Kapyong

Gday,

Philo wrote in the 30s and 40s probably -
he shows no mention of any of it.

Paul wrote in the 50s and 60s or so -
he doesn't mention the E.T.

Hebrews was maybe written pre-70
he doesn't mention the E.T.


The first mention of the E.T. (outside the Gospels) is early-mid 2nd century.

The earliest dozen documents or so of Christianity do NOT show any knowledge of the E.T.


K.

show_no_mercy

This doesn't negate my argument at all. There were different factions of Christianity, with some that held that the Law of Moses was still in effect.

You're responding as though Christianity was one homogeneous entity since its inception, where this simply isn't the case; we only have the official history of "Jesus believers" put together by the Catholic Church. Once they got in power, other sects of Christianity were marginalized.

And why are these people authorities? Because Paul and apparently his audience thinks so. That still doesn't give us the entire picture and assumes that Paul and the people that he claimed to have met in Jerusalem shared the same soteriology as Paul.


And this still assumes that Paul's letters arrive to us unmolested by the emerging proto-Orthodoxy, and assumes that only "heretics" changed epistles, Acts, and Gospels to suit their theological or polemical needs.

Acts of the Apostles is mid/late 2nd century anti-Marcionite fiction.

Amaleq13

And I've pointed out that it wasn't a symbol because nobody had invented it yet.

If Paul knew an empty tomb, it is a rather painfully obvious symbol of the resurrection and it is simply idiotic to suggest that neither he nor anyone else would have noticed until after the Gospels had been written.

Eyewitness testimony was used as a symbol and logical proof of the resurrection? That makes no sense. You've lost it. :rolling:

Paul isn't making an appeal to logic or trying to prove the resurrection in 1 Cor. He's reminding his readers of the fundamentals of faith in Christ and he does not mention an empty tomb. He can only offer a partially anonymous list of people who claimed to have seen the risen Christ and remind his readers that all of it was according to scripture.

Yup, no reason for a secretly sympathetic wealthy member of the Sanhedrin to play any further role. He probably turned into a coward shortly afterward and went pagan.

It is willfully ignorant to claim this is what I've been arguing. These straw men are tiresome though they do speak to the lack of support you can offer to your position.

You have no basis for that claim. Please indicate the exact post in which you identified specifically how any of the reasons offered is not rational. I'll save you the time and inform you that it does not exist. All you've done is argue against straw men and provide unsubstantiated descriptions of what you imagine might have happened.

Why would that be when it would be so obviously appropriate? Do you have a rational explanation for such a strange oversight?

But only gets mentioned in one version of the story? How "key" could such a figure be?

And, given his alleged position and subsequently brave action, that seems rather unlikely, to be kind.

As we've already seen, it takes tremendous prior faith to accept such arguments. They offer little to sway the rational inquirer lacking such pre-existing faith. There continue to be good reasons to doubt the historical veracity of Joseph, the guards, and the empty tomb.

Doug Shaver

Yep. Which could suggest that the author was not trying to convince anyone that his story was true. It suggests the possibility that he was writing fiction and expected his readers to assume as much.

Solo

How does this scale of importance touch on what was being discussed ? Any ideas ?


But he says that it won't be a body of flesh and blood just one verse before that. It seems to me Paul is emphatic that one gets a different body in the resurrection.

I am sure you are aware that what I am saying has been taught at Tuebingen since the days of F.C.Baur.

I think the point those guys would make to you is that it is not at all sure who were the "poor" Paul was asked, and was eager, to fund. It was not the "pillars", that's for sure. No, Paul wants to win favour with the saints (Rom 15:31), who are poor (15:26). Perhaps, the revelation he said he had in Galatians to go to Jerusalem was to be heard by them.

Of utmost importance to whom ? The community for whom Mark wrote were Paulinists. The gospel allegory of Jesus tells his audience that the earthly disciples misunderstood Jesus mission which was engineered to be a failure on earth but a victory in heaven. The disciples run away and never hear the good news.

I wish I could help you but I can't. Mark was the first narrative gospel, and therefore he had no yardstick to measure the length of his creation with.

