spin

Just on the continuing confusion about the destruction of the temple, the rending of the curtain in the temple at Jesus's death is a figurative destruction of the temple in itself. It is the opening of the holy of holies to all, making common god's special place on earth, something impossible before the temple destruction. The gospel of Mark already knows of the temple destruction.


spin

ApostateAbe

Spin, I am not of the inclination to dismiss 400 years of critical scholarship of the New Testament in order to start from the beginning. I will give appropriate credit to the critical scholarly consensus, the same as I would any other intellectual field that is over my head. They think that the Gospel of John was written around 90 CE. It is not a date picked out of the air. They compare the language of the text with other Greek texts, and they pin down a probable date range. You dismiss common sense, and indeed common sense does not always work, but you will need good reason to replace it with another method of determining what is here and what is there, rather than arbitrarily dismissing all evidence to keep your conclusions true. You also dismiss the criterion of embarrassment. The criterion seems an obvious thing to use once you get a sense of what groups of Christians wrote the various Christian texts, because it can be tested appropriately. I don't know exactly why, but those who argue for a mythical Jesus don't like this criterion, as if they are in favor of disregarding the matter of bias altogether like it is useless. Arguments from embarrassment are embarrassing? If the Jesus mythers dismiss all the standard methods commonly used among the critical scholars of the New Testament, then exactly what do they have left?

spin

Nobody's asking you to start over, just start doing history.

It is not an intellectual field that abnegates the responsibility to use valid controls for one's analysis.

Of course the date is not picked out of thin air. However, the result is similar.

You didn't read my comments closely enough.

What you are trying to flog as "common sense" in the context is utterly bankrupt of common sense. As you don't know anything about the mores and conditions of the times any conjectures you try to float are merely reflections of your times.

When you don't know anything about the times, retrojections based on modern musings of embarrassment are absurd.

Don't you get this? I mean really, how do you know how people of the time thought about things?

Ok, I'll bite how do you test the embarrassment levels of someone writing 2000 years ago?

I'll resist insulting you for being the umpteenth pundit to drag mythical Jesuses into a discourse with me. But I get the idea that you don't mind dirtying your analysis of the past with your baseless conjectures. This is a simple example of shooting yourself in the foot.

All such use of it I've seen in this area are. It makes one look foolish to claim to know things they have no way of testing.

I am not a Jesus myther. (Insult omitted.) The position is as untenable as Jesus historicists.

What do people have left if they get rid of such rubbish as embarrassment? Ask a contemporary historian of the period. They seem to do fine without such kid's stuff. (And I do mean look at what historians of ancient history are doing these days. And then give up what biblical analysists pass off as methodology.)


spin

ApostateAbe

spin, if you are the one who thinks that the gospels began as fictional literature for entertainment, then forgive me for conflating you with those crazy Jesus mythers. :Cheeky: You asked, "how do you know how people of the time thought about things?" and "how do you test the embarrassment levels of someone writing 2000 years ago?" We get a sense of their biases by looking at what they wrote and what other groups wrote about them. They had conflicts with each other, and they needed to stay alive by making converts. The conflicts are seen in the texts. In Galatians 2, we see that Paul has disagreements with Peter over whether or not circumcisions should be required for Christians. Every passage yields clues about the interests of the authors. Models are built, and those models are tested against the text. We can get a model of the author of the gospel of Luke--a Greek Christian who admitted to be dependent on other authors for his knowledge of Jesus and his disciples--and we can test that model in the book of Acts, to see if that model of the author is consistent. If the model is consistent, then it contributes to the evidence that the two books were written by the same author. We have plenty of knowledge about the authors, the society, the environment, based on what they write, regardless of whether they lied or didn't. You may dismiss that because you think that the gospels are fictional entertainment (forgive me if I misunderstood you again), and so from that perspective I can see why nothing in the New Testament writings would contribute to our knowledge of the time, at least no more than The Lord of the Rings would contribute to our knowledge of early 19th century England, but you cannot seriously expect anyone else to give that possibility any weight at all. Just read the first passage in the gospel of Luke.

aa5874

The criterion of embarrassment is totally flawed, it cannot be used to prove a person existed.

