Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 05-08-2012, 11:55 PM

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Adam · 05-09-2012, 05:20 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by Adam

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by Adam

Peter Kirby accepts most early dates for Paul in
earlychristianwritings
ranging from 50 CE to 150 CE, but with only the Pastorals to after 100 CE. Seven he dates as 50-60.

One guesses that the notion of "evidence" is too complex here, James. Do you have crayons?

I would have thought that spin, at least, would recognize Peter Kirby as not an orthodox churchman. Here he proclaims himself a Naturalist in philosophy:
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...c_inquiry.html

Why would even he date seven Pauline epistles to 50-60 CE unless there was evidence from academics, not just Bible scholars?

Evidence doesn't come from academics. Ideally they give their opinions based on evidence. Whatever the case it is the evidence that is important. Merely using those opinions is called argument from authority.

I'm not one to argue from authority very much. I have been attacked vociferously on FRDB for going off-track from the Consensus. No one else here on FRDB questions authority, right?
About evidence, spin, you were heavily involved in my main thread to shoot down my eighth eyewitness (Qumraner I called him) and the six strands in gMark, my Post #230. You were not active when I rolled out my main seven eyewitnesses through #170. You had dropped out before I derived my main proof in #450, the Alpha and Omega Principle. I presented evidence for each of the cases that the beginning and end of each eyewitness section identifies the author in some way. Here's one
Post #450 in Gospel Eyewitnesses

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

For each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual).... For Nicodemus, for whom I have given the argument that he wrote the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still alive, his name appears in John 3:1 at the very start of these. At the end, Nicodemus brings spices to anoint Jesus’s body, John 19:39. The text he actually wrote was sayings only, so his name only appears in text that brackets his writings.

I recommend that each of you read each of the seven and decide whether I present lots of first-hand evidence or not.

spin · 05-09-2012, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Peter Kirby accepts most early dates for Paul in
earlychristianwritings
ranging from 50 CE to 150 CE, but with only the Pastorals to after 100 CE. Seven he dates as 50-60.

One guesses that the notion of "evidence" is too complex here, James. Do you have crayons?

I would have thought that spin, at least, would recognize Peter Kirby as not an orthodox churchman. Here he proclaims himself a Naturalist in philosophy:
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...c_inquiry.html

Why would even he date seven Pauline epistles to 50-60 CE unless there was evidence from academics, not just Bible scholars?

Evidence doesn't come from academics. Ideally they give their opinions based on evidence. Whatever the case it is the evidence that is important. Merely using those opinions is called argument from authority.

I'm not one to argue from authority very much.

So the bit in red above was not posted by you. Or maybe that's just in the rest of the time from the "very much".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

I have been attacked vociferously on FRDB for going off-track from the Consensus.

You've been "attacked vociferously" for spewing a crock of assertions whose validity naturally enough can only be perceived by you. You've proven incapable of dealing with alternative analyses. And I generally don't waste my time on your substantive claims anymore because you can't see what the problem ever is.

And I won't quote the rest of your post, which I see as just the same incessant assertion-based waffle that you started here with, which I have already dispatched. You can go back to having deep discussions with yourself about your imaginary seven witnesses.

Adam · 05-09-2012, 07:10 PM

I can understand your unwillingness to get involved again, because your method involved quoting every sentence I wrote, and your posts mostly dealt with my Post #230 that was tangential to my basic thesis. Yet you never succeeded in refuting any of it (except my Boismard Matthew-copied-Luke theory that I had myself by then rejected). You would than dismiss them as assertions and never get around to the thrust of my thesis. Maybe you have the common problem here on FRDB (and elsewhere) that something is not evidence unless you agree with it?

Alternative analyses? You mean the sacred Gospel According to Vork? I don't know why you and Michael Turton cannot accept the possibility of sources underlying gMark. Chiasms could have been imposed upon sources and Latinisms added when a later edition had a new audience. Most scholars accept sources underlying gMark. Whoops, there I go again, appealing to authority.

Let me bring in the other six of the seven Alpha and Omega items in that

Gospel Eyewitnesses Post #450

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Relating to the seven eyewitness sections proposed, for each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question (inclusio).

The best recognized source is the Passion Narrative. After long attributing this to Peter, I now see John Mark as the author. His name Mark is attached to the start of that gospel, and he is often considered to be the young man who fled away naked in Mark 14:51-52. The beginning and ending identifications are weaker here, so the evidence needs doubling? Fine, this is paralleled in the Gospel of John in which he may be “the disciple known to the High Priest” (John 18:15-16). As he may also be the author of the P-Strand I derived, he may have accompanied the Pharisees who went to see John the Baptist (John 1:24). If so, the basic list he inserted into John runs from first to last: John 1: 20-21, 24-28, 35-37, 42-44; 7:40-49; 9:13-17; 11:46-50, 55, 57; 12:18-22; 20:11b-14, 16-17.