As for the failure to deliver Jesus appearances to the disciples, again, I can't be of assistance. There are some people here who believe the original Mark intended Jesus to show himself to the earthly followers in discarded flesh to satisfy future church orthodoxy. I am not one of them.

I take Mark to be a staunch Paulinist (in most respects) and his view of the resurrection coincides with Paul's. In Mark Jesus shows himself "transfigured" (i.e. in his resurrected glory) to Peter and the Zebedees and they can't figure it out. (But you can bet the bottom dollar that any Mark reader with an IQ of 110 and who had experienced photism could figure out where Mark was going with this). Peter and Co. are faithless (by the higher Pauline standards) so the word of the gospel does not reach them. If Mark intended the meeting to take place he must have forgotten it when he wrote the last verse of his gospel (16:8).

I'll translate that verse for you the way I understand it:

You either get the gospel because it is given to you to understand it or you get nothing at all. You can't get the talk of angels second hand. What is flesh is flesh and what is spirit is spirit.


Who is current theory regarding Mark ? What is your guarantee that Mark was doing needlework ?

How do you read Mk 4:11 ? I mean how does one read that verse as history ? what does the "everything" (πᾶς) in that verse include ? BTW, if you know the kingdom of heaven (i.e. Jesus has been in touch), why do you need a gospel ?

What on earth are you babbling about ? ..."abridged". How on earth would Mark know his gospel was the short one when those who were about to copy and add to, and improvise on, Mark were ten-twenty years from dropping their first line ?

Brevity is the soul of wit, they say.


Which I assume you put down to (as Hitchcock did the omission of the Academy to grant him a lifetime achievement award sooner) a matter of great carelessness.

logical ? I tell you what, I have this guy sitting beside myself here with blond hair, blue eyes, a shiny nimbus around his head, and a lamb in his lap, and he says you are out of your friggin' mind if you think that anything that Mark conjured up has to do with logic. He says Mark's magic wand is called suggestion.

And that would be which verse, you said ?

Listen, there is a great scene in Annie Hall that you want to see, just so you know the difference between useless patter and a punchline. It's definitely worth three minutes to watch. You don't have to be Woody Allen's fan.
Here you go.

Jiri

spamandham

There is a parallel story recorded in Josephus of the body of a crucified man being yielded for burial upon request, so perhaps it wasn't that unusual.

(....there's also speculation that the Gospel writer was familiar with that story)

Diogenes the Cynic

The guys in the Josephus story weren't dead yet. He was also able to make an appeal directly to the Emperor.

Diogenes the Cynic

Abridged from what? Mark was the first Gospel written.

renassault

Philo wasn't a historian. Didn't mention many things.

No occasion for it and the primary proof of the Resurrection used was not the empty tomb but appearances to the disciples.

You're forgetting the Gospels themselves are early documents written by latest 70-100 AD.


Your argument was that Paul's reference to "other gospels" meant there were other factions. This is just incorrect. How homogeneous the beliefs about Jesus were in those days, we really don't know. But as with any religion, there were dissenters of orthodoxy. The fact is the Apostles were the ones by whom orthodoxy was checked and it is incorrect to say that we only have the history of what the Church that "won out" wrote, because no one disputes that Galatians was actually written by Paul, not even F.C. Baur did. The theory of Walter Bauer, that the heretics which the Church fought in the 2nd century were the original Christians is completely impossible given how none of them appealed to Paul's or others' original works (e.g. Marcion mutilated them, Valentinians based extra-biblical (and quite wrong) reasoning based on the Gospel of John, etc.), and the tradition of Apostolic succession wasn't with them (this tradition is fairly strong).

They're authorities because...they knew the teachings of Jesus from first-hand. Paul's soteriology, if we assume 1-2 Peter, James, etc aren't by the Apostles, would have still likely been the same seeing his statements in Galatians 2:4-8.

No one disputes the unity and integrity of any of the books of the New Testament as a whole. There are some passages that are considered inauthentic: The Adultery Pericope in John (which still probably reflects a genuine historical basis seeing it's in Papias), the longer ending of Mark, the "in Ephesus" in Ephesians, etc. That the heretics mutilated these is evident by the textual tradition and the changes they made. No reasonable or sane scholar disputes this.

