Solo

My favourite high-school teacher used to say: "there is nothing harder to fake than thoughtfulness". It has been my experience that thoughtful people generally tend to the middle of any debate. This comes naturally as a consequence of grasping, balancing, and integrating diverse factors. The further you travel from the middle, the more obvious the emotional strain of visionary hyperbole, the looser the hold of die Hure Vernunft ("the whore that is reason", as Luther used to say).

Sticks and stones will break my bones, pigeonholing won't. The early Jesus worshippers responded to being pigeonholed as nutcases by writing their collective memoirs of him and selling them as gospels. When I point out to Jeffrey that Mark's baptized Jesus was pigeonholed as a nutcase by his own family he says Mark did not agree with that opinion. Well, bravo !
But my issue is how did this piece of "additional information" get into a myth of a superhero descended from heaven? What function would Mark 3:21 have in a purely mythical scenario ? What if not to declare the anathema in 3:30 against seeing Jesus as a nutcase ? And who but a nutcase would want to control the external perception of himself as mad by consigning those who subscribe to it to the hellish nightmares he himself suffers from ? So to begin with, we have in Mark a very dysfunctional myth, if it is all myth.

On the other hand, I don't think that the idea of Mark being entirely fiction is nutty. It is possible to make a case for it, I think. I personally believe most of Mark is transparently allegorical. But I do have a problem in assigning mythical origins events like the crucifixion which follows a short-lived assault on the most public and holy place in Jerusalem which follows a disoriented seer looking for figs out of season. It is possible to look for mythical correlations in such events, and adorn them with mythical meanings. But the bottom-line question is what purpose would such mythical structure serve ? Why would Mark insist on Jesus being rejected, humiliated and killed if he was not ?

Jiri

No Robots

Hey, Weimer, didn't you say that public fora are "illegitimate pipes", anyway?

Ted Hoffman

Solo,
I dont mean to argue that the Jesus in Mark is fits the mythical hero archetype. I dont think he does - in the first place, he is not born and exposed like Moses and the rest.
As for being "beside himself" the problem exists both for historicists and those who want to argue that Mark's narrative is not history. But there are several possible interpretations. See Turton's HCGM.
Assault on the temple would be a way of telling the incumbents that Jesus opposed something they were doing. Again, several possible interpretations. Sanders says that Jesus, the radical eschatologist that he was, wanted God to change things in a fundamental way. He wanted this so badly that he was giving the onlookers a sneak preview of what was coming to hit them.
The fig tree is interpreted as failure/punishment as a manifestation of divine judgement. The search for a fig tree with fruit is used as imagery for Gods search for righteous Israelites. Likely borrowed from Micah 7:1 or Psalms 35.
What other problems do you see with interpreting Mark as non-historical?

Febble

Yes.

spin

Jesus is for losers. That's what Julian basically said. Was he wrong? That's the sort of people Lucian of Samosata portrayed as christians. Was he wrong? What sort of religion do you present to slaves and peasants? He's already been rejected in your place, humiliated in your place, but where he comes from is better than this sorry state and death is a release from here so you can move on to a better life.

While I don't think the Marcan writer thought he was writing fiction, he was only collecting and compiling pre-existent material. That's the nature of traditions: you don't know how far back it all goes. It merely grabs what it needs on the way through as it proceeds. Such a writer believes to be true what he receives and passes on. It doesn't mean that it's "ultimately" true or not: it's true for him.


spin

gregor

Chris

I wish there were a way to keep the good and lose the bad. Your contributions are always appreciated. I really enjoy and learn from discussions on topics like:

1. The documentary hypothesis
2. Ossuary fakes
3. Gnostic gospels
4. Early church fathers
5. Xian synecretion
6. Creation of the Bible

And would hope to read more of this and less of crazy MJ/inerrancy/messiahship stuff.

But I cannot much of substance, as I've no time to get much deeper than the popular level (Ehrman, Crossan, Mack, Friedman, Finkelstein, Dever, Price)

Clivedurdle

Is Gregory of Monmouth and his writings about Arthur fiction or legendary history? Hamlet? Macbeth? Is Mark a similar question?

And about figs, I think Gore Vidal notes Julian making some comment about their relationship to the true gods.

Chris Weimer

Yes, but I don't see how that's relevant. Wanting intelligent discussion with knowledgeable members and publishing a paper are two different things.

aa5874

It seems to me that you only want to talk to those who agree with you. And in addition, your classification of other people's opinions, logics, beliefs and professionalism serves no purpose, since others can say the exact same thing about you.

Your position on any topic and the rational for your position is all that is necesssary to discuss.

If your position is that Jesus was a dead human, show us how you came to that decision.

Amaleq13

No, he wants to talk with people who are informed and rational.

He tends to ignore those who are not.

I'm offering this response for him because it is entirely possible, as a result of the above, that he will not see it.