Radorth

Not when it includes hyperbole, lack of examples, innuendo, reading metaphors where there are none, fringe scholarship, and all of the other problems Carrier listed, no.

Rad

Family Man

Vork --

That Radorth accepts the great man theory of history is very clear. In http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...5&pagenumber=4, where I pointed out that some of Jesus's teaching used violent imagery, he first accuses me of confusing Jesus with Muhammad, then claims that because Christianity was peaceful that Jesus's method must have been one of peace. Then after I pointed out that Christianity and Islam arose in two very different environments as a partial explanation of the relevant violence of the movement, he turns around and accuses me of equating Muhammad and Jesus! I don't think Radorth even understood the argument I was making.

Having read Durant, I'm not surprised Radorth loves him. Durant's account is so cursory and so full of praise for The Great Man that the few critical remarks Durant does make can be easily dismissed. Why he should be favored over far better modern authors is simply because Durant's attitude fits Radorth's. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with the rigorousness of Durant's work.

Gregg

First, Rad, there's no way we can know all of Mark's reasons for including the details he did. We can't read his mind. We don't know exactly what pressures his community was under, what religious and theological issues they were dealing with. But we can still make some pretty good guesses.Christianity was challenging the authority of the Temple cult, of the religious establishment. They were saying you didn't need to be a Levitical priest to give baptisms. So having Jesus say something like this to the Pharisees makes perfect sense.The silence before Pilate makes perfect sense once you realize that Mark was taking his cues from Scripture (Psalm 39:9, "I am dumb, I will not open my mouth" and Psalm 38:13-14, "I am like a dumb man who cannot open his mouth. I behave like a man who cannot hear and whose tongue offers no defense.") Of course, "John" didn't agree with "Mark" and had Jesus run his mouth off during the trial. Just one of those "minor" contradictions.

The rest of this passage is indeed very interesting, especially since "Bar Abbas" basically means "Son of God." We may never know Mark's intent for this little story, although it was probably obvious to his readers. (I think there are some theories out there, but I'm not familiar with them at the moment, so I'm not going to speculate.)Mark 6:1-6. And in context, the passage reads in part, "And he could do no mighty work there...And he marveled BECAUSE OF THEIR UNBELIEF." Read in context (including Jesus' comment about a prophet being without honor in his own country), it's clear Mark is trying to make a point, and isn't just sticking this "embarassing detail" in there because it's his duty as a good honest Christian to tell the whole story exactly like it happened.Most scholars readily accept the possibility that John the Baptist was a real person. Mark may have been repeating a tradition about how John died. Naturally, he'd want to show Jesus' reaction to the death.Why, in other gospels, does Jesus make no effort to hide his activities or identity? Perhaps in "Mark's" community, discretion and modesty was considered a virtue.ROFLMAO!! Rad, I swear...stop it, you're killing me!

How are preachers able to pack churches, even stadiums, to tell people that they're miserable sinners deserving of eternal hellfire? I mean, they continue telling them this even AFTER they've been saved, and yet they keep on lapping it up. Oh sure, lots of them eventually get tired of it and leave, but there are plenty more to take their place. There are people who want and need this sadomasochistic stuff, for whatever reason.

Anyway, this is yet another case of your thinking you can understand 1st century Christians without understanding the culture of the ancient Near East. "Emphasis by exaggeration" was a common teaching technique at that time and place...lots of wandering preachers and sages used it. It made lessons more memorable, and people knew they weren't supposed to take it literally.

Besides, you're ignoring the fact that other gospel writers softened many of Mark's "hard sayings."Not at all! Christianity (or at least many expressions of it) was a radically inclusive faith. That was part of its appeal. Mark's community envisioned an end to the old order of things and the dawning of an new age of religious and social egalitarianism. So naturally they'd show Jesus practicing what they preached.Again, Rad, your ignorance of ancient Near East culture reveals itself. Washing another's feet was a ritual with profound and sacred significance for these people, just as the Japanese tea ritual has profound and sacred significance for them.

And in any event, John is not just sticking this footwashing in here as an incidental detail. It represents something more, a spiritual washing. ("'What I am doing you do not now know, but afterward you will understand." "'If I do not wash you, you have no part of me'"). It also beautifully illustrates how Christians are supposed to relate to one another.

