Freethought & Rationalism Archive

beallen041 · 07-10-2011, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TedM

There is a reason people make things up. There is also a reason people report history.

So the question is, is the gospel of Mark history?

Quote:

Originally Posted by TedM

The criteria of embarrassment is not invalid simply because we know that people make up embarrassing things. Should we throw out the criteria simply because we know it is not always reliable?

I would say we should, yes. I would throw out a baby stroller that wasn't always reliable. I would throw out a garbage disposal that wasn't always reliable. I would throw out a scientific theory that wasn't always reliable like phlogiston or phrenology. So not being always reliable is a pretty bad mark against any theory in any discipline.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TedM

If the reason something seemingly embarrassing is known (maybe there was a good religious reason Attis cut off his balls) then we can discount the criteria as unreliable.

Yes. Of course it is also possible that there was a good religious reason that John the Baptist baptized Jesus

Quote:

Originally Posted by TedM

If the reason something seemingly embarrassing is not known yet there is evidence that it was IN FACT embarrassing, then it should not be discounted as 'evidence' for actual history.

Great, so what evidence is there that the author of Mark was embarrassed by the baptism of Jesus?

Quote:

Originally Posted by TedM

Carrier surely is making a point, but I think it is relevant if we have evidence that something seemingly embarrassing really was or was not really embarrassing to them.

Minus a time machine, we don't really know a thing about the author of Mark, including whether he thought he was writing history.

beallen041 · 07-10-2011, 08:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Well, first of all, I am skeptical of Richard Carrier's claim that "Now in Roman culture this kind of emasculation is one of the most embarrassing insulting things that you do. It totally dehumanizes you and this whole sort of masculine, macho culture is like that. That’s the worst thing you could do and why on earth would you ever worship a eunuch as your savior?" I would like to know specifically where Dr. Carrier gets the impression that emasculation was especially embarrassing. The embarrassment would certainly apply in modern cultures, but some very powerful men in the ancient Greco-Roman world were believed to have been eunuchs (i.e.

Halotus,

Heraclius and

Melito of Sardis).

He probably gets it from things like this:

Quote:

As priests of Cybele, the galli devoted themselves to their goddess by castrating themselves (apparently removing both the testicles and the penis), cross-dressing, and, in some cases, offering themselves to other men for sex. A tax may even have been levied on them as prostitutes.

Cybele was accepted into the state cult in 204 B.C.E., and she thus became an official goddess of the Roman state. From that point, the religion was funded by public money, but also placed under stricter control of the state.

Although Cybele was an official goddess, the Senate refused Roman citizens the right to participate in her rites as priests, reflecting the Roman distrust and fear of the galli, for both their infertility and their rejection of masculinity. The galli not only deliberately made themselves unable to produce offspring, but they served as bad examples to others, tempting young men to join their ranks. Because of their effeminate nature, the galli flouted Roman exhortations toward virtus, the ideal of manliness. In brief, the Roman reverence for paternity and masculinity made castration a highly stigmatized activity, especially for Roman citizens, and made the galli a distinctly marginalized community.

The galli were often described in derogatory terms such as pathicus ("faggot"), mollis ("softie"), or cinaedus (originally an Eastern dancer, but later a term for a grown man who displayed effeminate behavior and/or desired to be penetrated). Being a gallus was deemed the ultimate in unmanliness.

Because of wide-spread castration anxiety, the emperor Domitian (81 to 96 C.E.) declared genital mutilation illegal. Once Christianity triumphed over paganism and became the state religion, the highly institutionalized Greek and Roman mystery cults finally disappeared, although some galli may have plied their trade as late as the fifth century.

ApostateAbe · 07-10-2011, 08:06 AM

beallen041, I sure as heck hope that Richard Carrier doesn't source his information about ancient history from things like an online encyclopedia for the GLBTQ community.

Toto · 07-10-2011, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Well, first of all, I am skeptical of Richard Carrier's claim that "Now in Roman culture this kind of emasculation is one of the most embarrassing insulting things that you do. It totally dehumanizes you and this whole sort of masculine, macho culture is like that. That’s the worst thing you could do and why on earth would you ever worship a eunuch as your savior?" I would like to know specifically where Dr. Carrier gets the impression that emasculation was especially embarrassing.

Possibly from his PhD studies?

Quote:

The embarrassment would certainly apply in modern cultures, but some very powerful men in the ancient Greco-Roman world were believed to have been eunuchs (i.e.

Halotus,

Heraclius and

Melito of Sardis).

You list one court retainer and two Christians.

Quote:

Secondly, I don't think anyone would claim that non-historical myths that are embarrassing to the myth-tellers are impossible. But I do think that it can help us evaluate probabilities among all competing explanations.

You still have no way of evaluating these probabilities.

Quote:

In modern courts of law, there is an analogous principle known as

declaration against interest. The principle is that, if a witness says something that is against his or her own interest, then it is more likely to be true and it counts for more than just hearsay.

This is not how that principle works. Hearsay is normally inadmissible, so the jury cannot even consider it. A statement against interest will be admissible as an exception to the rule against hearsay in certain cases, especially against financial interest, but the jury will still have to decide how to evaluate it.

Quote:

But, it doesn't actually work all of the time. Sometimes, they are still lies. Sometimes, the motivations of the witness are hidden and unknown. Sometimes, the witness is simply crazy. Richard Carrier would be able to pick out a few examples of such things and claim, "AH HA, see?? Declaration against interest is completely useless in courts of law!"

