schilling.klaus

it's only improbable for extremely naive scholars like Crossan.
of course inconsistencies appear as the Catholic forgers wrote
the canonical gospels by reworking Gnostic proto-gospels
of various origins

Klaus Schilling

aa5874

Justin Martyr does appear to know the gospels, or at least some version of them, but he does not give these gospels any name. The names Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and "Paul" are all missing from every single extant writings of Justin Martyr even though he made many references to scriptures found in the gospels and some epistles.

But oddly, Justin Martyr made mention of Marcion of Pontus, and never ever mentioned "Paul" at all.

After reading "First Apology", by Justin Martyr, it would appear to me that, up to and about the middle of the 2nd century, the gospels and epistles were circulated as un-named writings, and authorship were probably fabricated after Justin.

Solitary Man

Because it was too easy to dice it up and throw it away. The theories are just as valid as UFOs invading the earth and propping up Jesus as their fake messiah.

spamandham

The problem as I see it, which does not yet appear to have been addressed in this thread, is that those you listed take ALL of Mark to be historical, including the fantastic portions. If we start with the assumption that the fantastic portions simply are not historical, then I don't see how the fact that these others thought Mark to be historical adds any weight to the argument.

These later writers clearly had no insight into which portions were historical or fabricated, or they would not have treated the obviously fabricated portions as historical, assuming honest intents on their part. Without the assumption of honest intents, they serve no value at all in regards to this discussion.

If there are early sources that accept the ordinary parts, but reject the fantastic, they would bear weight on the argument. The Ebionites?

Solitary Man

That other people took it to be historical only says on how Mark should be taken as a genre, and not as history. Josephus is clearly a historian, writing in the historical genre, and yet he mentions the fantastic.

You see the fallacy you're committing?

angelo

Of course it could be complete hogwash. I'm using the consesus that 'most' scholars, whether religious or not, have all come to these estimates and conclusions.

aa5874

Solitary Man, it's you who is committing a fallacy. You are implying that since Josephus was clearly an historian and mentioned the fantastic, that all writers who mentioned the fantastic are historians.

GMark appears to be just a fantastic story of the fantasy, Jesus of Nazareth, without historical support, whereas the writings of Josephus are about events and people who may or may not have believed in the fantastic, and his writings are supported by other writers and historians of antiquity.

The mere mention of established geographical locations and figures of history by the author of gMark does not qualify him to be an historian, since the stories of his main character Jesus appears to be fundamentally fictitious both in chronology, geography and magnitude.

Ben C Smith

That was not obvious to me, especially since these gentlemen know parts of Papias that they could not have taken from Eusebius.

If I understand your request, this is an easy request to fulfill. So, just to make sure I understand you, are you asking for a passage that predates 330 in which some church father or other names Irenaeus and claims that he wrote a work against the heresies?

That may be, but what you wrote requires Eusebius to have been quoting Irenaeus quoting Papias, and he did no such thing for the passage you cited.

Thank you.

Not a problem, just a limitation. I intend to evaluate reliability in due time, but right now I am compiling data. For me, the compilation of data comes before evaluating those data. I do not wish to make a claim, say, that nobody before Eusebius cites Irenaeus until I have compiled all the relevant data and can be somewhat certain.

Ben.

spin

When a text was written can have profound effects on arguments. What most scholars think is just what most scholars think. It doesn't mean too much. What we have evidence for is another matter. If you base arguments on what scholars think rather than the available evidence, you risk not saying anything useful. No available evidence means no tangible argument.


spin

schilling.klaus

he knows completely different documents with contant the gospels drew from,
but this doesn't make them canonical dgospels,
as they differ in serious details.

Pauline epistles are Marcionite works, and got reforged catholically only after Justin Martyr.
Whether Marcion used the term Paul(<< pauculus, little one -- a typical Gnostic title) is not explicitly obvious.
What JM quoted is not found in Marcion's Paul, it got interpolated into it by the Catholic forgery mill from JM onward.

this is a foul apologistic excuse that holds no whatsoever value.

Klaus Schilling