spamandham

Surely you wouldn't apply such a standard to the analysis of Tom Sawyer would you? This is an absurd position. The analysis of any text necessarily depends on information not contained within that text. I never claimed, nor even implied, that the New Testament could be analyzed without reference to anything else.

I disagree completely. The story serves no prophecy fulfillment purpose, with or without the 153 fish, and is not even an impressive miracle, so it doesn't serve the purpose of showing Jesus as a miracle worker either. What is the purpose of the story then if not to set up for 153 fish?

spin

Listen, bud, if anyone's been conned, I haven't seen that you have the facilities to know about it.

Why not be nice and tone down that sort of rhetoric.

Remember, to me you have made yourself out to be piddling about with an simplistic view of text as either fiction or fact. Is propaganda fact or fiction? Is philosophy fact or fiction? Does much of what gets written boil down to this dichotomy? I would think not.

Further impressive rhetoric.

Unless you claim that it is fiction, then you have an obligation.

Unless you claim categorically that a god does not exist.

A claim that a text is fiction "must be properly verified".

And as you will not verify your claims your position must be rejected according to your logic.

More shitty rhetoric. In your value system, how would you describe yourself when you ignore your responsibility to justify your claims?

I agree that unsupported claims should not be considered and your unsupported claim that "the opposite is the case" is a case in point.

You were doing so well up to this point.

If fraud is shown.

But then we come to yet another unsupported claim.

Why continually overstep the mark? You apparently cannot show that the bible is fraud. You can think or posit that the writers were deliberately trying to mislead the readers of the text -- fraud requires deliberate deception --, but we would still like some reason for you claiming such an effort to mislead.

Is it not sufficient to say that the content of the texts has not been shown to represent reality, that it contains elements to me which don't represent any reality that I know and that until it is in fact shown to represent reality no-one can make meaningful claims about the world based on it?


spin

spin

Until you can show the relevance of any comparison you are in an absurd position.

While this may be true, we lack a date for the relevant biblical source texts, we don't know who wrote them, where, or for what audience. We are somewhat hampered in our analysis because we simply cannot place the text in a context. The closest probable related literature is the other biblical literature. Hence that's where we should start and introduce other material when we can justify it.

That's new.

It is the Johannine equivalent of the sort of meal in the mass feedings. It is another miracle. It is a further development of the Petrine tradition. It deals with a tengible resurrection. And perhaps more. None of which gives any relevance to 153 fish.


spin

dog-on

Spin, would you agree that, when discussing ancient literature, almost any work of unknown origin could be parsed to provide, seemingly possible evidence for a "historical kernel". I listed the verse from Mark denoting the baptism event and subsequent extended sandbox holiday with the devil as a case in point. Is it feasible that some guy went down to a river a got baptised? Of course it is, nothing impossible about that. Do the other events described in the passage meet the same level of credibility? In my humble opinion, no. Do we have any evidence to show that this story was ever told simply as:

Jesus went down to the river and got baptized by JtB. Afterwards he went wandering in the desert to dry off. After about a month and a half he decided to go to Capernaum.

I have no reason to believe that the story ever existed in this form. I can only assume that this is a work of fiction until such time as someone comes up with actual evidence of this story being told or written down senza the magical doves, voices from heaven and of course, Satan.

spin

The operative word being "possible". All this amounts to a statement of plausibility and that is the food of most fiction. History has other requirements. At the simplest, we then have a trichotomy:

1. historically "validated" information,
2. potentially "validatable" (the don't know option), and
3. crap.

Not much of the bible can be shown to be in the first category.

We have an aversion to magic tricks, which are the food of the religion, only so far as they supply those who need them some signs of wonder. We find it easy to discount them and it makes good sense, though the easiest and most efficacious way of doing so is to say that as real magic hasn't been shown to have occurred in history there needs to be some proof before admitting any magic into the realms of history and consign that which can't be demonstrated into the "don't know and don't care" basket to gather dust until someone can come along and do something better.

Once the magic has been removed we are left with a more plausible narrative, so we haven't really got much further.


spin

Steve Weiss

Please call your insurance broker and ask him what are the legal ramifications of making a claim for which there is no evidence.

dog-on

Agreed. Keep it in the dustbin!

For my own edification, are there any ancient texts which support this "more plausible narrative"? If not, or in other words, if there are no prior texts (or any evidence of such, for that matter) that state that JC was anything less than the realistically improbable (realistically impossible...), why should the default position in "scholarship" be that this story is not purely fiction.

Another question if you don't mind. Why is it more reasonable to assume that the plausible came before the implausible than it is to assume the contrary?

Steve Weiss

In fact, the bible, though putatively the word of god, is a work in progress. There are many translations and many versions which vary by denomination. So to refer to "the bible" is using a misnomer as a starting point. The earliest versions of the bible evolved based upon the political agenda and the audience that it was aimed at. As time wore on and the world did not end as predicted by an alleged Christ and as Christianity became a state religion and stamped out differences of opinion and divorced itself from its pagan and Jewish roots, it gradually took on the shape that is most familiar to present day Christians. Increasing layers of mythology were added over time so that we end up with the superstar that Jesus is currently portrayed as. How anyone could assert that any book has a sacred origin as in the case of "the bible" strains credulity beyond the breaking point.

spin

Why? It's extremely interesting literature.

Aren't you too now proposing the simplistic dichotomy I've complained about? I've put forward a simple definition of fiction which requires the writer's (writers') intention to be to deliberately construct a non-real world in which a narrative is unwound. I don't think much of the bible features any such intentionality.

I don't think it is the case. It all must be plausible somehow to the reader. The easiest way that this plausibility be the case is if it is plausible to the writer as well. (Hai capito?)


spin

Ted Hoffman

I agree, Freke and Gandy and Archaya: BS scholarship.
Provide examples of these alleged mistakes please.
Please make us all cringe. Not with claims, but evidence.
The fact that their argument doesnt jell with "consensus scholarship" doesnt help what things? Doesnt help their arguments? The only things that matter, ultimately, are the arguments - not the social or even scholarly appeal.
What specifically is he wrong about regarding "the relationship between Luke and Matthew"?
So, Goodacre's approach to his work is the model we should all expect Turton to adhere to? Because?...
We might as well reject Sanders work - The Historical Figure of Jesus - in favour of Van Voorst because he doesnt engage current scholarship.
You can believe what you want. What is of interest to us is what you can demonstrate.