Clivedurdle

Sorry, I am reading it in a bookshop!

Vorkosigan

No, he just reads them bass-ackwards and upside down, and misunderstands Mark completely. Why is anyone even paying the slightest attention to this atronauts-from-space crap? Atwill knows his way around all the texts and the scholarship. Carotta ignores or invents history....and of course, there is this fuck-up in the Parable of the Sower:

Carotta: * focate—whether under thorns or under the temple roof. And in spite of this they shot up as if on good land.

• Perhaps not one hundred percent, as on fertile land, but still sixty, or thirty percent.
  
  Earth to Carotta: The thirty, sixty, and hundred on the end of this parable are not PERCENT but -FOLD! Jesus is talking about fantastic multiplication, not reduced output.

...in which Carotta can't tell the difference between something increasing and something decreasing.

Your own argument demonstrates a titanic misunderstanding of Mark:

• The conversion Iunius > Judas is linguistically probable, especially when one looks at the Greek renditions of the names, Decimus > "one of the twelve" is very probable, the conversion sicarius > Iskariot is highly probable, and has been proposed by various theologians, decades before Carotta published his book. The fact that Judas has the primary role as traitor, is logical because Decimus Iunius Brutus Albinus - although not the driving force behind the assassination - was the one closest to Caesar, one of his secondary heirs.

1. Judas doesn't betray anyone in Mark.

2. If you have forty conspirators, and three languages to play with, I imagine it would be easy to find a prominent one that sounded like Judas.

3. Here's why you need to keep up with the scholarship: it has already been demonstrated that Judas is created by midrash off the OT.

According to scholars who've read the scholarship of the last 60 years, Mark tracks the tale of Elijah and Elisha and Jehu in 2 Kings, with departures here and there.

Except, of course, their origin in the Septuagint....

WARNING: GALILEO COMPARISON ON THE HORIZON!

Severe bullshit, as I know, for I have published in fields far from my background. Yet nobody smashed me; instead I did the hard work of mastering the scholarship and learning the methods, neither of which Carotta has done.

A line like this can only be written by someone who doesn't know scholars.

Go back to page 1 of this thread. The book has been comprehensively rebutted, and nearly every claim in it is false. If you like, present me with Carotta's five strongest arguments about the gospel of Mark, and I will show you why each one is wrong.

Yes, it will, for Carotta has not in the slightest thought about methodology or is familiar with the scholarship, especially in the last 10 years. He is popular only with people who don't know anything about the topic. People who don't know that the Parable of the Sower involves fantastic multiplication, not fantastic reduction.

Vorkosigan

Juliana

You know Vork, maybe you should switch to "studying" (I'm not sure this is the correct word for what you did with Mark) Matthew.
In Matthew there is a verse which seems to have been written especially for you, cf. Mt. 5:3

Aquila Pacis

Juliana, I would like to advise you again: as someone who tries to propagate Carotta's book, you're not quite acting in favor of it. Flaming in the name of the Lord, Divus Julius or what? I know Vorkosigans work, and I'm telling you he is not "poor in spirit". Just take a look at his website and his blog. He may not like what Carotta has written - and believe me, he's not the only one - but he has every right to criticise him. So have others the right to criticise what Vorkosigan writes; that's how things should work, if it's done constructively. Insulting other people won't get you anywhere. Carotta should be thankful, that there is at least one person who bothers to deal with his book. I for myself am still skeptical as well. It comes with the matter at hand: a book that seems almost too good to be true, has to be thoroughly investigated.

Juliana

Yes, Aquila Pacis, it "has to be thoroughly investigated", I agree.
And this is exactly what Vorkosigan has not done, he refuses to do it.
I was just responding to the insulting allegation that Carotta's work "is popular only with people who don't know anything about the topic. People who don't know that the Parable of the Sower involves fantastic multiplication, not fantastic reduction."

