TedM

I was clarifying for Rlogan that it is my opinion that human nature is such that Mark would not have gotten away with taking a tradition about a spirit man in some other sphere (ala Doherty) and putting him in recent history.


What about all the Jews who lived in Rome throughout the beginning of Christianity onward? Of course they would have known if Jesus lived or not! Don't you think they talked to each other? We're taking about the Messiah here.

Sure, if it was written in India or China you might have a point. But I can't think of a plausible time or place this could have been written and actually believed to have been true had Jesus really never lived or had some reputation had he lived.

As shown above, I AM considering the context. If I've got an inaccurate picture of how Jews would have communicated about the origins of a Messiah movement, just let me know.

We have multiple attestation to the basics I mentioned in the other post--Jesus lived, was influenced by JTB, had disciples, was a teacher, healer, was crucified, believed to have been resurrected in some form. I don't know of any early evidence which disputes these basic claims. That's what I mean by compatibility.

You may misunderstand me. I agree that portions of Mark are inaccurate, and therefore one can justifiably be skeptical of the entire thing. However, I believe other evidence supports basic parts of Mark's story.

Well, others have, and I'm responding to that.

The primary report is plainly not a firsthand witness to certain things because the context makes it clear that he was not present. Others likely weren't witnessed first hand due to the probability that the OT would not have been referenced or mimicked by chance or on purpose or unlikely numerical occurances. And for yet others, we can't say whether he witnessed them or heard about them second-hand or completely made them up.

Did I say I was trying to make a case to prove something to people here? I don't remember saying that.


Those who claim it is pure fiction should care if they don't want to live in a biased mindframe.

Clearly Josephus wasn't a witness to many of the things he wrote, which at times included outlandish claims. Do you consider him to be lacking in credibility and therefore an untrustworthy source as a result? IF not, why not? This is what you have done with GMark. How can you really know if ANY specific text that we can't prove Josephus was a witness to is credible? If you can't, what have you got?

ted

TedM

If Paul's many converts worshipped a non-historical Jesus, then I would absolutely expect such a movement to have continued and to have violently opposed those that bought into the 'great lie' written by Mark. That we have no record of such a movement or clash to me is very telling--ie, there was no group that ever thought Jesus wasn't similar to the one portrayed in GMark. In fact, we know that Paul's movement DID continue, yet we don't hear a peep about such objections from them.

Sorry, I can't speak to the Mohammed example. It may be wrong, it may be right. And, even if it is right, it doesn't necessarily serve as a good example.


I don't know enough to make a judgement on either. My main objection here is against the idea that Mark is pure fiction, and that the existance of SOME inaccuracies to a story such as the JTB beheading justify claiming the entire story is fictional. Just as Doherty's thesis relies on a combination of wildly unlikely scenarios--requiring numerous improbable explanations for dealing with the data we have--as untrustworthy as it might be, so does the "Mark is pure fiction" idea.

ted

spin

You can't say what you did though, because of the literary nature of the work. As I pointed out there was no way to verify such things in ancient times. People took reports on face value whether correct or not.

They didn't have a crystal ball, TedM. They also were in Rome, not in Palestine.

Rubbish.

You have to establish christians in Rome in the first century and that dating issue is highly complicated, especially when the only sources for a christian presence were maintained by christian scribes. (How long does it take marginal comments to creep into a text?)

You're not making much sense here. You seem to assume an extremely modern flow of news (without the manipulation).

I keep trying to make people realise that checking wasn't done through the example of Ebion, who plainly didn't exist, but who was given a life as the eponymous founder of the Ebionite movement. Nobody checked the information and yet the details of Ebion grew through the years.

Hell, you show no interest in when, where, to whom, or in what cultural context your sources were interested. How can you possibly be considering the context??

How would any particular group of Jews know anything about the origins of a messiah movement. They might here that someone was saying that they were somebody, but does that mean that that someone actually lived? No. It means they heard a report.

Can you demonstrate that there is actually multiple attestation or do we have a evolutionary body of of information which cannot be seen as multiple attestation of anything other than many different people had Jesus information without any indication of separate sourcing.

Up to here you have the tradition as collected by the Marcan writer. Matthew and Luke both acknowledge the Marcan source by using it so frequently. No multiple attestation there. There is acknowledgement of expanded tradition though.

Why should there have been disputes about such claims? Who would have cared? Who would have had grounds to dispute reports of far off events? Did anyone dispute the existence of Ebion? Why should they? Because they need to live up to your requirements?

Any entirely separate tradition though, or just part of the evolutionary process of an undifferentiated tradition?

I merely give my point of departure, because much of this thread you have been dealing with me.

