Horatio Parker

Do numbers exist? Are they real?

Or a point in geometry - no dimensions, no mass, no location. Does it exist?

These are examples of pure intelligibility with no physical existence.

Some would argue that they *don't* exist - they are products of imagination even if they at times reflect or seem to reflect certain properties of the physical universe.

I would argue that they do exist. There is an intelligible universe. Call it a working assumption since it can't be proven.

Now when we come to characters such as Batman(thanks Jay) or Jesus, they exist in the minds of those who think of them. These figures are vessels or variables that represent certain portions of a persons mind; archetypes Jung called them. As such they are mediums for people to communicate with parts of their minds that ordinarily are inaccessible.

For most here, Jesus has a trivial existence. As a primarily atheist forum, few here gain any positive insight from contemplating him (btw I don't mean to suggest that negative insight is a bad thing).

Generally speaking, the posters here are only concerned with a historical Jesus. I'm not. I'm agnostic on the issue, but I think the mythicists have the better case.

As for the believers they should be as well off with a mythic Jesus as a historical one IMO.

Does that help?

outhouse

you cant state there was no HJ with any credibility

Horatio Parker

It's a theological point, not a historical one.

aa5874

Do you mean propaganda?? The Jesus story of the short gMark had very little to do with theology.

It is most important to understand that the Jesus character in the short gMark admitted that he spoke in Parables so the the outsiders would remain in sin and not be saved.

The short gMark's Jesus was NOT a universal Savior.

Duvduv

That only works if a "Short Mark" was an original document rather than a document missing a page......

tanya

The two oldest extant copies of Mark, codex vaticanus, and codex sinaiticus, while different from one another, in significant ways, share a common presentation of Mark, stopping at 16:8.

The short version may indeed not have been the original. We cannot claim as true, what we don't have. Our best guess, is based on what we do possess, not what we don't have.

If the longer ending was not part of the original text, why did the scribes leave a place for its inclusion in codex Sinaiticus? Did someone in the 4th century demand removal of text beyond Mark 16:8? If so, did they do so, based on an understanding that the ink flowing from Mark's quill stopped at 16:8, and whatever had been written after that, did not come from Mark's brain, but someone else's?

Does that space demonstrate that interpolation was alive and well, in the 4th century, when these two codices were constructed? Did the same folks adjusting the texts of Mark, also adjust LXX?

Horatio Parker

I'm thinking more of how it's received and understood than the authors intentions.