rlogan

We can certainly look to other oral traditions to clue us in here. The Greeks of course had epic poems and songs for their myths, which are constructed in a form specifically to assist in memory.

In biblical texts the only person I see who has demonstrated literary devices that might qualify on these grounds is this guy named Vorkosigan.

He's written quite a bit on the chiastic structure of Mark, for example. He would have to comment directly here on whetjer he considered this a device meant to assist in oral transmission.

Vorkosigan

I do not think that the elaborate structure of Mark is a sign of orality. Quite the opposite; it looks like it was worked out on paper. At least to me.

Vorkosigan

TerryTryon

Although I will participate in those discussions where my expertise is relevant, I am not getting into a tit-for-tat flame war with anybody on this thread. That kind of debate is, what in my already stated opinion, has made this thread a total waste of time for anybody, especially the unsophisticated reader, sincerely wanting to know about the current scholarly thinking on the history of early christianity, especially regarding the essential nature of the eponymous "founder" of the religion. Since I do not have the background to debate such things, I can only watch as various arguments turn sour from lack of support. Sarcasm and ad hominim attacks seem to be the best indicator of that. Certainly, if I make a generalization regarding the tone of the thread, I find it exceedingly tedious for the other readers as well as myself to slog through the 500 sheets of paper to document where each violation occurred. I would assume that people participating in this thread will have read the posts and will know if I am a paranoid nutcase or not. If such be, it will require only the effort of a quick glance and pass on to the next relevant post.
[Personal disclosure: I have been certified by several competent mental health specialists to suffer from paranoia.]

Doug Shaver

If you honestly believe those are relevantly analogous to how the Jerusalem Christians are supposed to have thought about Jesus, then you've got me, because I can't think of a good response.

No Robots

This is part of a new educational process that takes high scholarship into an open forum. It is fun and enlightening, but it has problems. The biggest problem is the bad blood between different outlooks. If you look past that, though, there is a wealth of helpful material for serious students. I for one have discovered over the last few hours of discussion here that the most promising area of NT research lies precisely in the question of oral antecedents. Skeptics help drive research forward by focussing on deficiencies in current understanding. It is always of benefit when doing serious investigation to focus on the position opposed to your own.

jgibson000

So far as I can see, nobody has asked you to go tit for tat with anybody, let alone to enter into a flame war. All you've been asked to do is to clarify your terms and to provide some documentation for your claim that there are people who have been constantly "reciting" their laurels. And since to do this requires no particular expertise in Gospel studies, it is curious that you not only do not do what has been asked of you, but that in reply for the call to do so, you mount what appear to me to be red herring excuses not to do so.

Seems to me that if anyone is not supporting his or her claims, it's you. And you haven't been asking questions or seeking information about scholarly thinking on the history of Christianity and the "essential nature" of the founder of "the religion". You've been making apodictic claims about these things.


Err, what? You find your slogging through your print outs extremely tedious for other readers of this thread? Are you cite this as the basis for your making generalizations about the tone of the thread?

In any case, I did not ask you to document where each and every violation occurred. I asked you only to point out a few examples of what you considered to be such violations and to name those you thought were at fault. Surely, this doesn't entail "slogging" though the entire exchange, especially since you must have already had some examples in mind when you first made the charge.

But the issue is not whether you are paranoid. It is whether you are willing to define your terms and document the claims you make.

Are you?

Jeffrey Gibson

Amaleq13

Setting aside all MJ vs HJ debates, I think they are a very good way to conceptualize the group that revered the living Jesus.

No Robots

Yeah, I didn't realize that Crossan and the Jesus Seminar had a problem with this. It seems there really is a division in NT scholarship over oral antecedents. Birger Gerhardsson seems to be the point man on the pro-oral side with his book The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk). A juicy extract from the linked review:

The central issue at stake concerns the touchstone of the historical Jesus research, namely, the nature and reliability of the oral tradition that preceded the manuscripts of the New Testament. Since the publication of his seminal doctoral dissertation, Memory and Manuscript: Oral tradition and written transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity (1961), Gerhardsson has proposed a thesis that challenged the dominant paradigm of the Form Critical School, and in recent years a basic tenet of the Jesus Seminar.

As explained in the Foreword, by Donald A. Hagner of Fuller Seminary, both the latter movements employ a negative assessment of the reliability of the oral tradition. Drawing on present-day experiences of memory, they conclude that the oral traditions underlying the gospels were basically unreliable. This led to the conclusion that there was a fundamental contrast between oral culture and print culture. In the former, they conclude, it was impossible accurately to hand on material.

