Roger Pearse

Your evidence for this will be interesting to see.

driver8

entertaining.......

But, what can realistically be said of these scribes, who are given such a prominent role?

Are any of them known by name, or in any way documented?

What sorts of records are actually known to exist that can be attributed to these generic scribes as identified in Mark?

Or, back to my earlier question, are the scribes used here simply as a literary device or in an attempt to discredit authority?

Roger Pearse

I wasn't sure that I understood this question. Which scribes are we discussing? Do we mean "people who copied literary texts in antiquity"? Or "people who copied ancient literary texts during the Dark Ages"?

We must always remember that we are talking in either case about the era before printing. The situation was much more like that which obtains on the internet, where any reader might take a copy (or have his slave do so) and circulate copies (if he wanted to), in a modified or original form. Likewise the fact that I take a copy of the Gettysburg Address and add in a few lines about Obama will not affect the transmission of the real text unless I am fantastically lucky! -- and everyone will spot the change.

We do know of ancient copyists, people like Cicero's secretary Tiro. I don't know whether we know many names; mostly they were slaves. Martial refers several times to copyshops in Rome, along the Argiletum, where his books can be obtained, and dedicates at least a dozen epigrams to his own book.

Medieval scribes often added their names at the ends of the works in the colophons. One records that he finished a copy during a snowstorm with the ink freezing solid in his inkwell! So do ancient copyists and editors, from which we learn that the great family of the Symmachi was engaged in correcting the copies of Livy ca. 400. Another biblical ms. is descended from one compared against copies made by the Holy martyr Pamphilus at Origen's library in Caesarea. So we get snippets of info.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Yellum Notnef

I don't know and I don't know how anyone could know. What's fishy about it though is how we don't hear about this 99% being lost unless you somehow think it's helps your arguments for your Christian world view.

99% of ancient literature is gone, but we know all about Mithra and other gods from what little the Christians told us? Sounds rather queer if you ask me.

Roger Pearse

I don't think anyone can know very precisely! No-one suggests that. But ancient authors mention other authors and their works, so we can get an idea.

For instance we learn from them that there was a Greek festival in the classical period at which 12 new plays were performed every year. Over a period of 79 years, that amounts to 948 plays. We have 33 from that period. That gives us an average of 3.5%, with various caveats.

Books and the like tend to interest scholars, as you might imagine. Calculations of various sorts have been done. The point is not that the particular figure is accurate; but that it is of the right order of magnitude, and could be a lot smaller.

Remember the context of all this (which is when I tend to remind people of it). Someone is making an argument that silence in what has survived is proof of non-existence. The argument makes sense in the modern age when almost everything has survived. It makes no sense at all in antiquity, measured against the massive knowable losses of ancient literature.

Well, the early Christians do tell us a lot, although accurate descriptions of paganism are not really their focus. But so do the survivals of pagan literature. We don't learn about Greek mythology from the references in the Fathers, although they do refer to them, but from Works and Days and the Iliad and things like the compendium of mythology by Apollodorus, and mentions in Byzantine dictionaries. Where these fail, we do indeed know very little. Sol Invictus is a case in point.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874

You are completely wrong.

The argument for the non-existence of Jesus MUST take into account the information that have SURVIVED about Jesus of the NT.

And virtually all the information that have survived about Jesus claimed with witnesses that he was the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God, as witnessed by the angel Gabriel and his mother Mary, that he transfigured, as witnessed by the 1st bishop of Rome called Peter, that he walked on water, the 1st bishop of Rome also walked towards Jesus and nearly drowned, that he resurrected, the 1st bishop of Rome and Paul saw Jesus in a resurrected state.

This is what has survived and the Church writers also claimed these events did truly happen.

Now, how it is possible that only the implausible events about Jesus have survived?

Because Jesus was implausible and was only BELIEVED to have existed.

driver8

Refer to my post on page 5 of this thread.

All this talk about the writings of antiquity yet no one seems to notice how many times Mark puts scribes on the scene. "He" is attesting to scribes as direct witnesses to many key events. THESE are the scribes I am discussing.

andrewcriddle

Very little survives of the writings of pre-70 CE Palestinian scribes.

If there were scribal records of legal debates between Jesus and the Pharisees these records have not survived, but then very few of the disputes about the law found in later Jewish writings seems to genuinely go back to the period before 70 CE.

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

Surely the idea that there were legal debates in the pre-Rabbinic period is an anachronism.

aa5874

But, some of the Best records for Jesus survived, based on the Church writers.

We have or was supposed to have surviving records of THREE DISCIPLES who were with Jesus. One called Matthew, the other called John, and another called Peter.


TWO BROTHERS of Jesus were supposedly authors in the NT. There is James and Jude.

And based on the Church writers, the authors of Mark, Luke/Acts and Pauline Epistles were supposed to be contemporaries of Jesus.

[b]In effect, the NT is probably the only surviving record where 100% of the writers of the 27 books were supposed to be contemporaries of the character who they wrote about.

All the writers of the 27 books should have or could have had the ability to physical eyeball Jesus, talk to him and go to his funeral.

What went wrong? Why do we need records from the scribes?

The surviving records of the NT are no good. All 27 books.

But, all is not lost, the writings of the Jews called Philo and Josephus have survived, maybe we can get an idea what may have happened during the days of Pilate.