jakejonesiv

Dear AAA5874,

These are good comments. They are so good I am giving you an extra "A" in your name. You are absolutely correct that a human father is never mentioned for Jesus in the gospel of Mark. There is no Joseph.

Marcion had a primitive gospel older than canonical Luke. Let's call it urLuke. It starts out as follow:

Do you see that Triple-A? According to Marcion's gospel, Jesus descended straight out of heaven, and he had NOBODY! He was a phantom. Now, if some one wants to argue that a bodiless phantom is historical, they can be my guest, but it is really purely religous conceptions.

Richard

There appears to be a confusion. For all the gospels, wrong is that Jesus is portrayed only as human or only as "supernatural." Not either-or, but rather both-and. In some pericopae, Jesus is portrayed as a human being acting in ways humans are known to act, and in non-human (superman or supernatural) ways humans are known not to act.

Do you see that as a problem here?

My view is that most, if not all, the portrayals of Jesus Christ is authorial invention, and with a definite division between docetic and arian. The great debate in Christology was whether JC was BOTH human and divine, which was the catholic (orthodox) view, a non-human JC being the primary heresy.

TedM

You are implying that you believe humans are not capable of supernatural activities. I do not accept that view. It may be true but it is unprovable.

It seems to me that this is your primary assumption behind your claims with regard to Mark's Jesus. I am agnostic about your assumption. It may or may not be true.


You don't even believe in the supernatural so how do you know what they are or are not capable of? Once again, this comes down to your own opinions and definitions.


No, and you certainly MAY be right. But, you MAY be wrong also. Do you think we puny humans know all of the laws of the universe? We don't even know the most basic issues--how energy could possibly have always existed if that is the case, or how it could have been created if that is the case..


Let's say you are right about Mark's presentation of a supernatural Jesus. What does that possibly say about Mark's INTENTION? Did he know that Jesus didn't exist? Did he know that Jesus never was a historical figure? Or did he believe Jesus had been historical--born and lived and died, and STILL believed he was capable of supernatural abilities and powers? Why do you assume Mark viewed the Supernatural the way you do, and not the way I do?

aa5874

You have no idea what you accept or can prove.

Please state a known credible independently confirmed case where a human being did Supernatural acts like gMark's Jesus where he WALKED on the sea during a STORM and TRANSFIGURED.

Agnosticism is NOT evidence that human beings are capable of the Supernatural. You don't know what you are talking about.

Do you not understand that GODS are classified as Supernatural beings, as NON-HISTORICAL beings, as MYTHOLOGICAL entities, that in LEGENDARY FABLES and TALES appear like human beings?

The Gospel called Mark appear to me to be a LEGENDARY FABLE or TALE full of fiction and implausible mythological Supernatural activities about an entity called Jesus the son of God.


Well, once I may be right and you cannot PROVE I am wrong then my theory is GOOD.

The Jesus of gMark had NO FLESH.

I can show the evidence, the written evidence in gMark, where this Jesus had NO FLESH when HE WALKED on the sea during a STORM and did NOT sink or SWIM.

According to the WRITTEN evidence, the Jesus of gMark in the FABLE APPEARED to be a SPIRIT.

1. The author of gMark presented a story filled with KNOWN fiction and implausible activies surrounding Jesus and his supposed disciples.

2. The unknown author of gMark did NOT claim he was writing history.

3. The unknown author did NOT claim he was an eyewitness to any event in gMark.

4. The unknown author did NOT claim his Jesus had an earthly father.

5. The character called Jesus did NOT say he had an earthly father.

6. The unknown author of gMark wrote that his Jesus WALKED on the sea during a storm and appeared as a SPIRIT to his disciples.

7. The unknown author of gMark claimed his Jesus TRANSFIGURED in the presence of Peter, James and John in his story or fable.

8. When the unknown author's Jesus was crucified he did NOT even write that his Jesus SHED a DROP of BLOOD. There is ZERO about any BLOOD from gMark's Jesus.

9. In the FABLE called gMark, the short-ending, Jesus VANISHED after he was supposedly dead and buried.

My theory that gMark's Jesus had NO FLESH is fully supported BY THE WRITTEN evidence from gMark itself.

And that is ALL I need.

You need SUPERNATURAL Laws of which you DON'T even KNOW what you are talking about.

TedM

Agnosticism is the withholding of judgment in the absence of proof. Since there is no proof of the absence of the supernatural, I am withholding judgment regarding its existence. I'm agnostic about it.

