Vorkosigan

It is not difficult to find scholars who disagree, and AFAIK there is no methodologically sound approach for dating them. Not that the lack of sound methodology has ever stopped those who believe the Canonical gospels are first century from confidently advancing conclusions about the texts they study .

I am more interested in Cueva's analysis of how these novels are constructed. Many of the practices of those authors are reflected in Mark.

It would be interesting to see which way dependence runs, but since the Hellenistic Romances appear to have deep roots, I doubt it runs from the Christian gospel tales to the Greek novels.

Vorkosigan

Doug Shaver

A novel is fictional by definition.

I don't think Mark's gospel is like fiction. I think it is fiction. By that, I mean the author knew it was nonfactual and he expected his readers to know it was nonfactual as well.

Whether it would be properly categorized as a novel, I'd have to ask someone who is a specialist in literary taxonomy. I was briefly a literature major, but didn't stick with it long enough to learn much of the lingo.

ApostateAbe

OK. Do you think that the hypothesis that Mark is fiction more likely than the hypothesis that Mark is a Grecco-Roman biography?

dog-on

I would believe Mark was bios, if I were an Apologist.

ApostateAbe

Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana (or via: amazon.co.uk) was a Grecco-Roman biography, by all opinions of scholars, and nobody thinks that such an account contains any more than slivers of historical reliability. I think the gospel of Mark can be put in the same category.

Littlejohn

Never you came to suspect that perhaps the forger fathers, who gave birth to the catholic-christian cult (now simply 'Christianity'), were forced to keep hidden most of the life of Jesus, that not lasted only 33 years (*), but exactly twice, because Jesus was born in 6 AD (year of the Census) and died in 72, because stoned to death by the Jews?...

The life of the historical Jesus, because of its many shadows, as well as 'lights', absolutly did not lend itself to build around it a cult as the catholic-christian one, hence the decision to hide most of its real human story, because extremely compromising and 'embarrassing' to the castle of lies and deception on which was built the catholic-christian worship ....


Greetings


Littlejohn

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ApostateAbe

Littlejohn, just FYI, you attributed that quote to me, but it is actually from Doug Shaver's website, and I don't agree with it.

aa5874

Why are you making claims about scholars that are mis-leading and now MUST be DELIBERATE?

You simply DON'T know the OPINION of ALL SCHOLARS.

And further, unlike the author of the "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", the UNKNOWN author of gMark did NOT ever claim he was writing history.

In the "Life of Apollonius", Philostratus did claim he was writing a "TRUE ACCOUNT of what Apollonius said and did" but no such words can be FOUND in gMark about Jesus.

Littlejohn

Sorry!...


Greetings


Littlejhon

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Toto

When are we going get rid of the false idea that Mark is a Greco-Roman biography?

Joe Wallack tried in this thread.

Neil Godfrey tried here.

If you actually read the book by Burridge on the issue, rather than just pick up on the false impression that it created, Burridge uses the term "bios" or "life" and admits that bioi were written about gods. The possibility that a "life" of a god is based on the true history of that god may be assumed to be 0.

Since Abe is ignoring what I write, perhaps someone else here could tell him about this point and ask him kindly to stop repeating discredited claims. Thanks in advance...