Freethought & Rationalism Archive

ApostateAbe · 06-09-2012, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James The Least

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Thus I called it an anachronism. Jesus is directly addressing the audience of "Mark's" time. It is Mark's generation that will not pass, not the generation of the 30's. This follows on the anachronisms littered throughout Mark 13.

Exactly. Once you remove the massive and unwarranted assumption that Mark is somehow preserving oral traditions from the 30s, you begin to realize that Mark is simply addressing the audience of his day (whenever that was), with the concerns and ideas of that time.

Mark would be addressing the audience of his day, one way or the other, but I think the idea that it is an oral tradition that survived from the thirties would seem to follow from the face of the evidence, given that the religious myth is all about founders of the religion who allegedly lived in the thirties, we have parallel independent traditions of the same religion in Q, M, L and Acts, and we have an attestation to such a religious tradition in the writings of Paul in the fifties. Do you think Mark made it all up himself or something?

aa5874 · 06-09-2012, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Mark would be addressing the audience of his day, one way or the other, but I think the idea that it is an oral tradition that survived from the thirties would seem to follow from the face of the evidence, given that the religious myth is all about founders of the religion who allegedly lived in the thirties, we have parallel independent traditions of the same religion in Q, M, L and Acts, and we have an attestation to such a religious tradition in the writings of Paul in the fifties. Do you think Mark made it all up himself or something?

We do NOT have any independent sources in Q, M, and L. You very well know that NO Texts have ever been found and identified as Q, M, and L.

Q, M, and L are ASSUMED.

Acts of the Apostles is NOT credible, a work of fiction, and date of composition is ASSUMED.

The dates of composition of the Pauline writings are ASSUMED and have Multiple authors and contains events that were INVENTED.

The date of composition of gMark is ASSUMED and is NOT credible, filled with fiction and implausibilities.

You are employing a Bait and Switch argument. You claimed in the OP that we would NOT have to ASSUME or Imagine the "historical evidence" yet you have switched and is now wholly engaged in Assumptions and Imagination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

... Surprisingly, the historical evidence for this theory is featured prominently throughout the New Testament canon, and we do not need to read between the lines nor use our imaginations to see it....

You cannot be serious when you introduce worthless sources for history.

Who was the first apologetic source to mention a gospel called gMark???

What is the PROVENANCE for gMark??

What is the PROVENANCE for Acts of the Apostles???

What is the PROVENANCE for the Pauline letters???

Let us do history.

Remarkably, it appears gMark was unheard of and was NOT mentioned by apologetic sources until "Against Heresies", a most fraudulent work attributed to Irenaeus.

ApostateAbe · 06-11-2012, 08:14 AM

Other thoughts?

outhouse · 06-11-2012, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Other thoughts?

whats your take on post #24 and #25

ApostateAbe · 06-11-2012, 10:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Other thoughts?

whats your take on post #24 and #25

It is a plausible hypothesis. The hypothesis that JtB was an anti-tax zealot would fit with the social circumstances. It does not seem to follow from the directly relevant evidence, neither Josephus nor the gospels. The gospels portray John as religious and apocalyptic, and Josephus portrays John as religious.

hjalti · 06-11-2012, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

....and all of the canonical gospels betray some embarrassment concerning the baptism (see this post).

This is the argument in the linked post for Mark being embarassed by the baptism:

Quote:

In the gospel of Mark's account of the baptism, God chooses Jesus, not John, to be his son. John is essentially snubbed.

So Mark is snubbing John because he has supposedly changed the more original version, that he found embarassing, in which John chose Jesus to be the son of god? That's probably not the argument, but I honestly don't see exactly what it's supposed to be.

But here's Carrier's rebuttal of using the criterion of embarassment to establish that the baptism of Jesus is a historical fact:

Quote:

John Meier gets it wrong, however, when he attempts to use the “criterion of embarrassment” to argue for the historicity of “the baptism of the supposedly superior and sinless Jesus by his supposed inferior, John the Baptist” (who was proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”).[28] Meier says this must have been embarrassing to Mark, because it contradicts Christian beliefs (that Jesus was “superior” and “sinless”), and because subsequent evangelists scrambled for damage control. But this is the same double error Meier himself refuted in the case of Jesus’ cry on the cross.

First, we might see subsequent evangelists were embarrassed by the story, but Mark is not. Had he been, he would already have engaged the same damage control they did. In fact, this would have been done by transmitters of the story decades before it even got to Mark (probably even before Jesus had died). All the evidence of embarrassment is thus only post-Mark. Second, Meier simply assumes Mark (and all prior Christians) believed Jesus was “superior” and “sinless” and thus would not countenance anything implying otherwise. But neither is even plausible, much less established for early Christians, or even those of Mark’s time. Paul included Christ’s voluntary submission and humbling as fundamental to the Gospel (Philippians 2:5–11). Christians did not imagine Jesus as then “superior” until he was exalted by God at his resurrection (e.g., Romans 1:4, 1 Corinthians 15:20–28). There is nothing in Mark’s depiction of Jesus submitting to John that conflicts with this view. Only later Christians had a problem with it. So when we take our actual background knowledge into account, contrary to Meier, the evidence (Mark’s story) is not improbable.

