rlogan

I don't know if you are still in the thread, TedM.

But it seems the main source for your trust in Mark's narrative as history is incredulity over the idea someone would write such "ludicrous" fiction.

But the way you've phrased it takes the fictionalizing completely out of context. Of course the story would not be made up cold, from scratch, out of the blue, devoid of any pre-existing thought.

When you remove the presumption of a historical Jesus the result is not a vacuum. It is for most Christians simply because they have never given the slightest thought to an alternative development for early Christianity.

Odd that so much energy goes into endless excuse-making and so little into the much more interesting question of what actually happened.

Malachi151

I think that this sums things up:

http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/...tro.html#place

TedM

I don't think the pre-existing thought overcomes my arguments for it being ludicrous fiction if that thought included the idea that there was no actual preacher named Jesus who had disciples, was influenced by JTB, was considered by some to be a healer and the Messiah, and was crucified by Pilate, and was at some point believed to have been resurrected in some form. Either THAT was the pre-existing thought or the idea that Mark created THAT out of other pre-existing thoughts from the OT is ludicrous, the way I see it.

ted

aa5874

I would think that Mark also had a greater need not to be careless, since as you claim Jesus was highly venerated.

It has already been established that being blind, deaf, dumb, epileptic, mentally unstable or any other infirmity is not the result of a spirit or devil. The miraculous actions of Jesus are identical to what is commonly called witchcraft, which was criminalised at one time, and still maybe in some jurisdictions.

If the author of Mark was careless or misled by the eyewitnesses, then his writings have no credibility. There are no known documents that can be used to corroborate any statement or event of Jesus in the book called.Mark.

And what makes the author of Mark more relevant to fiction is that historical facts, pertaining to geography, eludes him. And since the author of Mark, living, as assumed, within at least 50 years of Jesus, it is incredible that all of his carelessness or erroneous information was not detected by any-one and left to confuse all.

Malachi151

It was detected by many people, all the non-Christians to ridiculed the religion.

It was never more than a small movement among uneducated poor people with a handful of educated apologists for more 200 - 300 years.

People in America today can't find their own state on a map, and you expect slaves and illiterates in Rome to know that the geography in a gospel (which they never read), was askew?

TedM

Unfortunately, people don't always rise to the occasion a circumstance calls for.

Knowing a material cause doesn't rule out a spiritual one. This is not relevant to our discussion however, I think..

That doesn't mean they don't contain real truths..only that they will be justifiably subject to more skepticm than other writings with more credibility.


What about the event of the 'crucifixion'. This is one of many examples that are corroberated in other documents.

I don't see why? Why should someone writing pure fiction be allowed to get the geography wrong and one writing about non-fiction not? It wasn't as though Mark was making up cities and places that didn't exist as might be the case with pure fiction. Therefore this IMO falls under the category of simply carelessness. Carelessness can apply to either fiction or non-fiction.

I don't think we know if it was or wasn't early on--only that there was no record of it. It seems to me that we also should expect that someone would have objected even moreso to the very sudden humanization and historization of the Messiah had that been what Mark had done--yet I know of no early documents--Christian or non-Christian--which do that.

ted

rlogan

Hi ted.

Maybe you could word this better. I don't want to try paraphrasing.

Whether you like Doherty or not I'm just going to use it as an example. He presents a pretty complete scenario in place of the "official" story. That is what I mean.

The excuse-making is really half-baked and becomes absurd as it accumulates into such a huge pile.

The "careless" excuse, for example. You don't get to just throw out this hand-waving universal dismissal of nearly everything that is wrong. I see it has become your darling.

Provide for us an actual explanation as to how "carelessness" results in the set of mistakes made by someone writing close in place and time to the alleged circumstance. Why such "carelessness" fits in with writing a gospel in the first place. Who is this person, exactly, and what is it about him and his motivations that make each mistake highly likely? "Careless" is not an explanation.

An explanation is demonstrating why, for example using "who's" instead of "whose" or "you're" instead of "your" is likely to be done by a professional writer being "careless" as opposed to someone who simply does not know any better.

Detail for us how it is actually very probable that the geographical, historical, and other errors are made by someone living in the area, close in time to the events, and yet nobody hearing or reading it that is also close in place or time manages to alert him to it before the piece is widely enough distributed to preclude rewriting it correctly.

