Sven

:huh:
Hint: Repeating an insult isn't exactly an argument.

ETA: @Julian: I'll do as soon as he does - IOW, never.

Julian

Well, then just stop posting nonsense, Sven...

Doug Shaver

I have seen what people do when they recreate historical events. I have seen what people do when they do critical thinking. They may often do both at once, but doing one is not doing the other.

I don't assume that they always are. I justfiably believe that they often are. In any case, there is no good evidence that any gospel is a record of such firsthand accounts passed down through family tradition or by any other method of transmission.

I can't quite parse that sentence, but you seem like you might be claiming that no writer of fiction ever wrote as though he were telling a true story. I have read novels and short stories written exactly that way, and I'm not just referring to first-person narrative style. I mean they were written as if they were the result of careful research.

One of the Christian dogmas to which I referred was the claim that his teachings were accurately represented by the men who wrote the New Testament.

How did people know what genre they were reading before it became customary for authors to identify works of fiction as such?

When I talk about fiction, I am not talking about any intentional deceit. I am talking about a narrative that the author did not expect his readers to think was historically factual.

That may well have been all that the original author (whoever that was) had in mind.

So, no unsophicated people ever heard the story? Who made sure of that? The author? What about after he died?

I'm not making that assumption. I'm assuming that the majority were people of average intelligence with what in those days was an average education. I don't consider gullibility to be a sign of either inferior intelligence or ignorance.

Gamera

Well, this is subject to factual analysis. People did move around less in the past, and it wasn't unusual for a mediaeval peasant in Europe not to leave the environs of his or her village for their entire life. Presumably, some analysis could be done to determine the demographic shifts that occured in Judea from 1000 BC to the common era.

But does it really matter if Joseph's family really did remain in Bethlehem for 42 generations, or that he (due to family tradition) THOUGHT they did. The tradition doesn't have to be factual for Joseph to have followed it.

Gamera

Honestly, I don't quite get your argument. What I think you're saying is similar to Crossan -- that Luke is writing a fictive religious work and he knows he is. It's a genre that doesn't purport to be historical, though it may take an historical form.

If that's the case, you need to account for how the audience got it heywire. Here Luke is writing to people educated enough to read him, and they take as history what he intended as hagiography. Again, except for literary fiascos like John Bunyon's attempt at satire, can you show any historical analogies to this process. I find the claim astonding since it essentially means Luke is the most misunderstood writer in history, and that misunderstanding altered history forever. Quite a feat.

Amaleq13

Given that this is essentially how the early critics of Christians described them, "utterly unsupported" is not true.

Gamera

If you take as true the claims of critics, who have an obvious bias, then you lack critical thinking.

The fact is anybody educated enough to read Luke, would be sophisticated enough to know history from fiction. There were plenty of unsophisticated people in the classic world, but they tended not to be able to read.

TomboyMom

Perhaps Luke's intended audience included people who would not read it themselves, but have it read to them, as in the case of medieval peasants?

RGD

But the point is that people didn't read Luke - the Gospels were written long after and were primarily read to the Christians.

The vast majority of the Classical world was not literate.

Amaleq13

The existence of these early characterizations constitutes support for the notion so your assertion of "utterly unsupported" is simply wrong. I do not necessarily expect you to acknowledge this fact but your insulting tone is both uncalled for and unnecessary.