Oh right. Yet it reflects no anti-Gnostic polemic such as one would expect. It has such details, confirmed through archaeology, such as the proconsulship of Gallio that would be near-impossible for a even a meticulous researcher to find in the mid 2nd-century, seeing how Tacitus found it convenient to call Pilate a procurator rather than prefect. I'm not going to comment on the weight of Acts' testimony about James' statement. I know that, although the tradition of Paul escaping from Damascus through a basket points toward a detailed knowledge of Paul and everyone else, someone will point out how Acts doesn't describe Paul as we know him from the letters, and Acts isn't pivotal to the fact that Paul and Jerusalem didn't disagree.

No, it wasn't a painfully obvious symbol because one would have said, "Well maybe they stole
the body", "Well maybe something else happened to the body". Instead, the painfully obvious,
and much better symbol is the mentioning of Resurrection appearances, which he does.

Umm, I guess all the courts who prefer witnesses have lost it too.

He most certainly is trying to prove that Christ Resurrected, as he states in 1 Cor.15:12. There's no reason to mention a partial list of people saying they saw Christ if it wasn't for that purpose. His lack of mentioning the empty tomb is irrelevant. If Jesus rose from the dead, clearly He wasn't in the tomb. He was focusing on the much more important fact - the Apostles and others seeing Christ risen. If the empty tomb wasn't accepted by Paul, he would have had more of an occasion to mention that it wasn't empty in order to explain how Christ would have risen.

What else could you want beside something like Luke 23:50-51?

Regardless if it was the Evangelist or not, someone made up the story. The fact is, if the story was indeed made up, one would expect much more material regarding Joseph of Arimathea: the very thing which marks out legends. Speeches become available, and so on. The fact that as, Luke 23:50-51 testifies that Joseph of Arimathea was likely not an invention by any of the evangelists and yet has no such legenday development speaks for historicity.

Most of the posts that respond to your claim about Joseph of Arimathea include the reasoning that there is no reason to say he was made up based on the lack of previous appearances in the Gospels. The above points out why this way it points more toward historicity. I haven't been arguing against strawmen. Your notion of a strawman, that you didn't state the Evangelist made up the story is somewhat misguided; if the story isn't true either the Evangelist or the community made it up. In any case, either way it's not very relevant who you're claiming made it up. I'm not the one providing unsubstantiated descriptions; I'm merely pointing out why it's unnecessary to claim the story is fiction, whereas you're giving unsubstantiated arguments as to the fact that the story must have been made up due to the lack of mention of Joseph before Jesus' death, and not supporting it by pointing out why this would be the case, or why he must have been mentioned before Jesus' death, and so on.

The fact is, the Gospel of Mark and Matthew were apparently not so happy with Pharisees who were Christians. This is shown by their naming of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7) to Simon the Leper (Mark 14). Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, would be unlikely to be mentioned amongst the hundreds of disciples. There were apparently many cases such as Nicodemus' (e.g. Zacheus in Luke).

What do you think warrants Joseph being on the Council further appearances? A speech in the Sanhedrin? Maybe he had none. Maybe if there was one it wasn't recorded for some reason. You're assuming there was something that would have made it inevitable to have him mentioned. Maybe he wasn't that central in early Christianity to mention him during Jesus' trial but until Jesus' death and add that he was part of the Council.

This had nothing to do with the guards, or the empty tomb. It's not me who is investing the faith, because I'm not the one believing that Joseph of Arimathea must have been mentioned for some mystical reason, which you never provided.

renassault

If Matthew was answering charges that would have popped up in his readers' heads, he omitted the biggest and most obvious one according to your theory.

Of course, it won't be a body of flesh and blood, as it won't be a body that is based on natural living, but a spiritual body which was made immortal.

Many things were taught in the days of F.C. Baur that have been discarded. Your interpretation about Jerusalem in Romans 15:23 is not impossible, but Galatians 2 doesn't just have a revelation that is to be heard; it records how Paul met with the pillars and confirmed that his message was no different from theirs.