The Signs Gospel is usually seen as a source, and I name Andrew as it author, named at John 1:40. His name occurs often thereafter in narrative sections of the first twelve chapters up to the end at John 12:21 (2 times). Scholars also think that the original ending of Signs has been shifted to John 20:30-31 to conclude a later edition of that gospel. This covers from the baptism of Jesus to the Resurrection, truly an Alpha and Omega....

As for Peter, the source for Ur-Marcus, his name turns up from the first when his brother Andrew finds him (John 1:40). Acts 15:7-12 records his speech. He is the most-named apostle, helping to identify material attributable to him in both the Synoptics and Acts. Limiting the purview to the gospels, however, Peter still turns up at the end at the Sea of Tiberius, John 21:23.

During Jesus’s life-time the Apostle Matthew may have written Q and later the associated Twelve-Source that underlies gMark as well. If so his name turns up almost at the start of his eyewitness portion of gMark, his call by Jesus at Mark 2:14. His name only occurs again in the naming of the Twelve, but this gospel concludes abruptly at 16:8 in a section most likely from the Twelve Source that can be shown to continue into much of the ending of gMatthew, or at least Matthew 28:16 with the word “eleven” denoting Matthew among them. The Twelve-Source may underlie part of the Acts of the Apostles, and the name “Matthew” is included there along with the other ten remaining apostles (Acts 1:13).

Last to write, but still active on my interpretation (and thereby) becoming Bishop of Jerusalem in 62 CE, is the eyewitness I discovered, Simon. He is one of the two disciples seeing the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) according to Origen and my reading of Luke 24:34. The name Simon also comes at the start of the Lucan material as Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). If he is not to be identified with this Simon, he still may be (as a family member) the source for the Infancy Narrative starting up Luke 1 and 2. I see him as the author of Proto-Luke.

Writing later than most of the others, but still an eyewitness, was the Apostle John as the main Editor of the Gospel of John. His name is in the title. For “John” in the text itself, John the Baptist comes up early, but always as simply “John”. This could indicate an author not needing to give further identification about a John who was not himself. In any case, the editorial insertions I recognize (following Howard M. Teeple) begin in John 1 and continue through John 21. If we assume he was also the Beloved Disciple, then he is written about in the very ending; John 21:20-23.

You have not dealt with any of the above, and it is based on ancient evidence, particularly internal evidence. I do rely on some current scholars in delineating the sources at issue. I could not myself have independently derived the Editor in gJohn nor the two main sources within gMark. Incidentally by that criteria (of what sources I could have reasoned out by myself), the sources for my Gospel According to the Atheists might have come OK: Proto-Luke (Q + L) and the Passion Narrative plus the Johannine Discourses (once I came to understand that Nicodemus was building a legal case against Jesus).

AFAIK spin has not refuted what I said

Post #130 of Why I Am a Mythicist (sort of)
spin did finally get un-pedantic and come out swinging, yes. However, you are missing that this Post #612 of his was refuted by me in
Post #616
in which I observed that his earlier #420 was the last he enumerated, yet I had already refuted it in my
Post #422

Vorkosigan · 05-09-2012, 08:08 PM

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You mean the sacred Gospel According to Vork? I don't know why you and Michael Turton cannot accept the possibility of sources underlying gMark.

Adam, the issue isn't your claim of sources going back to the HJ, though that is absurd on its face. Rather, it is your complete lack of methodological justification for your claims. Not only that, but time and again the issue has been pointed out to you. So everyone simply ignores you.

Both spin and I accept "sources" for Mark -- they are obvious. The OT, other Jewish writings, Roman legends, perhaps the Paulines (I don't know what spin's position is on the last).

Vorkosigan

James The Least · 05-09-2012, 08:28 PM

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Originally Posted by rlogan

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Originally Posted by TedM

1. no clear record of early contrary views

Demanding "contrary views" to a view that does not exist is absurd. There is no Jesus in Christianity until sometime after 112 CE, when Pliny writes about them to Trajan. By the 130's you have Mark, who introduces the gospel with a Jesus. There is no Jesus to dispute until the myth is circulated a century after his alleged crucifixion.

Quote:

4. The emphasis on a Jewish Jesus-Messiah crucifixion despite being an embarrassment, and the rising from the dead, with little OT basis in prophecy for either.

This is a test to see how outrageously stupid the audience is. You take the thing Christians are most proud of - wow, how he fulfilled Isaiah right down to the letter in Prophecy, proved he was the messiah, then in the greatest comeback victory of all time he cheats death and lives forevermore!!

Yeah we're supposed to be so STUPID that we see Christians celebrating this, so much Joy over it - and believe they are embarassed by it? Hahahahaha. Yea.

