MCalavera

Imagination. You sure you're not projecting?

mountainman

I think the fact that he made the attempt, and that his heretical ideas were preserved despite the despotic authority, persecution and intolerance of the church, and its militant heresiologists, speaks volumes.

Nathan Poe

I have interpretation of text -- you have hysterical dismissals.

The texts give us some very interesting clues about the subject -- whether or not that subject was an actual historical person knows as "Jesus of Nazareth" aside, we can clearly see what those authors did to make such a person into "Jesus Christ."

Actually, it's very relevant. I don't doubt for a second that the history around the subject of the story had to be very creatively edited in order to match up with Jewish expectations of the "messiah" -- to the point where if we were ever to hop into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to meet the original subject, his life would bear no resemblance whatsoever to the stories. I would suggest that a HJ who doesn't match up to the Bible's description isn't really any different from an MJ.

But I digress. If those birth narratives were, at least in part, written to cover up an embarrassing secret about the character's paternity, it supports the idea that a historical character existed -- a fictional character made from whole cloth would have no such issues to smooth over.

Now, whether that character was actually a certain Jewish carpenter from Gallilee, the author's Brother-in-Law, or just some guy that they all heard some stories about, well, that can't be determined. But an examination of the text makes it clear that they're all talking about someone with a real past -- one that occasionally needed to be edited.


Not if the later Gospels used the earlier ones as source material -- which they clearly did. For example, Mark has 664 verses, and Matthew used 606 of them in his own Gospel -- many of them lifted verbatim.

Of course, even then, the information is far from identical -- Matthew made some interesting changes to some of Mark's words, changes which indicate that Matthew was speaking to a far more conservative Jewish audience than Mark. Any passage that Mark wrote that threatened to undermine Jesus' orthodoxy, Matthew either omitted or rewrote -- changing the story in the process, if need be.

And so they don't -- Each author was pursuing their own theological agenda, and played fast and loose with historical facts (or, I'll grant you, what they at least thought were historical facts) to get their point across.

Which makes the nativity stories a very relevant example indeed -- how can you pretend that they are "the same information" when the stories themselves are mutually exclusive? There is no way that the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke could've happened simultaneously -- it's plainly obvious, but Christians have been twisting their minds into pretzels trying to reconcile them as literal for the last 2,000 years.

And that's just one example of how they're not the same information -- why did you assume they were?

You have read them, right?

Despite both my and your own examples that they aren't? Never mind the Bible; have you read your own posts?

So because the details were largely unknown, some writers glanced over the issue of Jesus' paternity, others filled the gap with mythology. Perhaps YOU don't expect that, but the rest of us see it all the time.

Nathan Poe

It says a few copies escaped burning.

Trust the Jews to preserve their texts from being destroyed by oppressive regimes -- they've had, unfortunately, thousands of years of experience in that particular field.

aa5874

Your statement is COMPLETELY erroneous and mis-leading.

You make HYSTERICAL PRESUMPTIONS and support them WITH you SPECTACULAR IMAGINATION.

I PRESENT WRITTEN STATEMENTS, WRITTEN EVIDENCE from antiquity.

In gMatthew Jesus was the Child of a Holy Ghost, Son of Mary, that WALKED on water, TRANSFIGURED, and was RAISED from the dead.

In gMark, Jesus was the Son of Mary, WALKED on water, TRANSFIGURED and was RAISED from the dead.

gMatthew's Jesus, the Child of a Ghost is the same Jesus of gMark.

You HYSTERICALLY IMAGINE that gMark's Jesus was probably a man with the same BIOGRAPHY as gMatthew's Child of a Ghost.

In gMatthew, there is mentioned a character called Pontius Pilate the Governor before whom Jesus was put on trial.

In gMark, ONLY the word Pilate is found and Jesus was put on trial before Pilate.

Is NOT gMark's Pilate the same as Pontius Pilate the Governor in gMatthew?

Let us hear what you have HYSTERICALLY IMAGINED.

Nathan Poe

Apparently you present them on a computer with a caps lock key that sticks -- if you want us to believe that it's not hysterics that makes you write every other word in ALL CAPS.

I'm going to go with the simpler explanation on that one -- one that suggests you reduce your caffeine intake.

Which suggests that Mark added some mythological elements to his story to serve a theological purpose -- Matthew later added more to Mark in order to smooth over some sticky theological points or deal with unanswered questions.

History gets mythologized all the time; more so in ancient cultures.

There's that caps lock key again -- you sure you're not mainlining espresso?

The same character told by two different authors with two different agendas.

My, you are a tweaky little one, aren't you? take the coffee IV out of your arm, count to twenty, and come back with a relevant (although at this point, I'd settle for coherent) topic for discussion.

aa5874

There goes your hysterical SPECTACULAR imagination.

You are "seeing" things that are NOT visible to the naked eye.

This is PRECISELY your problem. You think your IMAGINATION is an EXPLANATION.


OK, that was real SPECTACULAR AND IMAGINATIVE.

Nathan Poe

Right... because when you type a word in caps, it becomes invisible.


Lacking a better explanation (which you certainly can't provide), I'll go with a little deductive reasoning.

More so than the idea that Pilate's title was mentioned in one Gospel but omitted in another is supposed to mean something profound.

Really, have you got anything worthwhile? I'm getting bored.

Doug Shaver

I haven't studied them, either. If I were to do so, it would be to form my own judgment as to whether the authorities were justified in their belief that the writings actually contained interpolations. But in order to do that, I would have to become fluent in NT Greek, and I have not had time to do that. Until I can do it, I must suppose that the consensus is justified, if in fact there is such a consensus, and as far as I can tell right now, there indeed is one. The authorities disagree as to the extent of interpolation, but not (except maybe among a few inerrantists) as to whether the extant manuscripts do include some interpolations.

And now the point to which I was hoping to build. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but let's say for the sake of discussion that the authorities' estimates of interpolated material range from 3 percent to 10 percent. I also stipulate for the sake of discussion that of all the authorities we're talking about, not one of them doubts Jesus' historicity. Let us now bring in a hypothetical mythicist offering a list of passages that he says should be added to the list of interpolated material. That list, I suggest, would not significantly change the aforementioned 3-percent-to-10-percent range of estimates for interpolated material. And if that is so, then it is not clear to me why the the mythicist's interpolation argument must be dismissed out of hand on grounds of special pleading.

mountainman

Thats a well presented response Doug.