Is this an agreement? If so, doesn't that mean that you should abandon your support and join my agnostic ranks?

I think you were trying in your own way to say something tangible. I was just trying to get you to stay on that track, but are you off it completely now?

I have said that plausibility is not a sufficient condition in this issue. Most fiction works on plausibility, so it is in itself of little relevance.

We usually use Josephus for his own times. His job, like that of historians of the period was to verify the information he collected. Our job is to verify the information he collected and on innumerable occasions we have been able to do so. Josephus displays so much information that can be checked that we can consider his other material as prima facie historical.

Now, which outlandish claims have you found about what Josephus says about his own times? What are their purpose in their contexts?

What I have done with Josephus is consider a lot of his information in respect to other literary historical sources, as well as the archaeological and epigraphic materials that have come to us. All the relevant evidence available supports Josephus rather than contradicts him. Do you have any problems with Josephus's geography? He talks a great deal about geographically verifiable information. On the instances where the Marcan writer does geography, why does he make errors? Do you have problems with any of the historical information that you can check in Josephus?

Is Josephus the be all and end all in the matter? Our job is to verify the texts we want to use. We have a number of issues with Mark:

1. he gets most of the facts wrong regarding Herod Antipas and his wife;
2. he gets the geography wrong;
3. he creates dramatic units rather than historical ones

These point away from us dealing with a historically viable narrative. These plus the Latin underpinning of some of the language point to a text that was written away from the narrative context of Herodian Palestine.

We know what was available for Josephus to do his history. He was an eye-witness to a lot of what he writes about for his time. Other material, because it relates to his own time he certainly had ways of obtaining, seeing as he lived in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately our evidence for Mark says that it wasn't the case for that writer.

What we have in the end is you with an ontological commitment for which you don't have the epistemology.


spin

TedM

You know much more about this stuff than I spin, and I appreciate your patience in dealing with my positions here..

About the Jews
I don't know what scholars say, but Paul's writings and travels seemed to me to reveal Christian presence in Rome in the 40's and Jews all over the Roman empire. Jews and Christians argued throughout the empire on Paul's version of Christianity. As such it seems logical to conclude that those same Jews would be very aware of the origin of the movement--which of course would include its founder--especially since he is being touted as the Messiah rose from the dead!


Sorry, I don't know enough to compare.


I don't know how you deal with the Didache or Luke's claim to using eyewitnesses. I don't know what you consider sufficient for demonstrating multiple attestation.


I would be agnostic if all we have is GMark, but I think there may be historical value to finding compatibility in other sources which appear to be unrelated, as well as various arguments with regard to human nature.

I'm more than happy to be off it.. Just don't want to take the time.

I don't know enough, but according to this Josephus is criticized for being inaccurate in a number of places. If true, I was curious how you handle it:


What percentage of his writings are historically verifiable? I suspect less than 10%. Does it really make sense to consider Josephus writings to be credible?

Josephus is accused of negligence and blatant exaggeration. Certainly Mark could be accused of those too. I simply don't know what the criteria are which determines that Josephus is credible and Mark isn't. Is there a list people are using? If so what is it?


These do hurt his credibility about those things. But, he gets some facts about Antipas and his wife right, he gets some geophraphy right, and he is not writing for historical reasons, so where do those point? Why don't we conclude that some of the unverifiable things are right and some wrong, just like the verifiable things?

Basically I have arguments for probability based on intangables and probabilities, and assumptions about human nature. If that isn't considered an 'epistemology' then I guess you are right. Take care...I probably won't be writing much more here. It's too addictive and I have more important things to do.

ted

spin

I have spent numerous posts demonstrating that there is no way to date the production of Paul's writings, using the contents of those writings. There are no tangible realistic indicators. So, how can you talk about the 40s?

We tend to overread Paul, assuming we know what he's talking about due to the encrustations of theological apologetics his work now bears. So we have messianic believers. He wants to talk about his messianic candidate, Jesus. Does that make his audience christian? The letter to the Romans is a rather strange work to interpret.

If we can trust the reaction of Gamaliel to the christians in Acts, the Jews were quite open to a wide range of views.

Try this as a quick source:

Later a mythical person by the name of Ebion was invented as the founder of the sect, who, like Cerinth, his supposed teacher, lived among the Nazarenes in Kokabe, a village in the district of Basan on the eastern side of the Jordan, and, having spread his heresy among the Christians who fled to this part of Palestine after the destruction of the Temple, migrated to Asia and to Rome (Epiphanius, "Hæreses," xxx. 1, 2; Hippolytus, l.c. vii. 35, x. 22; Tertullian, "De Præscriptione Hæreticorum," 33).

