Afghan

What I said was...

I was talking about the apparently universal Historicism at the start of the 2nd Century. I feel that this can be explained quite well by the idea that there was a guy called Jesus who got crucified by Pontius Pilate. My argument really was that simple.

That the 'Pillars' were also Historicists is a pretty obvious corollary.

I think it shows that the silences of Paul really aren't that fatal to the Historicist position. It's not harmful to Mythicism of itself but it does pose the question, what does Mythicism explain better?

And for my part I think that Mythicism is perfectly possible. It's just I feel that Historicism is substantially more parsimonious.

Diogenes the Cynic

And this reverses the burden. The fact that the autor does not identify himself means that anyone who wishes to assign a specific author has the burden to prove it.

I also have to say that anyone who was purporting to record an eyewitness account of Jesus would make some effort to say so. I do not find it credible that the author would fail to cite the provenance for his claims if he was able.
Maybe you should look a little harder. This may be true of some of them but definitely not all of them.
In the narratives it most certainly does. Most of the passion was fabricaticated virtually verse by verse from the OT.
But Mark was supposedly writing down everything that Peter told him without changing a thing. The mistakes would have to be Peter's not Mark's.
It was Eusebius and so what if it was a real quote?
We don't have to guess,we know that they did. Papias describes an unordered book. Mark is highly ordered. The contradiction is undeniable.
Wishful thinging? Sloppiness? A desire to establish provenance amd apostolic credentials for a popular book? All kinds of reasons. These were people who believed that a dead guy came back to life and flew into the sky. They'd already swallowed the camel. Objecting to a forced identification of a popular Gospel with an obscure piece of writing alleged by Papias would be straining at gnats.
It's definitely in chronological order and that, in itself, contradicts Papias.

TedM

What I said is that we may be missing the a critical identification for a large written work--The title page which includes the author's name. Any claim of anonymity needs to recognize that the work may not have been anonymous at all originally. Do you really think the author would go to all that trouble and not give himself credit?

Some of it may have been. It does argue for some literary creation.

Papias says Mark wrote down what he "remembered". I don't assume inerrancy in Mark, or Papias. It is reasonable to assume Mark would have made mistakes from memory glitches regardless of Papias' statements to the contrary.


It argues for Eusebius correctly passing along Papia's words from about 120AD.


I'd have to check into it further. The quote I'm reading says that Mark's account wasn't a "systematic arrangement", which may simply mean he wrote down just what he remembered and overlooked many things--a potpouri of content--and nothing about chronological order.

Christian community mistaking an "ordered book" for an "unordered one" by the same author:
Maybe. I think it is more likely that there was one book by one author than two books with the more systematic immediately popular one given false authorship because its author wasn't known and the community mistaking it for an unsystematic book by an author who was known. A better explanation is that there was one book and it's author was believed to have been Mark.

I'm bowing out. Gotta have more self discipline here..as my priorities are outta wack..

ted

Amaleq13

This is another burden shift. Where is the evidence of a connection?

In addition to the time factor of quarter century, you need to add an unknown about of "space" (where was Mark written) and the fact that Peter had been dead for nearly a decade assuming scholarly estimates of c.70CE are correct. Paul certainly got around in establishing Christian communities and there were apparently several already established over a fairly substantial chunk of real estate.

With all due respect, you are wrong. The burden logically lies with the affirmative claim. Papias makes it but what reason do we have to consider it credible? AFAIK, none.

You are the second person to make this entirely illogical assertion. A claim is not evidence for itself. That is circular reasoning. Otherwise, "My dog can speak French." and the fact that I made this claim is evidence for it.

I don't think that is an appropriate use of "prima facie" but I agree that Papias' claim is without any other support. That is, by definition, an unsubstantiated claim and I don't tend to consider those reliable.

I guess you shouldn't have brought them up, then. You introduced the subject when you appealed to expectations about why the author would be so mean? I offered a response to that.

Amaleq13

I guess you missed the thread where I explained to hatsoff why this was flawed reasoning. We already know from Paul that Peter was a "main character" so the fact that he is portrayed in Mark's story as a "main character" is as unsurprising as it is uninformative about any relationship the author may have had with Peter.

You also appear to have missed the point of Papias' Judas story in your desire to create some sort of harmony between all the versions of his death (did you make that up or did you read it on Holding's website? It really reminds me of his apologetic harmonization attempts). The point is that Papias passed it along and the only other evidence for the story indicates the information was not reliable. A source that provides unreliable information is, by definition, an unreliable source.

