Ben C Smith

For what it is worth, it looks to me like 1 Timothy 5.18 quotes Luke 10.7 as scripture (though this would be clearer if 1 Timothy 5.18 did not first quote from Deuteronomy 25.4).

Unfortunately, it also looks to me like the historical Paul had nothing to do with the penning of 1 Timothy.

Ben.

Vorkosigan

Antiquity, maybe. But historicity is a stretch. That's the vexing problem we're dealing with here. How to connect antiquity to the HJ?

We talked about this before. another bit of evidence is the motif of eating to prove you are not a ghost, which may also appear with the raised girl in Mark 5. The ending of Mark is prefigured in the first half, so it seems impossible that Mark prefigured the resurrection in the water walk, but then didn't actually have one (note also as you did the water + resurrection association, also found in Jn 21). All in all I am inclined to agree with Ross.

On the other hand, I also like the suggestion that the gospel is circular and turns back on itself, returning to Mark 1:14 where he meets the disciples in Galilee.

Michael

Vorkosigan

Does Paul quote Luke? Or are you still taking the fantastic view that the Pastorals are from Paul?

ynquirer

A typical mythicist desideratum. The best you can do is to cast some doubts on the whole thing.

That’s the point: novels were alien to first-century Jewish culture. Now, someone writes a novel, aka the gospel of Mark, and it turns to be a religious best-seller, arguably on account of the literary ignorance of the Jews. Is it the mythicist theory?

Homer wrote in a poor cultural environment, and his myths grew classical Greek culture anew after centuries elapsed. You may not say a comparable process evolved in highly cultured Judea in a few decades.

Mythicists typically put the cart before the horse. As first-century gospels are less convenient for the theory than later ones, well, why not supposing they are really later? External evidence is against the supposition, at least as regard Mark.

Again, a mythicist desideratum. Any man can either have been existed or have not been existed. If there is an indication that he existed, for instance, if he had followers, then the a priori likelihood is for his existence. The load of the proof falls upon the mythicist.

All wrong? Please produce more balanced an assessment of my analysis. What does it mean “heavily hellenized�? That Jews worshipped Zeus anywhere in their country or abroad? That they had pagan shrines at home? The evidence so far is that Jewish hellenization was quite superficial.

Maybe you are unaware, but it is implied in your argument that “if there is no HJ, then Jesus is automatically MJ regardless of the positive evidence in support of the MJ idea itself.� See above.

The “two powers in heaven� theology is not Greek in origin, but Zoroastrian. It is in the root of Manichaeism, and of course permeated the whole Middle East during the High Roman Empire. Still the very fact that it was more influential in Judea that Greek paganism is proof that hellenization was superficial. And packing Zoroastrism in Greek Hero novels – that simply does not work.

Again, unbalanced. You really don’t know where the gospels were written; nobody does. The mythicist theory needs a milieu as paganized as possible, so the diaspora looks pretty better. But you lack in this, as in everything else, a bit of evidence.

BTW I don’s mean that the NT was written in territorial Judea. I rather use the name “Judea� in Maimonides’ extension, which of course includes the synagogues throughout the Mediterranean basin.

I’m glad you begin to understand it.

As you seem to reject the theory of ultra-hellenized communities, I will not insist in the critique. But – there is a big “but.� Without such hypothetical communities, the case for the MJ is a much harder one.

Steven Avery

Well is the cup half full or half empty ?

Anyway if those who really believe that Paul is Paul, and Peter is Peter, etc. understood the Timothy-Luke relation, they would almost overnite become pre-70 AD NT folks.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

rlogan

Even this concession is disingenuous in terms of misrepresenting what there actually is "no hard evidence" for.

The slaughter of the innocents. The ridiculous story of the butcher Herod releasing a murderer - an enemy of the Roman State - and executing an innocent man by crowd acclamation at a fictitious annual "tradition" - etc.

And where is this material found? Oh - in the Bible with all of the other stuff about creation in six days, global floods, an Exodus that never happened, a Moses who never existed. Etc.