Have you done any studies in the reliability of hearsay or the operation of this exception to the hearsay rule in courts? Do people normally admit that they are liable for a debt if they are not?

ApostateAbe · 07-10-2011, 08:26 AM

"Possibly from his PhD studies?"

Toto, can you please tell me either how that helps or why you mentioned that?

Toto · 07-10-2011, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

"Possibly from his PhD studies?"

Toto, can you please tell me either how that helps or why you mentioned that?

Would you please explain why you would question how Richard Carrier would know something very basic about Roman Society after studying it at the PhD level?

It would be one thing if you actually had any evidence to the contrary, but you do not.

aa5874 · 07-10-2011, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

So why is the embarrassment of later authors an argument that what 'Mark' said is true?

If Glenn Beck says something so embarrassing that even Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin disown it, does that make it likely that what Glenn Beck said was true?

Ehrman is a big joker.

How can the NT Canon which the Church claimed was written by the FRIENDS, SUPPORTERS, APOSTLES and FAMILY of Jesus be an INDEPENDENT source?

Ehrman MUST know that he NEEDS external credible sources of antiquity to corroborate the NT and he has utterly failed to produce a single credible source of antiquity to corroborate anything about Jesus, the apostles and "Paul".

beallen041 · 07-10-2011, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

beallen041, I sure as heck hope that Richard Carrier doesn't source his information about ancient history from things like an online encyclopedia for the GLBTQ community.

Abe, I would assume that you have an alternate source that backs up an alternative view. The criteria of embarrassment is the topic at hand. So I would think that when an encyclopedia for the GLBTQ community states that something was the ultimate in unmanliness and lists the epithets that were hurled at the Galli by Romans, that would be a 'statement against interest' which you seem to think is valuable even in unprovenanced work.

Do you have an alternative source that states the opposite?

ApostateAbe · 07-10-2011, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

"Possibly from his PhD studies?"

Toto, can you please tell me either how that helps or why you mentioned that?

Would you please explain why you would question how Richard Carrier would know something very basic about Roman Society after studying it at the PhD level?

It would be one thing if you actually had any evidence to the contrary, but you do not.

Toto, my question to you still stands.

DCHindley · 07-10-2011, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Ehrman also claims that the authors of Mark, Q, M and L were independent of each other.

Yes, mainstream Biblical scholars read one work, the Gospel of Luke, cut it up into pieces and declare that the pieces are independent of each other.

How does that work? How can works that lack provenance and often lack existence be known to be 'independent' of each other?

Just how big was very early Christianity that writers could produce works the contents of which were a mystery to other Christian writers, despite being circulated enough to be used by other writers?

And notice that the criteria of multiple attestation is based on mostly hypothetical documents, according to Ehrman, and largely depends on claiming that the author of John's Gospel could never have learned any stories that 'Mark' wrote about from any person who had read 'Mark'.

Steven,

I think you are over simplifying the matter.

I didn't read the article by Ehrman, but you seem to be stating that he considers M, L, and Q as independent sources. It seems to me that you must be mistaken here.

Singly attested traditions (material only found in the gospels of Mt & Lk = M & L, and even Mk has passages that are not in the other gospels), traditions common to two gospels only (Mt & Lk but not Mk, properly the "double tradition" which often gets equated with a hypothetical Q), and traditions which are attested in three gospels (Mt, Mk & Lk = the triple tradition), and even a few traditions that John has in common with one or more of the other gospels, are the evidence we have to work with.

As significant portions of Mt, Mk, and Lk do overlap, it does in fact suggest that there is some sort of relationship between these gospels. Logic requires that between any two gospels,

a) one gospel used the other as a source (sometimes verbatim, usually with some changes). The directionality of the borrowing can go either way, so scholars try to determine from the differences between common material which seems to be a modification of the other. (e.g., Mk as source for triple tradition, or other hypotheses that suggest other relationships such as Mt was initial gospel, which was epitomized by Mk, and Lk drew from Mt & Mk, etc)

b) one or more otherwise unknown sources influenced those gospels which have shared tradition (Q = double tradition)

c) one or more otherwise unknown sources influenced one or the other gospel but not the others (M & L)

The problem with an author using sources it that a written source can be used verbatim (word for word) or modified in ways that can range from minor to paraphrases in order to suit the agenda of the author. The source can even be oral tradition, and for this kind of material we really don't have much of a clue as to what was floating around out there or how it may have been changed in the author's interest.

Written sources are by far the easiest to work with, and most all solutions to the synoptic problem assume this, even for the double tradition on account of its size and complexity (hence Q). Usually oral tradition is used to explain single traditions (M & L) as these are much smaller and less organized.

John's relationship to the other gospels has been debated forever. It agrees in a few places with one or more of the other gospels, sometimes all three, but does not seem to be directly dependent upon any one of them except maybe Mk. I guess Ehrman has sided with the "independent John" opinion.

Some critics think a case can be made on the basis of style, subject matter, whatever, to expand Q by including parts of Mk, L or M.

Fun fun

DCH

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07-10-2011, 08:06 AM	#23
ApostateAbe Contributor Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: MT Posts: 10,656	beallen041, I sure as heck hope that Richard Carrier doesn't source his information about ancient history from things like an online encyclopedia for the GLBTQ community.

07-10-2011, 08:26 AM	#25
ApostateAbe Contributor Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: MT Posts: 10,656	"Possibly from his PhD studies?" Toto, can you please tell me either how that helps or why you mentioned that?

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