Gerhardsson’s contribution consists in a painstaking textual analysis of the dynamic of oral transmission in Rabbinic Judaism, which he later extended to the early Christian tradition. He developed a sophisticated typology of different categories of tradition and the complex interface between manuscript writing and orality within each type of tradition. This is then also the main contribution of the three essays included in the volume under review. He concedes that in his first works he perhaps too readily assumed that the rabbinic sources after the second century reflected practices of the previous two. He also points out that the private written notation of the Hellenistic world still need further investigation. However, his cardinal view that material could and was transmitted with great care and accuracy remains unchanged. As Hagner puts it, though we do not have the ipissima verba of Jesus, Gerhardsson’s work shows that we do have the ipissima vox.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

In regards to Gal. 4:4, you have previously stated that the "Son of God" is mystical or theological.
So you are off on the wrong foot for a literal interpretaion of Gal 4:4. Your argument then must depend on the identification of the woman in Gal. 4:4 with Mary. But it doesn't say Mary, so you are left with mere assumption. But perhaps you will say, the woman in Gal. 4;4 doesn't have to be Mary, it could be any unidentified woman, just so long as she is an individual human being. I will state the obvious; if this is indeed your argument, then Gal 4:4 is divested of historical content.
If I have mischaraterized your position, apologies; please correct me.

But your postion is even worse. You have been looking for an example where a woman gives birth, but the woman is not a literal human being. And to this end you have scoured far and wide looking for an exact match to the extant Greek of Gal 4:4. As valuable as this method undoubtably can be, I have noted before the caveats with this approach, and how incomplete or misleading results can be obtained. In this case you have missed the passage with the closest content, and it occurs right in the NT! I can understand why you, and many other Christian scholars, are wary of Revelation Chapter 12.

Revelation Chapter 12
The Woman and the Dragon
1A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

The signs, the woman and the dragon, are seen in heaven. It is not said that the woman descends to the earth before she gives birth. Your reply is

Are you arguing that the "contents" (i.e the birth) was a physical human birth here on earth? And that it indeed refers to Jesus and Mary?

The story presented there has sevaral affinities with the Jesus story, but it really is rather a poor fit. In fact, it is questionable if the vision concerns Jesus at all.

To begin with, the woman most likely symbolizes Israel, since the images are drawn from Genesis 37:9–11. (in another thread I have argued that Revelation was oringally a pre-Christian document). Conservative scholars try to see the church in the woman and Jesus in the child. But regardless, the woman is not a literal single individual, yet the son born to her is said "will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.," a clear allusion to Psalm 2:9.

Here we have what you have been looking for; a birth from a woman that is clearly not literal. This counts against the literal interpretation of Gal 4:4.

Ben, I don't don't see the relevance of the adjective "hortatory" has in this discussion. Can you explain? And certainly you must admit that Paul was no stranger to visions, 2 Cor. 12:2. (Sounds similar to the reported experience in Revelation).
In fact, Paul's knowledge of Jesus came primarily (perhaps even exclusively) from direct revelation.

Jake Jones IV

*
Corrections noted. Apologies for putting words in your mouth.
It has been my primary argument that since "born of a woman" didn't appear in Marcion's version of Gal. 4:4 that it is a latter interpolation by a proto-orthodox redactor. If "born of a woman" had been original, Tertullian would certainly have turned the phrase against Marcion. However, arguments down this line have not been persuasive to you (perhaps you still are thinking of Earl Doherty), so I am pointing out in this thread that even as allegedly redacted, born of a woman falls short of evidence for a human birth.

And, while I am at it, just because somebody wrote down that a person was born (I am thinking of the gospels accounts now, not Paul) isn't evidence that they were historical, especailly in tales that are filled up with fabulous occurances and myth. They could be lying, misinformed, telling a moralistic tale, creating a fiction, creating allegory, etc. Do you believe that Cain and Abel were the literal sons of Adam and Eve? Somebody wrote it, and alot of people have believed it, but it just ain't so.

spamandham

While this is certainly true, we haven't even proceeded that far. We've been stuck trying to figure out whether or not Paul believed Jesus to have been historical. I actually think Solo's theory is the most plausible scenario presented as to why Paul probably believed in a historical Jesus.

I think the reason we have dwelt on this point so long is that the MJ position seems to be mostly rooted in Paul. If Paul believed in a historical Jesus, then the evidence that Christianity started with a mythical Jesus pretty much collapses and we're back to HJ as being the simpler explanation.

By the way, thanks for bringing up the woman giving birth in Revelation. I thought about it pages ago but didn't mention it because I'm too weary to write a dissertation on the meanings of the words in my question.