Vorkosigan

"having no tangible measurement for" and being "purely subjective/having no real meaning" are not the same thing AT ALL. That's hyperbolic nonsense. There are no concrete measures for literary parallelism either, but most of us readily detect it. The fact that there is a degree of subjectivity does not mean that there is total arbitrariness.

And again, the issue isn't just Paul. It is ALL the early epistles, and Mark as well. Whoever wrote Mark knew no historical events of Jesus' life. The entire document is fiction. The oldest letters AND the oldest narrative contain no historical information about Jesus.

If true -- and it is certainly not -- that inherently favors the ahistoricists.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

That "most of us readily detect it" doesn't mean that literary parrlelism isn't entirely subjective either. Most of us readily detect cold too, and place it at more or less the same temperature. But it's still useless as an empirical description.

And I'm not sure how you're defining literary parallelism here. It's usually used to describe author's that use similar grammatical and lexical structure--both of which are easily quantifiable.

And if something is subjective, it is arbitrary. By definition. See the second entry.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=arbitrariness

And you base this on what? Use of the old testament? That is utterly reversible, rendering it an inherently flawed argument. Thematic chiasm? Same as above--thematic chiasm is so utterly subjective that you can't even invariably find people to agree with you when they are sympathetic to your overall position--your suggestion that Mark is fiction is as subjective as everything else. You have no measure for it, no argument that isn't reversible, nothing, except that--again--it works for you.

No it doesn't. That reconstruction is impossible doesn't favour anything except the conclusion that reconstruction is impossible.

Regards,
Rick Sumner