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Old 06-11-2013, 06:13 PM   #11
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If that were so you wouldn't have bothered with your patronizing attitude and "hobby horse" reference. You are doing what we call in Yiddish "dancing at two weddings."

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I am not avoiding your point. I am meeting it head on, again, and there is nothing more to say.

The existence of Marcion means nothing to me, but it does seem to make sense of the history.
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Old 06-12-2013, 05:15 PM   #12
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That is a very interesting supposition considering the fact that the gospels were always presented as a canon of a set of texts, and there exists no evidence of Christians who accepted one or another of the canonical gospels to the exclusion of the others. There is every reason to believe that all the gospels were intended to be part of set of texts supplementing one another.
There were never Christians who accepted 2 gospels and 5 epistles, or 6 gospels and 11 epistles.
Baloney! The fact is that the gospels started with Mark. Since Mark stopped with no resurrect, and had no infant narratives, there was nothing for others to copy from. Each gospel writer decided to write a gospel to fill in that lack of information with made up nonsense, which is why the resurrection tall tales differ so wildly. the infant narratives of Luke and Matthew likewise. Somebody later added the last few verses to Mark and the sermon on the mount stuff from some other source.

The idea that Matthew, Luke, Mark, john were somehow written to supplement each other is simply false. I have seen a lot of foolish amateur harmonists try to tell us that these were written to support each other, and that these books were meant to fiit together like some sort of bizarrre jigsaw puzzle.

And yes, there were many other gospels written, rejected by orthodoxy, but fakers do make up crap and float it as gospel truth. A good example in the gospels is the infant narratives of Matthew and Luke that cannot be made to harmonize, showing the tendency to make up crap from whole clothe with no knowledge of what some other faker is writing on the same subject. No competent way to argue here Luke and Matthew meant to complement each other.

And of course there are the many Gnostic gospels that were believed by many.

The gospel narratives stand as a whole and should not be allowed to be pulled apart willy-nilly. The narrative of Luke, Jesus arose and on that day ascended to heaven from Bethany after being in Jerusalem cannot be harmonized with the tall tale of Matthew that Jesus was never in Jerusalem with his disciples, but they went to Galilee to meet Jesus, several day's walk from Bethany. John complements neither with his tall tales of a Jesus that was in Jerusalem, THEN Galilee but is not recoded as ascending at all. Mark, something different, a whole other narrative.

I have seen apologists try to insert whole new tall tales into the old tall tales to try to harmonize them, and then telling me each sentence in these carefully crafted narrative has no connection to each other and can be moved around at will. No that does not work.

The infant narratives demonstrate how this works, Filling in gaps in the story with made up tales that certainly did not happen and most certainly do not in any way support one another. The made up tales of these four gospels have no more truth in them than the infancy gospel of Thomas with its animated clay birds et al.

After all, somebody made up the orthodox nonsense of Roman era Mithraism, and many people believed that. Making up nonsense and passing it off as truth is rather common and it is not a matter of who believed this rather than that. Contradictions in the gospels tell us something. And it isn't about mutual support.

In the end, nobody knew anything at all about the supposed resurrection of Jesus, all we have is wild and woolly tall tales that contradict each other massively and cannot be harmonized and do not support each other in any way at all. The important lesson of all this is, nobody knew anything factual at all about the supposed resurrection, Not one reliable fact at all.

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Old 06-12-2013, 05:34 PM   #13
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There is no evidence of any of this except among the statements of the church spokesmen. The logic just doesn't hold up. There is no evidence for the existence of Marcion or his alleged community anywhere, no surviving texts, nothing.
There is evidence of Marcion in he writings of his enemies. This is usually considered sufficient evidence.

Your constant repetition of this point, without responding to your critics, is getting boring. Please find something more interesting to post.
I have to concur with Toto on this point. Marcion existed, wrote what he wrote and drew criticism from orthodox Christians likeTertullian. Tertullian's Adversus Marcian pretty much establishes Marcion's existence.

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Old 06-12-2013, 06:20 PM   #14
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Charlie, I think you are going around in a few different directions.
You ignore the point I made, which is that Christian writers always present all the canonical books as going together as a SET. There is no one who says that Christians adhere to 3 gospels and 9 epistles or 6 gospels and 20 epistles. The canonical set always goes together. No Church writer says that the canon included the gospel according to Henry, or that one of the canonical gospels never existed.
Likewise no one says that the canon includes the Epistle to the Muscovites or the Epistle to the Damascenes. You get the point.

You can concur with Toto as much as you want. The point is that you have no corroborative evidence anywhere for the existence of someone named Marcion, Marcionites or communities or texts of this group from the second century.
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Old 06-12-2013, 06:57 PM   #15
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I was going to refer you to
Dan Barker's Easter Challenge
but I see my Post #71 latest response to you there still is falling on deaf ears. Perhaps we can renew the debate over there in a more appropriate thread. There's a new article out in New Testament Studies in which Henk Jan de Jonge argues that Luke's syntax in Luke 24 and Acts 1 means that the "Ascension" precedes the forty days, and this would even bring it into agreement with Mark 16:19.
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Old 06-12-2013, 10:51 PM   #16
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I have to concur with Toto on this point. Marcion existed, wrote what he wrote and drew criticism from orthodox Christians likeTertullian. Tertullian's Adversus Marcian pretty much establishes Marcion's existence.

