TedM

So, if GMark was just a story written about a fictional Jesus--a face perhaps to the Divine Jesus in the sky that Paul preached, then I am having trouble putting the rest of the pieces together:

Assuming this genius named Mark created GMark whole cloth--how long did it take Matthew, Luke, and John to come up with the parts that aren't in Mark, and where did their material come from? If Jesus was never historical then the various stories added by Matthew, Luke and John were 'made up' by someone, sometime. Who made them up, and when?

What I'm getting at is this: IF GMark was entirely made up by the author of GMark, then how many years went by before Matthew, Luke and John came out with their new material? IF only a few years, do you support the idea that all three of them also made up the material? If you think they got the material from a growing Church of GMark, then how many years did it take for those new stories to be created and passed along to them?

outhouse

The gospel authors are all unknown

written to a roman audience, by romans who followed judaism, but were not jews



your coming into all this blind, you may want to research a bit first

90% illiteracy rate of people then

oral tradition

judaism

the roman culture

the culture in Galilee first century

TedM

I know about all that, but thanks. Few scholars think Mark was written as late as 120AD, but it seems many folks here do. I am curious what their timeline is on the others that followed--how much time do they think it took for at least 3 others to add in some more made up stuff after Mark.

Steven Carr

How long did it take Joseph Smith to write the Book of Mormon?

aa5874

Please, there is almost no new idea that begins as a majority. If we go by your logic then atheism must be wrong.

We are NOT merely counting people here.

We are attempting to locate the evidence that was used by the so-called majority to date gMark before the 2nd century.

It is SOURCES, SOURCES, SOURCES of antiquity that matter--Credible Sources.

Let us deal with Actual Recovered Dated Texts.

1. No Jesus story have been recovered and dated to the 1st century by Paleography and C14.

2. No Non-Apologetic writings attributed to 1st century writers mentioned the Jesus character found in the NT.

3. Events in gMark are found in writings attributed to Josephus that were composed at the end of the 1st century.

4. 2nd century writers as late as the mid 2nd century did NOT acknowledge any Gospel called according to Mark.

What is the evidence that gMark was composed in the 1st century??? Surely if LOTS of reasonable people support an early gMark then there MUST be an abundance of credible evidence.

We can't locate this Evidence for early gMark.

Let us get the evidence!!! It got lost in the mail???

I KNOW the CODE for "NO evidence for early gMark."

Look at the CODE---"Few scholars think Mark was written as late as 120AD"

GenesisNemesis

Question:

Do you believe human beings are sinners? Secondly, just because something might be false, doesn't mean it was necessarily made up, by any one person, or handful of individuals. It is a false statement that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Nobody "made up" the idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth. It was the best explanation they had at the time until someone came up with a better one. Christianity is a complex religion, and the more sophisticated a religion is, obviously the more difficult it is to create. It was a process that took centuries. If you believe that the Koran was made up, please explain to us how the Koran could possibly be made up if it has so many miraculous claims in it. Thirdly, you're assuming that human beings are primarily rational creatures. They aren't. Fourthly, in the case that there is no god, and if you grant that people are amoral in that instance, as I have said in the other thread, there's no reason not to think that it's plausible someone would have made up something like that. Fifthly, it is likely that you will claim the writers of the Gospels were divinely inspired. If the Gospel writers were indeed working under that assumption (we know nothing about whether or not they were), it's not at all surprising that they would have thought they were in communication with god and new information would have been added to the Scriptures. With that being said, however it almost certainly was not an "overnight" process, and took months, probably years, to complete.

This verse is extremely relevant:

PhilosopherJay

Hi TedM,

John circa140, (first commentary by gnostics around this time)
Mark circa160, (still unknown by Celsus, 170-180)
Matthew circa180, (Revision of Mark after some time)
Luke, July-August 206. (Putting it all together, unknown by Tertullian until his works post late 206 and 207)
Rewrites 206-20012.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Adam

YOU KNOW ALL THAT? BUT OH IS MOSTLY WRONG! I gave up listening to him long ago. He keeps on throwing the same stuff at us and never learns anything from us, so why bother trying to educate him?

Not that you should ignore him as much as aa, Mountainman, duvduv, and Shesh.

Duvduv

Adam, do you work for some kind of online censorship police to instruct people who to interact with? ?

Adam

My method is to keep people from ignoring me if they want to find out whom they should ignore. (You've got to keep them laughing. I guess that's why so many still read aa's threads.)

I don't think my other method is working very well though. I censure those who demonstrate the least willingness to interact with anyone else to learn anything. By that criterion Shesh should not be on my list, because he is learning so much from Mountainman. But that puts him in the same category as you, that he is willing to learn only what is more off-the-charts odd than what he believed before. It's disheartening that people are more likely to change for the worse than change for the better. For the most part, of course, people here do not change at all, no matter how much evidence for the other side. That's equally disheartening.