Kapyong

Gday,

Like you "did not see" the evidence that G.Mark was not written as history from before - even when posted repeatedly for you to answer ?

You just ignore the evidence that disagrees with you by insisting you "don't see it".


Kapyong

bacht

Or, he was constructing a text to answer typical questions from gentile converts.

Apologetics, obviously intended to assert apostolic succession back to the first witnesses. Another possibility is that gMark was written by an Alexandrian gnostic, or even Marcion.

Well, the title Christ is a Greek translation of Messiah. Then we've got John the Baptist appearing like Elijah, then the 40 days of temptation echoing the 40 years of the Exodus. The whole story takes place in Galilee and Judea. The main characters are all Jewish. The miracle stories (healings, mass feedings) have antecedents in the book of Kings. The story climaxes in the precincts of the Jerusalem temple. :huh:

Of course, but who was this "good news" written for?

Toto

This is breathtaking. Even historicists who claim that Mark had a historical figure in mind find references to the Hebrew Scriptures at every point in Mark.

See the details at The Gospel of Mark

aa5874

Did "Mark" say that?

So, who said this?

Mark 1 The earliest version of a Canonized gMark is dated to around the 4th century so we cannot assume that the Canonized version of gMark is original.

There were MULTIPLE versions of gMark based on Origen and it cannot be established which version can be found in the Canon.

aa5874

There is NO Credible evidence that "Paul" was an early Christian. Justin Martyr who lived in the middle of the 2nd century, was BEFORE the "Pauline" writings and Acts of the Apostles.

Doug Shaver

You seem to have gotten my reasoning backwards. My argument is not "The gospels were fiction, therefore Jesus did not exist." My argument is "Jesus did not exist, therefore the gospels were fiction."

I believe a plausible case can be made for the fictional character of the gospels even on the presupposition of Jesus' historicity, and anyone who finds the case convincing will certainly find it that much harder to defend historicity, but it can be done. There seems to be a large segment of NT scholars who do it now. They have concluded that the gospels contain essentially zero historical fact, but they continue to insist on Jesus' actual existence.

Obviously, they aren't much like most modern fiction. One thing we have to keep in mind is that most modern fiction is written for the primary purpose of making money. Most writers do have other motivations, of course, but in general they wouldn't be writing if they couldn't get paid for it. That was not the case in ancient times. The only people who could make a living doing nothing but writing were scribes, but they were the analogue of typists, not of writers.

I don't think the case against historicity depends on any data that aren't accepted by mainstream scholarship. The dispute is over interpretation of the data, provided you can distinguish between actual data and certain widespread presuppositions that beg the question of historicity. There is no argument for dating Mark as early as 70 CE that does not assume Jesus' historicity. If you can find one, please let me know.

Unlike others in this forum, I have no problem with the conventional dating of Paul's work. When I say that he and other first-century Christian writers seem never to have heard of Jesus, I'm referring to the Jesus of Nazareth who was the central character of the gospel narratives -- the Galilean preacher who was crucified by Pontius Pilate and then returned to life sometime afterward. Obviously, Paul had heard about some person who was called "Jesus Christ" who had been crucified and then returned to life. What I'm saying is that there is no clear indication in Paul's writings that his Jesus was the same Jesus about whom the gospel authors wrote, and many indications that they could not have been the same Jesus.

I'm having trouble parsing the logic of that comment.

Written evidence is all we have. If we want to figure out who believed what and when they believed it, we have nothing else to go on except the extant documents. Furthermore, our interpretation of those documents has to take into consideration all of the known, or reasonably suspected, bibliographic data about how they got produced.

dog-on

I am not confused. You seem to have, once again, missed the point.

The meaning of which, I suppose one day will dawn on you. :bulb:

angelo

Or use the gospels to study the gospels as many authors and historians do.

Juststeve

Angelo:

If you feel I am wasting your time, don't read my posts and don't reply to them. You objections notwithstanding I will continue to post whatever the hell I want.

Steve

Juststeve

Doug:

You had difficulty parsing the logic of my last comment because it was truncated by an editor who was offended by the idea expressed. For a Free Thought Forum there is a lot of dogma being enforced.

When you speak of NT scholars who think the Gospels contain essentially no historical evidence it is important to recognize that essentially no evidence is not no evidence. I can't think of any major scholar, mythers aside, who does not regard the crucifixion as historically established. I think it obvious that to have an historical crucifixion you need an historical guy to crucify.

Steve