ApostateAbe

I suppose a big reason why I find the misquoting option more favorable is because we know that has already been done throughout the course of early Christianity. We know that Christians put words in the mouth of Jesus that Christians wanted to believe. That describes almost everything within the gospel of John and every gospel authored beyond that. You ask:

So what seems more likely to you; that a person who thought he was the messiah was able to convince people he was so with a dramatic death or some people decided to just make him out to be the messiah even though he didn’t want that, nor did he do anything to deserve the title?

With the first option, we must posit a weird thing about Jesus that is not otherwise evident. With the second option, we just have to posit the usual pattern. It is a tough call, though. I don't mean to say I think its obvious. My own explanation strikes me as ad hoc, and I wish I had a more consistent rule for making such judgments.

So is the son of man to Jesus like the Helper in John? What type of figure was Jesus without the Messiah aspect to you, just a prophet or morality teacher? I guess he had to be a teacher of some type to have followers.

Jesus apparently made himself out to be a prophet. It would be misleading to say just a prophet, because a prophet is nobody to take lightly in the Jewish religion. He was an apocalyptic prophet, and he proclaimed that the world as he knew it would come to a tumultuous end at the hands of the Son of Man commanding an army of angels from Heaven, and a new Kingdom of Heaven would be established on Earth, all within the generation of Jesus. He apparently said so in Mark 13 and the other synoptic gospels.

Vinnie

That is incorrenct. Marcan priority is far more solid than Matthean priority for a multitude of reasons.

If you look through a synopsis it is Matthew who abridges far more than Mark. THe problem is two-fold: Why did Mark omit the material he did that would have been congenial to his purposes and why did he make the expansions that he did instead of adding things like the Sermon on the Mount. Not only does he neglect to include things he should but he decides to expand things in Matthew.

No. You should look at Goodacre's article on Redactional Fatigue. In addition, Mark is more commonly the middle term in wording and order.

Mark was written first and prior to 70 C.E.

Anyone can predict the fall of anything. Jesus may have been fed up with something and thought God would intervene. When Bishop Spong writes a book "Why Christianity must Change or Die?" if it does in fact die 100 years from now it does not a supernatural predictor of the future make him.

Good for him.

That is a good question. Luke may very well have been written early as a knowledge of current events is difficult to suppress. But scholars offer solutions to this.

Acts was not a story of Paul but a story of the spread of Christianity which climaxes with the symbolism of the great missionary coming to Rome, the capital of the Gentile empire. In addition, as Brown relays (Intro NT p 273), "Indeed, the relation espoused by the Paul of Acts 28:25-28 between the mission to the Gentiles and the failure of the mission to the Jews is so different from what Paul himself wrote in Rom 9-11 ca. 57/58 that it is hard to imagine a date in the early 60s for Acts.

Vinnie

IamJoseph

:constern01:


Good if someone can list what was sacrificed by Jesus. They do not even have to offer any proof - just let it be logical, moral, ethical and relative to what others sacrificed in that exact space-time.

spin

Mark was obviously written after the destruction of the temple as the rending of the temple curtain shows.


spin

Elijah

I don’t know which of the early gospels, even the ones found in the Nag you could say you [u]know[u/] contain things he didn’t say. I’m sure there is but it’s hard to know for certain especially with things like John or Thomas which could be more accurate than the synoptics. The post-life appearances you could with confidence say were added in later and didn’t belong to him but beyond that there should be some evidence and reasoning beyond not believing he would say that or thinking that a prophecy about nearly inevitable events couldn’t be made. I don’t see how you can use probability when the data you are using to base the probability on is completely unverifiable.

With the first option, we must posit a weird thing about Jesus that is not otherwise evident. With the second option, we just have to posit the usual pattern. It is a tough call, though. I don't mean to say I think its obvious. My own explanation strikes me as ad hoc, and I wish I had a more consistent rule for making such judgments.

You lost me, sorry. I’m not sure what you consider the weird thing that is not evident and what is the usual pattern?

Jesus apparently made himself out to be a prophet. It would be misleading to say just a prophet, because a prophet is nobody to take lightly in the Jewish religion. He was an apocalyptic prophet, and he proclaimed that the world as he knew it would come to a tumultuous end at the hands of the Son of Man commanding an army of angels from Heaven, and a new Kingdom of Heaven would be established on Earth, all within the generation of Jesus. He apparently said so in Mark 13 and the other synoptic gospels.

So you consider some of the prophecy in the gospels to be real and not interpolation? Is it arranged so that the prophecies that came true no matter how probable or vague must be an interpolation and the ones that failed or haven’t came to fruition yet belong to the actual prophet?

Why would his followers think that a prophecy about the son of man coming at the end times needed to be retro fitted to the guy making the prophecy unless the end times prophecy had already came about? Did Paul consider him the Messiah or just a prophet that was letter edited to look like more than he was?

Elijah

His life is the usual answer, which created a self-sacrifice meme, which spread to his followers, giving the movement credibility.

Vinnie

Certainly a viable possibility but just slightly after 70 C.E. (68 +/- 5) if correct but I disagree at any rate.

Vinnie

spin

You wouldn't have proposed the common conjecture if you did.

But there is no reason to date the text to near the fall of the temple, once your original assertion has been discounted.


spin

Vinnie

Well if you date Matthew ca. 80-90 there is, granted Marcan dependence and time for the dissemination of Mark, along with an earlier Papian tradition, the failure of the details in Mark to correspond exactly to what occurred, the statement about "some standing here" and the lower density of Pharisaic material a good circumstantial case begins to built for a most probable dating.

Vinnie

ApostateAbe

You lost me, sorry. I’m not sure what you consider the weird thing that is not evident and what is the usual pattern?

The weird thing that you posit is that Jesus planned on his own death. The usual pattern that I posit is that Christians inserted things into his mouth.

So you consider some of the prophecy in the gospels to be real and not interpolation? Is it arranged so that the prophecies that came true no matter how probable or vague must be an interpolation and the ones that failed or haven’t came to fruition yet belong to the actual prophet?

Yes, generally, except for the no matter how probable or vague part. I make exceptions.

Why would his followers think that a prophecy about the son of man coming at the end times needed to be retro fitted to the guy making the prophecy unless the end times prophecy had already came about?

Cult followers do that kind of thing. They give as much prestige and credit as they can to the cult leader, often even more than the cult leader asks for.

Did Paul consider him the Messiah or just a prophet that was [later] edited to look like more than he was?

Paul considered him the Messiah (Christ), as did the authors of the synoptic gospels.