dog-on

Cool. Now for the question. Do the Gospels read more like biographies or more like novels?

Ben C Smith

Biographies (ancient biographies, not modern ones). Without question.

Ben.

bacht

Is it relevant to look at previous Jewish models vs pagan ones? For instance, the book of Esther may be complete fiction, providing a pseudo-historical origin for Purim, as well as celebrating Jewish nationalism.

Should we assume that pagans would find it easier to deify an ordinary man? After all the Jews only had one God officially, wouldn't the god-man Jesus be at odds with the their tradition? Or did Jesus Christ only emerge as fully God after Jews had left the sect?

Toto

I don't think so. Mark could have written an intentional piece of fiction in the form of a biography.

Very little. Besides, your question seems to assume that Jesus was a recent figure at the time Mark was written, which is assuming what you want to prove. Mark could have been written as late as 150 CE, after two wars had devastated the Jews; or as early as 70 CE, when only one war had devastated the Jews. In either case, the intervening events likely would have overwhelmed any history, not to mention any possible eyewitnesses.

aa5874

But, even if you consider the Gospels ancient biograhies, they are all about a God, the son of the God of the Jews, born of a virgin, who created the world as the the Word of God.

What is an ancient biography of a God, not a man deified, but a creature who came to earth as a God, the offspring of the Holy Ghost?

There are stories and biographies about men who have done wonders through magic or wizardry, like Simon Magus, even Emperors, who were diefied, and others who claimed they have eternal life, but some parts of their biographies can be disputed or regarded as fiction.

However, with the fundamental description of Jesus as a God, the entire story or biography of Jesus whether ancient or not is wholly disputable or can be considered as total fiction, even the crucifixion becomes implausible since it was a God who was crucified and not a real man.

spin

"Without question"? I think that's you covering up your theology.


spin

rlogan

This is "my explanation is better than nothing" reasoning.


You have to start with the time, place, and reason for what we actually have before us not what you think is "really" underneath it. What is the best explanation for the evidence we havein view of every other competing explanation.

You don't get to "win" by saying a man behind the myth is better than nothing. Or that the story we do not have before us is really the one we need to evaluate.

To compare competing full explanations of the text itself requires a summary of every god damned thing from the history preceding the Roman conquest through the councils of nicea & etc that canonized under penalty of death what the "official" story would be.

The text is a political document, and the competition was literally killed off in this political struggle. That this was done for the purpose of better controlling the population under the rule of dictatorship is not some incidental feature of it. It is the most important thing to keep in your mind.

It took a couple of years for me to be able to weigh the Testimonium Flavianum along with my opinion on the Ignatia, the order of gospels, the ending to Mark, blah de blah...


Every one of those things weighs in on any particular question, and as one develops their working hypothesis more fully, each can be re-visited and thought through again in light of everything else.

So for example the first time I read about the TF I was much more sympathetic to the idea it was a partial forgery than I feel now having thought about so many more things.

In statistics we solve systems of inter-related equations where everything depends on everything else so much that one tiny change in a specification reverses completely a major theme driving the whole system.



Here the question is whether some drifter was the linear progenitor to every christian church in the world, or whether different claimants for adherents used the time-worn tactic of creating phony "historical" heritages in order to compete against others.

The letters of Paul. The claim of direct descent from Jesus to Peter to the Pope. All the other gospels and material that was declared heresy in the 4th century apex in the battle over dogma.

The importance of Jesus as a person was to out-compete others in that battle over dogma. That was also the point of using HB prohecy to validate him.


Finally you see Jesus as something that was necessary to retroject after-the-fact. It needs to be sufficiently grand, but also sufficiently removed from the time and place so that it cannot face the howls of contempt it would have if you told it one generation removed and in the same place.

In general I think seeing religion as a game theoretic problem where different brands are competing for adherents is more fruitful than approaching it from the view that it is a random thing without any core motivations driving it.

Elijah

If I’m tracking with what you’re saying, I do agree with Jesus being used to compete with other religious figures in particular the imperial cults. How much did the man himself represent an amalgamation of Judaism and western philosophy/mythology and how much of that was overlaid afterwards in order to compete I don’t know.

I think I imagine the evolution of Christianity as more trial and error then deliberate manipulation of the character to a singular motivation like control over the masses. The version of Christianity that accepted the Gentiles was going to be more prosperous then the version that rejected them and the version that tried to destroy Rome was gotten rid of while the version that tried to work within Rome finally got an emperor to acknowledge Christ. Those who wanted to make Jesus a teacher of a philosophy were forgotten while those who wanted to make him king of all nations converted the world.

Simple evolution of ideas; with the same thing going on with the concept of the Messiah. Eventually after enough messiah wannabees fail at leading the people in a conventional way, someone was going to try something that worked for the people in an unconventional way, that way being a messiah that sacrifices himself for the people instead of asking them to sacrifice their lives in war against an empire they can’t beat. It’s also a messiah that can’t be beat since he’s already dead so it’s difficult to end the movement.

Now the question is did a guy with a messiah complex have a death wish and say watch this and do what I do to his followers or did someone write a story about a character that did that. I go with the guy because I think it was more common for someone to have an actual messiah complex then write a story about a possible messiah and it would be almost surprising if no savior of the world ever tried to kill themselves in some type of showy fashion.

And with the myth to history you have to explain how it got confused for history and from history to magical you just have to explain why people would say outlandish things about him… which shouldn’t be too big a deal if you see Jesus as being used to compete with other religions of the time.

dog-on

Don't you think that, Mark, for instance, is just a bit to contrived to actually be a biography? To me, Mark reads more like theater and seems to make a decent movie script, to boot.

Which ancient biography would you compare Mark most closely to?

Clivedurdle

What difference does it make if Mark is the script of a play?