Ok, but did Mark feel the same way about it?


It is not bad as a theory. It might be wrong though..


Did Mark believe that?


He didn't claim he wasn't.

He didn't claim he wasn't.

He didn't claim Jesus didn't have an earthly father.

He didn't say he didn't.

He also walked on land and appeared to be human. Maybe Mark thought that he was fully human with supernatural abilities. Maybe Mark was mistaken about the supernatural elements but right about the human elements.

Same as 6.

He didn't say Jesus didn't have blood either. Why are you hung up on the blood? Did he not suffer on the cross? Like a human? Did he not die? Do supernatural beings die?

This doesn't help your theory because it doesn't tell us what Mark though about Jesus. Maybe Mark believed Jesus' body was truly missing.

If by "NO FLESH" you mean "NON-HISTORICAL" (a much better phrase for you to use--I suggest it to avoid the confusion that I've shown you others have with that phrase), then I can only agree that the Jesus of Mark had some supernatural elements that normally humans don't display. This says nothing about Mark's own personal belief about the historicity of his Jesus. Your disbelief only says something about aa's Jesus.

They might exist but they don't have to for Mark to have been writing about a human being. That doesn't mean ALL of his assertions have to be true in order for SOME of them to be true. Your ALL requirement is a false requirement you repeatedly apply to gMark.

If you find yourself repeating the same things, as I am, I think we should both agree to not agree. Have a nice day.

aa5874

What absurdity you write!!! What non-sense!

You might as well claim to be agnostic about the absence of proof for flying elephants and Holy Ghosts.

What is the proof of the absence of the Supernatural?

Where on EARTH would you expect to find proof of absence?

Do you personally have to search under every shrub or the depths of every waterway, pond, lake and ocean in the entire globe to claim mermaids do not exist?

All things deemed non-existing OR ABSENT have NO proof of their existence or PRESENCE.

Humans can be deemed to be NOT capable of the Supernatural since it has NOT been proven or their is no evidence that humans can WALK on the SEA during a storm and TRANSFIGURE as described in gMark by Jesus the Son of God.

Richard

It appears all of you expect ancient characterizations of humans and divine creatures to be understood in our modern times. That simply is not the case. A human performing extraordinary supernatural actions was nothing unusual in ancient times. Homer pretty much set the stage in his epics for the Roman Empire. ALL the gospels portray Jesus as both human and divine: that was a requirement for the canon itself, devised by the catholic (orthodox) early Christians who won the Christian wars and presented/preserved Christianity their way. GJohn is the closest to a Gnostic presentation, but still has the human Jesus. So it's not either/or, but both/and.

In all the gospels, including GMark, Jesus is "in the flesh" whether or not that particular term is used, and ordinarily it refers to the sinful natural ways of humans, contrasted with the way of righteousness and goodness. Perhaps a little backgound for GMark will help:

In biblical studies a new format has been devised, called literary/narrative criticism (as distinguished from rhetorical criticism). It is used in understanding how the Gospel of Mark unfolds to tell its story of Jesus. While some scholars claim there is no structure (no coherent master plan, no self-conscious purpose of the author), others find a very complex web of interrelated sections. There are different proposals, and they are based on the principle used in the examination of the gospel, such as topography, theological themes, sitz im leben (context in which it is set), and literary factors. It seems most scholars divide the gospel in two sections, the second from 8:27 to the end, 16.8 (the following, known as the LE (long ending) or the SE (short ending) added much later than the original.

The second section has more of the words of Jesus, and the figure of Jesus changes as one who forsees his fated destiny determined by Scripture (“the son of man must suffer”), and Jesus describes himself as “the Son of Man” as a title, never calling himself the “Son of God”, nor claiming to be the long-awaited Messiah (in any of the gospels, nor claiming to be God). I think “the Son of Man” is an apocalyptic reference (following 1 Enoch). In the first section, Jesus would be thought of as a prophet, teacher, and healer, not to be the crucified Messiah as in the second part, which also has the first references to the Father, and there are some overlaps from the first section. The word Christos is used only a few times in the book and then not always very positively

One of the themes is that Jesus being understood is mis-understood, by everyone including the disciples. Some scholars have understood this second section in terms of the first calling Jesus “the Son of God” as a title (which we see as a possible spurious interpolation). With it, the gospel is structured by that Christological frame, and this may have been the purpose of the possible redactor who added it, the orthodox theology of the identity of Jesus. Among the theological references is “The Way” (“hodos”), which became prominent for early Christians much later, such as shown in the Didache.