(I just had to edit to add this: I can't get over how you seem to move so completely within your own little world, Rad. You seem utterly oblivious to the fact that these stories were written by people living in another time and place, in a culture very different from ours, people who were subject to a myriad of influences and pressures from the living, complex society around them that we can never fully know about or fully understand. None of this matters. If YOU don't get the point of a given passage, people back then wouldn't have gotten the point either. All I can say is, if you hold this same dismissive attitude toward modern non-Western cultures and their traditions, then please don't consider foreign diplomat as a career choice.)Well, I can't tell you why John chose to include each one of these details, because I can't read his mind. But actually, this level of detail itself strikes me as odd if this is just a case of people reporting what happened. It sounds like there were people whose job was to sit around and carefully observe and remember everything that was going on ("OK, so when Mary got up, did she get up slowly or did she sort of jump up?" "Uh, well, not really "jumped," but she did get up kind of quickly"). Apparently they even had a spy watching Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, since he was supposed to be alone then. (Of course, John didn't consider that incident important enough to say anything about it.)In the Garden, the disciples fall asleep on Jesus 3 times. Peter denies Jesus 3 times. Three evidently had some significance for Mark. In this passage he was probably writing for those in his community who had denied Christ under torture (or even under social pressures,) perhaps trying to assure them that such moments of human weakness were forgivable. Why? You said yourself it's a "nice touch." How else were they going to have the disciples react to the news?Since Paul and the early Christians didn't believe in a real physical resurrection, he'd probably agree with the first part of the above comment, but disagree with the second part. Actually, Rad, if you were a "real" Christian, you'd be on the mythicist side! You'd be calling all those people who think that Jesus actually became flesh--real, corrupt human flesh--false apostles, pagans, and worse. You'd denigrate them for having this need to defend Jesus' historical existence, instead of accepting his heavenly crucifixion and resurrection purely on faith.

BTW, did you know that practically every "interesting detail" from Mark's account of Jesus' torture and crucifixion is taken directly from Scripture?

Isaiah 10:6-7, "I offered my back to the lash...I did not hide my face from spitting and insult."

Micah 5:1, "with a rod they strike upon the cheek the ruler of Israel."

Day of Atonement ritual and Zechariah 3:1-5, other elements of the abuse, possibly the crown of thorns and the royal garments

Zechariah 12:10, "They shall look upon him whom they have pierced."

Psalm 22:16, "They have pierced my hands and my feet"

"Hanging on a tree"

Isaiah 53:12 "And he was numbered with the transgressors" (the two thieves)

Psalm 22:7-8, "All who see me jeer at me, make mouths at me and wag their heads" "He threw himself in the Lord for rescue; let the Lord save him" "Let God deliver him now, if he wants him."

Psalm 22:18, "They divided my garments among them and for my raiments they cast lots."

Psalm 69:21, "and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."

Exodus 12:46, and Numbers 9:12, the paschal lamb's bones must not be broken.

Psalm 34:20, "He guards every bone of his body, and not one of them is broken."

Amos 8:9, "I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight."

Joel 2:10, "Before them the earth shakes, the heavens shudder..." "...sun and moon are darkened, and the stars forbear to shine,"

Wisdom of Solomon 5:4-5, "Fools that we were...he is one of the Sons of God."

Deuteronomy 21:22-23, "(the hanged man's) body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day."

Hosea 6:1-2 and Jonah, rising up after 3 days.

So, it's more reasonable to believe that all these things really happened in fulfillment of prophecy than it is to propose that Mark constructed his tale out of scriptural passages, inventing a few details of his own as needed as he went along.

Toto

I never intended to respond to another Rad post, but the errors in this are too overwhelming.

Carrier's article on Doherty listed a few minor problems that would keep it from being a straight academic work, but endorsed Doherty's overall approach. "Reading metaphors where there are none" and "fringe scholarship" are your own inventions.

As Vork said, Rad's posts are "like a Turing machine crossed with a rap singer."

What can be done with a poster who continually misstates facts, after being continually corrected and challenged? Rad is just using us as a space to broadcast his own beliefs, much like an LA tagger spraypaints his gang symbol on any available wall. He can't seem to make an argument or respond to one.