Mark instead portrays what Christians originally thought: that Jesus would be exalted as the superior later on. Hence he has John say exactly this (Mark 1:7–8). Likewise, the notion that Jesus was “sinless” from birth is nowhere to be found in Mark or Paul. It is clearly a later development, and thus not a concern of Mark’s. To the contrary, Mark has full reason to invent Jesus’ baptism by John specifically to create his sinless state, so Jesus can be adopted by God, and then live sinlessly unto death. Mark makes a point of saying John’s baptism remits all sins (1:4), that Jesus submits to that baptism, and that God adopts Jesus immediately afterward (1:9–11). This is hardly a coincidence. The role of John and his baptism are explicitly stated by Mark: to prepare the way for the Lord (1:2–3). And that’s just what he does. There is no embarrassment here.

So when Meier insists “it is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment,” we can see in fact such a thing is not unlikely at all: once Christians started amplifying the divinity and sinlessness of Jesus, the story Mark had already popularized started to create a problem for them, so they had to redact that story to suit their changing theology. This proves Mark preceded those redactors and lacked their concerns, but it doesn’t prove Mark’s story is true. To the contrary, Mark had a clear motive to invent the story, particularly as he needed to cast someone as the predicted Elijah who would precede the messiah and “reconcile father and son” (see Mark 1:6 in light of 2 Kings 1:8; and Mark 9:11–14 in light of Malachi 4:5–6, LXX) and set up Jesus’ cleansing for adoption. Why not cast in that role his most revered predecessor, John the Baptist? Having John prepare Jesus by cleansing him of sin and establishing his divine parentage, and then endorsing Jesus as his successor, is actually far too convenient for Mark. Other scholars have made these same observations, and provided many other good reasons Mark would have had to invent this story, and there are additional reasons to doubt its authenticity besides.[29] And when all of that is taken into account, the story of Jesus’ baptism by John actually becomes somewhat improbable, and thus far from certainly true.

Because we can be certain it was not true that God publicly acknowledged his adoption of Jesus immediately after the baptism, or that John was sent by God to reconcile father and son, or that John actually declared Jesus not only his successor but one “mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie” and who would bestow on everyone a greater baptism than his. These all served Mark’s purposes (or his source’s) and yet all of them require inserting a famous Elijah-resembling baptizer into the framework to make those elements persuasively do their work. Actual history doesn’t work out that conveniently (except but rarely, which means, improbably). But literary creations, by their very nature, always do.

aa5874 · 06-11-2012, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Other thoughts?

whats your take on post #24 and #25

It is a plausible hypothesis. The hypothesis that JtB was an anti-tax zealot would fit with the social circumstances. It does not seem to follow from the directly relevant evidence, neither Josephus nor the gospels. The gospels portray John as religious and apocalyptic, and Josephus portrays John as religious.

The claim that John the Baptist was an anti-tax zealot is another unsubstantiated imagination based speculation.

Data MUST preceed any claim.

There is NO-NIL-NONE-ZERO Data to support the BS that John the Baptist was an anti-tax zealot.

Let us deal with ACTUAL descriptions in written sources of antiquity

John was a Baptizer.

Pilate was a Governor.

Caiaphas was a High Priest.

Tiberius was Caesar.

Satan was a Devil.

Jesus was the Son of a Ghost.

Let us do some history for a change.

andrewcriddle · 06-11-2012, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

But here's Carrier's rebuttal of using the criterion of embarassment to establish that the baptism of Jesus is a historical fact:

Quote:

John Meier gets it wrong, however, when he attempts to use the “criterion of embarrassment” to argue for the historicity of “the baptism of the supposedly superior and sinless Jesus by his supposed inferior, John the Baptist” (who was proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”).[28] Meier says this must have been embarrassing to Mark, because it contradicts Christian beliefs (that Jesus was “superior” and “sinless”), and because subsequent evangelists scrambled for damage control. But this is the same double error Meier himself refuted in the case of Jesus’ cry on the cross.

First, we might see subsequent evangelists were embarrassed by the story, but Mark is not. Had he been, he would already have engaged the same damage control they did. In fact, this would have been done by transmitters of the story decades before it even got to Mark (probably even before Jesus had died). All the evidence of embarrassment is thus only post-Mark. Second, Meier simply assumes Mark (and all prior Christians) believed Jesus was “superior” and “sinless” and thus would not countenance anything implying otherwise. But neither is even plausible, much less established for early Christians, or even those of Mark’s time. Paul included Christ’s voluntary submission and humbling as fundamental to the Gospel (Philippians 2:5–11). Christians did not imagine Jesus as then “superior” until he was exalted by God at his resurrection (e.g., Romans 1:4, 1 Corinthians 15:20–28). There is nothing in Mark’s depiction of Jesus submitting to John that conflicts with this view. Only later Christians had a problem with it. So when we take our actual background knowledge into account, contrary to Meier, the evidence (Mark’s story) is not improbable.