There are a number of literary tools in the gospel (like what is the messianic secret?), but it’s overall structure seems to be telling a story in the genre of drama, common at the time in the Greco-Roman literary culture, and to be heard rather than read, “indeed, to listen to it as it was designed to be heard—and so to experience it as it does its work,” as described by one scholar. Storytelling will use literary features such as repetition, foreshadowing and framing to tell the story. The process of writing down the story that he told would have preserved modes of oral recitation. Some have characterized the gospel as haggadic midrash (meaning of Pesach and Shabuoth in the light of Jesus' crucifixion and his elevation "to God's right hand" on Pesach and its aftermath, and on the Torah itself), and so not meant by the author to be historical as in writing a history. Nevertheless, the gospel clearly demonstrates an historical human Jesus in his story.

Dennis R. MacDonald, Yale University recently claimed in his book that the gospel is a deliberate and conscious anti-epic, an inversion of the Greek "Bible" of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which in a sense "updates" and Judaizes the outdated heroic values presented by Homer, in the figure of a new hero, Jesus (whose name, of course, means "Savior"). Homer was the major work in the first century/ Walcott D. Bartlett The Gospel of Mark is a carefully contrived work of art that is intentionally enigmatic in nature because it addresses itself to the spiritually ready. Its aim is to foster the process of self-transformation ritually acted out in baptism and “historically” manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is a process in which the psyche dies and the Child of Humanity is again born.

TedM

What you are doing is taking your very narrow and limited human understanding and extrapolating to all circumstances and situations in the universe! That to me is a highly misguided, possibly arrogant attitude. Agnosticism is a much more reasonable approach because it recognizes ones limitations. Of course you can reasonably say that specific claims to supernatural are highly doubtful given enough evidence which disproves them. But no one has the ability to test everything and millions of people have given accounts of personal supernatural-like experiences. The mysteries of life and of matter just by themselves leaves the door wide open for phenomena that people would consider to be supernatural.

It appeared originally to me that you wanted to discuss the kind of Jesus gMark had in mind when writing about him, but I see that you have turned this discussion into a discussion of your own personal beliefs about the historicity of Mark. Your thread topic is not even relevant it seems to me because here is basically all you seem to be saying:

"gMark is not writing about a historical human being named Jesus because it contains supernatural elements pertaining to Jesus"

It really has nothing to do with Jesus' father, does it? Will you admit that this is and has been your primary purpose for this thread from the beginning?

aa5874

But, that is not so at all.

I am dealing with the written statements, the written evidence, in gMark to support my theory that gMark's Jesus had NO FLESH.

You are dealing with the supernatural or attempting to confirm absurdities and non-entities that may follow Supernatural Law and intervention hoping to find, perhaps by supernatural means, "proof of absence".

I am limited by the written evidence, the written statements in gMark to support my theory that gMark's Jesus had NO FLESH.

You seem to have NO such limit.

You go beyond the written evidence and appeal to the supernatural.

You have the view, perhaps due to agnosticism, that human beings may NOT be limited by the natural but extend to the SUPERNATURAL and function and operate without natural limitations.


So, you have now ADMITTED that you are NOT limited by the written evidence in gMark, you are WIDE OPEN or have left your door WIDE OPEN to highly doubtful claims of the supernatural.

But what you say is just not true.

You know what I have written about gMark's Jesus.

You know that the unknown author of gMark claimed Jesus was the Son of God, and that Spirits claimed Jesus was the son of God, that the unknown author did NOT ever claim Jesus had an earthly father, that gMark is full of fiction and implausibilities about Jesus and that the author did NOT ever claim he was writing history.

You should apologise again.

You have NOT been able to show that the Jesus of gMark had an earthly father. You have NOT been able to show that gMark is history.

You have utterly failed to support your claim about the reason Mark did not mention an earthly Jesus.

gMark's Jesus had NO FLESH.

TedM

It is obvious to me now that you only need ONE reference to Jesus doing something 'supernatural' to conclude that gMark's Jesus had NO FLESH (which you explained means "Mark wasn't writing about a historical Jesus").

Why didn't you just say so in the first place? Why waste all this time with multiple 'evidences' when all YOU require is one?