Adam

Apparently all spin's quotation are from my first article in Noesis:
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common

I have changed my view in this matter, abandoning the above thesis of Boismard and Benoit. Here's my view now, copied in from my Post #230 in this thread:There was more than one Q text. Copying from Luke to Matthew (or vice versa) does not sensibly explain the number of nearly-exact parallels that would have been pulled out from widely scattered places, mostly individually (except for the great grouping at Mt. 23:23:33 to 24:51). These draw from a Greek text that would not likely have been Greek scattered among the original text mostly in Aramaic. A separate later Q2 in Greek makes better sense to explain about a dozen sequences. These include Lk. 3:7-9, 16-17; 6:36-42, 7:1-23; 9:57-10:24; 11:1-4, 9-32; 12:2-7; 12:22-31,39-46; 13:34-35; 17:1-2. These passages are disproportionately about John the Baptist and apocalypticism. These could come from someone who remained a follower of John the Baptist even after Jesus’s ministry began. Accordingly he was an eyewitness to Jesus only towards the very end, and apparently read his Qumran perspective into his reports.

As for the larger volume of non-exact parallels in word-use, these Q1 sayings and parables must trace to an Aramaic original separately translated. There is a disproportionate emphasis on parables and sage sayings. This would fit with someone from an unconventional religious background, like Matthew who is said to be the author of the Logia.
Similarly, there is Q material in Mark that is from Q2.
The above two paragraphs can be found here, as stated above:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=10
Accordingly, the various elements of Assertion 17 etc. cannot use the reasoning I used in the 2005 article. I do still believe all the gospels were complete by 70 CE, however.
I see that spin has not attempted to refute anything I said in the first of my three articles in Noesis. (I myself withdrew above what I would have admitted was a mistake.) spin attempted one refutation in his #357, but I refuted it so easily in #364 that he wisely chose not to attempt to do so again.

Vorkosigan

Adam, like spin said, you don't know how to justify your claims, nor how to respond to counter-evidence nor how to incorporate it into your understanding to enhance it. That's why I keep recommending that you start with works on methodology in gospel and HJ studies.

For starters, I'd read Crossan's The Birth of Christianity, Stanley Porter's The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals, Ludemann's Jesus After 2000 Years: What He Really Did And Said, and Theissen and Merz The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide.

Crossan's discussion of methodology is outstanding.

You should also read some stuff on literary structures in Mark. Tolbert's Sowing the Gospel is the best book on Mark ever written and a great place to start. Stuff on literature in the ancient world and Xtianity would also be useful. You should become familiar with the ancient hellenistic romances. I strongly recommend Stephens, S. A., and Winkler, J. J., eds. 1995. Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments as a good place to start.

The reason everyone has stopped engaging you is because you're like Elmer Fudd, running around shooting wildly, convinced you got the rabbit, but in reality you don't even know where the rabbit is.

Vorkosigan

Adam

Thanks, Vork.
I went first to Stanley Porter, and fortunately the preview skips Form Criticism and goes to Ch. 3, Recent Developments. Contradictions abound among scholars, some suggesting starting over from scratch. G. Theissen holds for historical plausibility for Jesus as a whole. Porter speaks well of John Meier and Craig Evans. The latter is too conservative for me. Porter himself seems to favor verse-by-verse criteria using careful linguistics.
http://books.google.com/books/about/...d=ywk1JCtjd4QC

Please explain to me how it is counter-evidence when someone simply sets aside what I said, and how is this supposed to be useful to me? The same people as readily say that I cannot support my assertions by appeal to authority, and anyone can about as readily footnote one opinion as its opposite. Scholarly writers all the time talk about probabilities and possibilities, and even if not, there is someone else saying the opposite.