You can't possibly be unawares of how closely the whole Passion sequence after the Last Supper follows Isaiah? I don't believe it.

"Pierced for our transgressions" is specifically Isaiah 53:5, from the Septuigint version. By his suffering we are saved. That is all non-Jewish hijacking of Jewish scriptures, but provides an ancient scriptural basis to Christianity that is urgent for defending against exactly what came: "You just invented a new religion."

We must continually be told that the crucifixion was an embarrassment, and continually told that Paul thought so because he wrote it was "a stumbling block for Jews" as evidence for this. It's grossly out of context, but smart people like Ehrman always cite it, so we must defer to the experts.

We must continually be told this because without it, the case for the historical-apocalyptic-messianic Jesus doesn't actually make sense any more.
God was going to come down from Mt. Sanai and join Jesus to kick Roman butt, and when the Romans crucified his ass with Yahweh nowhere in sight, why, that was such a major embarrassment to the twelve that they couldn't accept it, and instead turned defeat into triumph with the resurrection.

outhouse · 05-09-2012, 09:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James The Least

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlogan

Demanding "contrary views" to a view that does not exist is absurd. There is no Jesus in Christianity until sometime after 112 CE, when Pliny writes about them to Trajan. By the 130's you have Mark, who introduces the gospel with a Jesus. There is no Jesus to dispute until the myth is circulated a century after his alleged crucifixion.

This is a test to see how outrageously stupid the audience is. You take the thing Christians are most proud of - wow, how he fulfilled Isaiah right down to the letter in Prophecy, proved he was the messiah, then in the greatest comeback victory of all time he cheats death and lives forevermore!!

Yeah we're supposed to be so STUPID that we see Christians celebrating this, so much Joy over it - and believe they are embarassed by it? Hahahahaha. Yea.

You can't possibly be unawares of how closely the whole Passion sequence after the Last Supper follows Isaiah? I don't believe it.

"Pierced for our transgressions" is specifically Isaiah 53:5, from the Septuigint version. By his suffering we are saved. That is all non-Jewish hijacking of Jewish scriptures, but provides an ancient scriptural basis to Christianity that is urgent for defending against exactly what came: "You just invented a new religion."

We must continually be told that the crucifixion was an embarrassment, and continually told that Paul thought so because he wrote it was "a stumbling block for Jews" as evidence for this. It's grossly out of context, but smart people like Ehrman always cite it, so we must defer to the experts.

We must continually be told this because without it, the case for the historical-apocalyptic-messianic Jesus doesn't actually make sense any more.
God was going to come down from Mt. Sanai and join Jesus to kick Roman butt, and when the Romans crucified his ass with Yahweh nowhere in sight, why, that was such a major embarrassment to the twelve that they couldn't accept it, and instead turned defeat into triumph with the resurrection.

12 is a literary creation, and the NT is almost silent on those not being in HJ's inner circle.

I doubt a traveling teacher could survive eating dinner scraps with a group as large as 12.

3 or 4 makes more sense as any more might be seen sa a threat to romans

Sheshbazzar · 05-09-2012, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

(once I came to understand that Nicodemus was building a legal case against Jesus).

No, once you invented your cockamamie 'Conspiracy of Nicodemus' based upon nothing but your imagination.

You have not one iota of evidence other than your warped imagination, that Nicodemus was sneaking around 'building a legal case against Jebus'.

Why do you keep repeating this unsupported horse-shit?

Adam · 05-10-2012, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vorkosigan

Quote:

You mean the sacred Gospel According to Vork? I don't know why you and Michael Turton cannot accept the possibility of sources underlying gMark.

Adam, the issue isn't your claim of sources going back to the HJ, though that is absurd on its face. Rather, it is your complete lack of methodological justification for your claims. Not only that, but time and again the issue has been pointed out to you. So everyone simply ignores you.

Both spin and I accept "sources" for Mark -- they are obvious. The OT, other Jewish writings, Roman legends, perhaps the Paulines (I don't know what spin's position is on the last).

Vorkosigan

I have to admit that you have a point here. You engaged me about gMark after my Post #52 in which my stylistic methodology was only in my link:
Underlying Sources of the Gospels

Quote:

“Petrine Ur-Marcus”... was written in Aramaic at that time. It can be found in Mark (and comparable verses in Matthew, Luke, and even John):

Mark 1:16-28, 2:17-3:5, 5:1-43, 6:30-52, 8:27-9:13, 9:30-31, 9:38-42, 10:13-34, 11:27-33, 12:18-23, 12:35-13:15, 13:28-31, 14:1-9, 28-42, 14:46-54, 15:1-27, 34-40, and continuing in Luke 24:1-3, 9,11-12, 36-47, 51; John 20:1-23, 26-27; and Acts 1:6-4:31, 5:17-42, 9:32-11:18, 12:1-17.

