paarsurrey

Hi

This only reflects that the writers of the NTBible did not write the account of Jesus correctly. First, the writers of the Gospels were anonymous and only named after the persons "Matthew,Mark, Luke, John" to distinguish one from the other. Second, the point raised by you puts another layer of doubt on the accuracy of NTBible.

Thanks

Ted Hoffman

Please provide an example of an ancient writer who honestly recasted something actual to make it look like something it was not, and then proceeded to believe that his own creation was history. This will help support your assertion that "The Elijah/Elisha parallels are inconsequential to the believing, but only to the construction of narratives." If you cannot do this, I think you should drop this argument.
So you think Mark was a redactor and we lost the pre-Markan source? I know some scholars have argued that he was a redactor to verse 13. But stylistically, we see the hand of one author.
Homer is an ancient author, just like Mark. It has been argued by others that Mark imitated Homer's writing style via mimesis. Hydropatesis (water walking) and the feeding miracles are soem of features indicating he arguably borrowed from Homer.

But forget Homer and doublets. I was just exploring a possibility. What about symbolism? You dont think some of the things he (Mark) wrote were symbolic? Donahue and Harrington (The Gospel of Mark, p169) have argued wrt the Exorcism of the Gerasene Demoniac (which I have cited for evaluation) that the demoniac may have been a prototype of the gentile world under the destructive power of evil. And the exorcism therefore symbolized Jesus' victory over evil by freeing the demoniac as a missionary. You cant see a symbolism of a pagan world and the struggle involved in liberating it from evil?
Perhaps thats why the author doesnt care too much about getting the geography right? Because its not supposed to be literal!

Now, there are several scenes in Mark that can be interpreted as symbolic (I dare you rebut the argument above about symbolism) based on the thematic and ideological tendencies of the author.

Are we to believe that the author believed such scenes were historical?

Solo

I am not disputing anything, Ted. I am simply curious about what the "authorial intent" was and whether some of us are not missing a big piece of the Jesus puzzle. If, as I think, Christianity, (or more generally, apocalyptic sectarianism) arose as a novel kind of socialization of people with a common disorder, then perhaps we may learn something new about ourselves.

Beliefs are funny. They all seem preposterous to other beliefs. But we can track them down. Some of them we can explain by providing the physiological and psychological contexts for them. For decades the stories of UFO abductions told by many people have been dismissed as fiction, told by idiots to get attention and then copied by other idiots to get attention. Of course a whole new industry arose in the US around the phenom helping to investigate and get on top of the alien hordes. And yet, the idea seems to have a definite cause: the suggestion that the body has been disabled, manipulated from the outside, or left behind, has a known physiological root. It happens on sudden waking from REM sleep during which the brain disables the peripheral muscle control functions. As this persists for some time into waking (or hypnagogia) the idea of abduction by some external agent or entity suggests itself. Naturally, these "abductions" are articulated through the psychological profile and the culture that surrounds the individuals. Needless to say, the incidence of UFO abductions among the contemporary Gobi desert nomads would be much lower that in the urban US and cede ground to abductions by spirits.

The NT does not have a good example of a story built on REM paralysis, unfortunately, but one of the most celebrated religious events in Mohammed's life as a prophet, the israh wa il Miraj fits well. The archangel Jibril removes the top of the house, seizes the prophet, rips his chest open, washes the inside with holy water, puts him on a buraq and flies him to Jerusalem.

So, then:

Would you classify the stories of UFO abductions as fiction ?

Can you see the significance of brain wiring for study of religious texts now ?

Jiri

Solo

Is human brain today what it was two thousand years ago ?

Jiri

spin

spin

rhutchin

I do not see why a literal reading of the gospels is not sufficient to understand their content. I don’t think I see your argument. Can you give an example from the gospels where you don’t think it is possible to understand the text without more information about culture or traditions of the time?

The intention of the gospel writers seems to have been to provide a record of the life of a man called Jesus, the things he did and the things that happened to Him. Luke says, “Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us…it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write…an orderly account…that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.” John says, “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” The intent of the gospel writers seems very simple and straightforward.

I was thinking of Clement and then Ignatius in the second century. Granted, it is not much, but it does establish an ordered religious system based on worship of Christ at that time.

I don’t recall the specific details. However, the fragment is regarded as a copy putting the original earlier than 120 CE.

True. What we know of Papias is through references to him in the writings of others. However, those references are significant and give us insights that are otherwise missing. One record says that John dictated his gospel to Papias who then wrote it down. We read of Papias writing that Mark was Peter’s interpreter and wrote a gospel about the things he heard although I think there is ongoing debate about this. What we read about Papias and the gospels is consistent with what we have been led to believe about the gospels.

