TedM

The argument I wrote was that the issue needing correction may well have been that of baptism only by John,and what he was talking accurately about may well have been that Jesus was the messiah the scriptures foretold. I offered this as an alternative explanation because the one you favor (and I used to) requires assumptions about what 'concerning Jesus' means and doesn't mean, and what being 'acquainted only with the baptism of John' means and implies, and what it was he was corrected about.

My post also provides a passage in the very next chapter which more clearly supports the alternative interpretation than the one that you support, with regard to a group of people.

Seems to me that passage can be interpreted in two different ways and that the second passage may have reflected a similar issues found in the first one.

ApostateAbe

JoeWallack, one of the old threads that Toto referred to had an old post by me that argued against your criteria for identifying the genre of Greco-Roman biography. I still hold that the gospels belong in the genre of Greco-Roman biography, and my only criterion is that it is a claimed chronological narrative of someone's life. I will repost what I wrote before, and I would like to know if you have any opinions in response.

Joseph, I think you have made a few worthy arguments. If I can be indulged, I would like to know the justification for your list of three criteria for Greco-Roman biographies:

1) The author believed that the sources believed they were witnesses.
2) The author believed that the sources were witnesses.
3) The author wanted the audience to believe 1) and 2).

Sometimes, at least, the author of a Greco-Roman biography does indeed claim that his sources are eyewitnesses, but Plutarch seems to write no such thing for his biography of Alexander the Great, nor would it be expected, since the subject of his writing is 400 years in the past. Instead, his sources seem to be purely spoken myths.

Plutarch wrote:

It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother's side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias, in company with whom he was initiated in the religious ceremonies of the country, and her father and mother being both dead, soon after, with the consent of her brother, Arymbas, he married her. The night before the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided flames dispersed themselves all about, and then were extinguished. And Philip, some time after he was married, dreamt that he sealed up his wife's body with a seal, whose impression, as be fancied, was the figure of a lion. Some of the diviners interpreted this as a warning to Philip to look narrowly to his wife; but Aristander of Telmessus, considering how unusual it was to seal up anything that was empty, assured him the meaning of his dream was that the queen was with child of a boy, who would one day prove as stout and courageous as a lion. Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept, which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip's passion for her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was ever after less fond of her conversation. Others say, that the women of this country having always been extremely addicted to the enthusiastic Orphic rites, and the wild worship of Bacchus (upon which account they were called Clodones, and Mimallones), imitated in many things the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women about Mount Haemus, from whom the word threskeuein seems to have been derived, as a special term for superfluous and over-curious forms of adoration; and that Olympias, zealously, affecting these fanatical and enthusiastic inspirations, to perform them with more barbaric dread, was wont in the dances proper to these ceremonies to have great tame serpents about her, which sometimes creeping out of the ivy in the mystic fans, sometimes winding themselves about the sacred spears, and the women's chaplets, made a spectacle which men could not look upon without terror.

Copied from classics.mit.edu.

I suppose it is a possibility that Plutarch intended his reader to believe that anonymous eyewitnesses attested that Alexander descended from Hercules, and other eyewitnesses attested that Olympias danced with serpents, but I can't help but think that Plutarch would have specified these eyewitnesses if that were truly the case.

Maybe you have good reasons for thinking that Greco-Roman biographies are very much typified by claiming to be sourced from eyewitnesses?

ApostateAbe

There must be a few mythicists out there who believe the gospels to be written with the intention of belief. If so, I would love to get a criticism of the OP from that perspective. The responses so far in this thread seem to concentrate on an especially unlikely mythicist perspective.

Toto

That would imply that the author was either honestly mistaken or perpetuating a hoax?

Why unlikely? The mythicist view of the gospels seems a lot closer to liberal mainstream interpretations than the idea that there really is a lot of history to be derived from the gospels.

ApostateAbe

Yes, and I don't sympathize with that style of argument with theists. Generally the best estimate of the original writings seems to be contained in the earliest manuscripts. There are ways to judge the authenticity of passages, such as: (1) the passage is contained in the earliest manuscripts, (2) other early manuscripts corroborate the passage, (3) no other manuscripts contain conflicting passages, (4) the passage conflicts with the probable interests of the copyists, and (5) the context makes the most credible sense with the passage existing as is. It is generally bad reasoning to cast doubt on the authenticity of a passage just because it conflicts with one's rhetorical interests. If you think you have good reasons to doubt the authenticity of a passage, then present them. Inauthenticity should not be merely presumed.
No disagreement there.

ApostateAbe

Yep. No objection to that. I take that to be the general pattern of Greco-Roman biographies.
No disagreement. I take liberal scholarship only a little more seriously than conservative scholarship, which is to say not seriously.

Toto

That is in fact the generally accepted interpretation. Mark has an adoptionist flavor. After Christians started to believe that Jesus was divine from birth, the baptism became something to be explained away.

Oh? I think Mormonism has become embarrassed by a few things. The educated pagans of the time were embarrassed by the behavior of Zeus and the other randy Olympians. Modern Jews are embarrassed by the slaughter of the Canaanites, which we know never happened.

Also Joseph Campbell IIRC

Since they are all possibilities, what's the problem?

ApostateAbe

"Since they are all possibilities, what's the problem?"

Not a problem at all for postmodernists, but I think a fundamental difference is philosophy prevents any progress in arguing with that perspective.

Toto

What is it that you want to argue with?

We don't in fact know what happened. We can only lay out the possibilities. If you want to do a Baysian analysis, you might figure out which possibility is most likely, but it doesn't look like there is enough information for even that exercise.

But you can't argue that it must be historical because no one ever made stuff up like that.

ApostateAbe

You and Robert Price are postmodernists, and postmodernists tend to think all possibilities are of equal weight. I see it as a matter of the fundamental difference between those who value knowledge of the truth and those who value something else. When the values are fundamentally different, there is little to be gained from such disputes. Sorry.