Eye witnesses are means for a historian to get information about things he hadn't seen himself. You still need to validate the historian by demonstrating sample content reflects the past.

Which texts are we talking about that are unrelated?

Firstly, the comments seem quite biased, as I have worked with Josephus a lot and found that he attempts to get things right. Where he has made mistakes in BJ a comparable section in AJ will often display a correction. Secondly, what they are talking about needs to be compared with how much he actually gets right, because as I have just said, he does get a lot right, with the proviso that he was writing an apologetic history. He is trying to present the Jews to the Romans in the best light that he can, which is a necessary condition to understanding Josephus. This is where time, place, audience and literary cultural context help make understanding Josephus easier. These are elements you just don't have with the material you are trying to use for historical content.

Though these people don't supply a shred of evidence and I believe they are guilty of their own accusations, we do have information about Josephus which helps us understand what is going on. We know his biases where they come from and how to get around them, ie we treat his statements about the Jews with great care.

"Josephus much more than Mark" is a slight understatement, isn't it? We can get to the core of Josephus's narrative and check it out. We've got evidence for many of his figures. What have you got in Mark?? Almost nothing comparable. (John is worse, it simply has the John the Baptist tradition tied in.)

Robin Hood in Tights gets some of the geography and history right as well. Please.

Probabilities of probabilities?? Hmmm. In short TedM, you've got nothing whatsoever that has any historical currency. As I've said, plausibility is the stuff of fiction.

Epistemology supplies a means for you to know what you claim to know, so no. What one knows one has to be able to demonstrate how one can know it or they don't actually know it at all.

Have fun.


spin

TedM

This sure seems like an extremist point of view, but I haven't read your posts on the matter. Paul's references to Jerusalem would seem to me to be sufficient to conclude that his writings were prior to 70AD. His references to Jewish concern within the Gentile communities would seem to support widespread interest and communication by Jews in and about the Christian movement. The preservation of Paul's works by traditional Christianity would seem to indicate an acceptance of his presentation of Christ. IF Paul was writing before GMark and he was preaching a non-historical Jesus vastly different from the one in GMark, it would seem that we should therefore expect Jewish opposition, and a record of it by Paul's followers which shows up in writings in the century following Paul--or in interpolations in Paul's own writings, but we don't.

I"m sure you don't, but for the sake of those who do I'll note that Gamaliel's reaction was based on a belief that the religion was short lived and the leader was a dead man. The other Jews in that story weren't open to a wide range of views: they beat the apostles and told them to shut up. Like Paul's accounts, the early reaction to Christians was that of great interest and controversy by fellow Jews--which is exactly what one would expect given the claims being made.

In the interest of saving time, I'll limit my response to this.

ted

JoeWallack

JW:
You are starting to ask the right questions. Good. With Apologies to Jeffrey Gibson I've never seen the following type list presented by mainstream Professional and Competent Christian Bible scholars but the common sense that you are threatening to embrace tells me:

We have reasons to give Josephus's Testimony more Weight than the Gospels :

From:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Luke_2:2

1) Josephus has Provenance himself. He can be Placed in history. This is the biggest Source problem for the Gospels. We don't know Who the authors were. They could have been complete Maniacs or even serial killers. Maybe the author of "Mark" was the Jewrassic Demonic? (image of JP Holding scratching chin and thinking, "How do we know he wasn't?). Even if "Mark" identified Sources how much does that help if the author is not identified?

2) Writes like a Historian. The Gospels are not written in Historical style, they are written in a different style (hint - starts with a "Gee").

3) Provides Sources for his account:

---1) Nicolatis of Damascus

---2) Commentaries of King Herod

4) Provides potentially the Best possible Sources for his Primary subject Herod, Herod himself and his official biographer, Nicolatis. Compare to the Gospels where we have nothing from the primary subject except doodling in the sand.

5) Indicates ability to Critically evaluate sources.

6) Provides a Recurring Marker of time, the Olympiad.

7) Provides Comparative and Multiple Markers of time. Here are some of them:

---1) Caius Domitius Calvinus was consul the second time

---2) Caius Asinius Pollio (was consul)

---3) Marcus Agrippa and Caninius Gallus were consuls of Rome

---4) the thirty-seventh year of Caesar's victory over Antony at Actium

8) Provides a Starting date for Herod's reign.

9) Provides the Length of Herod's reign in years.

10) Corroborating evidence in a separate Work. Compare to "Mark" contradicted by fellow Gospels.

11) Tends to be corroborated by other ancient authors.

12) Josephus considered reliable Historian by the Gospels that the Gospels need to be reconciled to, especially "Luke" who is the biggest Historian wannabe.

