French Prometheus

I agree.

Malachi151

Well, I freely admit that I am no scholar, I don't know any language other than English, etc. and I am not up on the latest in literature on these things.

If I wanted to do so, how would I go about putting together an article for such a journal?

As I said, I would write something on Mark as allegory and discussing the scriptural basis for several key passages.

Is this doable by someone like me, and how would I start? I guess by getting the latest issue of one of these journals. I wouldn't mind giving it a shot if it's worth my effort.

krosero

Don't know if you're reading Don's questions about this, but I'm just as interested as he is in what you're saying about Tatian. Can you point us to something in writing where Doherty says, or allows, that Tatian worshipped Jesus Christ?

Chris Weimer

That should be your first task - getting up to date on the literature. I don't think you'd necessarily have to know another language, but knowing the language of the text you're working on is just common sense, not to mention a boon.

Each journal has it's own guidelines. First try looking at several articles (which I know you have seen some) and then check out their website to see their guidelines.

Start with the library. It can be a great resource. And remember, this does take time.

Chris Weimer

Not comparable, eh? Calling the entire establishment wrong when you don't even have the most basic training in it is flat out ridiculous. Aristotle's theory on falling objects (the heavier the object, the faster it'd fall) seems "obvious" until one learns about gravity.

Please, if the Mythical Jesus was so "obvious", it'd be accepted by now. It's "obvious" that it's not so obvious.

How dare we indeed.

Malachi151

Care to comment on this post thing?

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...73#post4306173

Zeichman

Because that's exactly what Weimer, Gibson, Carlson, and others have been saying, and not a total parody. In fact, this would be a vital time for knowledge of ancient languages, and not just dependence on whatever translation is at hand.

The Jesus Seminar should not be treated as a monolithic entity. There's not even agreement on the synoptic problem among its members, let alone a single image of Jesus. Acting like the Jesus Seminar was the pinnacle of HJ scholarship is wrong. The words that Malachi quotes are Robert Funk's summaries of major points intended for the public, not end-all discussions of all the issues at hand. Indeed, the Jesus Seminar has been criticized more than any other recent scholarly endeavor in Biblical studies, to my knowledge.

And all the parallel that Malachi points out, if valid (and I'm not just going to hand that to him), is that the framing of the two incidents may have been Markan redaction based on the Hebrew Bible. It says nothing about the ultimate origin (as the argument stands), as correlation DOES NOT equal causation; you cannot simply point out parallels and command dependence, such is sophomoric methodology. I know I've said this before and it wasn't addressed then.
If you're going to argue for dependence, you need to cite clear examples of redactional and linguistic structures from the source text that are also present in the later one, at the very least. Who wrote that article about criteria for dependence in the biblical tradition that explains it well? As you would have it, anything resembling anything else can be cited as plausible dependence.

There is nothing resembling nuance in Malachi's "argument," as it is little other than argument by assertion and controversial inference. Far better cases can be made against the authenticity of the Temple Act without appealing to such silly methods.

jgibson000

Well, then, it would be in your interest to get up on the literature which deals with this issue. No one is going to publish an article that is not conversant with has already been said on the topic, especially if all it does is re-invent the wheel and claims to offer something new when all it's actually doing is to naively trace out ground that has already been well coverd.

Contrary to what many here apparently think, journals want to publish material that breaks new ground and challenges consensus ways of thinking. But why should they publish something that is not only not new, but isn't even aware that it is not new?

JG

jgibson000

Are you thinking of Samuel Sandmel "Parallelomania"?

Jeffrey Gibson

Malachi151

That's part of the point though. There is no consensus on what HJ even is, and now are you saying, "oh, that's just what we tell the public, that's not the 'real' view." I mean come on.

Where is the scholarship here? So now the Jesus Seminar isn't good enough, who are the scholars, where is the impeccable view that has been established that is equivalent to the biological view of evolution?

Look at what I am saying in the post though, look at their methods, look at their conclusions. It's baseless garbage, and these are the respected scholars of the field. Sure you can say that there are other scholars who didn't participate, okay, but what the fuck? You are pointing to scholars who believe in HJ and saying "these people have more authority and make more sense and I trust their judgment over MJ proposals."

Look at THEIR methodology. Unless you are now going to tell me "oh but, they didn't really publish everything, and there is still yet other 'secret knowledge' that no one knows about that validates their views," look at their methodology.

Their methodology is: #1) strip the Gospels of supernatural references, #2) see how many times a certain saying or incident is reported in the various different sources and how similar it is in all the sources.

If sayings or incidents occurs in many sources, and is identical or close to the same in every source, then assume that this is "real history".

That method is absolute shit, and not even worth looking at.

We are dealing with texts that are all COPIED FROM ONE ANOTHER!

The assumptions that they take into the methodology are obviously nonsense.

This methodology is built on the assumption that:

#1 There was a historical Jesus.
#2 The writers of the Gospels were attempting to chronicle his life and deeds.
#3 The Gospels have some level of independence.
#4 There are external reasons dealing with traditions based on the historical Jesus that the writers of the Gospels weighed the inclusion of sayings and scenes against.