I have not published anything on the Gospel and I would not so long as I am only a beginner in Greek, unlike Vorkosigan who writes on his website: "Scholars are fond of saying that until you read Mark in Greek, you haven't read Mark".
But you can trust me I know the Gospel in several translations and I know the difference between "-fold" and "percent".
Maybe Vorkosigans problem is not so much with the "spirit" but with the wit.

Juliana

I agree with what you say about the academic world, I have had my own experiences there, in a different field but the attitude is the same, unfortunately. However, I thought there must still be some people there who are curious, inquisitive, who really want to learn, discover new things, people for whom science or scholarship are a passion... Well, probably that's wishful thinking. Anyway, maybe you are right in that Carotta could give it another try in the ivory tower. Maybe he could try to publish an article extensively dealing with one topic (e.g. the funeral of Caesar) under a pseudonym and of course with a less "pornographic" title. BTW, do you think the German title in form of the question "Was Jesus Caesar?" was better?
It would be interesting to see whether someone (with a big name) would react then. Which journal would you suggest?

Juliana

Vorkosigan

It is hard to imagine that after the several long entries on my blog plus all the stuff here, that you would have the cojones to say something like that.

How about that Parable of the Sower, eh?

• Carotta: * focate—whether under thorns or under the temple roof. And in spite of this they shot up as if on good land.
  
  * Perhaps not one hundred percent, as on fertile land, but still sixty, or thirty percent.
  
  Earth to Carotta: The thirty, sixty, and hundred on the end of this parable are not PERCENT but -FOLD! Jesus is talking about fantastic multiplication, not reduced output.

Carotta's book is hopeless. That has been amply demonstrated in this thread and elsewhere.

Vorkosigan

Juliana

Okay now, I apologize!
You are right, that parabel of the sower is the final word, the final refutation! :banghead:
Well done, Vorkosigan!
-------------------------------

:rolling:

Vorkosigan

You know, all you had to do was say "I realize that Carotta's massive misunderstanding of a relatively simple idea does indeed cast doubt on his ability to interpret the text in front of him...."

....but not once did you ever answer a valid objection I and others have raised. So in the end, if you can't read the Parable of the Sower properly (it's a typological section explaining how characters in the Gospel work, see Tolbert's Sowing the Gospel, one of the best works on Mark ever written).....you can't do Mark. That's why I keep pointing this out. There's an error so glaring it casts doubt on Carotta's ability to read, let alone interpret the Gospel of Mark.

If you really want Carotta's idea to succeed, then I suggest you go back to him and say: Your book needs extensive revisions. First, it will have to enter into dialogue with the scholarship since 1970, especially the major Mark works, from Weeden's 1971 Mark: Traditions in Conflict to Fowler's Let the Reader Understand. It will have to show why the major interpretations of Mark are incorrect and the scholarly explanations are all wrong.

Second, Carotta is going to have to develop a clearly explicated methodology that anyone can understand. At the moment it looks as though words have whatever meaning Carotta wants them to. Methodology, Juliana, not epiphany, is the basis of scholarship. Insight offers you understanding, but unless you can demonstrate why your insight is correct to yourself and others, you are simply engaging in religious conversion, not argument.

Without those two things, interaction with the scholarship, and a sound methodology laid out for the world to see, Carotta will never gain acceptance and never be published in a serious journal. At the moment, speaking now as a professional academic and reviewer, Carotta's work is poorly organized and written, is not familiar with relevant scholarship and methodologies, offers no methodology to support its conclusions, and makes gross errors and omissions of interpretation of both history and the gospel texts. It is not publishable in a serious journal in any way, shape, or form.

I am sure that it will sell well, though, especially with such a big push in all the internet forums. You and your partners are doing quite a job.

I have to go, as I am working on a piece for publication in the Journal of Nursing Education, the kind where you have to have a presentable methodology and data that anyone can criticize and use.

Vorkosigan

spin

Have people taken up wasting time over this non-issue again? The farce about Marcus Antonius was quite amusing. Juliana may have more stuff that good. :rolling:


spin