Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Ben C Smith · 01-15-2009, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

But, the Gospels cannot be classied as biographies unless first they can be shown to be of historical value with respect to Jesus, the son of God.

Is the Life of Romulus by Plutarch of historical value with respect to Romulus?

Ben.

Ben C Smith · 01-15-2009, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

...

If Mark did not intend to fool his contemporaries, then he must have included, even if only incidentally, something in his gospel that would let them know what he was about. What do you think that something was (or those somethings were)? What were his readers supposed to read in his text that would tell them that this text, while in the form of a biography, did not actually contain real biographical information about a real figure? What in his presentation would signal to his peers that he was writing only theology, not biography in any true sense?.....

Thr resurrection, witnessed by three women who ran away and didn't tell anyone, would probably qualify.

So you are saying that this narrated event would signal to contemporary readers that the work as a whole is pseudo-biography, correct? What evidence do you have that this kind of narrated event would signal this to contemporaries of Mark?

Ben.

Toto · 01-15-2009, 09:41 AM

I don't know who the contemporaries of Mark were. The only people we know read Mark were aLuke and aMatthew, and they seem to have treated Mark as a pseudo-biography because they felt free to alter key details.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything coming out of this line of inquiry.

aa5874 · 01-15-2009, 09:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

But, the Gospels cannot be classied as biographies unless first they can be shown to be of historical value with respect to Jesus, the son of God.

Is the Life of Romulus by Plutarch of historical value with respect to Romulus?

Ben.

Let us deal with your statement where you think Mark is ancient biography. You have so far failed to isolate one single event that is true or historical accurate within Mark with respect to Jesus, the son of God.

I have the view that gMark is fiction and can isolate many events that are fictitious and/or implausible within the texts, you on the other hand cannot show anything biographical or historically valid with respect to Jesus, the son of God.

It is not the fictional and implausible elements of a text that guarantee its historical or biographical validity, but parts of the text that can be corroborated or be reasonable considered true using some other source external of the text under scrutiny.

You think that it is not wise to regard a text as fictional even if the text is filled with fiction, yet you still think it is prudent, without question, to regard a text as biographical when nothing in it has been verified as historically valid with respect to its main character.

Your position is logically weak.

Ben C Smith · 01-15-2009, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything coming out of this line of inquiry.

Well, then, by all means lock the thread and throw away the key. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Ben.

bacht · 01-15-2009, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything coming out of this line of inquiry.

Well, then, by all means lock the thread and throw away the key. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Ben.

I had a question about the 1st C setting of the Jesus story. As Toto says, the real history of the period from 66 - 135 would have been very painful for many Jews. Yet the NT never mentions any of it. The gospels have more of a "once-upon-a-time" flavour compared to the gritty details in Josephus.

I was wondering if Mark deliberately chose dates ca 30 in order to avoid negative attention from Rome? That is, did he create a false setting for his Christ, even if there was an historical man behind it? For all we know the "real" Jesus could have been active after the fall of the temple.

Sheshbazzar · 01-15-2009, 11:46 AM

I tend to strongly believe that we do not have "Mark" as it was originally composed, that very early on, the christian church appropriated an early messianic Jewish "sayings" document, one which they then extensively modified and "fleshed out" into a connected narrative form that would become a supporting document and vehicle for their theological teachings.
As such there would have been no actual "Mark" as its writer, and no original composition known by the name of "The Gospel According to Saint Mark", the moniker that a much latter church finally placed upon the work that they had (re)composed.
The other synoptics being little more than slightly differing and/or latter forms of the same compositional process as it was subsequently modified to adapt it to varying cultural needs and leanings of the early church.
Thus there was no actual "Saint Mark", "Saint Matthew," or "Saint Luke", these being only names chosen much latter by the church to identify those variant forms of the "Memoirs of The Apostles" that were being circulated. Each of which in their church origins, had been composed and targeted towards the "needs" of specific ethnic/political/geographically located audiences, with no intention that most readers would ever have any easy and ready access to a version that was not the one that was targeted to their general area, or that all three would ever be bound together into a single volume, allowing for such easy comparisons.
As such, none were either "right" nor "wrong" in the irreconcilable differences that exist in their conflicting details.
(the related "events" never happened anyway, so the differences existing in the accounts were inconsequential to the church's writers)
In my view, these books never existed as novels, plays, or biographies, they were composed by the church's writers as works of religious propaganda, and so targeted and contrived to "win" as many converts to the new christian cult as possible.
Perhaps it would be easiest to understand them as the original variety of the "Chick tract", where the fictional story lines details are present only to serve as a vehicle to deliver the "conversion" propaganda.

Toto · 01-15-2009, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything coming out of this line of inquiry.

Well, then, by all means lock the thread and throw away the key. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Ben.

I'm not the only one here. Anyone else who thinks this is productive can continue.

