Malachi151

Spin, still waiting for you to address post #76: http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...4&postcount=76

Additionally, the concept behind the "two source" claim is proving that the story of Jesus as recorded by Mark came from "eyewitness accounts". That is where this concept came from.

Now, this of course assumes not only that Jesus were real, but also that Jesus actually performed miracles, and actually did feed thousand of people with a handful of bread and fish.

According to the two source hypotheses we have at least two accounts, based on some real event, that were later passed on to the author of the Gospel called Mark and both were recorded by him in his story because he wanted to use all of the sources available, or something of this nature.

Alternatively, one can argue that there was no real event, but that these are two severals of a "mythical" story that developed organically among the followers which was later picked up by the author of the Gospel called Mark.

Now, in order for the first case to be true it assumes the reality of miracles and that Marks account is based on eyewitness accounts.

I find that unbelievable and so that is discounted.

In order for the second case to be true, basically this story would have to have organically developed among followers, then split into multiple versions, then both versions were received by the author, and he then decided to included both, though there is no real difference between them aside from the numbers.

This is possible, but is it more or less likely than the alternative?

The alternative is that the author of Mark invented this narrative element himself.

Invention by the author is certainly less complicated, but does it provide any other better explanations? It does.

First of all, the wording of the miracle feeding is remarkably close to the miracle feeding by Elisha in 2 Kings. Likewise, there are several other cases in the surrounding text where the author also makes references to the Elisha/Elisha narrative in 1 & 2 Kings. Do the two feeding scenes server a larger narrative purpose? They do, which is indicated by the scene in Mark 8:14-21. Are the scenes symbolically significant? Yes they are, again also confirmed by Mark 8:14-21.

So, the explanation that these two scenes come from two separate sources really makes no sense at all. It is nothing more than an apologetic attempt to claim that the scenes are based on eyewitness accounts of real miracles, which is nonsense.

spin

No. It is a reasonable defense of the integrity of the writers, which I am also inclined to. This doesn't mean to say that what they wrote was a reflection of anything that really happened in the past.

A tradition is a bit like a river: at any given point along the river it is extremely hard to identify the stream further up that supplied any particular drop of water. If it is correct that Mk reflects the collection of traditions of a religious community -- and this seems the most reasonable scenario to me to explain the literature without accusing writers of creative license --, where does leave both the HJ and the MJ crowds? Do you think you have an approach that will get you further?


spin

spin

I guess I mustn't have sent it. It was probably too vociferous regarding your lack of content, both in the specific post and the basically irrelevant web page you were palming off.

I don't usually read secondary literature for good reason.

This must be interesting to you but irrelevant to me.

I see.

I don't know how anyone can extract real events out of the gospel traditions, but then I don't think anyone will be able to establish that such and such an event in the gospels was mythical either.

Hey, it's possible. But I'd probably feel that that possibility is sufficiently slim to practically exclude it, though such exclusion is irrelevant. We are dealing with traditions that we have no independent insight into, so we are left with trawling through the tradition itself. Sometimes we get lucky, but that's not frequent.

I think that is so unlikely it can be excluded as well. The text clearly reflects some form of community behind it and material in the gospel is pitched directly towards the community, such as the stuff about being persecuted and about staying awake, the responsibility towards the community rather than to the family.

To paraphrase Einstein, you have to make it as simple as possible not more.

You still haven't got the idea that you are not writing this stuff to me. I don't think we can reach any reality that may be within the gospel traditions. But then a writer seeing relations between past events and what "must have happened" does not add up to an act of fiction. The kernel of andrewcriddle's OP I agree with. But you must understand that I'm dealing with your accusations against the writer, not regarding any hypothetical reality in the account. The writer can easily believe what he is concocting is true, while rehashing material from the Hebrew bible. Why did Mt have Jesus on to animals for the triumphal entry in preference to Mk's one? Obviously he thought his erroneous reading of Zechariah was more reflective of what the reality must have been.


spin

Ted Hoffman

Yes, I believe the most useful approach is to determine the historicity of the events narrated. Historians and people interested in Christian origins are mostly interested in history, in what happened, not in what certain individuals believed to have happened. If we want to be that subjective and put aside the referential function of texts (which is primary) to the determination of mindset, desires and beliefs of authors, then we will be opening a wide can of worms in my view and whatever we will come up with is ipso facto unfalsifiable because criteria like multiple attestation dont apply here.

spin

Historians are interested in sources that can clarify the past by showing themselves to be within a known past and yet providing new information. The gospels sources cannot provide the first part and therefore there is no way to test historicity. That doesn't necessarily mean there's none, but, if there is, you can't get at it. That is what I was pointing to and what you don't seem to have acknowledged. It means that you simply can't do much history with it, either "positive" or "negative". You can only deal with the literary nature of the material. And that's what you're doing. Not history. You should be willing to admit that you can't do historical research in various areas. What can you tell me about Herod's greatgrandfather?