As for Luedemann, what is his authority for claiming that no one seriously believes today that Jesus performed any such miracles as walking on water, stilling the storm, changing water into wine, or raising the dead? It's one thing for him to presuppose that in his particular criteria for historicity, but it destroys his credibility about the nature of religious believers. It's not the thing to say to a contrarian like me.
Jesus After 2000 Years Ludemann (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Gerd Theissen seems to come to conservative conclusions
Theissen and Merz The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Sheshbazzar

Yes, whatever they publicly offer, in the public forum, whether it be in conferences, professional papers, Journals, press releases, or posts on publicly accessible Internet forums, when they do, it is expected that whatever opinions they hold about probabilities and possibilities will be subject to close and critical examination.
Any mere assertions are almost invariably 'sifted out' in this process and given far less weight than any observations about the details of actual texts that anyone else may examine and reasonably note and derive the same information and conclusions without any need to resort to unprovable speculations about 'probabilities and possibilities'.

Whenever your ideas need to be couched in 'maybe's, 'could be's', 'probabilities' and possibilities' there is -always- the possibility that your selected 'maybe' or 'probability' might be wrong, and someone else's 'maybe' or 'probability' the right one.
And that your 'possibility' might be totally incorrect, while someone else's 'possibility' could be spot on.

Whenever there is a -'maybe'- there is also a -'maybe NOT'- and often the two are equal.
And outside of personal preferences there exist no valid basis on which to choose, or to support either the one or the other.
Simply selecting one does not make it the only valid choice or position. This is what seems to be escaping your comprehension in post after post.

It might surprise you, but most mature scholars, when they present their novel ideas and speculations in the form of 'probabilities and possibilities' are quite satisfied when even as little as two or three percent of what they have written in these understood to be speculative writings is accepted and endorsed by their peers.
Thus when you assert your personal 'probabilities and possibilities' here, in what you already know to be a 'hostile' forum and audience for your speculative material, if you are expecting your imaginative speculations and cherished 'possibilities' to be accepted and embraced wholesale by us skeptics and atheists, your expectations are entirely unrealistic.

It is obvious to us that you have a very inflated opinion of the value of your own scholarly productions, and of how persuasive your arguments are, or you think, ought to be.
But if your speculations and arguments are really all that solid, and well researched, or persuasive, then you are really wasting your time in posting them here.
You ought to be posting to such forums where you can seriously press them upon your peer group of Bible believing religious scholars.
Given how you present your material, I'd be surprised if even among that peer group, one made up of one hundred percent Bible believing textual scholars, many would be willing to accept or to publicly endorse even one percent of this guesswork you have been here presenting.

As you say, there is someone else saying the opposite. And this is true even of your closest, friendliest, believing associates.
They all also have their pet theories and 'speculations' and are in no more of a hurry to buy into yours than we here are.

spin

Yes, of course it is. That was the version you pointed me to in #368, where you said,

Now you have successfully pissed me off.

If that's the case don't you think it was stupid to post the false indication in #368?

Did it occur to you to think that you were not just wasting your time in this endeavor, but anyone else's you suck into the process.

Now, really, who do you believe would care what you think now? You have poured your eye witless theory out here and cannot even get your act together to present it in any seriousness. "This is my view," you say, then "oh, no I should have said that that was what I should have presented," but no that's no longer my view. It's good that I can't see you in the street. I would spray paint your windscreen for making such a fuck up.

You haven't got a clue what is necessary to present a solid argument. You don't have any basic idea of evidence. You don't understand the impact of what people say to you, so you cannot respond meaningfully. You're just a disaster waiting to happen to anyone who gets too close.

You have refuted yourself, by failing to understand the task you set for yourself. So I only have one suggestion for you.

Vorkosigan

Adam, I'm not recommending them because of their conclusions. I'm recommending them because they discuss issues of methodology that you need to be thinking about. The point is methodology: HOW conclusions are constructed. That's what you should be thinking about. You offer no credible foundation for any of your conclusions, because you don't know anything about methodology. Consequently your positions are absurd ideological constructs.

You can learn a bunch by studying Ludemann, for example, even if you disagree with him. Why do you think I read people like Wright and Gundry and Tim Johnson, whose religious views are loony and whose conclusions I totally disagree with. Because they have much to teach me! You can learn tons from Crossan -- his discussion of methods in BoC is priceless.