Matthew seems to be an obvious expansion of Mark by an apostle who had intimate knowledge of the things about which Mark wrote. Luke seems to have used Mark but by his own testimony, sought out other sources and wrote of things not recorded by Mark. The conclusion is that all three gospels were written about the same period of time and that this would have been in the first century. They naturally convey eyewitness accounts of the events surrounding the life of Jesus.

Alternative corroborating sources would be nice to have but the absence of these sources does not argue for or against the veracity of the gospels. We might compare the gospels to Josephus as to Jewish life in the early first century and see if they are consistent.

We would have a lot of evidence if you accepted the historical writings collected and published as the NT. However, you seem to deny the veracity of all these writings together with the writings, or references, to others who wrote following the apostolic period. I suspect that only Tacitus, since you reference it, is able to meet your requirements for accepting the veracity of historical writings. All others you would likely reject as you do the NT writings.

Amaleq13

Yes and that only makes it more perplexing that you persist in misinterpreting them.

Both the authors of those passages from Luke and John state rather explicitly that their purpose in writing is to relate their beliefs about Jesus and not to provide a biography. We really don't need those explicit statements, however, since simply reading the stories establishes that none of them actually provides a "a record of the life of a man called Jesus". Each provides a very specific and limited portion of this man's life and the selection of those portions is quite clearly more about describing the basis and nature of Christian beliefs about him than informing readers about his life.

Solo

[QUOTE=spin;5296570]



:wave:

Jiri

spin

With regard to Pompey, Plutarch tells us:

As for his age, those who affect to make the parallel exact in all things betwixt him and Alexander the Great, do not allow him to have been quite thirty-four, whereas in truth at that time he was near forty. And well had it been for him had he terminated his life at this date, while he still enjoyed Alexander's fortune, since all his aftertime served only either to bring him prosperity that made him odious, or calamities too great to be retrieved.

Not only Plutarch contemplated seeing Pompey as Alexander, but a number of others were more serious than he at the task.

In a review on a book about Tacitus, we find this:

What is established in Tacitus' opening chapters, she argues, is that the domus Caesarum follows a destructive path similar to that of the Atreid dynasty, and specifically the Atreid dynasty of Aeschylus' Oresteia. For instance, Livia's binding of Augustus (senem Augustum deuinxerat, 1.3.4) and subsequent fencing off of the palace (acribus. . . custodiis domum et uias saepserat, 1.5.4) are read at pp. 47-56 as modeled on Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon and securing of the house (phraxeien, Ag. 1376); at the same time Livia's acts, as often in tragedy, proleptically look ahead to the younger Agrippina's poisoning of Claudius (12.67) and similar act of enclosure of the palace (cunctos aditus custodiis clauserat, 12.68.3).

The writer of Mk was a receiver of tradition, which he shaped and passed on.

Stylistically the passion narrative is quite different from any other segment in Mk. It is much longer than any other single topic in the work, made up of larger blocks of material. It features the oral trick of threes which I have mentioned before, things mentioned in threes, which is seen in numerous cultures in oral tradition, three people waiting at Gethsemane, three returns to them by Jesus, three comments by Pilate to the crowd, Peter's threefold denial, three people crucified, etc. What may have happened is that the bulk of the passion was already a unit when it was stitched onto the end of the little apocalypse and it was redacted in the process.

I've heard various attempts, but umm, ain't seen no real tangible rapport developed.

If you think the writer was responsible for the passage then I can understand that you might have some conflict, but I think it was just part of the tradition he received. Then again, if it weren't, something can be seen to have symbolic value while still being either real or perceived to have been. Clinton's cigar I believe was real, but wasn't it a symbol for something? (I know, analogies are difficult to employ in this forum, but this is simply to show that symbols can be relate to real events.)

Perhaps not, but maybe he just got it garbled from the tradition.

Refined notions of history are more appropriate for more refined times. Why must the writer see that symbolic can't be real? Why must the writer adhere to our notions of history and reality? I'm led to believe Tacitus in his representation of Tiberius was modeling his language and tone on Sallust and perhaps the darkness of his Tiberius was that of Sallust's Cataline. Do you think that Tacitus didn't believe the reality of his Tiberius?

Short answer to your last question is "sure, why not?"


spin

andrewcriddle

First of all there isn't much Christian funerary art that early and the Dura Europus material (not funerary but probably slightly before 250) seems to depict Gospel stories as well as the OT.

Secondly I'm not sure how much the sources of early 3rd century Christian Art tell us about the likely sources of the late 1st century Gospel stories.

Andrew Criddle