Amaleq13

Surely he knew that the census he described never actually took place yet he uses it to date the birth of Jesus.

hallq

How cynical would Luke's inventions have been? Filling in details was standard practice for historians of the time - consider, for example, this passage from Thucydides:When ideological bias creeps in, you get situations where the author might have said to himself, "This is what I've heard, but I know X theological truth, so it must have been like this..." He ends up stating as fact conjectures based what seems like him to sound reasoning, as much as modern historians may have wished he had been more careful.

JoeWallack

JW:
I tell you the Truth, I'm much more interested in what you think than what Not "Mark" Gospellers thought. IMNotHO the major Assertions of "Mark" are:

1) Everyone who knew Jesus failed him.

2) The original Jesus Movement ended with his death.

3) 1) was to "fulfill prophecy".

4) Jesus was primarily a man of Supernatural Actions (Not primarily a Teacher).

Not much of a strong historical core to these Assertions. Which of these Assertions do you disagree with Ben and why?



Joseph

Rick Sumner

Are these fair points, indicating that something is fiction? We can find successive (and frequent) redactions of virtually all of the multiply attested Dead Sea Scrolls, did those authors consider the works they drew from fiction? In the Hoyadot, for example, when the speaker is ostensibly none other than the Teacher of Righteousness himself, there are several redactive layers. Did they treat his words as fiction? Complete rewrites of tales from the Tanach are common, and even the more standard biblical books contain some significant changes. Did they regard the Tanach as fiction? Does the fact that it meets your criteria above (which it certainly does) indicate that it was regarded as such? And if it doesn't, how is it different?

For something to be an indication that an author regards something as fiction, it needs to be something that points *only* toward that interpretation, rather than something found in the treatment of texts regarded as fiction, and in texts regarded as historical. If it is found in both, it is useless as an indicator of either.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

Perhaps yes, depending on the sort of redactions.

Evidendtly "his words" were not treated as inscribed in stone.

Why do you regard the DSS as historical? Why do you regard the Tanach as historical? Perhaps they are not "fiction" but they may be something other than history.

Vorkosigan

I must disagree. The only indicator of an author's attitude toward a source is the author's own treatment of it. It is not relevant whether we know a text to be fiction or history. It is only relevant what the author thinks, and they only way to know what he thinks is to check his behavior.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

I think you've missed my point. The authors of the DSS regarded the Tanach as historical, but treated it the same way the gospel authors treated Mark. I am addressing the question of how a text is regarded not what it is.

Authors treated texts they regarded as historical the same way Matt. Lk. and Jn. treated Mark, at least by Toto's criteria. And thus Toto's criteria point to a false positive. The question, at the moment, isn't whether or not any of the texts were intended to be given as historical, it's whether or not they read Mark as such, and the suggested indicators don't indicate anything.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

mata leao

and the behavior of the very earliest known Christians was a sincere belief in the miracles done by and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Rick Sumner

You're missing my point, which is why I snipped the above portions of your post. I do not regard the Tanach as historical. Nor, for that matter, do I regard the DSS as such. Yet the authors did. I thought I had made this clear (it is, of course, the question I asked--whether or not the authors of the DSS regarded the Tanach as historical).

The redactors of the Hoyadot regarded the Teacher's words as historical. Many contend that they do so rightly, because they are in fact his words at the core, but that's neither here nor there for the moment.

They regarded them as historical but nonetheless treated them the same way as the other gospel authors treated Mark, by your criteria. Your criteria, as they sit right now, cannot distinguish between authors who regarded their texts as historical and authors who didn't. As such, it's a useless measure--or at least an incomplete one. So I am asking you what you see as different between the treatment of texts in the DSS (who did regard the texts as historical) and the treatment of the gospels (who, you suggest, did not). As it sits now, you cannot distinguish with the existing measures. So what should be added to point to your conclusion?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Amaleq13

In what sense did the DSS authors regard it as historical and how do you know this?

If they felt free to alter stories they regarded as "historical", doesn't that mean they had a completely different understanding of the concept?