Clivedurdle · 01-15-2009, 01:15 PM

Sorry, there is, we can clearly ask are we looking at the epic or the dramatic or the novelistic forms of fiction.

Quote:

Three Moods of Fiction.—Eliminating, therefore, as unprofitable any attempt at a critical distinction between fiction that is written in verse and fiction that is written in prose, we may yet derive a certain profit from a distinction along broad and general lines between three leading moods of fiction, the epic, the dramatic, and what (lacking a more precise term) we may call the novelistic. Certain materials of fiction are inherently epic, or dramatic, or novelistic, as the case may be. Also, an author, according to his mental attitude toward life and toward the subject-matter of his fictions, may cast his stories either in the epic, the dramatic, or the novelistic mood. In order to understand this distinction, we must examine the nature of the epic and the drama, and then study the novel in comparison with these two elder types of fiction.
I. The Epic Mood.—The great epics of the world, whether, as in the case of the Norse sagas and possibly of the Homeric poems, they have been a gradual and undeliberate aggregation of traditional ballads, or else, as in the case of the "Aeneid" and "Paradise Lost," they have been the deliberate production of a single conscious artist, have attained their chief significance from the fact that they have summed up within them-selves the entire contribution to human progress of a certain race, a certain nation, a certain organized religion. The glory that was Greece is epitomized and sung forever in the "Iliad,"—the grandeur that was Rome, in the "Aeneid." All that the Middle Ages gave the world is gathered and expressed in the "Divine Comedy" of Dante: all of medieval history, science, philosophy, scholarship, poetry, religion may be reconstructed from a right reading and entire understanding of this single monumental poem. If you would know Portugal in her great age of discovery and conquest and national expansion, read the "Lusiads" of Camoëns. If you would know Christianity militant against the embattled legions of the Saracens, read the "Jerusalem Liberated" of Tasso. If you would know what the Puritan religion once meant to the greatest minds of England, read the "Paradise Lost" of Milton.
The great epics have attained this resumptive and historical significance only by exhibiting as subject-matter a vast and communal struggle, in which an entire race, an entire nation, an entire organized religion has been concerned,---a struggle imagined as so vast that it has shaken heaven as well as earth and called to conflict not only men but also gods. The epic has dealt always with a struggle, at once human and divine, to establish a great communal cause. This cause, in the "Aeneid," is the founding of Rome; in the "Jerusalem Liberated" it is the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; in the "Faerie Queene" it is the triumph of the virtues over the vices; in the "Lusiads" it is the discovery and conquest of the Indies; in the "Divine Comedy" it is the salvation of the human soul. Whatever nations, whatever races, whatever gods oppose the founding of Rome or the liberation of Jerusalem must be conquered, because in either case the epic cause is righteous and predestined to prevail.
As a result of this, the characters in the great epics are memorable mainly because of the part that they play in advancing or retarding the victory of the vast and social cause which is the subject of the story. Their virtues and their faults are communal and representative: they are not adjudged as individuals, apart from the conflict in which they figure: and, as a consequence, they are rarely interesting in their individual traits. It is in rendering the more intimate and personal phases of human character that epic literature shows itself, when compared with the modern novel, inefficient. The epic author exhibits little sympathy for any individual who struggles against the cause that is to be established. Aeneas' dallying with Dido and subsequent desertion of her is of little interest to Virgil on the ground of individual personality: what interests him mainly is that so long as Aeneas lingers with the Carthaginian queen, the founding of Rome is being retarded, and that when at last Aeneas leaves her, he does so to advance the epic cause. Therefore Virgil regards the desertion of Dido as an act of heroic virtue on the part of the man who sails away to found a nation. A modern novelist, however (and this is the main point to be considered in this connection), would conceive the whole matter more personally. He would be far less interested at the moment in the ultimate founding of Rome than he would be in the misery of the deserted woman; and instead of considering Aeneas as a model of heroic virtue, would adjudge him as personally base. From this we see that the novelistic attitude toward character is much more intimate than the epic attitude. The wrath of Achilles is significant to Homer, not so much be-cause it is an exhibition of individual personality as because it is a factor in jeopardizing the victory of the Greeks. Considered as types of individual character, most of Homer's heroes are mere boys. It is the cause for which they fight that gives them dignity: embattled Greece must repossess the beauty which a lesser race has reft away from it. Even Helen herself is merely an idea to be fought for: she is not, as a woman, interesting humanly. It is only in infrequent passages, such as the scene of parting between Andromache and Hector, that the ancient epics reveal the intimate attitude toward character to which we have grown accustomed in the modern novel.
