gstafleu

Good one. We now have three analogies about the invalidity of a diminished Jesus:
1) Detering's Little Red Riding Hood one, even though that one is about Paul: reducing LRRH to just a girl who on a walk thorugh the woods to her grandma encountered a wolf, and then declaring that LRR historical.
2) Jay Raskin's version: take a Superman comic, cut out all the Superman panels but keep the Clark Kent ones. What you have left is history.
3) Your Muhammed Ali.

I'm sure more will be forthcoming over time .

Gerard Stafleu

rlogan

Hi wabbit. Welcome to IIDB.

I did a search, and there are a number of times they are mentioned together, but more so separately.

Scribes were a well defined occupation at the time.

Josephus was a Jew. He was commanding general over the Jewish defense of Jerusalem during the seige by the Romans and wrote an account in "Jewish Wars".

Yes, but the internal evidence also points to construction by someone outside the area. Mark, for example, (or rather the anonymous author) is clueless on the geography and makes obvious mistakes a resident would not make.

Christianity merely attached a phony Jewish heritage to itself on account of the legitimacy an ancient heritage imparted. Likewise, the Nation of Islam when founded had nothing whatever to do with Islam.

Welcome, again...


edited to add: My search was strictly in GMark, and I can't speak for the rest of the gospels on that. I do not disagree that we see them lumped together in the way "Kings and their court" often are...

jjramsey

No, GakuseiDon has explained why there is so little extrabiblical evidence. Both the HJers and the MJers are making use of the Bible as evidence (though obviously in different ways), and it's not as if the lack of extrabiblical evidence means that the MJ position wins by default.

RAFH

Huh?

aa5874

The lack of credibilty of the Bible and the lack of extra-biblical evidence is consistent with myth. That Jesus is a myth does not constitute a win, but it represents the evidence, or should I say the lack thereof.

It is amusing to note your eagerness to salvage some victory, in defeat, by any means necessary.

rob117

There was no press back then. Anything said about Jesus while he was alive would be by word of mouth. I don't think HJers say he was unknown within Judea itself- it's just that nothing that went on in Judea was recorded by Roman authors unless it affected the empire at large. The argument from silence here is an extremely weak one.

If you read MJ posts, you'll see that this is in effect their argument. For example, the OP's post essentially boils down to, "The gospels claim that scribes witnessed Jesus' miracles. This is unlikely; therefore Jesus never existed."

I'm going to be blunt here: MJ is a fringe theory. I know of no peer-reviewed articles or books that support it. It reeks of conspiracy theory, and its arguments are circular and/or nonsequitor. It dismisses the results of a century and a half textual criticism with the wave of a hand. It ignores the plain meaning of Paul's epistles in order to disqualify them as primary sources (Jesus in the spirit world anyone?). It dismisses passages as interpolations that nobody else does (James brother of Jesus). Its arguments also have no grasp of cult formation. Its proponents make broad assertions without citing them.

Ultimately its proponents think they know better than experts in the field. Kind of like creationists. The MJ theory is not about reason; it's about backlash.

GakuseiDon

You WERE making comments about scribes. You said that "no record exists of any scribe actually recording any of these deeds". What record exists of ANY scribe actually recording something similar? If there are none, then why single out

The extant record, yes. The fact is we don't know how many written materials from that era survived. All we can do is go on the materials that have left.

Why would scribes have recorded the gospels?

Can we have some examples relevant to Jesus?

I don't believe that the gospel Jesus existed. As far as I'm concerned, the "old bait-and-switch" goes the other way. As soon as we start looking at the historical Jesus, someone pops up and says that "oh but that isn't the Gospel Jesus".

But still, if you are going to argue that someone should have written about Jesus, then you need to

Keep "Historicists" distinct from "Gospellists".

If you know that the "Historical Jesus" being proposed is like that, then why don't you argue on that basis? Otherwise you are just inventing a strawman.

As Toto correctly determined, I was talking about Sai Baba. I doubt few people have heard of him, despite his reputation as a miracle-worker. I doubt that he appears in the modern equivalents of Josephus as well.

No, not in the way that the Gospels describe it.

aa5874

Then you are MJ.

I was of the opinion that the Gospels was a primary source for the description of Jesus. If you don't believe that the gospels' Jesus existed, then there is no other Jesus, unless you use your vivid imagination to fabricate one.

It is amazing how some would never admit they are MJ.

yalla

Let's look at how the author of g"Mark" uses these scribes.

References to "Scribe[s]" ... from my concordance ....in g"Mark".

1.G"Mark" -1.22
2.-2.6 "Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy, who can forgive but god alone?"
Now this raises a few points:
Is what JC is alleged to have said "blasphemy"? Really?
My understanding is that it is not.
In other words the "scribes'', if they were there, are probably being misrepresented for a political purpose [makes them look bad and JC look good].
Or else they were not there [it's fiction] and author "Mark'' did not know what constitutes blasphemy.
Or something else?
3.-2.16 "Why does he eat with...sinners?''
JC has a wise rebuttal.
4.-3.22 ''The scribes from Jerusalem [what no scribes in the local area?] ...possessed by Beelzebul".
JC has a wise rebuttal.
5.-8.31"...rejected by ....the scribes...."
6.-10.33 "delivered [what Gk. word is used here...is it the same as "betrayed"?] to the scribes ..and they will mock him etc [hmmm that's prophecy fulfillment isn't it?] and after 3 days...."
More rejection.
7.-11.27 ff "By whose authority...."
JC has a wise rebuttal...scribes defeated again.
8.12.28-"Which commandment is greatest of all?"
JC has wise answer, scribe impressed.
9.-12.35 JC explains why the scribes are wrong [again] re David and lords and then goes on to:
10-12.38 to tell people to "Beware of the scribes...[cos they are nasty].
11-14.1 "..the scribes were seeking how to.... kill him...''.
12-14.53 scribes and others [Sanhedrin] assembled on the Passover to to hold a trial that sentences JC to capital punishment.
Now I have read that there is a strong case to be made that such an assembly for a trial would not have been permitted at that time.
.


So what pattern emerges?
The scribes do not know Jewish law or custom.....2.6, 14.1.
Or are falsely represented.
They are outwitted frequently by a wiser JC.
They are not nice people [a/c to JC, ie the author of all this].
They serve, in a literary fashion, to further the plot of the author
For example JC's 'prediction" of the passion [from preexisting scriptures].

They are very convenient characters these scribes.
Smacks of literary invention to me.
Maybe the scribes didn't report any of this cos they didn't know they had been invented.
cheers
yalla

spamandham

It seems to me that the HJ/MJ debate needs to start with the assumption that the gospels are pretty much works of fiction based on Logos'ing together crap from the OT and synthesizing it with astrological symbolism.

From that perspective, the stories of Jesus arguing with scribes are also probably fiction, and so there is no reason to expect these scribes to write anything down about Jesus for us to find.

Paul's writings are the earliest Christian writings. They have the greatest (only?) relevance to the debate.