Sheshbazzar

The author of the STORY sets up the PLOT and the DIALOG of his FICTIONAL STORY.
The STORY includes the PLOT ELEMENTS and devised SITUATIONS,
and the SOCIAL INTERACTIONS between the STORY'S various CHARACTERS'
That the STORY'S AUTHOR chooses to introduce, in the order that he chooses.

The author so composes his STORY that the FICTIONAL CHARACTERS he has CREATED to populate his FICTIONAL STORY, will either be the STORY'S LEAD CHARACTERS or only be minor bit players.

The author sets up FICTIONAL SITUATIONS where his FICTIONAL CHARACTERS are either 'INSIDERS' with access to INSIDE INFORMATION or are OUTSIDERS without any access to such privileged information.

The AUTHOR of Mark 9:2-10 set up a DELIBERATE PLOT SITUATION.
One where only FOUR of his FICTIONAL CHARACTERS would be present.

In Mark 9:2 the AUTHOR makes it EXPLICIT that his FOUR LEAD CHARACTER'S were "APART BY THEMSELVES".

In Mark 9:9 the AUTHOR has his FICTIONAL PROTAGONIST command the other three CHARACTERS "that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead."

In Mark 9 verse 10, THE AUTHOR makes it even more EXPLICIT that "they kept that saying with themselves."

The AUTHOR of Mark 9:2-10 TELLS us this STORY so that WE the readers of his STORY, will know WHOM the AUTHOR of the STORY intends US his READERS to understand this PLOT INFORMATION was LIMITED TO.
It is an INTENDED and important PLOT ELEMENT of the AUTHOR'S FICTIONAL STORY PLOT.


aa5874 does not understand that THE AUTHOR of Mark created a FICTIONAL STORY, one where THE AUTHOR imbues his FICTIONAL CHARACTER'S with thoughts and motives and through PLOT DEVELOPMENT, and THE AUTHOR'S supplied DIALOG for his CHARACTERS, and his WRITER SUPPLIED FICTIONAL ACTIONS AND INTERACTIONS among these various CHARACTERS a certain amount of PERSONALITY.

Which addresses nothing at all in the paragraph to which it is appended.

The AUTHOR of The Gospel called 'Mark' wants US his readers to know and to understand that by THE PLOT ELEMENTS that he he AUTHOR of the STORY, has deliberately woven into his FICTIONAL STORY, that the Roman Centurion BIT CHARACTER that he, THE AUTHOR supplies in 'Mark' 15:39 is ignorant of these voices heard from heaven by the STORY'S Jewish characters.

And only 'know' within HIS STORY, whatever information The AUTHOR chooses to present them as having access to.

The CHARACTERS in the STORY are FICTIONAL, they are only imbued by the STORY'S WRITER with as much information on the STORY as the STORY'S AUTHOR will allow them to have.

The FICTIONAL CHARACTERS appearing within this FICTION STORY do not each have access to the entire content of the AUTHOR'S mind, or to the thoughts of the other characters within the STORY.

The Roman centurion in 'Mark' 15:39 is a minor 'bit character' that within THE STORY knows virtually nothing of the STORY that he is here first introduced as playing this single PART in.

This (fictional) Roman centurion sees a (equally fictional) beaten, bloody, and dead Jew on a cross,
Just hanging there dead, with a sign over his head proclaiming that 'This is the King of Jews'.
He looks up and he says; 'Sure. this man was the Son of God.'

So aa, you still have to come up with some rational reason from the texts for your view that this ignorant, one time appearing, Roman Centurion would have been able to recognize this pathetic beaten, bloody, and dead Jew as being the Son of God.
Or some logical explanation for WHY the AUTHOR of 'Mark' would have made this Roman Centurion be the only one to realize this thing.

semiopen

Sorry if I abridged your post at the wrong point.

My understanding of Talmudic dating is that there is hesitation to date anything before the final redactions which I think is in the sixth centery CE for the Babylonian Talmud.