These are bullshit assumptions, and I don't have to be able to read Greek to figure that out.

Talking about the fig tree and temple scene: What criteria can possibly be used to conclude that Jesus casting people out of the temple is an historical event? What criteria can possibly validate this event?

There is nothing that can be used to validate this event.

Their basis for claiming it as "historically true" is simply the fact that this event in mentioned in all four Gospels. That is their reasoning for including it as a "true" historical event.

That reasoning only makes sense based on the assumptions that I listed previously.

Now, if we know that the Gospel of Mark was written first, and the other writers copied from Mark, then if we can clearly see that the Temple scene in "Mark's" Gospel is part of an allusion to OT scripture, and that it is included in order to create a pattern that can be traced back to the Hebrew scriptures, then baring any other information we have no reason whatsoever to believe that this is a historical event.

The fact that the other people who copied his story chose to keep this scene in their versions too in no way can support the historicity of the scene.

The other sources are not independent, so their inclusion can in no way reinforce the historicity of the scene.

Any basic logical person can figure that out, and the fact that these people have NOT figured this out, shows that they are so far off the mark that it is not even funny. This is like an issue of creationism and evolution.

The historicists are like creationists in the 18th century explaining the data. An entire paradigm shift is needed in Biblical scholarship in order to even be able to approach the data. Yes, they can do textual criticism, and as far as figuring out if something was an interpolation or not, etc., that's all fine and good, but to take on the task of what the JS is trying to do, with their preconceived notions about Jesus and the Gospels, it's impossible.

It's like trying to solve astronomy problems using the Ptolemaic model, that, as far as I'm concerned, is where biblical scholarship is today.

There may have been some real Jesus who was the seed for the story, that could well be, but even if so, his seed is even smaller than the mustard seed of which he supposedly spoke.

The whole field works from assumptions that simply have never been established, and they use those assumptions in a self-defensive loop to defend the core assumptions.

Another example is the dating of works, such as Didache. These works are dated based on the assumption that Jesus was a real person who died around 30 CE, and thus these works had to have been written AFTER that time, if not after the Gospels.

Didache may well have been written after that time, but the assumptions used to date it are invalid. You can't date the work based on those assumptions. What if Didache was actually written in 10 BCE? Current scholarship COULD NEVER EVEN DISCOVER THAT. That conclusion is impossible to be arrived at based on how they date the works.

I'm not sure exactly what you are talking about here, the Markian dependence on the OT or the synoptic dependences?

Everybody knows that the author of Mark used the OT and made both explicit and implicit references to it. It's not as though this is something new. It's also widely accepted that the writers of Matthew and Luke used Mark. So, I don't know what you are getting at. I also think that the writer of John knew the Gospel of Matthew, or some form of it.

Such as other OT references and the historical facts that make it unbelievable.

Yet, this is still in the "historically true in some form" column by a group of leading Biblical scholars, so I hope you see the problem.

I also can see no reason to call me argument silly, because it is far from it.

The entire Jesus Seminar approach is invalid, and this is an approach adopted by leading scholars in the field.

Who cares how many times a passage occurs in a set of works that all borrow from one original?

All that the Jesus Seminar has shown is what story elements were most well known, well received, and widely shared, among the early Christians.

Instead of using their method, a more appropriate method would be to start with the Gospel of Mark, since it's the root of all this, and try to figure out #1) what it is, #2) the source of its story elements, #3) the motivation for writing it.

My proposal is this:

The author of Mark was a part of the Pauline community. As such, he didn't like the other major apostles, Peter and James and John. He was either anti-Jewish or a self-critical Jew. After Judea was destroyed he wrote his story as pure fiction and as a polemic attack on the Judean Jews and the apostles. The Gospel of Mark is a vicious attack, and a story of suffering, tragedy, loss, and despair, by someone who was angry, outraged, and saddened by what he saw as a wasteful and tragic war that was brought onto the Jews by themselves.

That's what I think the Gospel of Mark is, and, if that is even halfway correct, all the other nonsense is blown out of the water. If the Gospel of Mark is fiction, then the core of everything is fiction, and it doesn't matter if a certain passage is found in one Gospel or all four. If they all copy the same scenes from Mark, they are all just copying fiction.

Lastly, to close out, I don't see how anyone could claim that approaching with materials WITHOUT the assumption that there was a historical Jesus is not the best approach.

In other words, agnosticism should be the starting point, YET, it clearly is not. The Jesus Seminar approach wouldn't even work at all if they started from an agnostic standpoint.

P.S. And another thing

The Jesus Seminar, and virtually all other HJers, believe that "John the Baptist" really did baptize Jesus.

Why the hell would any rational person conclude this?

First of all, there is no mention of this in any other pre-Gospel literature.

Second of all, John the Baptist is clearly playing an allegorical role in Mark, once again.

The author of Mark is using JtB as Elijah, and yet "scholars" have no problem going headlong into concluding that "Oh, John the Baptist really baptized Jesus and played this important role, etc." What a joke. Again, this so-called scholarship is a crock.