andrewcriddle

It has been suggested that Mark's critical attitude towards the Apostles is not really directed against the Apostles themselves (who were almost all dead), but against those who preferred oral traditions supposedly derived from the Apostles to written Gospels.

Papias would be a later example of the sort of exaggerated reverence towards supposedly Apostolic oral tradition that Mark is opposing.

Andrew Criddle

BickByro

It has been suggested by Hyam Maccoby (in the entertaining but sometimes sketchy The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity) that the Gospels' negative portrayal of the apostles is a sign that Paulism had already supplanted the original Jesus tradition by the time the works were composed.

Kosh

Shouldn't that be: Paulianity ?

It sure sounds more humourous (I keep expecting an opera singer)!

jackrabbit

Writing something in the first person makes it true? Holy crap, I'm going to write in my diary that I was in an orgy with Jessica Alba and a dozen supermodels. If I publish it, it will become fact and the guys will be so jealous.

-RRH-

Ananias and his wife Sapphira, in Acts 5. But Paul doesn't kill them. Peter accuses them of lying and then they spontaneously die.

Maybe this happened, and maybe it didn't. But it at least tells us that the person witing Acts wanted people to believe it did. It's always been my favourite "Early Christianity was a cult" quote.

Zeichman

Have you been beaten and persecuted numerous times because of your proclamation of Jessica Alba's hotness, yet continue to do it anyway?

What would be sufficient, yet realistic evidence for you?

And please argue why scholarly consensus is wrong.

Kosh

Here we go again....

Dying for the belief that there are 72 virgins waiting in Heaven for martyrs does not make that true, but I can think of 19 young Muslims who did so recently.....

Sarpedon

People don't just spontaneously die. If that had happened today, Paul would certainly have been arrested immediately.

Kosh

eh, sounds like Peter was the henchman!

There are basically two rational explanations to this story:

1 - Peter and or Paul and or their followers killed them
2 - It didn't happen and was simply a story to scare other followers.

I'd put my money on #2.

Anybody noticed how this story bears a resemblance to all those anecdotal stories the preachers like to tell on Sunday morning? Turns out there's an industry around fabricating and selling those things.

Imagine that...

Zeichman

Horrible analogy. If the terrorists which you mentioned had actually believed themselves to have seen the 72 virgins and not just hoped to see them, it would be much better. The cause/consequence are reversed in your example.