As it is now, your excuse is no better than just saying maybe the writer was drunk. Drunk at precisely all of the places where these mistakes are made. You need an explanation of why drunk fits better than the alternative.

TedM

Hey, Rlogan. First, I'll start by saying that 'ludicrous' is an unclear term for me to have used. I'm expressing an opinion that it is ludricrous for Mark to have taken a Doherty-like scenario and triy to pass off a historical Jesus from it the way he did, AND TO HAVE SUCCEEDED WITHOUT ANY SIGN OF OBJECTION. We don't much early literature, but it seems like this would have been a VERY big issue of contention--resulting in a major split in Christianity--yet while we see gnostic and docetic literature and branches within more traditional Christianity, we don't see evidence of a non-historical Jesus camp (unless PERHAPS this is referrenced in 1 John). In addition to this, my belief that the compatibility of all the evidence with the basic outline of a historical Jesus increases the degree to which I find the 'historicalization' hypothesis to be unlikely.


People can be careless regardless of where or when they do something. It comes down to research and likely generic knowledge. However, EVEN IF a local would not have called a 'stepdaughter' a 'daughter' or a 'tetrarch' a 'king' or named a city correctly, that doesn't argue for fiction. It only argues against local authorship. That's why such mistakes IMO aren't helpful to the 'total fiction' argument.

I hope this helps to clarify what I'm saying.

ted

spin

That says that the Marcan writer was not responsible for making anything up. He gathered what was available to him and did his bit, as Paul had done. It could be, to my way of thinking, based on some person who once existed, but then again there is no need for that. Tradition development is self-driven.

You seem to misunderstand the process that was happening: gnostic thought along with docetic thought, and all the other thought can happily exist together as a sea of contemporary thought, the distinction of one from the other not mattering until some crisis arises calling for a division between what is acceptable and what is not.

Where the tradition came from is irrelevant, as long as one adheres to its current state. People in Rome can in no way decide whether something reported to have happened in Palestine was factual or not. People who have been attuned to some form of savior will be attuned to the notion of a savior as expounded in a religious text which belongs to a particular tradition. You learn more about the savior from the literature, for you don't have any other way to check out the fact of the narrative.

This is where the important questions of where and when the texts were written and in what literary tradition context matters. If one cannot answer those questions or one can answer them in a way which dislocates the writing from the narrative context, then any rationalizations based on modern imputations will have no value.

You seem not to consider the context we are dealing with and to be retrojecting your own values onto the past.

Perhaps you can quantify "the compatibility of all the evidence" so that we can understand that this is more than hyperbole. When I have shown evidence that the text evinces the fact that it is not a witness, I can't see that you've got any evidence whatsoever. You've only got your plausibility angle.

I personally said nothing about fiction. I said that you can in no way extract anything historical from the data, because your primary report is plainly not a witness. The writer makes no claim of direct knowledges and evinces none. It is your job to get beyond these excuses of yours and come up with something tangible. As it is you have not a shred of a case. Instead, all you are doing is sniping at the only other possibility you can perceive, and by so doing thinking you are getting somewhere.

See what I mean about you not saying anything at all? You are merely attacking the opposite your non-enunciated undefended position. The best you've done so far is to argue for some plausibility of the literature you are analysing. Who really cares whether it is plausible or not? You have nothing to show for your participation in this thread, TedM. You've made no substantive comments at all. You even admit that your source may not be a witness at all. So, what have you got?


spin

rlogan

Hi Ted again. So much jumbled into one paragraph.


It is a mystery what you mean, exactly, by non-historical Jesus camp. It's as if you wish for some "There was no Jesus" movement erecting monuments and publishing books in the 1st century.

What are you saying?

Look at how far the "Prophet" Elijah Mohammed got in 20th century USA with his completely fabricated "Nation of Islam".

Malcom X finally goes on a pilgrimage to Mecca and discovers Elijah Mohammed is a total fraud insofar as any connection to real Islam is concerned.

If that total fabrication can pass muster for so many years in the 20th century USA then it must be an order of magnitude easier to pass off a story line removed in time and place from Rome.


Does not advance discussion one iota.



One thing at a time. Looks like you are accepting that Mark was written outside Palestine, at least. Not so sure about outside the time frame.

Let's not revisit this. Are you saying so or not?