Evangelion

I'm afraid that's a complete non-answer.

Until you can show good reason why a scourged and crucified man could not have died in 6 hours (being finally finished off with a spear thrust, if we allow that he only appeared to be dead) you don't really have an argument.

Evangelion

Toto -

If you weren't capable of presenting a comprehensive overview of his arguments, you should have left it well alone until you had an opportunity to do so.

Such as...?

Straw man. I never once accused him of any such thing. I said he was using the same methodology as those who push the "pagan borrowings" argument. And yes, he does indeed use the same methodology. QED.

As a matter of fact, it was on topic. You raised Campbell in an attempt to shore up your argument - I took some time to explain that Campbell doesn't do what Leidner does, and presented Leeming as another example of the Campbell school of thought. Both Campbell and Leeming are useful because they demonstrate that similarities between mythological traditions can and do exist without any borrowing whatsoever.

That is the point which you have consistently missed.

Well no, if I've heaped abuse on anyone, it's Leidner - and in the face of such an appallingly superficial methdology, he's pretty much asking for it.

LOL, I didn't suffer any abuse at the hands of my university lecturer - he was, in fact, a good friend of mine. I did not take issue with his criticism of my essay; instead I thanked him for it and took care to avoid the same mistake in future.

You would have done well to study under that man yourself.

You've had every opportunity to present Leidner's work from day 1. If you haven't done it yet, that's your fault, not mine.

It's a little more sophisticated than that, but I can understand that you'd want to reduce it to a mere caricature in order to make it easier to tackle.

I take no issue with the fact that - generally speaking - the burden is upon me to justify my "minority belief." But since you have presented an arguent which relies on a later dating, the burden is currently upon you to show that the Gospels were not written as early as the 1st Century AD.

So please, let's see you do it.

Here you trot out the very argument that I had predicted in this post.

In response, I refer you to the work of Mr Kirby (here) who presents a sound argument for an early dating of the primary Christian source documents. In doing so, he employs the same methodology which I myself prefer; to whit, that of "converging lines of evidence." Many people make the mistake of concentrating on the mss. evidence, as if this constitutes the be-all and end-all of the Christian argument. But this does not take into account the attestation of other documents, such as the writings of the early church fathers (Ignatius particularly) and the Didache.

Mr Kirby (who sensibly takes this material into account) arrives at the following conclusion:

• In making my arguments for dating the Four Gospels c. 70-100 CE, I have attempted to rely on no single line of argument. Rather, several pieces of relevant data have been noted to confirm each other - one might call this 'converging lines of evidence'. This convinces me that the broad strokes of the timeframe offered here is accurate, although we cannot give precise dates.
  
  I have no interest in quibbling over whether this or that may have been written a few years earlier or later: I have written in refutation of the claim sometimes made by extreme conservatives or liberals that most of the Four Gospels were written well before 70 CE or into the second century. My modest conclusion is that of most scholars: Mark was written c. 70 CE, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John in the 90s.

I am happy to agree with Mr Kirby on this point.

Ummm... hello? The authors certainly believed that this was the intention.

• Luke 1:1-4.
  Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
  Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
  It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
  That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.

I do not see the relevance of this quote.

Let me get this straight. I wish to ensure that I know exactly what it is that you're claiming.

• it would have been similarly impossible or irrelevant to try to prove to a first or second c. Christian that the gospels were not accurate history.

You are claiming that it would have been "impossible or irrelevant" to try to prove to someone who lived in the very era in which these events were alleged to have occurred that they had not actually occurred at all.

This is simply breathtaking. If you had said "Middle 2nd Century", I might have agreed with you. But to argue that it would be impossible to disprove the Gospel record in a discussion with Christians who lived in that very same era is to abandon any pretence at a logical argument.

We know that the historicity of Christ was accepted by the 1st Century Christians. Many of them would have received the story 2nd hand, but even a Christian born in AD 25 could have had first hand experience with the roots of Christianity. Allowing that he might live for 60 years (not uncommon) we would therefore have an eyewitness capable of giving evidence right up to AD 85. This provides ample opportunity for the enemies of Christianity to disprove the Christian claims concerning the historicity of Christ.

So why didn't they do it?

*snip*

You will find that it is to some, but not to others. Unsupported generalisations will not assist your case.

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here.



__________________
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Søren Kierkegaard

Evangelion

I'll pick up the slack with Vork after I return home from work tonight.

the_cave

Maybe this, maybe that--who can say, really? I know that you agree with this...

Hey, you bet!

Grrr, pesky Slavonic texts... I just don't know when to trust them...

Well, I admit that's not a bad position. I'm not really arguing against that.



Now _that_ is an interesting question...thanks for putting it that way.

I'd say that the difference between J. Smith and "Mark" is that Smith was writing about a distant past with no connection with the present...(although it's unclear whether Smith was being dishonest about the tablets he purportedly found, it doesn't seem unplausible to me that he thought he was just writing a story that _had to be true_, based on his assumptions, common at the time, which were more or less a) the mound-builders were destroyed by the Native American tribes b) all civilization flowed from Mesopotamia c) the Ten Tribes had to have gone _somewhere_, and d) Jesus needed to preach the gospel to everyone--or, at least, to all of Israel. Put it all together, and you have the Book of Mormon.)

I suppose it's possible that Mark was similarly motivated, except that he was so much closer in time to his sources! So I have a hard time directly comparing the two...

Only inasmuch as "fiction" and "things that actually happened" are mutually exclusive. I readily concede Mark could be a conflation of both.



Ha

I'm arguing that we can't prove that Mark cannot be historical without considering his motives. But I'm all for the beer & buffalo wings

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]. Put it all together, and you have the Book of Mormon.)

I suppose it's possible that Mark was similarly motivated, except that he was so much closer in time to his sources! So I have a hard time directly comparing the two...[/b]

Was he? But either Mark, or Mark's source, used the OT.

Only inasmuch as "fiction" and "things that actually happened" are mutually exclusive. I readily concede Mark could be a conflation of both.

I'm not so sure. For example, if you look at Medieval history writing, many writers used Suetonius (as late as the 18th century!) as a framework for stories about events from their own times. So the accounts were fictional -- but the events were in some sense true. That is why it is so difficult to rule out the possibility of historical truth underlying Mark or, more correctly, the corpus of Jesus legends.

I'm arguing that we can't prove that Mark cannot be historical without considering his motives. But I'm all for the beer & buffalo wings

But how can we know his motives? We don't even know who Mark was!

Vorkosigan