Ben C Smith

BTW, Gerard, I may be out of online action for the next couple of days. I will pick this up as soon as I am back in the saddle.

Cheers.

Ben.

Amaleq13

I don't have internet connections on my horses!! I'm jealous.

aa5874

The heretics, Marcion of Pontus and Valentinius included.

Roland

Well, what with the Mormons believing that Eden was actually in Missouri, I guess we North Americans just want to claim everything as our own.

aa5874

In order to answer your questions, there are several others that must be answered.

Who wrote gMark?
When was gMark written?
Did the author write gMark to be cannonised or just as a concept.
Did the author write gMark as a legendary narrative similar to Homer's Achilles?
Was gMark circulated without the author's consent or after the death of the author?

It is really not known if gMark, as we have it today, actually reflects the intention of any author, all we have is the information as it is presented.

We cannot use gMark to verify any historical event in the very same gospel, but the gospel itself can be checked for contradictions, inconsistencies and likely fiction.

"Paul", the authors of the NT, and Church fathers all portray Jesus of Nazareth as a god-man, just as gMark, and deny any separation of the divine from human, they are useless to corroborate gMark.

The downfall of gMark with respect to historicity, even if all the miraculous events are removed, is that the author presented Jesus as the Christ, the son of God, a charismatic figure, that was in opposition to the religous leaders, and with thousands of followers, but historical independent sources cannot confirm such a figure, except maybe for Vespasian at around 70CE.

Malachi151

My 2 cents:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ospel_mark.htm

Joe Banks

Regarding the idea that later sources treated Mark as history, I find this terribly unpersuasive as evidence that it actually contained history or was based on history.

Wasn't the OT also treated as history? I am thinking of Genesis particularly. The ancient interpreters regarded it as historical for hundreds of years right? But that doesn't add any weight to the argument that it actually was history, or that Noah, for example, was historical. And the argument that multiple later sources seemed to view it as history (Mathew and Luke and then John and then Papias...) doesn't seem to add anything. They could have made that assumption and been simply wrong, each person increasing the odds that another would follow their lead - not unheard of in history or journalism or science or whatever.

If it was entirely fictional and Mathew, Luke, John, Papias, etc did not realize that, would the extant evidence be any different?

Solitary Man

Strawman. The argument is not whether it contains history or is based on history, but is it written as an historical narrative, as opposed to intentional fiction (or some other broad category).

Some parts of the OT is history.

Some ancients thought of Genesis figuratively, not literally.

Who did what when and for how long?

Again with the strawman, see first response.

What internal clues lead (present tense) you to believe that those authors were wrong?

Geetarmoore

Interesting. I ordered your book this morning.

Joe Banks

Easy there with your strawman trigger finger

I simply stated that the way other authors appeared to treat Mark is unpersuasive as evidence that it was written in the same way they interpreted it.

I made the connection with the document "containing history" or being "based on history" precisely because I assumed a historical narrative would have to be one of those things. Are you saying that a document written as historical narrative need not contain any history or be based on history?

great. so? I specifically wrote of Genesis, to simplify.
great. so?
Do you really not understand that sentence? :huh:

I'm guessing you do. But just in case sorry, I recently read Kugel's How to Read the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)and he consistently refers to the ancient interpreters vs the modern scholars as two different views of the intent of OT passages. I assumed that term was understood widely and that is what I meant. They had certain interpretations for hundreds of years. Modern scholars have different interpretations, usually dramatically so. The point is the ancient beliefs about the intent of a passage (in this context, its role as historical narrative) provide no evidence that the author actually had the same intent.
I did and noted that you invented the straw man accusation for your own convenience.
Actually I'm not persuaded that they were entirely wrong. I'm pointing out that their beliefs about Mark's intent don't provide any evidence that they were right.