aa5874

When one investigates the Jesus stories the picture cannot be accepted as true when there are major discrepancies and obvious consistent fiction in the very stories.

Well if history was written and controlled by the winners then what you may have learned about Marcion from the winners may be FALSE. The winners may have destroyed the truth about Marcion.

But, the "corrections" have been exposed.

Examine "Against Marcion"1 by "Terullian". He will "CORRECT" and DISCARD his own writing on Marcion. He claimed the first work against Marcion was hurriedly done. He will do a COMPLETE new work.

What have we really learned about Marcion from the winners?

Nothing but fiction.

"Tertullian" would totally contradict himself in another writing called "On the Flesh of Christ". Marcion did NOT need gLuke or the Pauline writings.

Juststeve

Spamandham:

When you write “But this approach overlooks something extremely important, which is that the original author clearly did not find the baptism of Jesus, crucifixion, whatever to be embarrassing at all, or they never would have included the stories!” you betray an assumption that may well be false. For what you say to be true we must first assume that the original authors were totally unconstrained in what they wrote. That they were writing from their imaginations and could exclude embarrassing material at their whim. According to the standard view this is not true..

The majority view of N.T. scholars is that the Gospel writers collected material in circulation about Jesus, not that they simply made it up. It may well have been that things like Jesus’ baptism by John, his crucifixion and his erroneous predictions of his own return were so well established in the oral tradition that they could not be denied. The Gospel writers were stuck with certain things even if they were embarrassing.

Consider the repeated and erroneous predictions Jesus made about his prompt return. People who plump for very late dates for fictional Gospels need to have a theory to explain why the authors would put prophesies in Jesus mouth that had already been proven false by the passage of time. The best explanation I can think of is that Jesus was reputed to have said those things and members of the Christian Community knew it. Thus the embarrassment of having Jesus appear to be wrong.

Steve

Juststeve

bacht:

Is it now your position that the evidence is insufficient to allow us to know for certain whether or not Jesus existed? If so we are in substantial agreement. I don’t claim to know for certain, I am only making a judgment of what I think is more or less likely.

I took it that you, like some others on this board, claim to be certain that a guy like Jesus didn’t live in Nazareth 2000 years ago, didn’t travel around with disciples and didn’t get crucified by the Romans. If your position is not one of certainty then you are more reasonable than I had given you credit for. If I misjudged you I’m sorry.

Steve

Toto

Try to find the basis for this "standard view." There's nothing to support it. It's just a convenient assumption that allows New Testament scholars to coexist with committed Christians, whether or not they are Christian themselves.

The gospel writers clearly used the Septuagint as a source. Historicists claim that they were just casting historical events in a form that resonated with them, but we have no independent evidence of those historical events.

Juststeve

Toto:

You are at best partially correct. The author(s) of Matthew clearly used the Septuagint as a source and quoted from it, sometimes erroneously. Show me where either mark or John used the Septuagint.

More importantly you ought to answer the question I posed in the post to which you responded. What exactly is your theory for why the authors would put a false prophesy of Jesus’ prompt return in his mouth? Given what you have written elsewhere it is your position that the Gospels were fiction made up at a time when it would have been clear that Jesus was not going to return promptly. Why did these imagined fiction writers put words in their hero’s mouth that would have made him a false prophet?

Doesn’t it make more sense that they were working from an oral tradition in which Jesus said those things and was just mistaken?

Steve

bacht

There's nothing certain about early Christianity. But I've come to believe that the gospel story is pious fiction. There may have been a person or persons that was a model for Mark but there are other possible explanations. It seems more likely to me that Mark wasn't referring to a real guy but was writing a carefully constructed story for the benefit of a certain circle of early Christians around the end of the 1st C.

The basic progression from a small group of mystics to a broadly-based universalist church makes sense to me. The notion that Catholicism sprang almost fully developed from Peter and Paul before the first revolt is implausible imo, especially when we consider the religious controversies attending the development of the canon in the later 2nd C.

bacht

As far as assumptions go, you seem to be assuming there were lots of Christians around by the time the first gospel (Mark) was written, and lots of oral tradition for him to draw on. We have no idea how many Christians or proto-Christians there were in the 1st C but they seem not to have made an impression on contemporaries.

As for the eschatology we can see a gradual lessening of this theme from Mark to Luke to John. For gentiles the apocalyptic prophecies could easily be read as signifying the destruction of Judea. And a book like Revelation can be read for entertainment value, even if we think that the author was talking about a specific era (emperor Domitian). The final judgment and general resurrection were pushed into the indefinite future, as they were for the rabbinic Jews.

Toto

The prophecy (in Mark) could easily refer to current events at the time the gospel was written. Look at current day apocalyptic cults (Ehrman spends some time on them.) Their prophecies of impending doom never seem to pan out, but that doesn't stop them. The sense of impending doom / revolution / upsetting of the natural order relates to their internal psychological state, which is much more real to them than "facts."

Christians today continue to deny that Jesus was a false prophet, at least until they lose their religion.

So - no false prophecy - no embarrassment - no problem.

I'll try to get back to you on the LXX.

Juststeve

Toto:

If you don't think Jesus' prophesy was false you ought to consider Christianity. You'd fit right in.

Steve

aa5874

You seem not to understand the difference between an opinion and evidence.

You simply cannot show that the baptism and crucifixion were embarrassing to Jesus believers.

In the NT Canon, Jesus taught his disciples that he would be killed.


Where is the evidence from antiquity that NT scholars used to come to their "majority view"? Again you are substituting opinion for evidence.

There is SIMPLY no corroborative external source for a MESSIAH called Jesus before the Fall of the Temple.

It may well be that things like Jesus' baptism, and the crucifixion were NOT embarrassing.

Are you AWARE that there is a SHORT ending and a LONG ending of gMark? The LONG ending was likely written LATER yet contain the predictions of Jesus simply because it was likely they were NOT considered embarrassing by the author of the LONG-ending gMark.

And you have ignored the MOST SIGNIFICANT point.

The Gospels were ANONYMOUS. No-one in antiquity, except the authors themselves, knew who wrote the Gospels and MOST importantly, No one KNEW WHEN the Gospels were written.

The Church writers claimed the Gospels, at least the Synoptics, were written before the Fall of the Temple. Justin Martyr claimed or believed the Memoirs of the Apostles were written by the apostles BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

Once it was believed that gMatthew, gMark, and gLuke was written BEFORE the Fall of the Temple then readers may think that since ALL of the other so-called predictions did occur, like the resurrection and the Fall of the Temple that Jesus would still come a second time.

Even today, 2000 years later, many Christians do not considered the second coming prediction as a failed prophecy.

The inclusion of the so-called failed prophecies of Jesus may have been included in the Synoptics to give the FALSE impression to the reader that the ANONYMOUS Synoptics MUST have been written BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

Without evidence from antiquity you cannot claim that you have the BEST explanation.

And there is another explanation.

The baptism, crucifixion and predictions of Jesus were NOT considered embarrassing to the ANONYMOUS authors.