aa5874

You don't know what you are talking about. I do NOT really argue that Eusebius existed. I argue that "Church History" contain claims that CONTRADICT you and that you have NO source for what you say about Marcion.

Now, why don't you doubt the existence of Marcion? Where is your proof of Marcion? Eusebius claimed Marcuion did exist.

I will tell you RIGHT now I ONLY present the written EVIDENCE of antiquity to SHOW that the NT supports FICTION and Mythology.

Justin Martyr claimed Marcion preached ANOTHER GOD and ANOTHER Son.

Hippolytus claimed Marcion did NOT use the Pauline but that he used the Doctrine of Empedocles.

These claims by APOLOGETICS Contradict "Against Marcion" , another apoologetic source, and MUST be taken into consideration.

You CONSISTENTLY IGNORE evidence that Contradict your assertions about Marcion.

jakejonesiv

You can't refute anything using unknown sources. It doesn't matter what you think Church history or Hippolytus claimed. You can't vouch for your own sources.

Justin Martyr wrote he was a contemporary with Marcion and that Marcion was a Christian. You are contradicted by your own sources!

You cannot refute a word I write by telling me what you don't know.

Solo

To each his own, archibald. We all live in a world partially created by our knowledge and partially by our imagination.

You have told us that you live in one where Wrede rhymes with read and the parallel tickles your exegetic fancy.

Apparently, it can't be helped. Gegen Dummheit gibts es keine Pillen.


Jiri

JonA

Of course, these are not our only options. There are many reasons why people seeking to write a story about a particular character look to other works already about that character to form the basis of their narrative.

For example, one of the reasons Matthew and Luke may have copied Mark might have been because the Markan account of Jesus was already widespread in their target communities. For members of such communities, Markan Jesus was Jesus; no account of the life of Jesus could even be remotely 'true' if it didn't at least somewhat resemble the Markan narrative as the community members knew it.


Sure we can. Verisimilitude is regularly used by authors of pure fiction to give their stories a more 'authentic' feel, and to make them more relatable.

Jon

archibald

If you think I'm scared off by secret coded threats of that sort, you're underestimating my superpowers.

fatpie42

I'm not sure I get all this stuff about forgeries and "writing fiction".

Surely we must remember that just looking at the Old Testament, there is a great deal of redaction going on. People didn't normally see what they wrote as 'a record of history'.

Now I can't speak for Matthew and Luke because they actually contain elements copied from one another. It's pretty clear they weren't in the same room borrowing from each other, so there must have been a gospel 'Q', or possibly a number of gospels with much copied from Mark, which they were copying. Who knows, perhaps they really did believe that the gospels they copied were recorded history. Luke certainly claims that his account is a record of history.

Of course, all three synoptic gospels are aimed at an audience. As I understand it, Matthew is aimed at Jews and Luke is aimed at Gentiles. Since the earliest account is (apparently) written for Romans, perhaps that explains why all of them share this apologia to excuse Pilate of all guilt for Jesus' death. In any case, the audience somewhat decides how the story is written.

Going back as far as Mark, he too was copying. He would be taking his information from pericopes which described various teachings or stories about Jesus in relation to how followers should live. What he needed to do, however, was put the whole thing into some kind of narrative. That required additions to his material.

I can actually quite easily imagine that each writer is taking previous writers' additions as completely reliable. Still, a great deal is added or altered for symbolic significance in all the gospels (especially often in John).

Sheshbazzar

Where?

Vorkosigan

Yes, of course. As I posted earlier in the thread, the other writers all knew that the Jesus tale was made by paralleling the OT. They did so themselves, and the way they did it suggests they knew how Mark was doing it. Really, this question has already been answered. The answer to the first half is "yes" and to the second, "no" since the other gospel writers were well aware the story was fictional and malleable.

Vorkosigan

fatpie42

Luke 1:1-10


Did I miss something important? Please let me know.

archibald

I would pretty much agree, with the proviso that we obviously can't say that each writer viewed the previous writer's story as completely reliable, in all details.