Vorkosigan

Honestly, this is why I feel that historicists don't understand ancient fiction.

Relative to when Jesus supposedly lived, we have a number of historical romances in which the lead characters enter cities to the acclaim of crowds, visit a temple where portentous events occur, are arrested, dragged before the local potentate, tried, sent to die though innocent, go willing to their own deaths, are executed during a festival, and then are miraculously spared death. There are whole periods when we don't have fictions like these.

Relative to the emperors and a few other famous figures, Jesus of Nazareth appears to be entirely the creation of midrashic construction.

I quite agree, interpreting Brother of the Lord as a physical relationship is agenda-driven.

This strained agenda-driven reading requires people like Bart Ehrman to invent relationships where none exist in the text, and to explain away the plain meaning of the phrase the other 50-odd times Paul uses it.

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

In other words, despite all these early sources, the anonymous author of Luke was forced to use an anonymous work like Mark for almost all of his story line, and could not find one single bit of historical context to date any event in the life of Jesus.

graymouser

Except it doesn't work your way. We don't have a ton of stories that are clear parallels to the Gospel story - that's a mythicist... myth. :Cheeky:

Yes, it's some totally contrived extrapolation that when Paul describes a man as the "brother of the Lord" it would be the same person mentioned as Jesus's brother in Mark 6:3. If I didn't know better I'd say these earliest Christian documents actually cross-verify each other, but I know that can't be true because it would be inconvenient for the mythicist belief that Jesus was an invention.

Steven Carr

Ahem, I guess we don't also have a ton of stories in the Book of Mormon that are clear parallels to stories in the King James Bible.

http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/mirc1.htm

Isn't it nice when supporters of the Gospels don't look both ways before crossing the road?

They get run over....

Steven Carr

So Mark has a brother who clearly wanted nothing to do with Jesus and there is zero hint that this person later became head of the church.

But sprinkle some magic harmonising dust....

graymouser

What exactly is this supposed to mean? The period has a blazing clear historical context: Jesus was crucified during Passover in the period when Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judea. There's no controversy, nobody even talks about dating it to anything other than the 10 years under Pilate.

Steven Carr

Translation. Carr was totally right again.

There was not one single bit of historical context Luke could find to date any event in the life of Jesus.

Although Luke does date an event in the life of John the Baptist, there is no dated event in the life of Jesus.

So much for 'historical context'. Not even Luke could find any.

sotto voce

Totalitarianism betrays genuine faith in Jesus as the Christ.

Vorkosigan

Ancient Greek Novels
http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-.../dp/0691069417

"Contrived" is when you re-assign word meanings that Paul uses with monotonous regularity dozens of times to mean someone who is of the same faith as him. We call that special pleading, unless you're a historicist, in which case it suddenly becomes "history."

And in Gal 2, when Paul refers to "false brothers" he means people pretending to be the physical brothers of Jesus?

If I didn't know better, I'd say Mark was writing parody of the Jerusalem crowd, following Paul, whom he obviously reveres. But I know that can't be true, because it would require that the text have greater depth and wit than historicists are willing to assign to it.

And how about that letter of James, which doesn't say he is Jesus' brother? When he refers to brothers and sisters, he's writing his fellow family members of Jesus, right?

Vorkosigan

sotto voce

Because that relationship gave him no status. 'False brothers' must refer to absent spiritual relationship; 'the Lord's brother' refers to blood relationship, and serves only as mundane identifier.