I think you are implying that the tradition of Jesus being illegitimate is older than the tradition of his divine origin. As you might know, I don't participate in Christian type discussions much but this seems absurd to me.

In any case, there are no Jewish writings from this period outside of the Talmud which can't be reliably dated.

Anyway this seems to be doubt which is the opposite of undoubt.

stephan huller

The adulterous origins for Jesus are very old (= the Jew of Celsus in Origen Against Celsus). This means that the virgin birth tradition must be even older (unless you are arguing that the virgin birth was invented to cover up the adulterous narrative which doesn't make sense because one would only need to bring forward Joseph or invent Joseph to contradict that). In other words, it doesn't make sense to invent the story that Bruce Jenner is a hermaphrodite in order to explain away the idea that he looks like a woman after his recent plastic surgery. You just need to provide a Wheaties box from the 1970s.

tanya

Not to beat a dead horse, you know I love you Shesh, but, please, rethink this notion.

Our only extant copy of Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, dated 14th century, is incomplete.

We haven't the foggiest notion of who Justin Martyr was, nor what he believed, taught, or imagined. We don't know whether he had a copy of Mathew or Mark, in front of him, a document which he may have called "memoirs of the apostles", or perhaps a scribe, recopying his work, labelled as such. The fact that he does not mention Paul's epistles may, or may not, be significant. We lack sufficient data to affirm either position, in my view.

maryhelena

[T2]Matthew 1:18-19

New International Version (NIV)


18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[a]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet[b] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.[/T2]


That is the gMatthew story against which Celsus raised objections. The gospel story is that Joseph is not the father of Jesus.

Unless one wants to run with the holy ghost and magic tricks - from a JC historicist perspective on the gospel JC story - Jesus was illegitimate.

Iskander

Not if Joe married her before the birth of the child.

maryhelena

:thumbs:

Nice...... in the gospel Joseph takes Mary to his home as his wife. It's the Toledot Yeshu and Celsus that use the term illegitimate. In the Toledot story the mother is left on her own - hence the child is illegitimate.

OK - I'll correct my earlier statement:

Unless one wants to run with the holy ghost and magic tricks - from a JC historicist perspective on the gospel JC story - the father of Jesus was unknown.

Sheshbazzar

I have read and studied what remains of Justin Martyr' writing extensively, There is more than enough remaining, and what does, covers such a breadth of Christian material, that if Justin had been aware of any 'Paul', or of any 'Paul's' Gospel' or of 'Paul's' reported extensive missionary works among the Gentiles, there would have been no way for Justin to have avoided mentioning or addressing the teachings and works of this famous 'Paul' when discussing the matters he writes on.

Indeed, in many of the doctrinal matters that Justin's writings cover, the total lack of any reference to Paul and Paul's famous teachings on those very matters virtually shouts that neither Justin nor his contemporary readers had
any aquaintance at all with the 'Apostle' to the Gentiles named 'Paul'.

The evidence is that 'Paul' and all of the 'Pauline Epistles' were invented by Christian Church writers sometime after 150 CE
The evidence of Justin's work, as well as that of other contemporary writers, indicates that there never was any living 'Apostle Paul' in the 1st century, or known to anyone before 150 CE.

'Paul's ' theology is not that of Justin, and reflects the development of theological arguments and late developed church doctrinal positions, that were totally unknown to Justin and to the world of the early 1st century CE.


.

Horatio Parker

Several people in Mark recognize Jesus.

andrewcriddle

Accepting FTSOA that the author of 1 Clement has a rather vague idea of Paul's missionary journeys, is this evidence of lateness ? It probably indicates that the author has not read Acts which if anything points towards an early date.

(If you date Acts very late this argument doesn't hold, but the author of Acts knows a surprising amount about the mid 1st century CE world for a post-Hadrianic author.)

Andrew Criddle