Because the epic authors have been interested always in communal conflict rather than in individual personality, they have seldom made any use of the element of love, the most intimate and personal of all emotions. There is no love in Homer, and scarcely any love in Virgil and in Milton. Tasso, to be sure, uses a love motive as the basis for each of the three leading strands of his story; but because of this, his epic, though gaining in modernity and charm, loses something of the communal immensity —the impersonal dignity—of the "Iliad" and the "Aeneid." On the other hand, novelistic authors, since they have been interested mainly in the revelation of intimate phases of individual personality, have seized upon the element of love as the leading motive of their stories. And this is one of the main differences, on the side of content, between epic and novelistic fiction.
Certain great works of fiction stand upon the border-land between the epic and the novel. "Don Quixote" is, for instance, such a work. It is epic in that it sums up and expresses the entire contribution of Spain to the progress of humanity. It is resumptive of the nation that produced it: all phases of Spanish life and character, ideals and temperament, are epitomized within it. But, on the other hand, it is novelistic in the emphasis it casts on individual personality, the intimacy with which it focusses the interest not so much upon a nation as upon a man.
The epic, in the ancient sense, is dead to-day. Facility of intercommunication between the nations has made us all citizens of the world; and an increased sense of the relativity of national and religious ideals has made us catholic of other systems than our own. Consequently we have lost belief in a communal conflict so absolutely just and necessary as to call to battle powers not only human but divine. Also, since the French Revolution, we have grown to set the one above the many, and to believe that, of right, society exists for the sake of the individual rather than the individual for the sake of society. Therefore the novel, which deals with individual personality in and for itself, is more attuned to modern life than the epic, which presents the individual mainly in relation to a communal cause which he strives to advance or to retard.
The epic note, however, survives in certain momentous modern novels. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," for example, is less important merely as a novel than as the epic of the great cause of abolition. Underlying many of the works of Erckmann-Chatrian is an epic purpose to advance the cause of universal peace by a depiction of the horrors of war. Balzac had in mind the resumptive phase of epic composition when he planned his "Human Comedy" (choosing his title in evident imitation of that of Dante's poem), and started out to sum up all phases of human life in a single monumental series of narratives. So also the late Frank Norris had an epic idea in his imagination when he planned a trilogy of novels (which unhappily he died before completing) to exhibit what the great wheat industry means to the modern world.
In the broad and social sense, the epic is undeniably a greater type of fiction than the novel, because it is more resumptive of life in the large, and looks upon humanity with a vaster sweep of vision; but in the deep and personal sense, the novel is the greater, because it is more capable of an intimate study of individual emotion. And it is possible, as we have seen, that modern fiction should be at once epic and novelistic in content and in mood,—epic in resuming all aspects of a certain, phase of life and in exhibiting a social struggle, and novelistic in casting emphasis upon personal details of character and in depicting intimate emotions. Probably no other author has succeeded better than Emile Zola in combining the epic and the novelistic moods of fiction; and the novels in the Rougon-Macquart series are at once communal and personal in their significance.
II. The Dramatic Mood.-It is somewhat simpler to trace a distinction both in content and in method between novelistic and dramatic fiction, because the latter is produced under special conditions which impose definite limitations upon the author. A drama is, in essence, a story devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience. The dramatist, therefore, works ever under the sway of three influences to which the novelist is not submitted :—namely, the temperament of the actors by whom his plays are to be performed, the physical conditions of the theatre in which they are to be produced, and the psychologic nature of the audience before which they are to be presented. The combined force of these three external influences upon the dramatist accounts for all of the essential differences between the drama and the novel.
1. Influence of the Actor.—First of all, because of the influence of his actors, the dramatist is obliged to draw character through action, and to eliminate from his work almost every other means of characterization. He must therefore select from life such moments as are active rather than passive. His characters must constantly be doing something; they may not pause for careful contemplation. Consequently the novelist has a wider range of subject than the dramatist, because he is able to consider life more calmly, and to concern himself, if need be, with thoughts and feelings that do not translate them-selves into action. In depicting objective events in which the element of action is paramount, the drama is more immediate and vivid; but the novel may depict subjective events which are quite beyond the presentation of actors in a theatre.