Cheerful Charlie
Tertullian's "Against Marcion" is a forgery and was not composed in the 2nd century and no earlier than the end of the 4th century

It has been already shown that "Against Marcion" attributed to Tertullian was unknown for hundreds of years and was never used or referenced by Eusebius or even Jerome at the end of the 4th century.

And further, Apologetics Hippolytus and Ephrem the Syrian contradicted "Against Marcion".
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Old 06-13-2013, 06:28 PM   #17
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Originally Posted by Adam View Post
I was going to refer you to
Dan Barker's Easter Challenge
but I see my Post #71 latest response to you there still is falling on deaf ears. Perhaps we can renew the debate over there in a more appropriate thread. There's a new article out in New Testament Studies in which Henk Jan de Jonge argues that Luke's syntax in Luke 24 and Acts 1 means that the "Ascension" precedes the forty days, and this would even bring it into agreement with Mark 16:19.
Mark and Acts are an apologist's dream, they are written in such a vague and general form they can be asserted to mean anything. From Acts' language, we cannot say conclusively anything about when Jesus ascended, after 40 days or not. This makes it subject to much abuse at hands of harmonists. Because Mark does not say Jesus arose from Jerusalem, though it is obvious that is what Mark mean, some harmonists will argue it was a house in Galilee to harmonize Mark with Matthew, not Acts.

In alt.bible.errancy i witnessed some truly bizzare efforts at harmonization in the past.
Vague pronouns are the devil's playground.

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Old 06-13-2013, 06:49 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by Duvduv View Post
Charlie, I think you are going around in a few different directions.
You ignore the point I made, which is that Christian writers always present all the canonical books as going together as a SET. There is no one who says that Christians adhere to 3 gospels and 9 epistles or 6 gospels and 20 epistles. The canonical set always goes together. No Church writer says that the canon included the gospel according to Henry, or that one of the canonical gospels never existed.
Likewise no one says that the canon includes the Epistle to the Muscovites or the Epistle to the Damascenes. You get the point.

You can concur with Toto as much as you want. The point is that you have no corroborative evidence anywhere for the existence of someone named Marcion, Marcionites or communities or texts of this group from the second century.
Ohhh the old bar game. Raise the bar so the evidence that Marcion wrote and drew the ire of early Christians is dismissed. Lower the bar when making claims you want to believe.

No, not going to play. Marcion most certainly existed and stirred up the pot real good with his existence. If witness from Ireneus and Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius and others don't count, by raising the bar that high means almost nothing can be claimed to be true or existed about anything involving Christianity until recent times. Somebody in another thread pointed out an ancient church has been found displaying Marcion's name.

All you are doing here is making sure nobody here will give you any credibility at all when you play games like this. You will be thought of as lacking good, sober judgement, if you play the raise and lower the bar willy-nilly game. You just cannot eave away facts you don't like like this.

Toto is right, the numerous critiques of Marcion demonstrate he existed, and sober experts admit his creating his canon spurred on orthodox Christians to follow suit.
Here on this forum, you are going to find most will follow the experts on this.

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Old 06-13-2013, 07:08 PM   #19
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Originally Posted by Cheerful Charlie View Post
I have to concur with Toto on this point. Marcion existed, wrote what he wrote and drew criticism from orthodox Christians likeTertullian. Tertullian's Adversus Marcian pretty much establishes Marcion's existence.

Cheerful Charlie
Tertullian's "Against Marcion" is a forgery and was not composed in the 2nd century and no earlier than the end of the 4th century

It has been already shown that "Against Marcion" attributed to Tertullian was unknown for hundreds of years and was never used or referenced by Eusebius or even Jerome at the end of the 4th century.

And further, Apologetics Hippolytus and Ephrem the Syrian contradicted "Against Marcion".
I don't think it was a forgery. Not that it matters, Marcion had plenty of other critics, establishing his existence.

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Old 06-13-2013, 07:27 PM   #20
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Rhetoric is no substitute fo substantive discussion.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Duvduv View Post
Charlie, I think you are going around in a few different directions.
You ignore the point I made, which is that Christian writers always present all the canonical books as going together as a SET. There is no one who says that Christians adhere to 3 gospels and 9 epistles or 6 gospels and 20 epistles. The canonical set always goes together. No Church writer says that the canon included the gospel according to Henry, or that one of the canonical gospels never existed.
Likewise no one says that the canon includes the Epistle to the Muscovites or the Epistle to the Damascenes. You get the point.

You can concur with Toto as much as you want. The point is that you have no corroborative evidence anywhere for the existence of someone named Marcion, Marcionites or communities or texts of this group from the second century.
Ohhh the old bar game. Raise the bar so the evidence that Marcion wrote and drew the ire of early Christians is dismissed. Lower the bar when making claims you want to believe.

No, not going to play. Marcion most certainly existed and stirred up the pot real good with his existence. If witness from Ireneus and Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius and others don't count, by raising the bar that high means almost nothing can be claimed to be true or existed about anything involving Christianity until recent times. Somebody in another thread pointed out an ancient church has been found displaying Marcion's name.

All you are doing here is making sure nobody here will give you any credibility at all when you play games like this. You will be thought of as lacking good, sober judgement, if you play the raise and lower the bar willy-nilly game. You just cannot eave away facts you don't like like this.

Toto is right, the numerous critiques of Marcion demonstrate he existed, and sober experts admit his creating his canon spurred on orthodox Christians to follow suit.
Here on this forum, you are going to find most will follow the experts on this.

Cheerful Charlie
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