dog-on

On the contrary, the fact that the author used older, familiar stories always makes the work a fiction. Special pleading based on your own mind reading ability, "describing events they certainly believed took place", not withstanding.

You don't think a story with events, such as those found in the gospels, should be considered fiction?

If you do, than it is you that must provide some concrete evidence of the author's personal knowledge and intent to support your claim that the author actually believed he was not writing fiction.

Clivedurdle

In a world populated by gods and demons, how much of a distinction would there have been between the real and unreal?

Would they have known it was fiction?

dog-on

The writer of the story would have, unless he was delusional, I suppose.

Jayrok

So all we have to do is hunt down the author and find out if he meant his works as fiction or historical biographies. Shouldn't be that difficult.

Someone needs to invent that time machine so we can clear up a great number of things.

aa5874

But, we have the writings of the authors, there is no need to get any time machine.

The writings of the authors can take us back in time.

The authors wrote fiction, they must have known their stories were not true. There is no statement in the NT where the authors even claimed that they were not sure or could not verify any story about Jesus.

They deliberately wrote fiction in such a way as to make it believeable by incorporating events that were similar to those believed to have occurred or could have happened.

The Joseph Smith model, that is, where a man writes a story about some God, using information that is already available or was made up, and then claim he received the information from some golden plates, is, in my opinion, one resolution in the possible origins of the Jesus story.

Amaleq13

So there are no ancient works of non-fiction? That's just ignorance, amigo. You clearly have not read enough ancient works to make any sort of informed assessment. The more ancient works you read, the more obvious will become the flaw in your approach. I had no clue until I started reading other ancient texts how much conceptions have changed.

They simply did not think about "fiction" or "non-fiction" the same way we do. There was not always a clear cut distinction. To assume that they did, and your conclusion certainly requires that assumption, is a significant mistake resulting from inadequate exposure to the relevant data.

You don't believe that the authors of the references Ben has offered for comparison considered their works to describe events that actually happened?

There is no special pleading involved. Just reading what they wrote. Have you even bothered to do so? You might want to actually read them before rendering a verdict.

No, I consider that sort of generalization to be intellectually lazy, if not intellectually dishonest and to reflect a profound ignorance of how people in the first centuries of the Common Era thought and wrote.

Stop trying so hard to shift the burden and start doing the research necessary for the assessment you wish to conduct. Your imposition of modern conceptions of "fiction" and "non-fiction" is simply anachronistic and, therefore, inherently unreliable.

dog-on

:huh: Where did I ever say that there where no ancient works of non-fiction ever written, amigo?

dog-on

Do you know what the word fiction means?

Irrelevant to whether or not the author actually believed what he was making up to be true, even for a cave man...

A 3yr old knows when they are making-it-up...

Clivedurdle

This is obviously the introduction to a play. A narrator comes onto an empty stage and recites the above, setting the scene, the context.

How does one best present the ideas of this oriental cult to people? Through religious drama of course. Hardly anyone could read and write.

It is also poetic, with clear rhythms and repetitions - word word word world world world, God God God made made life life light light, dwell, glory, glory, full, grace and truth, receive, receive, born, born.....

Amaleq13

That question suggests you still don't understand the nature of the fundamental error in your approach.

The question is, do you know what that concept meant in the first couple centuries of the Common Era and how it was applied to understanding stories? It would appear you have not bothered to find out but simply continue to assume what is true today held true two thousand years ago. Calling such an approach "naive" is putting it kindly. When such an approach is sustained despite having people more knowledgeable of the relevant data suggesting it is mistaken, we have ventured into "willful ignorance" territory.

It is utterly incomprehensible that any intelligent person would consider the way early Common Era authors thought about "fiction" and "non-fiction" or, more directly relevant, whether they differentiated between the two all the time to be "irrelevant" to understanding whether a given early Common Era author thought his work was fiction. :banghead:

Willful ignorance is putting it kindly.

Unless you imagine a 3 year-old wrote the Gospels, that is hardly relevant.

Did a 1st century author or reader consider a story written about a real man but told entirely through older stories to be fiction? You'll never know because you won't bother to do the necessary research. You'll just keep blindly assuming that they thought the same way we do despite the fact that people who are familiar with the relevant material have told you that this is simply not the case.

And you'll keep making the same utterly foolish assertion.

The fact is that ancient historians sometimes described what they considered to be historical events and historical figures with fictional stories that were often quite familiar to their readers.

From this we can conclude that nothing with regard to historicity can be assumed from the inclusion of such stories in the description of any events or individuals.