patcleaver

God Fearing Atheist

We should all stay on the straight and narrow path. I am not a scientist and I do not write scholarly articles and this is a blog. I have collected a lot of material that I do not have citations for. If I know about a cite then I will try to remember to provide it.

patcleaver

I provide a better arguement below.

Exactly right

Klaus, Welcome to this site. I really enjoy some of your responses.

The reason that Mark is usually considered to be earlier than Matthew or Luke is that Mark is copied by Matthew and Luke. Not just the ideas, but literally copied. Not usually word-for-word, but usually line-by-line with obvious additions and improvements in grammar and word choice in Greek. The additions and improvements by Matthew and Luke are often different but not always. About 80% of Mark is obviously copied by Matthew and about 50% of Mark is obviously copied by Luke in this line-by-line manor. There are some parts of Mark that are copied by Matthew and not Luke and other parts of Mark that are copied by Luke and not Matthew.

John seems to be based on all three synoptic gospels. I am not aware of John doing any line-by-line copying of the others, but in several places he tries to resolve contradictions between Matthew and Luke.

You seem to think that Irenaeus and her people wrote the gospels - seems reasonable to me. Mountain Man thinks that the Gospels were written by Eusebius (c. 330 CE) - also reasonable. I do not know of any good evedince that they were written befor 381 CE. The earliest carbon dated copy of the cononical gospels is 1050 CE, but we have carbon dating of the gospel of Judas at 280 CE, and gospel of Thomas at 350 CE, and most of the OT at 50 BCE. Some think that Mark was written by Jewish worshipers of Tammuz - possibly around 100 BCE and then updated to the time of Pilot. There are people who believe that Josephus wrote Mark for the Flavians. There are people who think that after the Jewish War the Romans had a Samaritans write it as anti-Jewish propaganda. There are some who think that the Jews wrote it as comedic anti-Roman propaganda with the humble Jesus following the same path and doing everything that Titus did during the Jewish Wars. There are people who think that Mark was written as Pagan missionary literature, to show that some pagan god was the messiah, in an effort to convert the Jews to paganism. There are some who think the Essenes wrote it about their "Teacher of Righteousness". I think Mark was probably a fictional book of midrash written in the late 30s CE, and then later updated during the Jewish wars. There are dozens of other speculations about the origins of Christianity because its a mystery, there is not enough evidence to discredit any of these speculations. The only speculation that is easy to discredit is the literalist interpretation of the Orthodox Christians.

schilling.klaus

It's not really important whether Irenaeus did the whole work alone,
and the Eusebian obscurantism makes it impossible to determine details.
Anyways the deeds of Irenaeus are much worse than the deeds of
Al Capone&friends altogether.

Irenaeus was the first to mention the canonical gospels, he had the
occasion, the ability, and the motivation for writing them.
No one significantly earlier than Irenaeus had all the motivations
needed for writing the canonical gospels,
especially no one before Irenaeus' friend Justin Martyr who
didn't know them yet in his Apologies and his Trypho.

Klaus Schilling

Toto

Hi patcleaver - the people who claim that the Catholic Church ran a forgery mill think that Eusebius was the head of it.

Also, Irenaeus is a male.

angelo

What don't you agree on? That Mark was the first gospel written is the consensus among the majority of scholars, it's also the shortest. Matthew resembles Mark to a certain extent and is regarded to come after Mark's gospel. Luke adds his version to both Mark and Matthew by example somehow building a tale around the birth to make Jesus be born in Bethlehem not in Nazareth.
By the time John was written, Jesus had become God himself. It really is the stuff of how legends grow from the flimsiest begginings.

Jane H

Some fascinating and original theories here, which seem to have completely evaded the discussions usually carried out by the academics who are experts in the field. Indeed, I have yet to see a serious academic touch these suggestions with a barge pole. Why would this be?

spin

A majority of scholars doesn't dictate what the reality was, they're just the basis for an argument from authority. A non-believer shouldn't be so willing to simply believe what a group of mainly religion-believing scholars agree on.

We don't really know when Mark was written.

My second comment was aimed at the ten years after claim of your previous post. It may possibly be totally wrong. Matthew and Luke may have been composed a year or fifty years after Mark. Ten years is guesswork.


spin

Clivedurdle

Pat your excellent summary of which jesusdidit may miss Ellegard and Seneca!

Jesus-Hundred-Years-Before-Christ (or via: amazon.co.uk)

http://www.nazarenus.com/


(And is Mark's alleged symplicity taken as a reason for early dating? It is an incredibly sophisticated text!

Clivedurdle

Did they?

Yesterday's Guardian has a wall chart of Greek Gods, today's Observer a wall chart of Greek Monsters.

They all read - without exception - as characters invented to explain things that happen.

Cyclops is of particular note - it is without doubt a mastodon skull.

Now what group does cyclops fit in, historic or imaginative interpretation of something or fiction?

Toto

The serious academics are still laughing at mistaking Irenaeus for a lady.

The idea that Irenaeus wrote the gospels is wildly improbable, as Irenaeus would undoubtedly not have written some of the contradictions and inconsistencies into the four gospels and Acts.

Many of the other theories involve some deep confusion over facts or logic, so that the whole field of "extreme Bible studies" has a bad reputation, much as Egytologists sneer at Pyriamidiots. But if you search for Joe Atwill or Carotta in this forum, you will find some discussion here of a few of these alternative theories.