An apologist is an expert at sounding reasonable while fronting the ridiculous. "Oh, yes - why some parts of the Bible are a tad bit off, but shucks: there's probably some good quantum mechanics in there if we just interpret it right."

This is an odd "prove the negative" challenge, among other things. First to this:



it is "plausible" that itinerant preachers existed then. Josephus names quite a few, including many named Jesus. The problem is not finding a Jesus. The problem is that there was no gospel Jesus.

Bullshit. You take away the miracles and the other B.S. and you are left with any Tom-Dick-and-Harry itinerant preacher. Not just one - but bucketloads of real ones none of which are the gospel Jesus

Josephus, again, has for example a Jesus who led fishermen and other lower-class people at arms against Roman soldiers. Another that was running around calling out "Woe unto Israel". He's my favorite because he gets whacked by a Roman stone launched at the siege of Jerusalem.


1) it is absolute fact that no man does miracles and so in this respect it is of course obviously true there is no Jesus of the gospels. Period.

2) But you have created a straw man by innuendo that the Mythicist concludes on that alone that the myth was not "based" on some historical person.

That is insulting. It is a large number of factors - I would refer you to for example Doherty's entire development and to the necessary evaluations of extrabiblical sources, textual evidence and etc. found in many discussions here.


No - you can't get away with this vague handwaving of "someone who had devoted followers existed". Because of course they did. Lots of them.

You need to find this special one you are laying claim to. Who was he? Where did he live? What did he actually do? I can find you dozens of people with devoted followers who actually existed and are found in the pages of Josephus and other extrabiblical sources. So where is your Jesus?



Haw!

Holds by default in the Christian religion. BFD.


In general, Universities (other than religious ones) do not have biblical history departments just as they do not have Christian physics departments or Christian geology departments - and thank God for that.


Because they have real history departments and geology departments and physics and etc.

To refuse acknowledgement of this basic fact - to pretend Christians in charge of Christian History is nothing suspect is, uh, rather stupid.

ynquirer

Just a minor doubt. You want to erase Jesus from history so as to erase biblical history departments from religious universities in order to erase – what follows?

Not all of them are Christians: have you missed a large part of this thread?

In any event, the same argument applies to your real history departments – women in charge of women history, Eskimo in charge of Eskimo history, Americans in charge of American history, surely?

Oh, it would be more sensible, not, uh, rather stupid, but much more sensible indeed that a group of illuminated people in possession of truth were in charge of history at large and educated the rest of us on how the world really is and how to look at things complex the most simplistic way.

Thanks, rlogan, for constructive contribution.

Ben C Smith

It has become difficult for me for some reason to express myself clearly here. Lack of sleep, perhaps. My secretary says I have been going eight directions at once.

What I meant is that the existence of the rumor itself at the time John 21 was written seems historical. Whether the content of the rumor is historical is a different matter. I have already written about this limitation of the criterion of embarrassment on this thread; it can tell us that the item in question preceded John, but it cannot tell us by how much time it preceded John.

My purpose with this example was to find an instance where the criterion of embarrassment appears to demonstrate that an item (the rumor) was not invented qua fiction by the author. Rather, the rumor had a very real existence before the penning of the Johannine appendix, and the author had to handle its possible implications. It would seem to show that this particular author, at any rate, thought he was writing history, not fiction.

Did we? I do not recall. Maybe the lack of sleep again....

Yes, I like the connections in all of that.

If Mark was able to do anything at all, he was able to kill six birds with one stone.

Thanks for the exchange.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

The optimist says the cup is half full.
The pessimist says the cup is half empty.
I say: Hey, who drank half my water?

I have read my J. A. T. Robinson, and am sympathetic to the early dating of the NT texts, but have found it difficult to reconcile with the available evidence in a number of cases.

Ben.

Roger Pearse

Thank you for your comments. But they don't seem to need any response from me.

All the best,

Roger Pearse