spin

I don't consider that most of these can be considered as fiction. There is an intent to fiction which cannot be discerned in most of categories. C.S. Lewis had an intent when writing: it was his intent to tell imaginative stories.

This is a modern retrojection. You need to show the claim is relevant for the context of the gospels.

You made that one up.

Another one you made up.

Which devices do you refer to as fictional and how many makes large numbers?

This is an a priori commitment of yours.

Rubbish. Midrash is explanation.

Another one you just made up. If I told you about Columbus seeing the queen of Spain, going off to America, having a good old time there, coming back to Spain and recounting his deeds to the queen, I'm telling history in chiasmus.

We disagree about lies. To me a lie requires intent to deceive.

Oh, poppycock. Your so-called common definition of what is fiction is so general and idiosyncratic it is useless to us. It doesn't fit any of the definitions in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary so it is likely that you are bullshitting to suit your conclusions. Besides, you cannot verify who Boadicia's mother was, so I guess she's fictional.

When someone refers to the bible wholesale as fiction, they are simply talking rot. Lots of things cannot be objectively verified, but that does not necessarily make them false. It indicates that we lack the means of verification. Verification of reality makes something certain. Verification of falseness makes them false and what is left over is unverified. You then have a number of options as to how you should proceed, but arbitrarily declaring that anything not verified as true must therefore be false is not a convincing option. Lots of things we can now verify to be true were unverifiable in the past and you in the past would have illogically have labeled them fiction.

Claiming that the problem of genre regarding the gospels is a "dishonest red herring" to me is FITH. It might be easier to be simplistic in your approach to ancient literature, but if you are not prepared to get your hands dirty trying to deal with the literature (eg discover its genres), you'll never have a hope of understanding it. And to say something meaningful about it, you need to try to understand it. All you have is a useless definition of fiction as your guide and consolation.


spin

Amaleq13

I pointed you toward the speeches of Peter and James in the passage you quoted. Your game-playing is tiresome. :banghead:

Read the speeches. They explicitly support my position. James and Peter reject Paul's opponents' position.

Then you have either not read or not understood the posts in this discussion. As I cannot force you to read and they really cannot be more plain, I'm afraid I cannot help you with either problem.

The subject at hand is your false claim that Acts depicts Paul in conflict with Peter and James. Instead, they are depicted as denying Paul's opponents. Galatians provides an actual example of a depiction of Paul in conflict with Peter and James.

Repeating this rather than defending its relevance is not helpful.

No, my position is based on the speeches given by Peter and James in the passage you quoted. This emphasis on when the position was held appears to have no relevance and you have failed to provide an explanation when asked. More games?

His failure to indicate that circumcision is required and, instead, "we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles" fails to suggest he opposed Paul.

It doesn't lend any credence to the notion of prior opposition with the Pharisees.

DevilsAdvocate

[QUOTE=Amaleq13;5185781]Your responses are laughable. Not only did I read the speeches, I quoted them to you, clearly pointing out the context and the support in the text for the position that the text soes not necessarily support your argument as you claimed.

If you take the account and statements out of order, your position is partially supported by the change of context, but still contradicted in part by Jame's insertion of Jewish food customs into the instructions to the Antioch Christians. You cannot support your claims with the text in context, so you do not use it. You have made no substantive argument. Just rash claims.

DevilsAdvocate

So since you kept returning to Galatians, please explain your position that Paul was in oposition to the Pillars given the text.

spamandham

My mistake then. I thought you were saying it was unknown prior to the 4th century, except by Tertullian, Iranaeus, and Eusebius.

We don't know there were 7 churches, we don't know there were thousands of converts, and we don't know that no-one complained, nor is it obvious they would. There's power in numbers. Syncretization would serve both the Pauline and Catholic sects leaders.

We can't simply take the texts at face value, but that doesn't mean they are works of abject fiction rooted in nothing historical at all.

If Acts was written prior to ALL of the epistles, then you have a strong case that Paul was fictional. But if at least one of the epistles was written prior to Acts, then the idea of Paul being fictional simply doesn't follow.

The author of the original gospel story, which was either the author of Mark or someone he based his work on, and the audience of that work, I imagine knew it was allegorical fiction.

The other Gospel writers were clearly attempting to portray Jesus as historical by adding a lineage and a birth narrative. So, by the time they wrote, the idea that it was allegorical fiction was probably forgotten (at least among most converts).

The best evidence to date seems to support the idea of the following sequence:

gMark -> gLuke -> gMatthew -> gJohn

The Pauline epistles are not part of the Gospel story. Paul talks about A gospel, but he is not part of it. I'm referring to gMark, gLuke, gMatthew, and gJohn. Paul is not part of those stories. You will find no mention of him anywhere within them, and you will find no claim in the epistles or in Acts, that Paul ever knew the person Jesus. The claim is that he had a vision. ...and he could have! People really do have delusional visions, and mistake them for reality.

Unless you wish to propose someone sat down and wrote the entire NT from whole cloth at one sitting, you can't let your preconceptions of one book filter into another.

No he doesn't. He claims he is separated unto it. He is saying he has a special calling to spread the story. He is not claiming to be a part of the story. Also, when Paul uses the word 'gospel', there is no indication whatsoever that he is referring to something akin to the NT Gospels (once we dispense with later strata).

I don't know if this is an attempt to equivocate, or actual confusion. What do you think the word 'gospel' means as used by Paul, and what do you think it means in regards to gMark?


What I provided may well be the work of imagination, but it is both simple, and consistent with the evidence - requiring no implausible steps nor leaps of faith. It relies only on ordinary human behaviors and the evidence at hand.

Your position is not consistent with ALL the evidence, nor even with ordinary human behaviors. Your position is simple only in the sense that it is thoughtless.

