tanya

perfect.

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Adam

You misunderstand. I'm not saying that you cannot reasonably contend that most of the gospel stories are mythical. I'm saying you cannot reasonably say they are only myth. When the Passion Narrative was only traced back to the common Synoptic source, there were supernatural elements that could tag the whole account as fictional. Now that gJohn is more highly regarded for historicity and that it is not necessarily dependent uponthe Synoptics, the Passsion Narrative common to all four gospels can be extracted, the "earliest gospel". It is necessarily earlier than any of the Synoptics and has no taint of mythical development within it. Here is a Historical Jesus, whatever myths may later have been superimposed upon it. If MJ means belief that there is no evidence of an earthly Jesus, then it has been refuted.

For you HJ people, it may be hard giving up 200 years of radical criticism that there is no historicity within the Gospel of John. But I'm not saying that I have proven historical value outside the Passion Narrative portions that are shared with the Synoptics.

Any comment upon whether I have made a unique contribution to scholarship by my Post #534 addition of John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38 to the Passion Narrative, based on attributing it to a member of the household in which the Last Supper was held? I show him starting his story only at where he first met Jesus after a sentence explaining why Jesus had to come there in secret. Has source criticism yet advanced to specifying why a source got written that only covers Jesus's last week, and why it is best recovered in gJohn?

Vorkosigan

No one ever said they were only myth.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Adam, this isn't a response. Step by step means...

1. Defining the Passion Narrative for your purposes.
2. Showing for each part what you know and how you know -- by vocabulary? Form criticism? Narrative criticism? Reader-response criticism? Criteria-base evaluation?
3. Show the link between sources and the specific eyewitnesses you claim.

See my discussion of why the Temple Cleansing in Mark is a fiction for a template.
http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark11.html

Vorkosigan

Horatio Parker

I think you meant me, tho I'm not Duvduv.

I don't think the existence of God is at all tied to the literal truth of the Bible, but that is the core problem of Xtianity at this time: a concrete historical reality is required to prove the spiritual reality. Kinduva backwards cosmology.

It's centuries of misguided effort, and I do think that's sad.

Adam

Your response #533 to my #526 led me to expect I big response to the whole long post, not just to the first paragraph that was a parenthetical admission that I could not prove that the Passion Narrative in gJohn was a source. Meanwhile, I developed the idea that what John Mark wrote was not limited to events in Gethsemane and up to the entombment, but extended back a few days earlier to when he first encountered Jesus. I would think my Post #534 is the one you should be responding to now. In the first two paragraphs there I modify the Passion Narrative back to earlier than those that start at the arrest (see Peter Kirby site), earlier than the Form Critic start at the Last Supper, and back to other shared events with the Gospel of John. These lead back only a few days to when a person in the house of the Last Supper would first have encountered Jesus. Whatever is shared among the four gospels in that time period reads like the personal statement of a young person not otherwise familiar with Jesus, quite free of supernatural events. In John 18 and 19 this also coincides with the sources Teeple derived, S and perhaps all of G as well. Teeple was an atheist, so his source-separation was not motivated by apologetic considerations. He used strictly style utilizing the best texts (pg.117 to 125, The Literary Oigiin of the Gospel of John.)

In paragraph 3 in my Post #534 I show that Robert Fortna also derived an underlying Signs Gospel that in John 18 and 19 agrees with the my delineation. In paragraph 4 I give a brief listing of the verses to be added in before John 18 and why they tie us to someone without prior contact with Jesus. Not only did no apostle write this, but no one among the larger corpus of disciples that we hear about in Luke 10. He lived in Bethany.

Vorkosigan

I only put the first paragraph in parens to save repeating your whole response. It's completely void of an argument.

Define clearly, please what you see as the Passion.

Show clearly how Teeple derived these sources. Based on what methods. Give an example, please, verse by verse, as I have asked already many times.

Vorkosigan

Adam

It's that first paragraph in #526 that I completely reworked in my #533. As thus restated, it completments that remainder of my #526 that you did not address. I show three eyewitnesses that Naturalist preconceptions cannot dismess. They refute the MJ argument and give new bases for Historical Jesus knowledge.
I'm speaking of "Passion Narrative", not "Passion". The former has apparently been construed as only the latter. So I should call it "The Final Week Narrative"? What that gains in clarity might be lost in regards to the solid scholarly recognition of 90% of it as the Passion Narrative. Should I?My four-gospel-wide Passion Narrative is simply all the Synoptic overlaps in gJohn except the Feeding of the Five Thousand. I regard this latter as part of the Signs Source that got into the Synoptics in the process I described in my Post #18. The Passion Narrative agrees with the sources in John 18 and 19 as given by Robert Fortna and Howard Teeple. For the latter, his S and G sources I accept as PN are differentiated from the additions of the Editor E by the latter's anarthrous style, not using the article. There are also, of course, other related stylistic criteria Teeple identified. Thus John 18:2 is not in the source PN because both Judas and Jesus are without the article. "Jesus" in verse 4 and "Judas" in verse 5 with no article again identify these as E, as does John 18:7. Teeple's method gets complicated in the next verses, but is very clear in verses 15 to 19 in which "Jesus" and "Peter" are always preceded by the article, thus PN. 18:22, 27-29, 31, 33-35 always use the article, as do all subsequent verses up through 19:25. These compare closely to my listing for PN I have posted here many times:

John 18:1b, 1d, 3, 10b, 12, 13b, 15-19, 22, 25b, 27-31, 33-35, (36-40); 19:1-5a, 9-19, 21-23, 28-30, 38b, 40-42;.
(Except for the further complication that Teeple idenfities a Redactor who posts arthrous insertions into E at JOhn 18:9, 32, 38b-40; 19:6-8, 20, and 31-37.)

tanya

This makes no sense to me.
Do you know of any "mythicist" who believes that Hercules was poisoned by the blood of the Lernaean hydra?

Yes, folks were crucified under the Romans. Yes, Jews were persecuted by the Romans. Yes, Jewish rabbis were included in that group of people executed by the Romans. Yes, some Jewish rabbis executed by the Romans, may have been named "jesus".

However, that does not translate into "jesus was crucified", where you intend to indicate that Jesus, son of God, son of the virgin Mary, son of Joseph, descendant of David, was crucified.

I deny that anyone, who understands that the Jesus story is a fable, a myth, believe, nonetheless, that this same jesus was executed, in history. Jesus and Hercules were two Greek fairy tales.

I very much doubt that I am the first to declare that "they are only myth".
I assert it, now.
The gospels are 100% myth.

Sheshbazzar

Amein.