Of the utmost importance to all Christians. Regardless for whom the Gospel was written, much more Paulinists, this is unlikely to have been omitted (e.g. Epistle of Barnabbas). I don't know how you decided the Gospel is an allegory given it describes Jesus' earthly ministry. The disciples run away, but will see the risen Christ as per 16:7. The fact is, there are no positive statements that can add up to make Mark an allegory. Overall, it looks more or less exactly what form criticism has maintained: a summary of Jesus' teachings for a community (although I disagree with the origin of these teachings as being created by the community's needs as most form critics say).


You don't think he got his material out of nowhere. He had traditions at his disposal which he shortened for whatever reason (e.g. 1:13). A bit odd if it was an allegory. But if it's a history, then we have statements he wished to shorten because he wanted to talk about the main part as fully and yet as shortly as possible.

I don't know how possible it is to argue against a bodily Resurrection in Mark, given an empty tomb with a missing body (16:6) and Jesus on his way to appear to the Twelve (16:7). If you're saying that this is irrelevant and the whole episode of an angel appearing is the allegory, that is too much of an inference from the text.

Well, the fact is the Transfiguration occurred with Jesus' phsyical body. Also, by Mark's time the readers may have known it, but this certainly doesn't mean his disciples must have, since rising from the dead wasn't expected until Judgment day in the far future (supporting this is the answer of Lazarus' sister when Jesus told her Lazarus would be raised, John 11:24). The fact is, the highly symbollic sayings and actions of Jesus were uncommon at the time. This can be seen from the literal attitude of the Talmud (i.e. in the Talmud, disciples following the rabbi does not mean immitating their beliefs and morality, but literally following them around and doing exactly what they did such as they way they sat to write and so on). Also, the Transfiguration didn't occur in front of all the Disciples, only three of them, so one has to wonder if Mark intended this to be the allegory, why is it all of them aren't present in order to misunderstand the meaning.

He did intend the meeting to take place as 16:7 proves. He didn't choose to record the meetings.

This is a bit hard to infer from Mark 16:1-8. For one, Jesus will meet them as per the angel's testimony, and obviously this isn't due to a lack of faith. The Apostles' failure to understand symbols didn't preclude them from understanding the Gospel message as the fact that they are focused on as Jesus' disciples in the Gospel shows. Furthermore, Mark records Jesus explained everything to them privately (4:33-34). Why do this if they were meant to never understand the Gospel, especially when it is contrasted with others who apparently didn't understand?


The theory K.L. Schmidt in his "Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu"(1919) is accepted by most non-conservative scholars regarding Mark. Essentially, it's not incorrect, seeing how this doesn't conflict with Papias' testimony that Mark wrote down Peter's knowledge of what Jesus said and did, and then combined them, which would mean he created the historical framework.

Mark 4:11 is that Jesus explained to the Disciples everything (4:33-34). Knowing the kingdom of Heaven does not mean knowledge the mysteries. For example, as Paul says, the Gentiles who didn't know about the Law had conscience, but this doesn't mean they knew about it with physical knowledge, but spiritual (Romans 2:14-15), and it is these mysteries that Christ is talking about (Matthew 13:35).

Mark abridged the tradition he had before him as is evident from 16:1-8, 1:13, and so on.

Indeed, which is probably why Mark wanted his Gospel as short as possible. But why included abridged statements if it was meant as an allegory?


No, disinterest. His audience was probably either aware of these appearances, or Mark's purpose wasn't in what they constituted but only wanted to show that Jesus appeared to them (as Paul, who doesn't narrate what Jesus told the disciples, but only that he appeared to them in 1 Cor.15:3ff.). If Mark can feel disinterested in narrating a story about the Devil tempting Christ, angels ministering to him (1:13), then if the appearances themself weren't central to his purpose, it's not impossible he was disinterested in them too.

So according to this theory, Mark spent 15 chapters trying to come up with logically connected history only to throw it away at the end? Fabrications need to have a logical coherence too.

Funny as that is, it seems to be based yet again on knowledgeless observations on the Gospel. Mark 4:33-34 is the passage. Is it still useless patter?