aa5874

So you are claiming that the NT is just fiction. The authors just made stuff up.

Eusebius, Irenaeus and Tertullian wrote fiction when they implied or claim that the Gospels were written before the letters from the writers called Paul.

And you are claiming, without any evidence whatsoever, that the virgin birth was mixed in the Jesus story after letters of Paul.

You cannot use your imagination as history.


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teamonger

LOL. You're assuming a high level of cleverness and conspiracy that you have no evidence for. Mark appears as simply an imperfect 2nd hand reporter, not some ingenious fabricator.
t

teamonger

I made no such claim that the NT is "just fiction".

Or, perhaps they were simply mistaken. Or, perhaps some proto-gospels were indeed written before Paul's letters.


I don't understand you. Above you implied that it was fiction to say Gospels were being written before Paul's letters. Now you're saying the birth narratives were from before those letters?

Actually there is some evidence (1 Tim 1:3-4) that the virgin birth myth and genealogies was frowned upon, perhaps by Paul if he wrote that portion. Hard to imagine what else was meant by "myths and endless genealogies".

No, but a historian must use imagination to support a theory. So much fun, you know
t

aa5874

But, you just assumed you know Mark. That's not clever.

It is not really known who wrote the gospel called Mark, do you realise that? Yet you are claiming Mark is a second-hand imperfect reporter.

You just cannot use your imagination as history.

Toto

I don't think that it even rises to that level.

The legal standard does not say that admissions against interest are more likely to be true. It simply allows evidence that would not otherwise be admissible to be considered by the jury. But the jury is not instructed that the admission is more likely to be true.

I have yet to see the criteria used in an academic discipline. You said you had an example somewhere. . .

I'd venture not. But I will look at what you come up with.

If you think that there are no agendas in historical research, I doubt that you have read a lot of history. But I see no indication that this criterion, or the others that seem to be unique to NT studies, are used to strip away agenda items. I think they are used because the source material is obviously full of theological inventiveness and supernatural additions.

But I will wait for your examples. In previous discussions, no one has found any historians who used a criteria of embarrassment to decide on the historical value of ancient texts, outside of NT studies.

spamandham

That's fine and all, but I don't see anyone here doing that. I don't find the idea of a charismatic preacher implausible, but then, I don't see a mythical/mystical/legandary/satire/fictional origin as implausible either. The goal of historical analysis is to assess the most likely scenarios, not simply speculate on plausible scenarios.

I would however argue that the Gospels are not historical, nor were they intended to be. They are hero biographies (See Talbert's "What is a Gospel (or via: amazon.co.uk)"). The closest kin to them were almost all written long long after the hero had died (assuming he ever lived), to settle doctrinal controversies. The Gospels look exactly like that to me as well.

So, while it's possible there was a historical core to Jesus, we're not going to glean it from the Gospels.

I don't have anything more to say on the embarassment argument. I find it horribly weak considering Mark indicates no embarassment, and considering Paul did not mention the baptism at all. When combined with an analysis of the genre suggesting Mark was written long after the "facts", and also noting that it makes specific predictions that set a no-earlier-date of 70 CE (also long after the "facts"), the embarassment argument is weaker still.

teamonger

Sorry, you're projecting. You're the one imagining Mark to be a clever conspirator who set out to deceive and fabricate.
t

teamonger

Well the gospels look to me, as they look to most scholars, as being written a few short decades after the events they depict, which reduces the liklihood of complete fabrication. With Jesus is portrayed as saying "some standing here will not death", seems clear the author believes someone standing there was indeed still alive at the time he wrote.

How you figure Paul into that is beyond me. If he was embarrassed by the idea of some mere human baptizing his hero, that would be a good reason not to mention it.

t

Toto

This is not the view of most scholars. Mark is generally dated to 70 CE to 140 CE, more than a few decades after the event, and no barrier to partial or complete fabrication since Jerusalem had been leveled at that point.

The idea behind the criteria of embarrassment is that some embarrassing facts were so well established in tradition that they could not be ignored. Why could Paul ignore baptism but Mark could not?

aa5874

Please read your posts, this is what you wrote.
You cannot show that the author of Mark was a 2nd hand reporter, you are just making stuff up.

The author of Mark may have deliberately fabricated the first Jesus story in the NT.