Juststeve

Toto:

I think Mark presented the empty tomb as a fact because I read his Gospel and there is nothing in the Easter Morning story to suggest that he did not mean the story to be taken as true. I take it that Mark was presenting the empty tomb as fact because Matthew, Luke and perhaps John carried on the story as though it were fact. I take it that he was presenting the empty tomb as a fact because virtually everyone who has read the story understood it that way whether they thought the empty tomb was really a fact or not.

I could of course join you as a myther if I felt comfortable in just assuming ancient writers didn't mean what they wrote whenever their writings were inconvenient. It seems that is a lot to assume no matter how convenient.

To your final comment the empty tomb may or may not have been legendary, but either way that is no evidence for the proposition that the author of Mark so regarded it.

Steve

Toto

Nothing? A lack of sources in an anonymous document? dramatic elements? clear allusions to the Jewish scriptures? multiple "errors" in geography?

But in fact, they didn't - they felt free to enhance or alter the details. There is no way to reconcile all of the Easter morning stories.

Can you prove this at all? Do you have any idea how early Christians read this? At a certain point in church history, the authorities decreed that this story should be treated as fact and every True Christian had to swear that Jesus was born of a virgin and crucified under Pontius Pilate and rose from the dead. That creed implies that there were people who did not agree with one or more propositions there. But they lost, big time.

What's convenient about it? The Christian apologists are going for the most convenient explanation that allows them to keep their faith. I'm just looking for the most likely scenario. I've read ancient history, and it doesn't read anything like the gospels.

Is there any evidence that Mark thought this was actual history? I haven't seen any. I think you are just trying to shift the burden of proof.

hjalti

Right, so if something is reported in the gospel of Mark, we should assume that the disciples preached it, because christians wouldn't believe stuff that the disciples didn't preach. This doesn't seem very rational.

If the disciples preached about the empty tomb, then why did the earliest mention of the story say that the disciples weren't told about it? How do you make sense of that?

My view is this: The empty tomb is a legend (like other stories of the missing bodies of remarkable men) and we just don't know who came up with it.

hjalti

What makes me sympathetic to the view that Toto is proposing is the story of Barabbas. It makes so much sense as a theological fiction based on the ritual with the two goats in the OT, but it seems to be utter nonsense as history, that one must doubt whether the author intended his book to be read as history.

Juststeve

hjalti:

No one is arguing that everything in Mark is accurate. The question I have been pressing is how do we account for the fact that Mark seemed to think there was an empty tomb. Toto rejoins by claiming to know that Mark didn't really think there was an empty tomb.

The story of Barrabas seems as implausible to me as it is to you but that neither means mark didn't believe it nor does it have anything to do with the empty tomb.

Were I required to believe everything in the Gospels or believe that Jesus was a myth, I would go with myth. That however is a false choice.

Steve

hjalti

And I didn't say that anybody was arguing that. Right, you would probably also claim that the author of Mark "seemed to think" there was a Barabbas who was released, right?
Juststeve, the point is that the story of Barabbas makes one question whether the author was intending to tell us about history, and not just myths.

That is relevant to the question whether the author thought of the story of the empty tomb as history or myth. And nobody here is claiming that (other than maybe the guy who thinks that Christianity was invented in the fourth century).

gurugeorge

Yes, but what's your criteria for deciding? The criterion you seem to use, like so many people, is just to strip away the supernatural elements from the story, and presume that what you're left with must be historical.

To me, that simply does not follow. My impression of genuine historical research is that it's more painstaking than that.

All you get from that approach is a bunch of events and doings that could possibly have happened to a human being; but we cannot yet identify the human being via that process, and until we do, the hypothesis of a human being (to account for the exstence of the myth and the religion), is nowhere nearer plausibilification.

IOW, it's the other way round from the way you think it is: once you've found the human being THEN the stripped-of-supernatural, human-sounding elements of the story may plausibly pertain to that human being. But you can't find the human being just by stripping away the supernatural bits: you haven't found anything historical yet, because you don't know beforehand whether the stuff was just made up out of whole cloth or not (which is where the oft-used superhero example comes in).

aa5874

But, what is completely overlooked is that HJers are DISCREDITING the very sources that they need to be credible.

If one finds a book with the story of an unknown character and can IDENTIFY that virtually all about the unknown character is MYTH and FICTION then STRIPPING away the MYTH and FICTION does NOT alter the ORIGINAL story.

The story as it was found is one of myth and fiction. The Original story cannot be ALTERED unless another credible source can be found.

Once you STRIP AWAY the ORIGINAL MYTH and FICTION without any credible external sources then you PRESENT a NEW MANIPULATED version.

One cannot strip away any part of any version of "Robin Hood" until a credible version is found.

One cannot strip away any part of any version of "King Arthur" until a credible version is found.

The same applies to Marcion's Phantom.

One cannot change any part of any version of MARCION'S Phantom story without first finding a credible version.

We have FOUR versions of the Jesus story in the Canon and no one can STRIP away any part of any version to change the stories.

The FOUR versions are each UNIQUE. They show the EVOLUTION of the Jesus story over time. They are like GOLD MINES of the history of the BELIEF of Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin.

One should try to UNDERSTAND the Gospels just as they are presented. The FOUR Gospels are EXACTLY like an archaeological find. The very DIRT, the very RUBBLE, which surrounds the artifact is actually part of the history of the object, so too is the MYTH and Fiction which ENGULFS the FOUR Gospels.

If the MYTH and FICTION is stripped away from the Gospel stories that history of the BELIEF in Jesus may be LOST forever.

Who would dare strip away the story that Robin Hood robbed the rich to give to the poor?

No-one

Who would dare strip away the story that Marcion's Phantom Son of God ONLY SEEMED real?

No-one

Who would dare strip away the story that Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost?

HJers. But why? Why do HJers want to change the Jesus story?

Sheshbazzar

To make a baloney san'wich :Cheeky:

hjalti

Price seems to think that it's more probable ("knows") that Jesus being from Nazaret is a later addition.

Is that really the "established hypothesis"?

Right, if Jesus is said to be from towns A and B and both can be shown to probably be later traditions. Then we just don't have any information of where he was born. What's the problem with his statement?