Grog

So what's preventing this to be all folklore? What anchors your story in which later stories supplanted earlier stories in actual events in history?

Except that the reason he was considered to be authoritative is due to his miracles, healings, walking on water. Without one, there is no other. That in the course of these fantastical events he is also said to engage in other more mundane pursuits (like eating and drinking, what not) is no evidence of his existance. Clark Kent wasn't an actual reporter at the Daily Planet.

where is maryhelena when one needs her?


Except that you have a problem in your progression that shoots down the theory: Paul is out of sequence.

You haven't dealt with the main problem:

1. You want to propose real, historical events that were not recorded because the earliest followers of Jesus "had no reason" to preserve or refer to the teachings of Jesus.

2. At the same time, you argue for the preservation of the teachings of Jesus in oral tradition.

This problem is resolved if we remove an actual historical crucifixion from the mix. That resolves the problem of Romans 13: Paul had no vision of a crucifixion at the hands of a Roman governor.

(oh, here raises yet another unresolved contradiction: Paul extolls the civil authorities that only recently flogged, beat, humiliated, and executed Jesus AND at the same time we are to think that the shock of that same execution was the impetus for the founding of the religion!)

The "Jesus Myth" explanation resolves contradictions that the HJ theory cannot. That is what makes it a better hypothesis.

James The Least

I see you've drunk the Kool-Aid completely.

No Robots

Whose Kool-Aid? I thought you said that the work of Jewish scholars on this subject was a necessary corrective to all the Gentile misinterpretation? As Constantin Brunner puts it, Jews like John "had become such fervent Christians in their enthusiasm for the new knowledge that they had to demonstrate a commensurate hatred for the other Jews and their Judaism."

Diogenes the Cynic

Who says Pilate didn't know what he did? The Gospel of Mark? Mark is fiction.

outhouse

thank you, im at work, when I get home i'll listen

EarlDoherty

And this quote from Allison is supposed to provide "evidence" of the existence of oral traditions prior to the Gospels? Did you miss the "surely" and "must have" in this claim? In other words, Allison, no more than yourself, can actually appeal to a concrete witness to oral tradition about words and deeds of Jesus.

Or are you going to claim that something like the epistle of James, containing all those teachings of Jesus as found in the Gospels while neglecting to attribute them to him, constitutes such witness? Are you going to say Paul made a slip of the tongue when he said in 1 Thes. 4:9, that "we are taught by God to love one another"? Or when he speaks his three "words of the Lord" in 1 Corinthians, using language pointing to personal revelation, that this is concrete evidence of oral tradition? Or when Hebrews tells us in the opening verse that God has now spoken "through a Son" yet the author gives us nothing but the voice of Jesus in scripture throughout the entire letter? (I could be here all night, but that's enough to make my point.)

Give me one saying presented in the entire epistolary literature of the NT which is identified as a saying of Jesus on earth.

Give me one deed of Jesus on earth mentioned in the epistolary literature of the first century, prophecy, miracle, stubbing his foot on the way to Jerusalem, one detail about the crucifixion scene on Calvary, I don't care. (1 Cor. 11:23 has already been covered: Paul knows of it through revelation, not oral tradition, wherever it took place.)

And all the studies in the world about the theory and practice of oral transmission tells us nothing about whether it was even operative in the case of an alleged historical Jesus.

P.S. As far as Q goes, from what we can see in its final version used by Matthew and Luke, it had a heavily redacted literary evolution, and contained no context from which we could extract the presence or workings of identifiable oral tradition. There is no way of demonstrating that these sayings and anecdotes were originally identified with a Jesus, and lots of ways of making a case that they originally were not. (I know, of course, that you've read Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, but you must have missed those couple of chapters.)

I noticed at one point in your debate with Toto, you fell back in desperation on the appeal to authority. What would historicists do without that old life preserver? It's getting a bit ragged looking by now and is no longer so proficient at keeping fallacies afloat.

Earl Doherty

No Robots

Nice to hear from you, Earl. My brother-in-law and father-in-law loved your book. I've been trying to force-feed them Brunner as a corrective. No luck so far.

Solo

There is virtually nothing in the gospel of Mark which could be reliably linked to any sort of "oral" tradition. On the other hand, there is plenty internal evidence that Mark worked with the halakha and Paul's epistle material to create a narrative allegorical structure.

I have had private correspondence with a well-known Markan scholar who holds that Mk 14:28 is an editorial addition by Mark since Peter's answer seems to ignore the implied rendez-vous in Galilee in the preceding verse. This fits into his belief that the empty tomb story was pre-Markan material which Mark only redacted. When I objected that Peter "ignores" 14:28 because he does not undestand the concept of resurrection that Jesus proclaims (cf., 9:10, 9:32) and that the second half of the hidden "Malachi" verse (3:1) is referenced by "you are seeking Jesus the Nazarene" in 16:6 (cf "the lord whom you seek" in Mal 3:1), showing clearly a master plan of a composition, he abruptly broke off contact.

So, perhaps alternative interpretation seem "crazy" only because there has been so much invested in the current methodological approaches that no-one would dare to step off them even if they know they lead nowhere. The attitude seems to be that of the wife of the bishop of Oxford, who upon learing of Darwin's theory exclaimed: "Let us pray it is not true and if it is, that it doesn't become generally known !"

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

Your statement is laughable since you have been posting here for years and know that even if there is any evidence it could NOT be considered "Plenty". There is ZERO internal evidence the author of the short-ending gMark worked with the Pauline epistles to create the Jesus story.

Let us go through the short-ending gMark.

1. The claim in gMark that Jesus came from Nazareth is NOT found any where in the Pauline letters.

2. The claim in gMark that Jesus was baptized by John is NOT found anywhere in the Pauline Epistles.

3. The claim that Jesus was come to baptize in the Holy Ghost is NOT found any where in the Pauline writings.

4. All the supposed miracles of Jesus are NOT found any where in the Pauline writings.

5. In gMark Jesus did NOT want the Jews to be converted and that is NOT found in the Pauline writings.

6. The claim that Jesus spoke in Parables to confuse the Populace is NOT found in the Pauline writings.

7. There is no command by the supposed Jesus to carry out the Ritual of the Eucharist in gMark.

8. the Markan Jesus did NOT want the Populace to know he was Christ until his trial and that is NOT found in the Pauline writings.

9. The Markan Jesus was a SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE worker--the Pauline Jesus did NO miracles in the letters.

10. The Markan Jesus did NOT appear to the disciples--the Pauline Jesus Appeared to OVER 500 people plus the disciples, apostles and Paul.

11. The arguments used to show Markan Priority ALSO denies that the author of gMark used the Pauline writings.

12. The teachings of the Markan Jesus have NOTHING similar to the Pauline Jesus.

13.The Markan Jesus is so different to the Pauline resurrected Jesus that they hardly even use the same passages from Hebrew Scripture.

14. There is NO credible evidence to corroborate a single Pauline letter BEFORE C 70 CE.

15. The veracity and historical accuracy of Paul and the Pauline letters have NOT been established.

Mandelbrot

If there was a Jesus and he did come from Nazareth, wouldn't that mean he was either before the 7th century BCE or after the revolt of 135 CE since Nazareth lie uninhabited between those years?