I know all we are doing with the gospels is text analysis. Wouldn't you agree?


spin

Ted Hoffman

I humbly disagree. We can do historical criticism and evaluate their referential value against contemporary texts.

spin

I'll drop it if you like (pm me), but I'm fishing for a methodology you might be proposing that can somehow extract historical information regarding the central material of the gospels, rather than simply draw conclusions on a tradition from text analysis.


spin

andrewcriddle

a/ Credibility is not the same as truthfulness/accuracy.
b/ What makes a story credible or incredible in one society may be very different from what makes it credible or incredible in another society.

Andrew Criddle

Malachi151

Okay:

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...9&postcount=32

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...0&postcount=35

Ted Hoffman

Textual criticism or analysis can tell us how the texts have changed over time but I find it quite limited and less likely to yield significant results in terms of our understanding of what happened. What am I talking about? Luke claims a census was done. Matthew claims that infants were slaughtered by Herod. These are historical claims that can be checked against other historical sources so to some extent, historical criticism can be done. To what extent is debatable but it can and must be done.

On the other hand, the structure, themes and style of Mark for example, the function of the sea, buildings, miracles, trees, numbers (three, twelve etc) and his intercalation opens up fields of inquiry like rhetorical, literary, form, redaction, narrative and other forms of criticism. You have stuck on form criticism allowing for Markan redaction but you know that the weakness of form and redaction criticism is their inattentiveness to the narrative character of the Gospels, which we cannot ignore because they expose so many things to us that form and redaction criticism cannot.

There are questions a methodology has to answer in my view, for example:
Powell, M.A., What is Narrative Criticism?, p.79

So the methodology needs to be broad based, able to deal with the style, content and structure of the text. Andrew's proposal is quasi narrative critical because instead of interpreting the narrative from the perspective of an idealized implied reader, he is going beyond the determination of the authorial intent to the determination of the authorial belief. This opens a can of worms. People often write to fulfil their desires, not necessarily to express their beliefs. For example, if spin gives me grief and I cant do squat about it in real life, I can write a story where spin gets his ass whupped by a little girl. It doesnt mean I believe spins as was whupped. And it doesnt mean I believe a little girl can whup spins ass. Carthasis.
Psychoneurotics argue that the imaginative faculty serves the function of wish-fulfillment in the individual and the narrative is a vehicle for playing out the emotions and legitimizing the desires of the writer.

Folklorists argue that the Jesus' story meets the mythic hero archetype because, amongst other things, he is a son of God and an attempt is made on his life while he is an infant. He of course, triumphs eventually like other heroes and resurrects.
In the introductory chapter of In Quest of The Hero - Psychological Origins of Myth, Robert A. Segal writes,
Alan Segal notes:
So maybe mythmakers in Galilee came up with the story of Jesus, or maybe Jesus actually did exist. Regardless, we have to ask: Why would an author in Rome (AMark), who does not know the geography of Galilee, write about the powerful Rome being bound by the forces of evil and only getting freed by some peasant from Galilee (gerasene demoniac)?

His anti-petrine creed is clear with his portrayal of the disciples as bumbling idiots and his adoptionist Christology clear so he must have been a follower of the cult Jesus started. But why present Jesus as mentally unstable? Why allow him to be posessed? Why the emphasis on his humanity? Of course to underline his adoptionist beliefs and contrast them with divine Christology.
The next question then would be, was there a Gerasene demoniac? Did Jesus actually have a family he distanced himself from or were they placed there by the author simply to make a point? Was Joseph of Arimathea simply a deus ex machina inserted in the plot to move the narrative forward or did he actually exist?

Was the proclamation "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" a novelty or the same old shit? Whence came the idea of baptism?

Can the methodology answer some of these questions?

If I don't make sense, pardon me. Like I said, I dont think I can make any more useful contributions here. Too many thoughts dancing in my head.