Juststeve

Kappy:

Although I am losing interest in helping you understand me I will give it one more try. I will break it down step by step so that you are either bound to get it or are being intentionally obtuse.

1. I do not believe nor have I said that everything is either true or a lie. I am well aware that there are also mistakes and errors. If I were to forget your posts would remind me because they are most often mistaken. I am also fully aware of fiction, myth, legend, allegory and I do not consider those to be lies either.

2. I do regard it to be an instance of lying if someone presents material as fact which they do not themselves believe. Just to avoid confusing you people like Rowling , JRR Tolkein, Kahlil Gibran, Arthur Conan Doyle did not present their material as fact but rather as fiction. Therefore they are not lying by any conventional understanding of the term. As to the authors of the ill defined Greek Myths and the book of Job, they may very well have believed what they were saying or writing. Many people since have. I don’t know but I bet the mythers do.

3. It has been proposed by Doug that the Gospel writers themselves did not believe Jesus actually existed.

4. Since the Gospel writers do present the exploits of Jesus as fact, if Doug is right about their beliefs, they are guilty of lying or at least of being culpably deceptive.

Now that shouldn’t be difficult to understand unless your are obtuse, deliberately or otherwise. In any event unless you really surprise me with some shocking new insight this will be my last word to you on this subject.

Steve

Toto

I guess this is the crux of the matter. Many readers do not see the gospels writers as asserting the factual nature of their narratives.

Many fictional works are written as if they were factual histories, but we know that they are fiction because of the entire context. We are missing a lot of the context that the gospels had when they were first published. But overall, Mark's narrative does not appear to me to be intended as hard, cold, fact.

Most critical scholars do not think of the gospels as fact, but continue to believe that the Jesus of the gospels was based on a historic character. If this is the case, you would still accuse the gospel writers of lying?

Toto

Mod note: We do not have a limit on the lengths of threads, but this one is getting to be excessive. If you would like a sub topic split out, PM me, or feel free to start a new thread.

Kapyong

Gday Steve,

Thanks for your post.

There is the problem Steve.
I do not agree they "present them as fact" (*)

Please show me exactly where the author of Mark "presents the exploits of Jesus as fact" ?

Because -
all he actually does is tell a story. A story based on episode from Jewish scriptures. But he never CLAIMS it is fact or history at all. He does NOT explicitly present it as fact at all.

But later on, others COPY G.Mark while also CHANGING certain episodes in the story - that is NOT "presenting Jesus' exploits as fact".

As far as I can tell, you believe it is "presented as fact" purely because it is based in a real place. Is that it? Is that you actual reason for claiming they are "preseneted as fact" ?

Well, the Greek myths were based in real places - are THEY "presented as fact" ?


Kapyong

(*) At best we have ONE claim - Luke's - a weak claim to have investigated the other books.

Kapyong

Gday,

Actually, in LOTRO, Tolkien pretended he was translating from a real ancient book. He claimed it was true - not fiction.

Dan Brown claims his book is true - when it's fiction.

Many works of myths and poetry and allegory are specifically and explicitly presented as truth even when clearly fictional.

Really?
Can you quote where he did so?
You DO realise many people believed Sherlock Holmes was real?


K.

Toto

@Juststeve:

Fake memories, factual fictions, and the history of history

Read the full article for examples of fiction that claims to be fact, and the indistinct line between history and novels.

Doug Shaver

You're more than welcome.

Obviously, I think they're simply mistaken.

I have not studied the noncanonical literature enough to have a defensible opinion as to the authors' thinking.

I have never claimed and never believed that any early Christian writer was guilty of mendacity. I believe that the canonical gospels were written as fiction, meaning that the authors not only knew that the events they narrated never really happened but expected their readers to know it as well. The belief that those stories were about a real man arose among certain Christians who read the gospels sometime after they began circulating. Nobody was ever trying to deceive anyone.

Because unless there was a historical Jesus, it's not the simplest explanation. You need a fairly elaborate hypothesis to account for their believing all those things about something who never existed.

All the supernatural baggage in the stories is easily to account for if there was a charismatic preacher who ran afoul of powerful people and as a result was unjustly executed. What's not so easy to account for is why nobody seems to have heard about him until nearly a hundred years after his death. All we hear from Christian writers during that century is "He was crucified, he returned to life, and he's a god." There is no parsimonious way to reconcile that with what's in the gospels and Acts if we assume they were intended as history, even granting that they're bad history.

mountainman

"severely conditoned responses to Jesus ...
usually these authors deny his humanity"

[Robert M. Grant]

The "gnostic gospels and acts" present a docetic Jesus, and appealed to the public sense of romantic adventure stories concerning the "Travels of the Apostles", almost like a "Homerisation" of the books of the NT canon. The majority consensus of opinion appears to be that the authors of the non canonical texts cannot have been presenting history. There is thus negative support for the HJ in the non canonical material, since it is known fiction.

dog-on

Steve,

Kappy has been extremely patient with you, so before you go, at least have the courtesy to answer the question that has been repeatedly asked of you.

Where, specifically, does Mark claim that he is presenting fact?

That is all you need to do.

angelo

I don't think it would take a time machine. What would sway me [myther] would be a discovery of a biography of the man Jesus. What he was like, what he ate, was he married, what he actually was like as a human being, not some exalted man-god as portrayed in the gospels.