Toto

No, it does not. Why are you assuming some sort of bias on Carrier's part or the LGBT community on this obscure issue? If you are skeptical, why not do some real research to understand the issue?

dog-on

You observably are not, Abe, but you are kinda funny...

ApostateAbe

Thanks, that's a much easier pair of questions.

From Wikipedia:

Richard Carrier (born December 1, 1969) is an American historian. He is best known for his writings on Internet Infidels, otherwise known as the Secular Web, where he served as Editor-in-Chief for several years. As an advocate of atheism and metaphysical naturalism, he has published articles in books, journals and magazines, and also features on the documentary film The God Who Wasn't There, where he is interviewed about his doubts on the historicity of Jesus.

From the homepage of glbtq.com:

Point of View

Re-Turning to the Bible
Contributor Tony Hoshaw reviews the extensive work of theologian and Chicago Theological Seminary Professor Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. in which Jennings re-reads the Christian Scriptures in a gay-affirming way and expresses the view that Christian homophobia derives from Plato rather than the Bible.

To answer your second question, I was hoping to save time by having those who make the claims do the research. Didn't work.

Toto

I don't see any bias on Carrier's part regarding this issue. Are you assuming that any atheist is untrustworthy? Are you assuming that a GLBT site has some reason to distort this issue? Do you see any problems with the extensive details on that site?

ApostateAbe

No. Yes.I actually don't know about the extensive details on that site.

spin

Under most conditions this "criterion of embarrassment" is mindbogglingly stupid. Think of the first writer of Mark who collected his religious traditions and ordered them into a semi-continuous text. Now think of another writer who comes along and takes the then circulating text of Mark and reworks it into the first version of the Matthean text. How many reworkings of the Marcan text we can't know. How many Matthean reworkings we cannot know. Some modern pundit comes along and decides something is embarrassment for some polemical reason of their own. How they know something is embarrassing to an ancient person is something they can never justify, never being able to verify (or even falsify) said embarrassment. That is sufficiently a waste of brain power, but let's put the unfalsifiable aside for the moment and ask to whom was the embarrassment embarrassing? -- the person from whom the tradition was collected? the person who first put it on "paper"? or any one of the other people in the chain of the evolution of the literature? If it was not embarrassing to the very first person in the chain--a fact that can never be controlled--, then there is no reason to think that there is any veracity to the embarrassment.

Then of course, one can decide that something is not consistent in the dogma that has evolved with the religion and is therefore an embarrassment, but dogma represents a formalized religion, which is a long way from the foundations of the religion. The dogma is merely the evolution of religious ideas under given exigencies and no necessary relation to any original realities. Ideas can be carried along well after their value has been lost. What does the baptism of babies have to do with the earliest recorded ideas about baptism? Surely baby baptism is embarrassing.... Mary being the mother of god is so silly, it's embarrassing.... Oh, it must be true. The trinity.... Oh, the embarrassment! Shades of Teegeeack. What's embarrassing to one may become a rallying point in a religion.

I hope the casual reader can see just how silly this criterion of embarrassment can be.

DCHindley

It is possible for some material in John to be dependent on Mark (or Mt or Lk), but there is much that is unique to John alone and probably represents independent tradition, unless you want to think that the author of John simply made it up.

There are also fragments of narrative style gospels that have stories unlike the canonical gospels, such as:

Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 840 4th century script but possibly composed before 200 CE (Jesus walks through the temple precincts and draws the criticism of a Pharisaic chief-priest on matters of purification, with no obvious connection to the canonical gospels),

Papyrus Egerton 2 script dating to ca 150 and 200 CE, possibly composed between 80-120 CE (Jesus disputes with the "rulers of the people," with material resembling that in John and occasionally the synoptic gospels, plus an otherwise unknown miracle on the bank of the Jordan river),

Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1224 script of the late 3rd or early 4th century, possibly composed ca 150 CE (Jesus disputes with the scribes, Pharisees and priests who criticize his dining with sinners, with material resembling Mk 2 & 9, and Mt 5),

Papyrus Cairensis 10 755 copied in 6th or 7th century CE per Schneemelcher New Testament Apocrypha, and might be an excerpt from an unknown gospel or a homily sermon (a story related to Luke's story about Elizabeth's conception of John the Baptist and Mary's conception of Jesus, and commands by an angel to Joseph & Mary resembling Mt 2).

There are also 3 gospel-like quotations in the Epistle of Barnabas, 1 in Ignatius' letter to the Smyrneans, 1 in Justin's 1st Apology, and another 2 or 3 in his Dialogue with Trypho.

Who really knows what kind of materials were floating around that haven't come down to us.

DCH

TedM

It is evidence that should be considered because of Luke and Matthew's writers proximity in time and location to the events. They were in a lot better position than you or I to judge whether Mark was writing something that was embarrassing to Mark but did so anyway. They may have been wrong, but were more likely to be right than us.


A generalized question like that isn't good enough. If Glenn Beck said that he heard that in a closed tea party meeting all the republicans shouted "down with the niggers" and there is evidence of an anti-black click within the tea party group, and Rush and Sarah report that they believe what was said must have been "down with the bigots", then yes that does make it more likely that Glenn Beck's story was more accurate.

spin

It is not evidence for anything until it has been shown to be evidence. The view you express is merely an assumption avoiding the job of doing history.

This is just another assumption. Vague temporal proximity does not necessarily put people in a better position for anything.

Mark's writer(s) not showing any embarrassment is just a quick and dirty invalidation of any embarrassment prior.

Which Matthean and Lucan writers are you referring to? You just don't know.

You seem to be using the word "historical" as some use the word "fucking": it's not the semantic content of the word that is important--just the "mantric" impact. Let's just omit it. It adds nothing useful. The writers of the time wouldn't have understood what you were trying to talk about.

And such promiscuous referals to probability have no weight, not based on anything weighable.

As you don't know the dates of any of the writings, I'm sure you'll understand why your statement doesn't do what you were hoping it would.

TedM

True: not necessarily. But for those prone to using probabilities to make judgements, it should be considered in an examination. My opinion. I'm bowing out of this one now..