Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Amaleq13 · 01-25-2006, 09:33 AM

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Originally Posted by TedM

Luke isn't just retelling it as history. He is saying that the other narratives were history, so HE bought it as history.

Actually, he is suggesting that other narratives are not necessarily reliable but he has made an attempt to provide only that which is. Luke rewrites Mark's story as Greek history while Matthew rewrites Mark's story as a continuation of Jewish history.

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First, we can't say Paul wasn't "interested" in Mark's Incarnated Jesus, because it was written after Paul died.

Well, I didn't say that so this "point" is irrelevant to my theory.

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All we can do is speculate as to how Paul's converts would have responded. I absolutely assume they would have responded strongly to a portrayal of their Savior which was entirely contradictory to their own belief.

Since Mark's Identified Incarnation is not "entirely contradictory" to Paul's Unidentified Incarnation, this point is also irrelevant to my theory. That the depiction clearly adds to what little Paul offers does not constitute a contradiction.

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You don't think that Paul's converts who worshipped a mysterious man named Jesus as the son of God...

I suspect this flawed assumption is at the heart of your confusion. It is patently absurd to suggest that Paul or his audience worshipped the Incarnation. They clearly revered the True Identity of the Incarnation (a.k.a. God's Son and Messianic Savior). Mark's addition of the "Messianic Secret" appears to address the potential concerns you described with regard to depicting the Incarnation as a miracle-worker. IOW, if the Incarnation ordered everyone to keep his superpowers a secret, there is no conflict with Paul's expressed belief that the Incarnation was executed without his executioners knowing his True Identity.

Julian · 01-25-2006, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

The consensus on that passage is that it is authentic. Jeffrey Jay Lowder had even pointed out that "I have much more confidence in the assessment of Josephan scholar Louis Feldman who noted that the authenticity of this passage "has been almost universally acknowledged."

Well, that certainly depends on how you define 'consensus.' I think that one should be careful in using the appeal to popularity among authorities. That goes for this passage as well, considering Photius Codex 238.

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His first two arguments on Suetonius are flawed as well:

I agree that he favors one interpretation over another when we cannot rightly say which is the proper understanding of this name.

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From the academic mailing list Corpus Paulinum:

Yet, that very argument can be used to refute the two entries about christ in Josephus, yet when used against Jesus it suddenly carries no appreciable weight.

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No, it doesn't. It can also indicate that Suetonius has a garbled understanding of Christianity.

Agreed. It doesn't rule out a reference to christ. It doesn't rule it in, either.

Julian

TomboyMom · 01-25-2006, 09:38 AM

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Originally Posted by Killer Mike

If you stay within mainstream scholarship, there is a 99.99% acceptance among scholars that Jesus did exist. Go to Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc.., and they all teach that Jesus did exist. The basic summary is that Jesus was just one of the dozens of people claiming to be messiahas and miracle workers at that time (see Life of Brian by Monty Python

). He preached for 1-3 years, and had managed to gain a small following of believers. Eventually he was executed over Passover by Roman authorities as a criminal. Early in his ministry, there was wide diversity of belief in interpretation of his teachings, but some of his followers, believed that shortly after his death god would come with all his glory and that the end of the world was near. Stories about Jesus circulated around mainly thru oral tradition at first, and eventually some of them came to be written down. About 40 years later, the Jews revolted against the Romans, and this war was lost. After the failure of this war against the Romans, it is when we start to see the Gospels being written (with Mark being the first). So the Gospels are a reflection of how the early Christians were dealing with losing the war, and the fact that the second coming had not come. For over 40 years they were waiting for God to come in all his glory, and this they thought would happen shortly after his death! They dealt with these very depressing and hard times by telling stories about Jesus. This is a very brief summary, but for anyone interested Id recommend books written by Helmut Koester from Harvard, Paula Friedrickson from Boston University, or Bart Erhman from the University of North Carolina.

Thank you so much, Killer Mike. As someone who is very unsophisticated about this subject, this summary is very helpful. I'm sure any specific could be argued by experts, but this gives me the basic map at least as to what people are arguing about. Any expansion you would care to add would be helpful as well. Question: Where does Paul fit in? Thanks.

jjramsey · 01-25-2006, 09:56 AM

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If Suetonius or Tacitus had meant someone other than Christ, they would have specified him as "Chrestus the proconsul from Carthage" or whatever. That was the common method of signifying people. Again, Christus/os and "Christians" were household words by the time Tacitus (c.55-A.D. c.117) and Suetonius (A.D. c.69-c.140) wrote their histories. Hence, one word like "Chrestus" was enough. If I wrote about "Madonna" now,in the context of a well-known contemporary figure, you would know right away who I meant from the context, even if I cutely spelled Mad-donna..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian

Yet, that very argument can be used to refute the two entries about christ in Josephus

You will have to explain yourself because you seem to have totally misunderstood the point from the Corpus Paulinium list.

Julian · 01-25-2006, 10:07 AM

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Originally Posted by jjramsey

You will have to explain yourself because you seem to have totally misunderstood the point from the Corpus Paulinium list.

I don't think so. They are making the point that Christ would be a commonly understood term in the 2nd century. Fine.

My point is that Josephus could not have written the two Christ entries because at the time that he wrote them (1st century) the word 'Christ' would have meant nothing to the average Roman reader. They would have read something like 'he was called the oily one' and would have had no clue who or what Josephus was taking about. The word Christ only appears two times in Josephus, both regarding Jesus. Since Josephus (or, rather, the forger) doesn't qualify Christ, we can assume that it was written (added) at the earliest in the second century. Same argument that they used.

Julian

jjramsey · 01-25-2006, 10:32 AM

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Originally Posted by Julian

I don't think so. They are making the point that Christ would be a commonly understood term in the 2nd century. Fine.

My point is that Josephus could not have written the two Christ entries because at the time that he wrote them (1st century) the word 'Christ' would have meant nothing to the average Roman reader.

Unless what was true at the early part of the second century was also true in the tail end of the first. Considering that the passage in Tacitus was describing Nero persecuting Christians as scapegoats, which is an event in the first century, it is hardly unlikely that this was the case.

Lord Emsworth · 01-25-2006, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

No, it doesn't. It can also indicate that Suetonius has a garbled understanding of Christianity.

A garbled understanding - if I understand you correctly - would disqualify it from being used as a reference to a historical Jesus though.

jjramsey · 01-25-2006, 10:49 AM

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Originally Posted by Lord Emsworth

A garbled understanding - if I understand you correctly - would disqualify it from being used as a reference to a historical Jesus though.

Not quite. It simply bars it from being independent confirmation of the existence of Jesus, not as a mere reference to him.

Lord Emsworth · 01-25-2006, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

Not quite. It simply bars it from being independent confirmation of the existence of Jesus, not as a mere reference to him.

That is, I think, what I was trying to say. To rephrase maybe, it would disqualify this passage from being evidence for a HJ over a MJ.

Didymus · 01-25-2006, 11:44 AM

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Originally Posted by Amaleq13

I see no reason to assume Mark's audience accepted his story as history and I've seen nothing in the threads that have discussed that subject to suggest otherwise.

What evidence supports the view that Mark's contemporary audience thought of his gospel as other than history? What about the gospels that followed?

I can think of no 2nd century writings that treat the gospels as fiction, and Ignatius, in his early 2nd century epistles, insists that the basic biography found in the gospels is true.

Can you track the transition from "Mark Read as Fiction/Midrash" to "Mark Read as History"?

Didymus

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