No Robots

Well, yeah, exactly. Christ is condemning the moralistic criticism directed against him, pointing out that John was criticized for his ascetism. His point is that moralistic criticism is just a way of shutting out what the prophet has to say.

It fits with the whole tenor of the Gospels, of Christ's struggle against moralistic criticism, whether directed against himself or others.

No Robots

The Nazarenes are generally understood to be the early Jewish-Christians in Palestine. There is no doubt that there was a tendency among them to maintain strict adhesion to rigid legalism. We see this tension throughout the NT. Even within the Gospels, Christ's cavalier attitude toward convention scandalized even his closest followers.

spin

Infrequently.

Hey, I mightn't like it, but he's citing a source and specifying where the lunacy comes from. You need to try a better catch.

And we'll never know by whom. It is merely one sign that there is no (ancient) biographical intent going on here. It's not that an instance of codswallop, but that it is epistemologically unverifiable, thus reflecting badly on the writer.

That's the issue I'm pointing to here. I'd also deal with some of the literary issues that relate to what Ted was on about.

Sorry, your desires are for Mark to be biography and the epistemology isn't looking good.. I'm trying to locate an analysis for you of the gospels as folk traditions (which doesn't necessarily mean that the material, or some of it, reflects a past reality). Hopefully it'll come.

This is partly my bad. I didn't see the scope of your use of Joseph and Mary (but below...), I was only considering the annunciations. The kludge was trying to present Joseph and Mary for sources of material that wasn't told to Nazareth natives, didn't make it into the earliest gospel, but only into the obviously literary efforts of Matthew and Luke.

Oh, so Joseph and Mary gave the report about their interview with Herod?

Hypothetical method of transmission of information that interests us.

I was interested in what sort of excuse you would give for an impossible-to-obtain datum to enter the tradition that the Marcan writer preserves. Next you'll tell us that Jesus transmitted the information.

The rest of the material in the "megaparagraph" should deal with other issues that should shake your desires for a biography.


spin

spin

That is one interpretation and may be correct, but there is no necessity.

Fitting something and being right aren't the same thing. You'd convict too many people on circumstantial evidence.


spin

No Robots

It really comes down to how to read, how to understand what one reads. Reading and understanding the NT is made all the more difficult by the mountains of mud that have been thrown over it. Here's how Brunner opens Our Christ:

How are we to understand Christ, how can we envisage him, this man of Truth, stolen by the men of superstition? No one, for two thousand years, has been the subject of so much talk as Christ has-and mostly on the part of people whose minds are as open to Truth as an owl's eyes are to the light of the sun. Blind as they are, they have even put scales over the eyes of those who can see. And now, at last, the sighted shall see; let them lose, let them forget what they imagined they possessed, and find what they had never sought!

Having fought its way through religious obscurantism, mankind must now contend with critical obscurantism. Here, again, is Brunner:

Until now there has never been a real picture of the character of Christ because the necessary and indispensable means were never applied. What can we say about Christ if we are not really acquainted with Judaism, if we have not made the distinction between prophetic and pharisaic Judaism, if we are not aware of the part played by the oral Torah, of the relation of the ammé haaretz to educated society? And above all, what can we say about Christ unless we are aware of mysticism and genius and the Doctrine of the Spiritual Elite and the Multitude (which alone can explain how the historical Christ has become the dogmatic Christ), unless we ourselves are free from superstition? The so-called "critical" method has contributed nothing to the portrayal of Christ's genuine character. It is good for nothing: indeed, it is damaging and dangerous. My work is also a work of criticism, bringing out the original Christ, as it were, from the palimpsest of Christ. I speak as a critic against the misapplication of criticism, against a mischief which falsely claims to be a study of the Gospels and of Christ, falsely claims to concern itself with the most significant and positive figure of our literature and history.

Go, and see if you really can read and understand the NT.

Ben C Smith

No, Suetonius is citing a source, and that source is Asclepius. Where did Asclepius get it from?

But this exchange is now obsolete, I think; I did not understand at first what exactly you were on about. Your list bore no marks of relating solely to the transmission of allegedly eyewitness information. (Who transmitted the temptation pericope? Well, if it happened, obviously Jesus did, and probably to his disciples over the next year or more. But at present I doubt it happened at all, so what is the point of debating it?)

There are plenty of items in other ancient biographies whose ultimate sources we will never know.

You are projecting (again). My desires have nothing to do with it. I thought Mark was pretty much sui generis until I read Talbert and Burridge.

I agree that the gospels contain folk tradition. But they are written in biographical form.

No. I do not think there were any magi reporting to Herod. The pericopes in the gospels that contain information whose details are hard to imagine being transmitted in any way are implausible. And there are other pericopes in the gospels that are equally implausible (or even more so) for hosts of other reasons. And implausible pericopes do not invalidate a text as an ancient biography. Some ancient biographies seem historically plausible for the most part. Others are just full of implausibilities.

(Is there an it is missing?) You seem to have latched onto a single source of implausibility for some reason. Why is that single kind of implausibility of such interest to you for purposes of determining genre?

For the very last time, spin, somebody invented such data. Is that an excuse? Do I have spell it out in skywriting?

You seem to be debating somebody else here. Probably the same unfortunate soul you were aiming your comments about Peter and Mark and the birth narratives at.

Not one of them affects, to the best of my understanding, the genre of Mark.

And I will not continue to debate you if you are going to continue to guess (and badly) as to my motives. If you cannot stick to the arguments, then you have no business debating someone who can.

Ben.

spin

Bingo!

What would ever make you think that Ben C? :grin: (I really need an eyelash fluttering smilie.)