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles18/fiction-9.shtml

Clivedurdle · 01-15-2009, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

So which heroic biographical dramas written in Rome during the first century would you compare (any form of) Mark to?

Ben.

Wasn't Seneca purported to have written these types of works? Only one I ever read, (years ago), was called 'Octavia', I believe.

http://www.nazarenus.com/

Quote:

Ever since the Enlightenment, when the gospels began to be studied in a rationalistic frame of mind as literary works within their ancient context, parallels have been drawn between the passion of Jesus and the rituals and mysteries of the dying and resurrecting gods such as Dionysus and Osiris. The death and resurrection of Osiris was enacted annually in a dramatic performance. Greek tragedy evolved from sacred plays in honor of Dionysus. Did primitive Christianity, too, begin as ritual drama?

The economy of the Gospel narratives is related to the ritual commemoration of the Passion; taking them literally we run the risk of transposing into history what are really the successive incidents of a religious drama,

so wrote Alfred Loisy, one of the most perceptive New Testament scholars of our time.[2] J. M. Robertson went even further, claiming that the story of the passion is

the bare transcript of a primitive play... always we are witnessing drama, of which the spectators needed no description, and of which the subsequent transcriber reproduces simply the action and the words...[3]

Even theologians who are less daring in framing hypotheses continue to stumble upon traces of some ancient drama that appears to underlie the passion narrative.[4] S.G.F. Brandon is impressed by the superb theatrical montage of the trial of Jesus[5] ; Raymond Brown finds that John’s gospel contains touches worthy of great drama in many of its scenes and suggests that our text may be the product of a dramatic rewriting on such a scale that little historical material remains.[6] But none of these scholars has succeeded in reconstructing this drama or identifying its author. They came very close to the truth but missed a crucial elementthe drama that constituted the kernel of the passion story was not a primitive ritual performance, but a tragedy of considerable subtlety and sophistication.
The gospels themselves contain evidence that the creator of this tragedy was someone imbued with the cultural values of the early Roman Empire, a playwright of unusual abilities, who used drama as a vehicle for expressing specific philosophical concepts. The gospels of Mark and Luke originated in Rome in the late fifties or early sixties A.D., a period that coincided with the last great flourishing of Roman tragedy in the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (3 B.C.–65 A.D.). Seneca was the author of at least nine tragedies, all modeled on other, more ancient dramas. His philosophical writings are still admired for their elegant exposition of the Stoic view of life. Was it Seneca who wrote the tragedy on the passion of Jesus that the evangelists used in constructing their narratives? A question such as this can never be answered with certitude. It can be, however, adopted as a working hypothesis, whose success can be judged by the extent to which it helps solve the innumerable enigmas of the passion narratives.
Seneca’s choice of Jesus as a tragic hero may at first seem surprising; but we must remember that there was a whole gendre of Roman tragedy that dealt with historical events from the recent past (the so-called fabulae praetextae). Moreover, Seneca had a lifelong interest in oriental religions and wrote several books on the subject.[7] That Seneca had received some information about the founder of Christianity may be inferred from the allusion in one of his works to an unnamed individual who had aspired to royalty, but instead was condemned to suffer a cruel death upon the cross.[8] Seneca encountered, in the trial of Jesus, a subject worthy of his aspirations as a philosopher and dramatist. His treatment of it was strictly within the conventions of the ancient theater, since it corresponded point by point with the original cultic tragedy of Dionysus, which every subsequent tragedy tried to emulate:

The hero is defeated in a struggle.
He is killed in a sacrificial ritual.
A messenger arrives, announcing his fate, and the chorus responds with its lamentations.
The body is brought onto the stage and is buried.
There follows a recognition that the hero is not truly dead, but has gained immortality. He appears to men as a god, and mourning turns into a joyful celebration.[9]

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01-15-2009, 09:41 AM	#173
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	I don't know who the contemporaries of Mark were. The only people we know read Mark were aLuke and aMatthew, and they seem to have treated Mark as a pseudo-biography because they felt free to alter key details. I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything coming out of this line of inquiry.

01-15-2009, 11:46 AM	#177
Sheshbazzar Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: On the path of knowledge Posts: 8,889	I tend to strongly believe that we do not have "Mark" as it was originally composed, that very early on, the christian church appropriated an early messianic Jewish "sayings" document, one which they then extensively modified and "fleshed out" into a connected narrative form that would become a supporting document and vehicle for their theological teachings. As such there would have been no actual "Mark" as its writer, and no original composition known by the name of "The Gospel According to Saint Mark", the moniker that a much latter church finally placed upon the work that they had (re)composed. The other synoptics being little more than slightly differing and/or latter forms of the same compositional process as it was subsequently modified to adapt it to varying cultural needs and leanings of the early church. Thus there was no actual "Saint Mark", "Saint Matthew," or "Saint Luke", these being only names chosen much latter by the church to identify those variant forms of the "Memoirs of The Apostles" that were being circulated. Each of which in their church origins, had been composed and targeted towards the "needs" of specific ethnic/political/geographically located audiences, with no intention that most readers would ever have any easy and ready access to a version that was not the one that was targeted to their general area, or that all three would ever be bound together into a single volume, allowing for such easy comparisons. As such, none were either "right" nor "wrong" in the irreconcilable differences that exist in their conflicting details. (the related "events" never happened anyway, so the differences existing in the accounts were inconsequential to the church's writers) In my view, these books never existed as novels, plays, or biographies, they were composed by the church's writers as works of religious propaganda, and so targeted and contrived to "win" as many converts to the new christian cult as possible. Perhaps it would be easiest to understand them as the original variety of the "Chick tract", where the fictional story lines details are present only to serve as a vehicle to deliver the "conversion" propaganda.

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