You still have not explained in any reasonable way how inventing Paul would aid the Jesus fiction. You have not explained why these people would fabricate the obvious layers we see in the epistles. You have not explained why Acts has Saul's name being changed to Paul. In other words, your position has no explanatory power at all.

I'm proud to have an active imagination, in comparison to the level of thought put into your position.

schilling.klaus

the Marcionite Paul is of course in rigorous opposition to the pillars who are all deceivers, like the churchfathers.

the Catholic corruptor of the epistles moderated the opposition somewhat, in harmonisation with the Paul of the apostolic acts who was just an auxiliary apostle.

Klaus Schilling

aa5874

Again, if you don't know that there were 7 churches, or thousands of converts, why do you constantly imagine that there was some syncretization?

But, wasn't gMark, gLuke, gMatthew and gJohn all written after the so-called Jesus should have been alive and after this Jesus wrote an epistle to a King whom he promised to heal after he was resurrected and ascended to heaven?

What is so difficult in adding a name to an anonymous writing and then fabricating a history for that name?

The name Mark was placed on the second book of the NT and we learned of his "history" after the fact in the second century. The third book of the NT is titled "Luke" but again we only hear about him in the second century.

Fiction can be written at any time. Why do you imagine it can't?

When do you imagine these things happened? Maybe you should imagine the opposite, that is, the other Gospel writers had to come up with genealogies because without these genealogies everybody would imagine that Jesus was fiction.

I think you are confusing stories about Jesus and the gospel story. Jesus, the disciples and Paul are all part of the gospel story, the good news of salvation.

Mark 16.15 1 Corinthians 1.17 It is obvious that Jesus, the disciples and Paul, according to the NT, are all part of the gospel story.


But you agree that the first five books of the NT are fiction and that more than one person used the name Paul, which also implies that some of the Epistles may also be fiction.

I don't have any faith in the Epistles since I am not sure when they were written, how many persons wrote them or what their their real names were.

You still have faith in the Epistles and lots of imagination to substantiate your faith.

You have already agreed that Acts is fiction. I can recognise fiction but cannot always identify motives. Why would persons write fiction in the NT when they should be Christians? I can't explain, except maybe they weren't Christians at all, or maybe all Christian lie about Jesus. I really don't know. But the Gospels, Acts and the Epistles do contain fiction, that's all I know.

I'm proud to be able to detect fiction in the NT.

spin

As a starter, note that Paul, Gal 2:2-6 came to present his stuff before those who were prominent (ie the leaders, the pillars), but false brethren came in and caused problems. But things worsened and he came to see the prominent men of no importance to him and, further, they contributed nothing to him (and that word for "contribute" has the idea of counsel), ie Paul went to them for emotional support and guidance but got nothing from them. They packed him off with a handshake after eliciting his support for the poor. He was clearly in conflict with them, especially as things become clearer in Galatians over their requirement of following the law and performing Jewish acts including circumcision. The conflict becomes open with Cephas in Antioch and other proselytizers circulating in areas Paul considered his own turf.


spin

Amaleq13

You babbled about when the position was taken as though it was relevant but you've repeatedly refused to explain what that might be. :huh:

You've offered nothing to contradict the plain fact that, in Acts 15, James and Peter explicitly deny Paul's opponents and the plain fact that Paul is never depicted as arguing with anyone associated with "the pillars".

That portion of your original assertion continues to be wrong and nothing you've offered so far seems to help rescue it.

Again, you keep repeating claims about chronology without explaining their relevance to my position. How have I taken anything "out of order" by simply pointing to their speeches? Why is when the position was stated relevant to the fact that it was? You seem to have an argument hidden behind these vague references but you don't appear eager to share it.

What "change in context"? James is clearly offering a compromise position that does not include the crucial requirement of circumcision so there is no contradiction at all.

You certainly haven't shown this to be true as far as I can tell.


Does anyone know what the hell he is on about? He seems reluctant to explain himself and prefers to pretend victory. :banghead:

You need me to hold your hand and guide you to the passages where Paul is opposed by men sent from James or where he describes an argument he had with Peter? Really? You aren't even that familiar with the relevant material yet you feel capable of making assertions about the comparisons between Paul's letters and Acts?

My suspicion that you are not sincere in your interest in rational discourse and only interested in playing silly games is growing.

spamandham

I didn't say we know nothing. I said we can't just take the texts at face value, but that doesn't imply everything in them is fiction.

You're the one claiming special knowledge - namely, that these works are abject fiction. I'm just trying to make sense of the evidence in a way that fits both the evidence and human behavior.

So, was Acts a secret book prior to the 4th century or wasn't it?

Huh? What epistle was supposedly written by Jesus?

There's nothing complicated with the basic idea. It's the details that make it complex.

You have to propose what mountainman has done, which is that the entire history of the church was constructed in the 4th century, complete with evidence of an evolving theology, and different strata in the documents, over 1000 years before the tools to detect such a crafty fraud even existed!

So what? Haven't we already agreed on these points?

Of course it can be, but it's implausible that a 2nd/3rd/4th century fiction would include strata that show an evolving theology, >1000 years before techniques to detect such things even existed. Did someone from our own future travel backward in time and help them? If not, how do you explain it? You don't, and you can't, so you just keep ignoring it.

If everyone already knew Jesus was fiction, then what would be the point of trying to portray him as historical, and how could anyone expect to get away with it? They didn't know, so they invented these things to settle the matter.

Paul is part of gMark, simply because an epistle says that Paul's mission is to spread the gospel, even though gMark does not mention Paul in any way?

This is not only the most pathetic argument in this entire thread (which is quite an achievement!), it's got to be one of the worst in BC&H history.