13) No one rewrote Josephus to show that what Josephus originally indicated were not the Sources of his writing were actually the Sources of his writing in the rewritten version.

14) Josephus' writings does not consist primarily of the Impossible.



Joseph

SUCCESS, n.
The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows. In literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines by the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious reason, "John A. Joyce."

The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
Do his thinking in prose and wear
A crimson cravat, a far-away look
And a head of hexameter hair.
Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

spin

But when was that?

Sorry, TedM, but these conjectures of yours are not based on anything much at all.

Remember that among the Jews there were positions such as the Sadducees, the Pharisees (and at least two flavors of those), the Essenes, the Zealots, and somewhere in there were various colors of messianic Jews. Judaism was rather heterodox and dispute driven up to Talmudic times. It could happily accommodate another messianic group. You have a mistaken idea of Judaism.

Why would you be so sure? The Rabbinical literature is full of disputes and differences of opinion. I must admit though, I intended to say "Pharisees" rather than "Jews", so that slip of mine may have caused the confusion of yours which followed.

This is a gross misrepresentation. Gamaliel indicates that if what the apostles are saying comes from men it will fail, ie let it run its course and the results will allow you to judge. Your interpretation is simply wrong and I don't understand how you got it from the text.

You are again misrepresenting, this time, Paul. He had a lot to do with Jews and it was not all as bad as you want to paint it. Many of his flock were Jews, as can be seen in his use of the Hebrew bible.


spin

TedM

Thanks JW for an excellent response. That is what I was asking for.

ted

TedM

Before 70Ad, and before GMark came about.

I'm talking about 3 kinds of opposition. One within the Gentile Christian community. Not a sign of opposition. The Christian community would likely NOT 'accomodate' such a heretical view without sign of dispute--yet the very group that claims a historical Jesus EMBRACED Paul's letters which would have been talking about a non-historical Jesus according to those who think Mark created a fictional historical Jesus out of a Doherty like mythical one.

The second opposition would have been within the Jewish Christian community. The opposition to certain allowances for Gentile adherence to Jewish Law was intense, and communication was between far-off Gentile cities to Jerusalem. To think that the Christian Jews would either not be aware of a Gentile conversion of their spirit-Messiah into a historical one, and that if they were aware of it they would 'accomodate' it seems quite unlikely given their response to these other issues..

The third opposition is the Jewish community. It's not as though the differing groups got along nicely. They hated those with opposing views. Paul's persecution of Christians was early on and represented, presumably, the Pharisee response to them. I think you grossly underestimate the response of opposing Jewish religious groups to a rising group based on a Messiac figure. Jews after 70AD would have been aware of the history of the Christian movement--growing out of a Logos concept, etc.. and would have scoffed at the idea that a 'play' by GMark was based on a historical person.

So, because each group would have had knowledge of the inaccuracy of the presentation of Jesus as a historical person who lived during the memory of some of them, and each group would have had the motivation to dispute it, it seems highly unlikely that such a new group of people would have been 'accomodated' by them, AND displaced an old group who didn't believe in the historical Jesus all at the same time--ALL WITHOUT A SHRED OF EVIDENCE FOR SUCH AN OCCURRANCE.

Clearly Gamaliel didn't feel threatened by the group. Of course he said let it run it's course, simply because it looked to him like other messiac movements that were short lived and whose leader was now dead. You didn't interpret anything here--you just said what he said..I was giving my interpretation of the WHY behind what he said. Seems pretty obvious from the text to me. Not sure why you think it is 'simply wrong'.

Does not Paul write on several occasions about his persecution of Christians, as a God-fearing Jew? This is the same picture as in passage you brought up about Gamaliel to try and demonstrate the opposite.

I never said Paul's flock didn't include Jews, and the fact that it did only adds to the likelihood that a new representation of Jesus as 'historical' would not have been silently tolerated or convinced those Pauline Jews to suddenly abandon their Platonic-like viewpoint and hop in the GMark bandwagon.


The bottom line is that a transformation from a non-historical other worldly mythical Messiac figure to a healer/teacher flesh and blood Palestinian who lived just prior to the time the other group began worshipping him, seems unlikely given what we know about the Gentile Christians, Jewish Christians, and the Jewish non-Christians who would have existed during the paradigm shift. It seems highly unlikely that while we have a fair amount of evidence for various messiac movements and various branches within early Christianity, we have nothing to signify what would have been the most dramatic shift in early Christian thinking and philosophy from any of those groups--nor even traces or clues of it in later writings either--including those that are direct spiritual descendants from the supposedly earliest philosophy that was replaced (the Romans who embraced Paul's teachings)!

ted