spin

You were just caught in flagrante with your pants down showing all your goriness and yet you don't get the logical goof-up that you commit jumping from a loose usage of a term to a strict one. Your original response is in fact a non-sequitur. I did try to make your blunder clear before it happened, but here we are. I accepted your initial loose usage for the sake of the situation, then you go and use the implications as you see them of the strict usage. The sad thing is that you are still not aware of your unconscious shift.

Please, please, please think of Tertullian. He should help you understand the problem. You did not answer my questions: Did Tertullian think that Ebion was not real? If so, how would you know from the evidence? You need to. If you cannot understand and respond to the people you are trying to talk to you are admitting that you cannot communicate with them.


spin

TedM

I am not answering your question about Tertullian and Ebion because I don't know anything about the expectations that existed before Ebion first appeared on the scene.

As for your comments above, I don't know what you are talking about. If you'd like to explain what in the heck you are referring to I'm all ears.

You also may want to look at my example to illustrate my point about how expectations can be used to determine if a story has real elements in it or not.

aa5874

Your flawed logic seemed to be based on the saying that the BIGGEST LIE is more believable than a small lie.

TedM

I should have known you would refuse to answer my simple question. It makes you look very insincere. I'm done with you aa..Again.

aa5874

I am NOT done.

Every time you post your FLAWED logic I will counter you.

Your own flawed logic means that gMark's Messiah would be LESS likely to be historical than:

1. gMatthew's Messiah who was the offspring of a Ghost of God and a virgin without a human father.

2. gLuke's Messiah who was the product of a Holy Spirit and a virgin without a human.

3. gJohn's Messiah who was EQUAL to God, was before anything was made, and was the Creator of heaven and earth.

You have self-destruct. You are done.

spin

Tertullian, like a number of christian apologists after him took to debating the positions of the founder of the Ebionites, the eponymous Ebion after whom they were named. By the time we reach the period of Jerome, we knew that Ebion had a hometown in the Bashan district, that he'd been to Rome and that he had been polemically thrashed by top apologists including the apostle John, except for the fact that Ebion never existed. That didn't stop Tertullian from thinking that he did and arguing against him (see, eg, Tert., De Carne Christi, 18.).

I know. You are unprepared to deal with what you are trying to deal with.

Because you cannot conceive of a position in the topic other than real or fiction (ultimately in the strict sense) you think that all other positions have no need to be dealt with because they come under the loose heading of "fiction", so you stick them all together, positions that are not strictly fiction at all, but can be loosely called fictional. Tertullian's Ebion was certainly not fictional as I understand the term.

Tertullian believed Ebion to have been real. Tertullian would not have believed in a fiction in your strict sense. Yet he can believe that someone--who wasn't real--was real. Your loose fiction includes Ebion, but your strict fiction excludes him. Still you think that someone must be able to see that a non-real Jesus was in fact not real, because he would bear fictional traits. Is the datum [I had "fact", but that was problematical] that Ebion came from Kochabe a fictional trait? or the datum that he succeeded Cerinthus?

Can you see that someone who received a tradition that was not based on reality could think that it was about something/one real?


spin

TedM

Wow. I'll start with answering your last question. Yes, of course I can see that. I don't know why you think I couldn't see that. Isn't that exactly what #2 below covers?

I confess I don't know where you think I need to recognize the difference between "loose" fiction and "strict" fiction. I still don't have the foggiest idea of what you are talking about. Have you even defined what it is you mean by "loose" or "strict" fiction here? Does it have to do with my comment about expectations and deviations from those expectations? If so, I'm afraid you're going to have to be much more staight-forward when addressing me in order to avoid this kind of guesswork, which frankly I find quite irritating.

THIS seems to have been the source of your initial complaint....:

..so maybe it would help for me to further explain what I mean by this.

What I mean is that if Mark's Messiah was fictional --whether Mark knew it or not --Mark would write about that 'person' (the evidence) in a way that likely would differ from the way he would write if he were writing about a real person whom he and others believed had been the Messiah. That's because it all comes with pre-expectations about what the Messiah would be like. A fictional Messiah would be much more likely to meet those expectations --and be reflected accordingly in Mark's writing--than a real man.

Does that help clarify any misunderstandings?

I gotta run soon and will check back later.

spin

This is what you said after I pointed out the epistemological issue of one not being able to know if a person is passing on tradition about a real person or a non-real person:

You have some way of being able to tell what is fiction and what is not. Well, you're a better man than Tertullian (like those apologists after him who passed on the Ebion traditions) who was a lot closer to the time than you. Despite you exceptional post hoc perceptions, we are dealing with how a person of the time would know.

Arbitrary differences such as Ebion not having been a messianic figure won't really help separate Ebion from Jesus. That will merely be you projecting your opinions onto the past.

