Horatio Parker

Very interesting point.

Horatio Parker

It sounds as if they perhaps fell victim to the reforms which dictated No More Revelations As Scripture.

Horatio Parker

Thanks. I knew there were some examples, but not so easy to find Googling.



Kind of a letdown...

yalla

One person who did believe that Jesus wrote material was Eusebius.
Or at least that is the conclusion of the New Advent.
From the link I gave in my post above comes this introductory sentence [my bold]:

"The historian Eusebius records a tradition (Church History I.12), which he himself firmly believes, concerning a correspondence that took place between Our Lord and the local potentate at Edessa"
and further down
"According to Eusebius, it was not Hannan [the secretary] who wrote [the] answer, but Our Lord Himself."

And, of course, we have material actually written by a source even more illustrious than Jesus, named god himself.
Both indirectly in that many [millions??] of people believe that all scripture is divinely inspired and therefore inerrant, but also directly in that god himself is claimed to be the author of the commandments that Moses brought down from Sinai [at least thats my memory of that bit].


Edit: We crossed Horatio.

Even more editing:
Here is a link to the relevant section online of Eusebius' "Church History" for the relevant bit about JC and Abgar.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf...i.vi.xiii.html

stephan huller

Both the 1 Cor 15:3-11 insert ...

But my research into Clement's text raises questions as to whether these references were there originally. I think Paul's original material assumed Jesus as God. I am also acknowledging that there was a wholly separate tradition which knew Jesus to be human. The fault line was Paul. The Catholic Church was probably conceived as an eecumenical tradition trying to reconcile the two earlier factions

Horatio Parker

Why not, it's innocuous enough. Arianist, orthodx or heretic can find no comfort there.

This gets to the nub of it. Invoking God isn't like following a recipe or an instruction manual. You don't follow a sequence of steps and then viola! find yourself communing with God. Sometimes it works, more often it doesn't, and it's different for different people. Some find God accessible; others never seem him.

God can only be indirectly invoked. That's why the language is so vague, so abstract. A large piece must be left out, to be supplied by the reader. An experience that transcends intelligibility can't be fully intelligible. God can only be negatively or indirectly defined, and incompletely at that.

If that is true, it would follow that any writings purporting to be His Direct Word would be something of a disappointment, since they would subject to the same limitations of intelligibility. One would expect to experience the full impact of the divine just by reading them, like a magic incantation.

Right. Confused me for a moment....

Solo

Something like that..I am persuaded that the process was not finished when Mark composed his gospel. Reading the Catholic church into Mark leads the interpreters into a blind alley because Jesus' post-crucifixion appearances to his disciples transparently date from after Mark. Most likely the sightings were the antithesis to Mark asserted in the Jewish proto-Christian groups with access to Paul's letters and written up as a coherent story by Matthew.

BTW, how do you feel about the possibility that the designation κατα Μαρκον might origanted from an intentonal corruption of ο ευαγγελιον του Μαρκιωνος after Marcion was from expelled from Rome ? I find the story of Simon trying to buy an office and being chased by Peter (Acts 8:18-24) a compelling cryptogram for Marcion (identified by his gospel of Simon !) being thrown out of the church and his gift to the church returned to him. The story might have been added later.

I just can't see Marcion using Luke. This idea would have originated in the belief of the patristic church that Luke was Paul's physician and Paul liked his gospel.

Best,
Jiri

stephan huller

solo

Your points are incredibly insightful. However I would go one step further and use Marcion as an example of why it is that the whole MJ/HJ debate is ultimately a waste of time. Was there really a historical 'Marcion'? Did he really get thrown out of the Roman Church in his lifetime? The stories are clearly mythical in nature but they don't preclude the existence of a historical person.

My problem with Ehrman's writings (getting back to the OP) is that he never seems to shake his fundamentalist roots even though he has recast himself as an agnostic. The real starting point here isn't whether or not Jesus is historical or whether this or that scripture was altered but what do we really know? I think that we have to apply the skeptical principles of Montaigne to almost every presupposition we have inherited.

The answer isn't to determine whether Jesus was or wasn't historical. This will never be determined satisfactorily but what do we really know for certain. You know the Oprah creed - what I know for sure.

I think at bottom the best we can hope for is a series of 'things we know for sure' or at least 'things we think we know for sure' (because even then we can't be sure that with our limited perspective that this insight is actually accurate).

We know that early groups were split on the question of whether or not Jesus was a man. Beyond that we're in the dark. Ehrman however assumes that Jesus was historical in the same way he recycles the Marcion pseudo-historical references (i.e. getting kicked out of Rome). Why does he do this? He has an uncontrolled need for certainty which belies his limitations as a thinker.

We should all be more like Michel de Montaigne. We really don't know very much for certain and what we can know here are subtle intimations - perhaps a series of subtle inferences which won't convince anyone on the other side of the debate.

For instance I would argue that the rejection of Marcion story could just as well be argued to be a myth demonstrating how the Roman Church purged itself of its original Marcionite roots. A parallel thing can be demonstrated in Edessa. What is often overlooked in the story from Tertullian is that Marcion's donation of some massive sum of money was originally received by the church and only later rejected.

I don't see any reason to believe there ever was a Marcion. Yet at the same time I can accept that one day a piece of evidence might emerge that will buttress the claim he did exist just as certainly as a new piece of evidence might emerge to help prove Marcion was Mark or the Marcellus figure from the Acts of Peter tradition. We just don't know and never will. We all just have to get used to using asterisks beside our claims.

Nathan Poe

Because credibility can only stretch so far before it breaks -- it's a lot easier to get away with imitating one of the man's contemporaries than the man himself.

Chili

But that denies the Ultinate truth that Truth is and can stand on its with beauty to make itself know to us. So now you deny beauty as well and make earth as flat as a pancake again.