darstec

Ever watch the movie Cat Ballou? In it the hero with apparently no redeeming qualities transforms himself in the end. Some of the novelelles on Joshua are just like that, or else Cat Ballou makes no sense either.

No Robots

This one goes in the opposite direction: from cosmic superhero to ultra-loser.

darstec

Ultra-loser? One who conquers death itself? Me thinks the entire Christian body would like to be utra-losers like that. But then your scenario is wrong. Just like in Cat Ballou we have superhero to ultra-loser and finally in the end superhero (except in Mark's gospel with the short ending).

Didymus

"Crucifixtion"? Arrrrgh.

As you pointed out, neither Q nor Thomas included a crucified Jesus. Michael Turton believes that Thomas knew Mark, rather than the other way around. As far as I can ascertain at this point, the dependency issue has no consequence for VMJ. In either case, Mark was a work of fiction. (Or should I spell it "fixtion"?:banghead: )

I realize that nearly all the sayings in Mt and Lk that weren't lifted from Mk are said to come from a sayings gospel called Q. It is entirely possible that the Q sayings come from an independent tradition that knew nothing of the crucified Jesus. While I realize that there are no coincidences in history (?), the use of the name "Jesus," common as it was, may have been used in early layers of Q that knew nothing of the crucifixion that led to Pauline Christianity. Or, that coincidence, the existence of those Jesus sayings coupled with that notorious crucfixion, could have led messianic Jews and God-fearers to think that the crucified man named Jesus was indeed their long awaited savior!

In sequence: Messianism + Sayings + Crucifixion = Pauline Christianity + Gospels = "Modern" Christianity.

Of course the sayings were eventually, in Mt and Lk, "officially" attributed to Paul's crucified savior.

Whew. What's the emoticon for "great sigh of relief"?

Agreed, except for the "Christian" part. In fact, those sayings may well have been floating around long before the time of Pilate. Burton Mack assumes that they were the work of a particular "community," probably located in Galilee, but doesn't provide any particulars about the community beyond that. It's just as reasonable to think that they refected a tradition about Galilee, not a community in Galilee.

Aside from their use of the name "Jesus," why should those sayings be considered part of the Christian religion prior to Mt's and Lk's folding them into their gospels? Merely the fact that they seem to have been uttered by a wandering preacher named Jesus?

Thanks! I have to say I'm more than a little disappointed by the response to "One Trick Jesus." Better open hostility than nitwit irrelevance. Maybe I should have stated my case in a different way. Oh well.

Didymus

No Robots

A "happy ending" that Mark doesn't even bother with.

darstec

Does anybody else hear an echo? :banghead: It seems Mark preferred a mystery. He must have died before he had time to write the sequel. I wonder if he wrote any other stories?

jakejonesiv

Thanks for your patience in explaining your ideas to me. I understand your point a lot better than when I first responded. I will be interested to see where you take it.

Jake Jones IV

Alf

Unfortunately that gospel with the short ending appear to be the oldest and most original of all the gospels. It appears to be what the earliest christians believed.

Of course, it is unlikely that they believed that Jesus just died and that was it. The question is then what was in the ending after that was later removed and replaced with a new ending in the later versions of the Mark - with the longer ending?

We do not know and so we do not really know what the earliest christians believed.

Alf

J-D

See the subtle difference in emphasis? You're asking the question, what led to the creation of the Jesus story? But I'm asking the quesiton, what led to the creation of the Jesus movement?

According to your categorisation, a theory that posits a historical individual who resembled the Jesus of the gospels in 'major elements of biography' is a 'Historical Jesus' theory. On that basis, in order to define what counts as a 'Historical Jesus' theory, we need to know which are the major elements of the biography of the Jesus of the gospels. You tell me what those are and I'll tell you whether or not I subscribe to a 'Historical Jesus'.

J-D

I don't see how you can say positively that every one of those things must have been an embellishment. It would seem to me more prudent to leave room for the possibility that some of them may be historically accurate, or partly so.On such a theory, it still seems likely to me that the first Christians or, if you prefer, members of the Jesus movement would have been people who were followers of his in life. Although I see no reason to suppose, and some reason to doubt, that the doctrine of the earliest Jesus movement agreed with later Christian doctrine.