If you reply to his posts, you risk an avalanch of abuse, but no coherent response. If you don't, you allow misstatements to pollute the board.

Gregg

Ahh, sometimes his comments tick me off, but then I find myself laughing at them because they're just so absurd.

Anyway, we're probably making an impression on all the lurkers who compare Rad's ravings with our reasoned responses.

Gregg

Radorth

Blah blah blah- Personal attacks, impugning historians, like Durant, arguments from authority and off-thread comments mean you guys can't answer Durant I take it. You can't even explain what my 11 examples are doing there other than with a cheap analogy of a story nobody believes.

At least you admitted you can't read Mark's mind. That's a plus I guess, except you basically have made 50 people into liars, with not one ounce of proof for your slander. That's not how you convince reasonable people, I don't think.

Rad

Gregg

I responded to every one of your examples, Rad, without mentioning Lord of the Rings once.

Who are the 50 people we've "made into liars?" Before I think you said it was 500 people. If no Christians in the first century believed in a historical Jesus, Rad, and nobody mistook Mark's story for anything but allegory, there's no "lying" or "cover-up" or "conspiracy" going on. And when people did start thinking the gospels were history, they most likely honestly believed it, even if they were mistaken.

And while I can't read Mark's mind, I can certainly make better guesses about what he might have been thinking than you can, since you have clearly demonstrated that you know nothing at all about the world in which he lived.

Slander? Impugning historians? You mean like what you do to Doherty?

Gregg

Vorkosigan

'dorth,

I'm talking about (1) Durant and (2) your misunderstandings of NT historical methods, as evidenced by comments like:

• Now let the skeptics explain how any of the following events/negative assertions, taken at random came to be invented by fishermen from Paul's writings:

or

• I suspect you can't give a believable rationale for why some similar details make it a fraud, and some varying details make it a fraud.

When such rationales are a staple of scholarly analysis of, say, the Synoptics. You don't seem to have read even a single major serious work, and you don't seem to have read Doherty. Relying on Carrier is rather silly, as Carrier thinks ...

• Doherty's theory is simply superior [to the historicist position] in almost every way in dealing with all the facts as we have them.

I'll be waiting for the thread on Durant and (presumably) Jesus.

BTW, Radorth, you should probably start checking yourself for comments like "invented by fishermen." Not only do you reveal a screaming class bias -- that is also found in Durant -- but you lean on a very silly theory of NT historicity that runs something like "they were too dumb to make it up." Such ideas do not grant people their full measure of humanity.

Vorkosigan

Bobzammel

1. "His conversation with the Pharisee's (Mk 11:27-33)
--------------------------

All 'new' religions which emerge from the background of another often feature the founder in argument with the religious authority. Take for example, Buddha and the Hindu Brahmins, or even in more modern times Luther and the Catholics.




4. The whole story of Herod cutting off Jbap's head at the whim of a woman, his misgivings, Jesus hearing it and going off by himself (Mt 14: 1-13) What is this story doing there? Is it just made up for some reason? What is the reason?
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Actually, this story is not made up, but is one of the Gospel's attempts to reconcile the Bible with the nearby history. Unfortunately, John was killed in 35 A.D, and not because he didn't like Herod's wife. It was because he was attempting to cause a rebellion.

The other ones deal mainly with why Jesus did some things that might be considered unappealing. Whoever said the religion needed to be perfect to be attractive to disciples? Many religions often ask for difficult levels of commitment, humbleness, and so on. Religions are, in a sense, a form of government. Christianity didn't have to appeal to pleasures to attract disciples. Even in the Roman Empire this was not the case. Take for example the Vestal Virgins, who were sworn to lifetime virginity. Hardly appealing for some people, I would imagine! It appealed in a sense to their moral sense, especially during times of Roman excess. In another form, it also may have spread because of people having fear of hell.




As for the prophecies listed above, some are simply songs or deliverance, others have no prophetic meaning, and others dealt mainly with events happening at the time.

Bobzammel

Also, about potraying the "founders" such as Peter as having serious character flaws, this is also not uncommon. In Buddhism, Buddha's disciples likewise did not understand many of the teachings. Moving forward the Koran' does not potray Muhammad as perfect. Show me one religion where most of the fathers were considered morally perfect or pious men at first.