stephan huller

my mother always taught me to say nice things about people even if you have a disagreement with them (maybe especially so). besides doing the opposite makes you seem weak and wounded. I'm sorry but publishers and readers like his writing style. i am the furthest thing from being an ehrman fan but you have to give the devil his due

EarlDoherty

This is unrealistic. The Gospel of Mark is a crude (at least on its surface) piece of writing, regardless of whether it was meant as a 'new Torah,' though it is hard to think that its author would look upon it with such pretentions. Also, this new movement included both Jews and Greeks, so Mark would hardly have been foolish enough to write the thing in Hebrew--if he was even capable of it. Why would he hide his light under a bushel?

Later evangelists hardly treated Mark so pretentiously either. They could alter anything in it according to their own agendas, even contradict him. This practice does not speak of an intention to create sacred scripture. That was the folly of subsequent times.

Earl Doherty

Adam

I know, Earl,
That you believe in Q. I believe that the presence of gMark sayings in gThomas shows that a Q document included passages that entered into gMark. Since both gMatthew and gLuke had a Q document independently of the one Mark had, their differences from gMark in those passages are to be attributed to not having copied from gMark for those.

stephan huller

i have already demonstrated in the other thread that clement of a had a very different 1 clement. a similar argument can be made with respect to mark as well as the pauline epistles

jdl

I think Carrier comes to his reading based on more than just that one paragraph. He says further down:
So yes, I do think Carrier's reading is supportable. Surely one badly worded sentence is a slip of the pen, but two is downright negligence.

I haven't reached page 44 yet (only up to Chapter 2) so maybe the context will vindicate Ehrman. I seriously doubt it, though. In my view, Carrier's review has thus far been accurate, and I don't anticipate that changing.

Joseph

mountainman

Does she post in this forum?

GakuseiDon

Ehrman has responded on the statue of Priapus on his blog here:
http://ehrmanblog.org/acharya-s-rich...nd-bull-story/

A pertinent extract:

And so my offhand statement about this particular one was that the Vatican does not have a statue of Peter as rooster with a hard cock for his nose. Carrier’s response was that the statue does exist. Let me put the question to him bluntly: Does he think that the Vatican has “a penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock” in its collection? I think we can say with some assurance that the answer is no. As I said, unlike a lot of other mythicists Carrier is both trained and smart. But sometimes he doesn’t read very well.

He makes this kind of mistake routinely in his vicious assault on me and my book. The problem appears to be that he sees something that strikes him as a problem, and he isolates it, dissects it, runs with it, gets obsessed with it, and …. forgets how it was actually said in the first place. Careful reading can solve a lot of problems of misunderstanding.

Let me say, in addition, that this comment of mine was made very much in passing. No major point was being made, other than that Acharya S was not a scholar who could be trusted (in part because she is not a scholar) in the context of eleven rather egregious mistakes that I picked out, more or less at random, in her book. Carrier does not object to any of the other ten. Which means that he appears to be on board with all eleven. That means that his cavil has no effect on my overall argument at this point.

So what is the point? Carrier appears to want to show that he is very much a better historian than I am. This is a repeated theme throughout his scathing critique. I, frankly, did not realize that this was supposed to be a contest between the two of us, and am not interested in the question of who wins.

I can't think of anything more counter-productive for the mythicist cause in recent times than Carrier's review. For reasons known only to himself, Carrier has focussed too much on side issues. I think any good will from Ehrman has evaporated. Good for theatre, good for historicists like myself who think that mythicists are agenda-driven fringe thinkers, good for forums who treat arguments as blood-sports. But not good for any serious debate.

GakuseiDon

Okay, fair enough. Thanks for your comments, jdl. If it does change when you reach page 44, please let us know.

jdl

Serious debate, Don? Ehrman himself has said he doesn't consider this book "serious work".

Joseph

EarlDoherty

I'd like to know what sayings in the Gospel of Mark you have in mind that are also in Q. I just need my memory refreshed.

Earl Doherty