Yuri Kuchinsky

Sorry, excreationist, but you missed my irony there...

Actually, what I'm saying is quite the opposite of how you understood me. Indeed, I fully agree with you that Christianity was originally a completely Jewish religion. Furthermore, as Loisy has argued extensively, in fact, Christianity still remained a completely Jewish religion well into the 2c! And I agree with Loisy.

It's our modern NT scholarship that really believes, in effect, that early Christianity was a Greek religion. Because they are a "Jesus the Greek" Cult, that's who they are! And the canonical Markan priority is really quite a big plank in this Gentile-oriented platform.

In my recent book, I supply great amounts of evidence to back all this up.

All the best,

Yuri.

Layman

Either your methodology is sound or its not. And dating writings by their extant manuscripts is sheer idiocy.

And you conveniently avoided the part of the analogy you found uncomfortable: the Old and New Testament manuscripts.

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: Layman ]</p>

Peter Kirby

Skeptical writes: So your argument is that a text cannot be dated any earlier than an existing copy can be dated? Our most current copy of Josephus dates (I believe) from the 4th century, do you think Josephus lived and wrote in the 4th century?

Some info can be found here:

<a href="http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/josephus_antiquities.htm" target="_blank">http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/josephus_antiquities.htm</a>

The oldest Greek manuscript, Vaticanus Palatinus, dates to century IX or X.

I think that there is an older Latin translation manuscript, but it is not any earlier than the sixth century.

But Josephus is one of the better-attested of the classics. Some classics are known today from a single 14th century manuscript or even just from the first printed edition, the manuscripts being lost to historians.

Obviously, it makes no sense to date the composition or final redaction of an ancient document to the time of the first extant manuscript, as a general principle.

best,
Peter Kirby

Bede

Hey Yuri,

Relax - anyone who is anyone has been expelled from the Jesus Mysteries group. And you will never get kicked out of here for vigorously espousing a marginal position, although you might end up being completely ignored .

Yours

Bede

Ted Hoffman

Yuri,
Thanks for your response.
I don't need to explain this at all. I've already granted that Mk does preserve the shorter form of the earliest proto-gospel.
The question is why does Mark preserve the shorter form of the earlist proto-gospel?

As to the "positive evidence in favor of Markan priority", I don't know of any.
I think this is a very unfortunate statement coming from someone who is obviously very well read in the area of NT Scolarship.
You know we are aware of the arguments in favor of Markan priority. To sweep them aside and claim you know of none is certainly intellectually dishonest and subversive. Skeptical has provided the link. Go through it and refute the arguments otherwise if you cant do that, with all due respect, I think you have no basis to even question the arguments in favour of Markan priority.
I am even beginning to think I can imagine why you got banned from wherever you got banned if this is your style of argumentation.

But I've given this up more recently, since I now think that the Jesus Myth movement is actually a very positive thing, since they do expose some of the lies of our very corrupt academic NT industry.
I wouldnt call it a movement - it implies there is a political (or unified) agenda behind it, which is untrue.

Yuri Kuchinsky

But we're talking about literary dependence here, NOGO2. That's the ground rules of this whole discussion. None of the 2ST supporters are talking about "common experiences" that might explain these anti-Markan agreements between Mt and Lk.

<strong> I already said that I can accept maybe 2 or 3 such agreements -- maybe 10 -- but certainly not 1000. 1000 is, quite simply, an impossibility. So, because of that, we don't really need to go into the nature of these differences.

Best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

My methodology is simple common sense.

Nobody here is proposing that all writings should be dated by their extant manuscripts, so this is just your own strawman.

The simple fact of the matter is that our canonical Mk is a 4c text. Now, prove to me that this represents "the original 1c text". In order to prove that, you will have to argue that, as its theology changed drastically in the years 70-200 CE, the Church had no interest in altering the text of the gospels. But this would be an obvious falsehood.

And your analogy with the Old Testament manuscripts can't really help you in any way. Since Judaism solidified doctrinally ca 1c AD, the Rabbis had no interest in tampering with the text of the Scriptures (with a few minor exceptions perhaps). And yet Christianity didn't solidify doctrinally until the 4c. After Christianity more or less solidified doctrinally, then the texts were also fixed permanently, more or less.

So what I'm saying is simple common sense. If you see the history of the gospels apart from the political battles that afflicted Christianity over the first 200 years or so of its earliest existence, then you will get a false history of the gospels.

Yours,

Yuri.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices -=O=- William James

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Intensity.

Sure, it might be an interesting question. But why should this be directly relevant to dating Mk, or to deciding if it was the earliest gospel?

We do know that the 4 gospels had always been in the custody of the Church up to the time of our earliest MSS. So then it's probable that during all that time the Church had been continuously at work on these texts. So this is simple common sense -- which also happens to be supported by lots of hard textual evidence.

Thus, common sense tells us that all 4 gospels, in their present shape, should be dated to approximately the same time period.

Now, each of the 4 gospels happens to preserve some early elements. For example, Mt is more Judaic-oriented. Lk has only one Feeding of the Multitudes, and lots of other early stuff, Jn portrays Jesus in close association with the disciples of John the Baptist, lacks the birth stories, etc. And Mk is the shortest of the gospels.

So each of these things has a reason, of course, but IMHO none of them needs to privilege one gospel over the other in terms of their final dating.

<strong> Well, this would be too much work...

The truth is that I'm not really all that interested in this question of Markan priority and dating. Because, you know, at this point, I see these things as rather too simple and elementary.

I'm really not saying anything new on this subject now, because most of this work had already been done by Loisy. So I would simply refer those interested to his books.

But if some people want to present some specific arguments for Markan priority, I will deal with them, of course.

<strong> Well, a movement doesn't really need to have one specific and/or unified political agenda behind it, in order to be described as a movement. For example, what about the recent "anti-globalist" movement? Everybody says they don't have a unified political agenda but, still, it's commonly described as a movement.

Maybe it's only my impression, but I think I'm seeing quite a few people with different ideologies espousing the Jesus Myth idea recently. Some of them seem to be "gnostics", some out and out atheists, etc. So it does look like a movement to me... And just like I say, if they're taking a few pokes at our rotten NT academic establishment, they couldn't be all that bad...

Cheers,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi there, Bede,

You know, perhaps it's good to keep in mind that just about every "widely accepted position" had at one time been a "marginal position"...

Regards,

Yuri.

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." -- VOLTAIRE

Clarice O'C

Yuri and Bede, I invite you to join me at RRP:


<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=001057" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=001057</a>

All the best,
Clarice