No other Synoptic sources were employed in the Gospel of John, so we can deduce that 44 A.D. slightly preceded the major development of the writing of John. Its textual mark is identity of word-use between Mark and Luke, but not with John. This shows that it must have been translated into Greek by the time it was used in Mark and [subsequently copied into] Luke.

I was not aware at that time that you had published a commentary on gMark and that your exposure of my failings was directed at my method on gMark, not necessarily at my three earlier eyewitnesses in gJohn. Besides, for gJohn I could at that time appeal to my subsequent The Significance of John. On gMark, however, my methodology shows up in the thread itself with my next eyewitness:
Gospel Eyewitnesses Post #74

Quote:

All the Q-Twelve Source material in Mark can be determined by the lack of exact word correspondence between Mark and Luke, as well as by the frequent use of the word “Twelve” to denote the Apostles. This lack of verbal exactitude means that the Aramaic Q or copies thereof were used at least four different times on the way to the Greek versions in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas, with the copy used for Thomas apparently being the most different from the others.

rlogan · 05-10-2012, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James The Least

We must continually be told that the crucifixion was an embarrassment, and continually told that Paul thought so because he wrote it was "a stumbling block for Jews" as evidence for this. It's grossly out of context, but smart people like Ehrman always cite it, so we must defer to the experts.

We must continually be told this because without it, the case for the historical-apocalyptic-messianic Jesus doesn't actually make sense any more.
God was going to come down from Mt. Sanai and join Jesus to kick Roman butt, and when the Romans crucified his ass with Yahweh nowhere in sight, why, that was such a major embarrassment to the twelve that they couldn't accept it, and instead turned defeat into triumph with the resurrection.

Lying for Jesus!

The forging of the Testimonium Flavianum convicts the Christians of falsifying "history". It was the Noble Lie of Eusebius, doctoring Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews because no Jesus of the Gospels had walked the earth.

It is so clear with Emperor Constantine calling the great Council of Nicea to force Christians all under one authority, and Eusebius happening to find this apparantly never-before seen passage on this great historical comet Jesus Christ. In his personal copy of Antiquities of the Jews.

Motive: Organize Christianity for the purpose of control
Means: Obtain supremacy by direct lineage from a living Jesus to Peter, first of four nonexistent Popes
Opportunity: Emperor Constantine provides it
Offender: Eusebius

I usually ignore aa's stuff but he brings up the original ending of Mark where the women run out of the cave and told no-one because they were afraid: this is extremely important because it explains why nobody ever head the Gospel before Mark told it. Because it was a secret kept by the frightened women.

Mark I guess learns it by osmosis, or it is stored in Earth's magnetic fields for him to access. But he needs to explain why nobody else knows this story. By the time Matthew is written with all the extra hogwash in there on the Nativity and more prophecy fulfillment, a geneaology - shameless stuff - you now need to add to the ending of Mark to match the other Gospels. Oh yea, by the way, he appeared in front of all kinds of people. We just forgot to mention that before.

The Geographical and historical errors in Mark tell us it is being written at a place distant in both time and geography from the alleged events. We can see who the author is reading for his source material though, the Septuigint version of the Hebrew Bible, along with Josephus.

It took money to produce and circulate Mark. The shipping magnate Marcion can produce and distribute letters of Paul. They are liturgical devices, not letters. Ultimately Mark represents the proto-catholic side that is certainly not Jewish. It is clearly a gentile writing to other gentiles.

We have modern equivalents that are even more striking hijacks of pre-existing religions. Elijah Mohammad was a bold-faced liar in 1930 by claiming Nation of Islam was... Islamic. Malcolm X had to travel to Mecca in 1964 before he learned Elijah Mohammad was a fraud. The church had operated for 34 years, in complete contradiction to Islam, in the Midwest USA where there actually were Islamic Mosques in operation at the same time.

So it wasn't like Islam was in some distant land far away with another language. A minority religion, but it existed alongside this blatant fraud. The fact a guy could get away with this in the 20th century with newspapers, telephones, radios, libraries, and such high literacy is incredible. Getting away with it in the second century where nobody can read - pffft. Piece of cake. So Mark hijacks the Hebrew Scriptures to his own ends. We're Jews in name only, so that we may abscond with their credentials while acting contrary to Judaic Law.

So this Jesus is a "Long ago and far away" story that was loosely placed in the reign of Pontius Pilate, which is necessary if you are going to try putting him with John the Baptist. You need to place him before the destruction of the temple in 70 CE so that he can foretell of it. John the Baptist is executed by Herod in 30-35 CE so you need John to Baptize Jesus before then. It isn't an exact fit, but it doesn't need to be. Close enough for Jesus!

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05-08-2012, 11:55 PM	#211
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	The discussion of moderation issues has been split off here and locked. We've tried to treat you all like adults ...

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