TedM

Yes, I missed that thread. All I'm saying is that his emphasis on Peter (as opposed to say brother James, or John) is consistent with the authorship attribution. It is more likely from the content of Mark alone to conclude that someone who knew Peter was the author than someone who knew John, on the basis of character emphasis. It is not unsurprising but it is not uninformative either since we can say this: The author emphasized Peter more than he did John or James, or Paul for that matter. On the basis of content alone which would you think more likely: The author knew Peter, or Jesus' brother James? The author knew Peter of John? The author knew Peter or Paul? You know which I would pick.


No, I didn't use Holding. I thought it up all on my own Using your strict definition, no one is reliable becuase everyone at one time or another provides unreliable information. I was pointing out that reliability isn't an all or nothing proposition. There are degrees of reliability. I consider the likelihood of unreliability with a Judas tradition MUCH greater than authorship for a book as important as what he describes from Mark. I therefore find his comments re Judas to be of little consequence.

ted

Amaleq13

Yep and that is exactly what I said in the other thread. All you can say is that it is consistent with the claim but so is Paul and John and the Gospel of Peter, etc. It tells us absolutely nothing about the author or any relationship with Peter because, given that he is described as the first witness of the risen Christ in Paul and a "pillar" we would expect him to be featured prominently in any story about the beginnings of Christianity.

None of the above. The internal evidence of the story offers nothing that makes a relationship between the author and any of those individuals more likely than not.

What you call "strict" is simpy rational and yes, I hate to be the one to break it to you but, everyone is an inherently unreliable source because humans are inherently flawed observers and recollectors and notoriously prone to exaggeration, falsification, and mistaken memory. Often without even being aware of it. That is why DNA evidence is FAR superior to eyewitness testimony as many recently freed convicts will attest.

I've seen the basis for your willingness to grant Papias the benefit of the doubt and it looks like it requires more faith than reason to me.

TedM

That is simply not true. If person A tells person B of many events involving group C of which person A was a member, it is more likely that the most often mentioned member of group C would be person A. Therefore, if a story exists in which person A is mentioned more than any other person, the probability is higher that the story originated from person A than from any other person.


Once again, we see it differently. Based on your comments, I'm not sure how you are able to comfortably speculate about anything at all, but I commend your effort

ted

Afghan

Ah, a good ol' fashioned light-cone problem. How do we know Mark was in Peter's light-cone? Simple. Mark was a Christian. He must have been able to trace some indirect connection back to Peter - the only questions are how extended was it and what was the signal-to-noise ratio?

Well I would hope you would agree that Papias making the claim is at least evidence for the fact that either he believed it himself or wanted others to believe it. The claim is still evidence that we must incorporate in a wider explanatory framework. The Historicist (of a certain mind) can do this by saying that Papias claimed it because he believed it and he believed it because it was actually the case. Such an explanation, I agree, doesn't work so well within a Mythicist framework.

Sorry. Being glib. :blush:

Amaleq13

Convoluted and false. If the story of group C is well established within a particular community (see Paul) and person A is, as a result, widely known to be a significant part of the story of group C, then we should expect any attempt to tell that story to prominently feature person A REGARDLESS OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THAT INDIVIDUAL!

Only direct evidence of the author's source(s) can establish a personal relationship with a prominently depicted character in the story and Papias is the exact opposite of direct evidence. He is third-hand at best.

There is a significant difference between offering a speculative conclusion which follows from a consideration of the evidence and sifting through the evidence for anything which can be speculatively viewed to support an a priori conclusion.

IOW, it is the difference between the following questions:

What conclusion appears to best explain the most evidence? (eg What does the evidence tell us with regard to Papias' reliability?)

and

What evidence appears to support a preferred conclusion? (eg What evidence can be viewed as supporting Papias as a reliable source?)

I consider the latter to be far too prone to false positives (accepting a false conclusion as true) to be acceptable. You, apparently, consider the former to be too prone to false negatives (rejecting a true conclusion) to be acceptable. I think it is important to point out that the former is clearly based on the same adherence to rational thought and logic as "the scientific method" while the latter is far more similar to the approach taken by apologists such as Holding.

I completely understand why those whose faith forms the bedrock of their self-identity would prefer the latter over the former but, given how you've described yourself, I am at a complete loss why you would do so.