Sheshbazzar

Got anything substantial to say?

Adam

I'll take that as an admission you have been bested again. We can all agree it's better than flailing.

Meanwhile, there are those links in Post #18 that link to other links all the way back to my 628-post thread, Gospel Eyewitnesses. I apologize for having nothing more substantial. All those members on Ignore are so hungry for substance.

LegionOnomaMoi

That's quite an assumption. You're taking quite a contentious claim, and asking what happens when we presuppose it to be true. Although this can sometimes be helpful (i.e., when one is trying to show that, even given a particular assumption, a particular conclusion does not hold), it doesn't appear to be here. If we "presuppose" that Mark was written as allegory, we are making very problematic claims concerning genre, authorial intent, register, etc., and at the same time ignoring the work of scholars from various backgrounds on these issues.

Toto

The OP is entitled to conduct a thought experiment with any assumptions.

And it's not all that contentious. It is quite in line with the work of many scholars.

LegionOnomaMoi

Of course. I was merely commenting on the value of this particular thought experiment. I can, for example, say "Let us suppose that the earth is 6,000 years old and God exists. Does this indicate that evolution is a fundamentally flawed theory?" Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't, but the assumption is so problematic that the thought experiment has no value. This is hardly the equivalent, but my point in the comparison is to illustrate why simply conducting a "thought experiment" can be quite meaningless.

What scholars are you referring to? And are you asserting that they argue Mark in its entirety was "written as allegory"?

Toto

Since you made the initial assertion, please list your scholars who think that Mark is something other than allegory.

dog-on

I vote for satire.

aa5874

Well, the assumption that gMark is NOT an allegory is like asking to presuppose the Bible is historically accurate.

gMark is a Canonised book in the Bible and cannot be assumed to be historically accurate since virtually all books of the Canon have been found to be historically unreliable and filled with allegory.

Even Scholars ADMIT it. The very QUEST for an historical Jesus is an ADMISSION that Jesus of the Canon is an ALLEGORY.

It is absurd to suggest that Scholars, even Ehrman, have NOT stated that the NT is NOT historically reliable.

We all know that virtually everything in gMark is REJECTED by many Scholars except perhaps the claim that Jesus may be from Nazareth, may have been baptized by John and may have been crucified under Pilate.

It is just completely baseless that the work of Scholars will be dismissed if gMark is assumed to be an ALLEGORY.

Scholars themselves are on a QUEST for a NON-ALLEGORICAL Jesus.

LegionOnomaMoi

Well that's hard to do until you answer my question about "allegory in its entirety." If you want a list of scholars who think that Mark was an attempt to write "history" (in that the author believed his narrative to reflect historical events and intended his audience to believe this as well) then it's kind of difficult to produce such a list. There are just too many names. But perhaps more useful than a list is the paper ("Gospels") by Burridege in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (2006), as the focus of the paper is the state of research on textual, literary, and genre studies of the gospels, and the Oxford Handbook series are intended to represent the state of a given field and (perhaps more importantly) like journals they are edited and reviewed. Burridge himself has contributed quite a bit to studies of gospel genre, specifically that they belong to a form of ancient biography or "lives." In the paper (p. 437) he writes: "This [the thesis that the gospels are ancient biographies] has been confirmed subsequently by the similarly detailed work of Frickenschmidt (1997), and the biographical hypothesis has now become the accepted scholarly consensus. It has been queried by Collins (1995), who also rejects the unique approach but prefers to see Mark at least as historical monograph."

After the work of Stanton, Burridge, Frickenschmidt, and others, approach to gospel genre became more nuanced, as increasingly it was realized that modern categorizations don't readily fit here. But (as Burridge notes) that the gospel authors, including Mark, intended to write a narrative account of Jesus historical activity/life is the consensus position. Therefore, any list I provide is bound to miss most of those who disagree with this idea that Mark is allegory, as the consensus position is diametrically opposed to this. So, again, what scholars are you referring to?

aa5874

It is MOST laughable that some claim that the Gospels, including Mark, intended to write a narrative account of Jesus historical activity/life when we can SEE that virtually 100% of the Gospel account of Jesus is FICTION and implausible.

We can see with our OWN eyes that even gMark without the myth birth, post-resurrection visits and ascension is virtually still total fiction and implausible.

We can go thorough gMark, word by word, line by line and chapter by chapter and it will be Exposed that it is NOT history.

1. The Baptism story is fiction--there was no holy ghost bird and no voice from heaven--Mark 1.11

2. The instant healing of the leper is total fiction--Mark 1.41

3. The instant healing of the man with Palsy is total fiction---Mark 2.12

4. The instant healing of the man with the withered hand is total fiction--Mark 3.5

5. The instant calming of the sea storm is total fiction--Mark 4.39

6. The story of the demon possessed herd of SWINE is total fiction--Mark 5.12

7. The raising of the dead girl is total fiction--Mark 5.42

8. The feeding of the 5000 men is total fiction---Mark 6.42

9. The walking on water is total fiction--Mark 6.48-49

10. The instant healing of the deaf is total fiction--Mark 7.34-35

11. The feeding of the 4000 men is total fiction--Mark 8.9

12. The instant healing of the blind is total fiction--Mark 8.25

13. The transfiguration is total fiction--Mark 9.2

14. The instant healing of the epileptic is total fiction--Mark 9.27

15. The instant healing of the blind is total fiction--Mark 10.52

16. The "killing" of the fig tree is total fiction--Mark 11.20

17. The crucifixion story is NOT plausible--Mark 15

18. The claim of the resurrection is total fiction--Mark 16.6

It can be seen that gMark is essentially total fiction and implausible.

The Gospels writers did NOT show any intention to write any history at all. They presented Myth Fables and those Myth Fables were BELIEVED by people of antiquity who ALREADY were Myth Believers themselves.

The very Romans that accepted Jesus as the Son of God, born of a Ghost, and God the Creator did accept Mythological Gods and Sons of Gods.

The Gospels, including Mark, are NOT historical accounts of the supposed Jesus' avtivities.