aa5874

What!!!! The Gospel writers thought they were writing history---but the Gospels are Akin to Bullshit "reenactments" of ghost stories and UFO abuductions..."

What a sad day!!! What pain!!!

Diogenes the Cynic ADMITS the Gospels are Bullshit reenactments.

Who use Bullshit reenactments as history???

EHRMAN.

anethema

What you think their genre is agrees with Craig. What a load of bullshit! The only "gospel" writer who even claims anything like writing history is "luke". See Carriers, "Not the impossible faith" for an education about "lukes" qualifications as an historian. Show me where Tacitus starts anything with "This is the good news of the Caesars". What a joke this argument about genre is!

Diogenes the Cynic

My opinion of the Gospels is not remotely close to Craig, and you are completely misunderstanding my use of the word "history" in terms of ancient genre.

aa5874

We UNDERSTAND your opinion of the Gospels---"They are Akin to Bullshit reenactments of Ghost stories and UFO abductions..."

Is it NOT risible that "Historians" used the bullshit reenactments for history like on the History Channel???

Diogenes the Cynic

It is risible to read them as accurate history, yet the authors didn't know that. It's like Conservapedia. They don't know they're in La La land.

aa5874

Please, tell that to EHRMAN. He may be LA LA LAND right now because he wrote a book where he relied on the Bullshit reenactments of ghost stories called Gospels.

spin

I didn't say that you were trying to weasel out of anything. You're looking too hard for some sort of trap. I said that "fiction" is a weaselly term.

Here are the questions I asked:

1. by "fiction" do you merely mean 1) simply "not-real" or 2) deliberate fabrication with the awareness of the material not directly mapping any reality?
2. Is myth "fiction" according to your usage?
3. Do you see a meaningful distinction between the Jesus-as-myth and the Jesus-as-fiction crowds (and the Jesus-as-fiction-created-out-of-myths crowd)?

You answered the second question: "Yes. myth is a form of fiction".

You could be more specific by saying a) '"fiction" means simply "not-real"' or b) it is "deliberate fabrication with the awareness of the material not directly mapping any reality" or c) something else you consider more accurate and that you specify.

The third question could be most simply dealt with by a yes or a no, or with some reasoning behind the yes or no.

Diogenes the Cynic

"Not real" is not a term with any literary definition.

"Fiction" is an umbrella term, not a specific one. It includes any narrative literature which is invented or imagined. Any story which is not a substantially accurate record of reality.

Myth is a subset of fiction - the use of sacred story and allegory to convey religious messages. That's a wide genre in itself, though and does not necessarily have to be completely invented. Real events can be mythologically interpreted and spun. Cargo cults, for instance.

I say the Gospels are fiction because they are obviously not accurate records of history, and because they are highly mythologized, but that doesn't mean the authors did not think they were writing history just as much as cargo cult progenators think John Frum was real.

John Frum might actually be analogous to Jesus in some ways. There may or may not have been a GI with that name. If there was, then there was a "Historical John Frum," even if he has little to do with the character in the religion.

He may just be a sort of an archetypal representation of "America GI's" in general (sort of a "G.I. Joe" figure) which would be a point in favor of mythcism in that it shows an invented character can be retrojected as historical, but the cargo cult mythmakers would still think they were talking about genuine history, not fabrication.

I believe the gospel writers, for the most part, believed what they were writing was true history, they just had some incredibly horrible methodology.

Forgot the last question.

I would draw a distinction between myth which the authors themselves believe is authentic, revealed history, and "fiction" in the sense that the authors are intentionally inventing a story and presenting as an invented story (making stuff up and presenting it as true is just lying, which I guess, is still a form of fiction).

outhouse

these people were as intelligent as we are.


they knew they were creating deities frommortal men, and like now, different people believed differently about deities.


straight up fiction through mythology is not a bad call. Fact is, answers as to what was fiction and when, we can never know. But based on probablility we can make educated unbiased guesses