It's not that we will never know, so much in part as that the authors could never have known or investigated.

I doubt it. I'm vaguely a mentalist. I'd say belief shapes your opinions in a way that is different from that of someone without belief. Is my analysis of a Greek "myth" tradition going to be any different from the way I approach biblical traditions? What about yours?

See above. (Of course I could be wrong, but if you were in my position, how would you react to a profuse denial in the matter here by a rational believer?)

Is the Golden Ass a biography?

So, without anything solid to support the rest, you'll happily hack way what offends your sensibilities and happily keep the rest. I at least know that Suetonius was dealing with real people.

Ellipsis.

It reflects on the activity of the writing. It certainly points to a non-realistic effort.

If it'll make you feel better about it.

Somebody invented this data and our author blithely didn't get the material from any biography-oriented procedure. It was not based on research it was tradition transmission.

No, you fulfilled my analysis above.

You, it seems to me, are the one who is trying to have his cake and eat it. It's a biography, well, this bit isn't, and that bit isn't and come to think of neither is this or this or that, without any sign of anything that is actually back there somewhere. We are on slightly stronger grounds when we get to Suetonius, because at least we know that there is certainly something real behind it. In fact there is a lot behind Suetonius (despite the volume of accompanying crap -- which sometimes makes separation difficult) as is true for much of the later material provided by Plutarch, though basic sources get more questionable the further back you go.

I'm sure it wouldn't.

I can appreciate that and it is your choice. Understand though that my thought is related to earlier comments of mine about apologetics.

I'm a well-rounded communicator , I can do many things in the one act of transmission. There are usually arguments in there as well.


spin

Ben C Smith

My analysis of a Greek myth tradition is not going to differ from my analysis of biblical traditions, except, of course, as the subject matter itself would demand (and the subject matter even makes different demands both of different strands of Greek myth and of different strands of biblical tradition).

I will PM you shortly with more details.

I might, depending on his or her presentation, secretly suspect ulterior motives, but would publicly attack only the arguments.

It is usually listed as a novel. But my study of it is quite incomplete.

No! I think you are confusing two different issues. Issue 1 is: Does implausibility disqualify a text from being an ancient biography? This is the issue I was addressing, and my answer is no. Issue 2 is: Does plausibility imply historicity? I was not addressing this issue, but again my answer is no.

Quite a few things in quite a few ancient biographies point to a nonrealistic effort somewhere along the line. It is not always easy to tell whether the nonrealism stems from previous sources or traditions or whether it derives from the biographer himself.

Ancient biographies are not always based on research.

No, it is all biography. Biography is not (only) a mode; it is a genre; it (usually) covers the entire text. Even the implausible bits are part of the biography. This is why the Life of Romulus and the Life of Apollonius, as full of implausibilities as they are (with even the existence of the former being suspect), still belong to that genre; plausibility is not one of the requirements for ancient biography.

No, we are on much stronger grounds when we get to Suetonius. The Greco-Roman biographers were usually more critical of their traditions and sources than the evangelists were.

Ben.

spin

If one is flexible, the term "biography" becomes all encompassing.

First, I was mainly pointing out a specific type of implausibility. A couple of eagles in the sky don't mean much to me, baby. But a voice out of heaven saying "you are my son" means more and less. Some duffer might be stupid enough to think that the eagles might mean something, but it is quite reasonable that eagles were seen. Was such a voice heard and who could have? Such a statement would not have been addressed to anyone but Jesus.

Plutarch didn't have much quality control, confusing tradition with history. He seemed to have treated tradition as though it were history, leading to a few rather questionable "biographies", Theseus, Numa Pompilius, Lykurgos. His notion of sourcing seems to have been constructive. He seems to have adhered to standards of methodology. I doubt whether he would have let himself get away with stuff of the ilk of Gethsemane or the temptation or the heavenly voice directed only to Jesus.

That which is biography is.

I don't really know much about the Life of Apollonius. It has never really been in the need to know category. I just know that Philostratus was writing far to long after the events to give me much hope of usefulness. Thucydides wrote purely of his own time, so did Polybius, so basically did Tacitus -- his own time and that of people he could query whether directly or through descendants. The encyclopaedic guys are worries, writers like Livy and Diodorus. Writing about long before when records couldn't be trusted means you cloud the boundaries between history and tradition. At some point you end up in never-never-land. You trust Josephus the closer he gets to his own times, as with the others who wrote of the long ago. You never know when that tasty morsel will leave you with dyspepsia.

All this however to me is dealing with a different register of problem. The gospels contain certain materials that are simply made up, that cannot be construed to have arrived via purely stupidity and ignorance.

We catch them on the cusp between oral and written traditions, featuring aspects that were obviously non-real in both categories. When Mark evinces numerous examples of sandwich-passages, you know that we are dealing with a purely literary manipulation for purely literary ends. When Matthew and Luke present quite discordant birth narratives, you have good indications that there is a common oral tradition behind them both, but which has developed in significantly different directions finding homes in literary forms that have undergone further developments. There again is no biography here. There is material that can be construed as biographical because it deals with the life of a figure and there is a hellenistic tradition of biography writing so a model is available. But the gospels aren't biography.

I don't have much time for Suetonius, when there were writers such as Polybius and Tacitus.


spin

aa5874

This is highly illogical and contradictory.

1....."the implausible bits are part of the biography."

2...."plausibilty is not one of the requirements for ancient biography."

If these statements are applied to the Jesus story, then the implausible conception of Jesus through the Holy Ghost is part of the biography of Jesus, and the plausible crucifixion is not a requirement and may be discarded.

In your case, implausibilty is history.