dog-on

Just to be clear, please define "fiction" and "non-fiction", in relation to your questions.

Amaleq13

How does this compare to the practices of other ancient authors?

How does this compare to the practices of other ancient authors?

Why assume our first impression of the story is relevant to the impression of the original readers? Did they think the same way we do about history and fiction?

Amaleq13

I put them in quotes to indicate the modern understanding.

Stop playing games and start doing your homework.

dog-on

I am not asking the question in relation to the "original readers". I am asking the question as it would then relate to the work, itself.

dog-on

Cool.

Amaleq13

Do you not recognize the fundamental error in your failure to ask that question? Do you not recognize that how the original readers understood the story is directly relevant to the OP?

From whose perspective?

dog-on

An author would know what he wrote was fiction, if he made it up. An author, at that time, may have believed some strange things by our standards, therefore if he was simply reporting events, he may have had no reason to question their veracity.

Readers, even today, believe some pretty outlandish stuff, I say we leave them out of this discussion. Besides, they are irrelevant to author's intent.

Readers are irrelevant to the author's actual intent, as I said above.

Toto

This is getting pointless. Ancient authors engaged in story telling. The point of history was not to record dull dry facts, but to tell a good story and get a moral across.

So there is a lot of historical writing from ancient times that would not meet our standards, but was not intended as fiction.

The issue here is whether there is some history in the gospels. They can't be dismissed outright because they have mythical and supernatural enhancements. But is there any positive reason to derive some history from them? It hasn't been established.

Jay Raskin in the OP was trying to give some positive reasons for regarding the gospels as pure story telling, as if they had started with once up a time and ended with they lived happily ever after.

dog-on

My point is simply that Mark wrote a story that contains fictitious material. He does not indicate that his story is meant to be understood as actual history, he does not point to any sources, other than LXX references.

This means that, at first glance, the story was meant as fiction.

Now, if someone could provide evidence that this is, indeed, not the case, I am all ears...

aa5874

So, who claimed in antiquity it was a play? The author of Mark?