It is just totally illogical and without any merit whatsoever to claim a person existed because it was alleged that person did some embarrassing act.

Total absurdity.

ApostateAbe

Gotcha.

Toto

This is an astounding claim. Are you confusing the paleographic dating of papyrus by comparing handwriting with the dating of the composition of the gospels?

You can read the discussion of dates on earlychristianwritings and there is no expert scholarship that relies on a linguistic analysis of the gospel. The dating is based on other clues.

What you have left are all of the tools that historians and critical scholars in other fields use.

ApostateAbe

I think you are right and I am wrong on this point. I appreciate the correction.
That is good to know.

Elijah

I did a quick Google and I saw this claim a bunch of times online but didn't see the original source right off the bat, do you know it?

spin

Is that sort of buffoonery meant to keep up your end of the conversation?

This doesn't answer either question. If you analyse a text, how do you know over what sort of period from its genesis to its final touches? How then would you know which biases belong to which period of time? With Matthew, what did other groups write about it? You just don't know.

(They could always mend tents.)

Peter is interpolated into the text. Paul outside Gal 2:7-8 only knows Cephas, but these verses were added after Petrine ascendency. If you would like to refer to Cephas, how do you know from Galatians that Cephas was a christian rather than a messianic Jew who knew nothing about a crucified savior?

This is the first thing I can agree with, but your "common sense" won't help you eke out those clues, just as it won't help you understand Swahili. You need to know how it works from inside the culture, most of which is unavailable to you. Normally in such a case the historian remains non-commital when they have insufficient data, but biblical studies is a punter's field.

This is not science. You can't test any significant theories you construct, because all the necessary subjects are dead. Scientific models work because you develop means of reproduceable checks. You don't have that luxury in history. Lots of things you just can't check. How do you check if Jesus really did exist in the world? I can show you statues of Julius Caesar, reflecting different ages of the man and even signs of his medical issues touched on in ancient texts. I can show you coins he had minted that reflect what we learn about him in literature. There are even traces on the battle fields the literature says he fought on. What on earth can you show regarding this Jesus? Embarrassment.

Did the person who wrote the prologue write any or much of the rest of the gospel? Are you depending on the veracity of a comment you can in no way at all test? ("Mommy, mommy, I keep running round in circles!" "Shut up or I'll nail you other foot to the floor.")

For centuries Hebrews was thought to be consistent with the (rest of) the Pauline corpus... Consistency is the necessity of most fiction. It is not a sufficient condition for historical research.

Ok, give me three non-trivial facts you know about the author or authors or authors and redactor(s) of the gospel of Matthew.

(I'm pleased to see that although you don't seem to know much about the matter, you've at least got a strong apologetic to cover your hind region.)

When we can't even decide on that time, your analyses based on it aren't very promising.

So I gather you are able to accept the prologue to Luke as though it were gospel... but on what grounds? Which parts of the text (if any) do they represent? Is the "many" in the first verse a real many or is it just a rhetorical device to impress the reader? Was the second verse written around the time of Marcion to lend support to the apostolic primacy polemic? Do you honestly believe the third verse? Isn't there sufficient evidence to indicate that the writing of Luke, being based on Mark and Material also found in Matthew as well as other material unique to the Lucan gospel, was certainly not eyewitness material and to find that the verse doesn't fit the reality of the text?

One needs to be radically skeptical, rather than willing to accept or reject issues that lack evidence. Jesus mythicism and Jesus historicism are not able to support themselves with evidence. If history is meaningful to you, you can't just jump on the apologist's bandwagon. He has reasons to believe it, you may not need them. However, your "common sense" has you believe them. And believing means not doing your job.


spin