Mark instead portrays what Christians originally thought: that Jesus would be exalted as the superior later on. Hence he has John say exactly this (Mark 1:7–8). Likewise, the notion that Jesus was “sinless” from birth is nowhere to be found in Mark or Paul. It is clearly a later development, and thus not a concern of Mark’s. To the contrary, Mark has full reason to invent Jesus’ baptism by John specifically to create his sinless state, so Jesus can be adopted by God, and then live sinlessly unto death. Mark makes a point of saying John’s baptism remits all sins (1:4), that Jesus submits to that baptism, and that God adopts Jesus immediately afterward (1:9–11). This is hardly a coincidence. The role of John and his baptism are explicitly stated by Mark: to prepare the way for the Lord (1:2–3). And that’s just what he does. There is no embarrassment here.

So when Meier insists “it is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment,” we can see in fact such a thing is not unlikely at all: once Christians started amplifying the divinity and sinlessness of Jesus, the story Mark had already popularized started to create a problem for them, so they had to redact that story to suit their changing theology. This proves Mark preceded those redactors and lacked their concerns, but it doesn’t prove Mark’s story is true. To the contrary, Mark had a clear motive to invent the story, particularly as he needed to cast someone as the predicted Elijah who would precede the messiah and “reconcile father and son” (see Mark 1:6 in light of 2 Kings 1:8; and Mark 9:11–14 in light of Malachi 4:5–6, LXX) and set up Jesus’ cleansing for adoption. Why not cast in that role his most revered predecessor, John the Baptist? Having John prepare Jesus by cleansing him of sin and establishing his divine parentage, and then endorsing Jesus as his successor, is actually far too convenient for Mark. Other scholars have made these same observations, and provided many other good reasons Mark would have had to invent this story, and there are additional reasons to doubt its authenticity besides.[29] And when all of that is taken into account, the story of Jesus’ baptism by John actually becomes somewhat improbable, and thus far from certainly true.

Because we can be certain it was not true that God publicly acknowledged his adoption of Jesus immediately after the baptism, or that John was sent by God to reconcile father and son, or that John actually declared Jesus not only his successor but one “mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie” and who would bestow on everyone a greater baptism than his. These all served Mark’s purposes (or his source’s) and yet all of them require inserting a famous Elijah-resembling baptizer into the framework to make those elements persuasively do their work. Actual history doesn’t work out that conveniently (except but rarely, which means, improbably). But literary creations, by their very nature, always do.

If we treat Paul's understanding of Jesus as an important influence on Mark, (which many posters on this forum do), then this may indicate that Mark would have found Jesus' baptism by John potentially embarassing.

Paul regards Jesus as a superior sinless person who has voluntarily chosen to humble himself. On this basis Paul's Jesus has no need to be baptized by John.

Andrew Criddle

outhouse · 06-11-2012, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

whats your take on post #24 and #25

It is a plausible hypothesis. The hypothesis that JtB was an anti-tax zealot would fit with the social circumstances. It does not seem to follow from the directly relevant evidence, neither Josephus nor the gospels. The gospels portray John as religious and apocalyptic, and Josephus portrays John as religious.

thanks for the reply

We know there were more then one type of Zealot often called dagger men.

Im more under the impression that the common poor hardworking jew in Galilee fell under the classification of zealot. with exception of the few Pharisees and Essenes that may have lived there

JtB shared many traits with the Essenes but we dont see those traits passed off to jesus, but more of a peaceful method of tax evasion.

I think the roman/gentile version of jesus were left with downplays the tax struggle of the common man as well as how prevalant zealots actually were. Which makes complete sense being were not getting a jewish version of events

spin · 06-11-2012, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

If we treat Paul's understanding of Jesus as an important influence on Mark, (which many posters on this forum do), then this may indicate that Mark would have found Jesus' baptism by John potentially embarassing.

Paul regards Jesus as a superior sinless person who has voluntarily chosen to humble himself. On this basis Paul's Jesus has no need to be baptized by John.

Paul states that he didn't baptize many people at all. Others did most of the baptizing. And he gives no indication of Jesus having been baptized, though people are baptized in the name of Jesus or into christ. It's strange, "I thank god I baptized none of you, except...." (1 Cor 1:14) There is a separation between Paul and those who baptized. This would make sense if those others were John messianists. What we could be seeing is two different approaches to baptism, Pauline disfavor, Johannine favor. There would be no room for embarrassment, just different cultic views.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

06-11-2012, 08:14 AM	#43
ApostateAbe Contributor Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: MT Posts: 10,656	Other thoughts?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.