Ben C Smith

Being preserved in manuscripts is not surviving? Come, now. You are redefining words.

No beginnings were added to Mark (unless you count son of God in 1.1 as a new beginning). Adding a beginning to a work that was based on Mark is not the same as adding a beginning to Mark. (This is so basic I am wondering why I am having to spell it out.)

And, on my view, an ending was added to it in order to make it survive. Anyone who did not like how Mark ended could simply eschew it and turn to Matthew or Luke or John. Why add an ending to Mark? Why sanitize it or make it seem more complete? In order to be able to use it, of course.

Ben.

Solitary Man

Endingless Mark seemed to have survived just fine in Rome and Egypt.

JoeWallack

JW:
[JW merely shrugging towards the Jury just like Michael Kuzack immediately after a hostile witness has said exactly what he wanted them say]



Joseph

JoeWallack

JW:
Dinosaurs survived too except now they are extinct. I don't respond much to you anymore because I finally realized I am completely incapable of distinguishing between your drunk and sober postings.



Joseph

Ben C Smith

It is not that you are wrong. It is that you are not writing clearly.

Dinosaurs do not survive to this day. Mark without the endings and (especially) any birth narratives does survive to this day (in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). A text can survive in the same way fossils survive. Dinosaurs themselves, being living beings, cannot; at least two of their kind have to keep breathing.

Ben.

God Fearing Atheist

[nitpick derail] Dinosaurs are not extinct. [/nitpick derail]

Carry on.

Solitary Man

Haha! Very funny. The question is - am I ever sober?

And thanks to Ben for supplementing what I said - in Rome and Egypt, i.e. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Endingless Mark survived for hundreds of years until the penning of these two codices. It was later replaced with Mark cum appendage, but that doesn't mean that it would not have survived if it was never replaced.

You've engaged in a logical fallacy. :wave:

xrey

Good point. Now if you could just convince the believers of that fact.

JoeWallack

JW:
Well let me make it clearer:
Original "Mark" did not survive by itself. It was preserved as a part of a Gospel. That Gospel is not original "Mark". Did original "Mark" survive because it is part of a larger Gospel? You could try to argue either way. I think the superior statement is it did not survive. Back to my original point that omission of this qualification is Misleading.

JW:
By this logic if Jesus returned and said "I tell you the truth, I, I, I...now what did I say?" and than snapped his fingers to make the original Gospel reappear in order to look up what he said, this would mean the original Gospel survived.

Obviously we have a Definition issue with "survived" which also gets back to my original point that omission of this issue is Misleading.



Joseph

Solitary Man

You'd be surprised how many Christians there are who do not believe in a literal virgin birth or literal corporeal resurrection.