But you can't learn because you've constructed a little Fortress of Ignorance in your Antarctic refuge. You're not contrarian, Adam, merely someone who has mistaken deliberate ignorance for contrarianism. I can't think of any way to reach you, either.

Good luck, then.

Vorkosigan

Chili

Sure and all probabilities are probe-able and likely will not stand the test in British Analytic Logic wherein all is supposed to be X, but a book under scrutiny wherein snakes can talk it must fail the test already on page one and should not be examined with such critical theory and so 'you guys' are in the wrong place, period, amen and out. The problem I see is that you actually married the serpent and chose to make her your own and keep talking and insist that you are right but fail to accept the second allegory wherein that very same serpent is really the temple tramp in your own TOK that is needed to critically examine all that you touch, eat and see so it can be retained in the TOL by the greater serpent who presides over it . . . and so then it can now be said that you must reject the very stone you are trying to lift.

Just go to Gen.3:15 where enmity is placed between these two serpents of which one is called woman who strikes just the same but strikes only at the head of the [lesser] serpent who in her turn strikes at the heel of him who chose her to be his wife on the way out of Eden, where she will serve him with mud only extracting the water to be retained by the greater serpent so that we can walk on dry land. In other words, just backwards we go while accumulating knowledge as foreshadowed already in Gen.1:9 and so West towards the end of the world where finally the words 'enough is enough' need to be said while at rest under a Bodhi tree and there can first see the Tigris just 'flow' East of the place that is left behind and once upon our return there the bright mind in Eu-phates shall find.

My point here then is that Port Royal Logic is a better way to go on the way back to Eden since firstly, that is where the gospels take place and second that it allows for induction and can easily absorb all that British Analitic logic has accumulated for us on the way out . . . which will be thru only if and if only we placed milestones of faith to speak on our behalf of knowledge retained while on the way out so it can guide us back home to Eden and much like Hansel and Grethel as 'fact' instead of just 'breadcrumbs' in righteousness that got picked away by the ravens to be gone when we need them the most.

Significant here is that the employment of critical theory is in effect while on the way back since it is what got us yonder to start with and so will never get us back to where we belong, unless of course we do not belong in which case there is no need to examine.

And so Shesh not in particular for you but I am reminded here of a poem by a man named Crispus wherein "unstructured space is a deluge" and kind of like a formless waisteland where darkness covered the abys while the mighty wind swept over the waters, while yet he stated that "the land was solid and stamped . . . watching his foot sink down thru stone up to the knee."

Sheshbazzar

My dear friend Chili,

(and for any who reads this, I am sincere in my here addressing Chili as 'My dear friend'.
Through exchanges of PMs, we have long since resolved any issues that were between us, and years ago I placed myself under a personal vow to -be- and to -remain- Chili's friend for life.

I "Met a friend I never know'd Walkin' down ol' rocky road Red, green ol' rocky road, tell me what you see"

Because privately and away from these forum dissensions and third party disputations, we were able, through PMs, to 'open up to one another' and tell from the heart, exactly what it was that we each saw, and made place in each others hearts to accommodate and to respect and to value those views that are unique to each of us.
Ol Chili here knows more personal information about me and my views than anyone else anywhere, -even my own wife of 43 years. A Friend he has been indeed.)

Might I suggest Chili my friend, that you this time, use the PM function to open up a personal dialog with Adam. Who knows but that we might have the pleasure of meeting yet another friend we never know'd 'a Walkin' down that ol' rocky road?






.

fatpie42

Or had been busy and hadn't revisited the thread...

Adam

So, Ss&V,
If you can't attack the message about eyewitnesses itself (and it has gone basically unchallenged for over 220 posts), attack the right to present the message here? Not to mention attacking the messenger instead of the message?

If one presupposes that there is no direct evidence about Jesus, then Form Criticism can be considered as the second-best (or third-best) alternative. But that presupposition is not true. Even on its own terms, the principles and conclusions of Form Criticism have been refuted. Why should I start over again by accepting what I know is not true? I continue to reject any presuppositions. On Christian websites they presuppose inerrancy. Scholars presuppose Form Criticism. Here atheism is the presupposition. Where am I supposed to be heard fairly?