Did the writer of Mark know that the scene in Gethsemane was not real as he told it? He had no-one to perceive of Jesus's words or actions while the disciples slept. Surely, he would have been able to see that the scene was "fictional" as you clearly can. Oh, you can remove bits like that in an ad hoc manner and look at the bits that don't seem to cause trouble: remove the naughty bits and find nice bits left.

There is nothing strictly fictional about the story told by mark, --because if there were, wouldn't he know? Yet that's the issue, the writer's ability to separate tradition based on real report and that which is not. And you don't seem to have tackled the notion except through your own a priori assumptions. Here it is again, as you restate it:

Mark would write about that 'person' (the evidence) in a way that likely would differ from the way he would write if he were writing about a real person whom he and others believed had been the Messiah.

Note the a priori commitment. He would have written in a certain manner. You know this not because he indicated it, but because you know what to expect from fiction. It is your expectations regarding fiction that you are writing about, not Mark's.

A fictional Messiah would be much more likely to meet those expectations --and be reflected accordingly in Mark's writing--than a real man.

You are imposing your notion of fiction here. Here's what Tertullian said about Ebion in De Carne Christi, 14:

even as [Jesus] is made less than the angels while clothed with manhood, even so he is not less if clothed with an angel. This view of the matter could have suited Ebion, who determines that Jesus is a bare man, merely of the seed of David, and therefore not also the Son of God--though clearly he speaks of himself in somewhat higher terms than the prophets use concerning themselves

or again in De Carne Christi, 18:

It was not feasible for the Son of God to be born of human seed, lest, if he were wholly the son of man, he should not also be the Son of God, and should be in no sense greater than Solomon or than Jonah, as in Ebion's view we should have to regard him.

or De Praescriptione haereticorum, 33

Paul, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, censures the deniers and doubters of the resurrection. This opinion is properly that of the Sadducees. Marcion adopts a part of it, and Apelles, and Valentinus, and all others who impugn the resurrection of the flesh. In writing to the Galatians he rebukes the observers and defenders of circumcision and the Law. This is the heresy of Ebion.

Tertullian is certainly writing against the views of someone he believes is real. If Ebion bore any traits of being fictional, shouldn't Tertullian have been able to tell? Yet he plainly treats him as a real person, despite our knowing that he wasn't. The issue remains how does a person tell that a tradition they received was real or not, if they have no way of testing its origin?


spin

mountainman

But is Tertullian to be treated as a real person? In Review of T.D.Barnes' Tertullian by Arnaldo Momigliano, it is questionable whether Momigliano considers Tertullian to be a living figure despite citing Barnes's ..... " Tertullian must be treated as a living figure". Here is the opening sentence:

Professor Barnes's book is a vigorous attempt to describe Tertullian’s religious life within his own time: ‘within this objective framework ... Tertullian must be treated as a living figure.'

They ask critical and skeptical questions about the evidence and they meticulously examine and review all the available evidence and they follow the evidence wheresoever it may lead.

To Ted:

One is able to find an historical or a fictional or a minimal or a maximal jesus in Mark in accordance to the preconceptions one brings to the study. I dont think anyone can really escape that. However one can and should IMO branch outwards from the textual criticism of the manuscripts into the wider realms of ancient historical evidence and archaeological corroborations for an epoch which has yet to be securely identified.

TedM

ok, back to the points in the OP:

This is true. It could be. But what plot device would that be? To emphasize that he must be a prophet because his own town didn't believe in him? If so Mark didn't say on what basis Jesus made that claim. To emphasize the need for faith in order to experience a miracle (as he did at other times)? If so Mark missed the opportunity. All he said is that "Jesus wondered at their disbelief".

The clear implication is that Jesus tried to perform one or more miracles, only to be unable to do so, and yet Mark made little effort to make a strong point in response. Seems like quite an odd Messiah Mark is creating here. How can the Son of God fail to perform a miracle? Wouldn't it have been better to just not even mention it? So, why didn't he? Is the best explanation perhaps that there must have been some widely known truth to the story.

Interestingly had Mark written what Luke wrote, I would probably conclude that it is a very clever plot device (Luke 4:25-27):

This is because Mark seems to want to present JTB as Elijah returned, and Jesus could be compared to Elisha, who followed Elijah and also performed many miracles. Why didn't Mark put similar words into Jesus' mouth as what Luke has? Was he relying on his readers to be familiar enough with the Elijah and Elisha stories to see the similarities? Was he hiding his source, like he may have done with the fish and bread miracle story--likely from the Elisha story too? Then there is the question of why Luke wrote it in..but that's another issue.

The plot device idea becomes plausible when you add in the Elijah/Elisha comparison. I think I've learned something unexpected on this one.

I may have to revisit Vork's sight on Mark. Anyone have a link for that?