of Versailles I don't mean that he actually built it with his own hands and I kind of doubt Homer would either!

Yours

Bede

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