aa5874

Again, where do you get your stories from? There is no evidence from antiquity that there was any actual tradition before the Gospels.

No manuscript of the Jesus story has ever been found in Galilee or Jerusalem and dated to the time of John the Baptist.

Non-Apologetic sources wrote nothing of Nazareth and Nothing of Jesus of Nazareth.

Apologetic sources admitted that there was NO acknowledgment by Jews that the Messiah had come.

The story of Jesus as the LORD and Baptized by John is a monstrous FABLE.

Mark 1:3 KJV The Baptism event in the Gospels was used to INTRODUCE Jesus as the LORD and Son of God.

Essentially, the author of gMark, introduce his Jesus as a Myth character.

The 'Lord' is a Mythological character in Jewish Scripture and the Septuagint.

spin

I realize that you are presenting what you consider to be the status quo, but, given the following scenario, which ends up with the same results as the one you outline,

[t2]John started a messianic expectation group
John got whacked
His supporters continued expectantly
Paul had his revelation about a savior/messiah already having saved
Paul converts a lot of people to his already saved religion
Paul dies and his proselytes speculate about the relationship between Jesus and John
If John is Elijah, then Jesus is Elisha, so John passes the mantle by baptizing Jesus[/t2]
do you think that the criterion of embarrassment would say that it was historically likely that Jesus was baptized by John? You'll still get a later redactor deciding that it would be good to clarify a bit about baptism.

Solo

I am not clear why equating the Son of Man with Messiah may be begging the question, Andrew. Jesus makes the connection himself, first at C-P (8:29-31) and then answering the high priest. If Jesus answers the question "are you the Christ" by "I am", then I do not see any reason to doubt that when he predicts in 10:33-34 :

"Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise."

he means that the "Son of Man" is the "Messiah". It looks as though Mark fully intended to deploy the SoM as a christological title. I am doubtful in the utility of searching for "pre-Christian tradition" since the suffering and manner of death of the Messiah was supplied by Paul.

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

The author of the short gMark implies Jesus is the Lord God.

It is clearly stated that John the Baptist PREPARED the way of the LORD using a passage found in Hebrew Scripture or the Septuagint.

The Lord is the God of the Jews in Hebrew Scripture and the Septuagint.

Mark 1

Zeke_Piestrup

Thank you for understanding! Wow, what an exercise in nonsense with that aa dude. Yes, I'm only trying to explain the mainstream scholar view of how the criterion of embarrassment was used in attempting to establish the likely historicity of Jesus' baptism by John. Whether the criterion succeeds in the example that I laid out is not a judgment I'm making. I'll let the real scholars battle that out.

aa5874

I am arguing that your claims are nonsense with respect to the application of the C of E. This is precisely why we have discussions.

You are the one who referred to posts as "irrational" while simultaneously introducing the irrationality of supposed "mainstream scholars"
I have exposed that the Jesus character had NO rank in gMark at the time of the Baptism event and that there was NO claim that followers had to answer why John baptized Jesus in the fables called Gospels.

It is illogical to presume that gMark is an historical account of Jesus when every single account of Jesus in gMark of Jesus is either fiction, implausible or without corroboration by non-apologetic sources.

The Jesus character, the Lord, was unknown by John the Baptist and was ONLY recognized when the Holy Ghost bird descended upon him and there was a voice from heaven.

The criterion of embarrassment cannot be applied or it is irrational to apply it to the baptism fables in the Gospels.

Grog

Frankly, while I understand the mainstream scholarly application of the criterion of embarrassment to the baptism scene, it seems clear to me that Mark leaves no question as to who has rank: John is the messenger preparing the way for the Lord:


I don't see anything here that would embarrassing to Christians, except perhaps the assumption that Jesus was sinner who needed baptism. It could be that the author of Mark just didn't think of that as an objection. It doesn't mean anything at all in regard to it being an actual event.

Solo

This becomes a problem for the Matthean Christians because they want to supplement the Pauline spiritual Messiah with the Davidic one who will restore Israel. Mark's Saviour was adopted by God in medias res after cleansing himself. John the Baptist was God's agent (11:30) so no problem. But Matthew, having Jesus predestined to be Messiah by his pedigree, certainly cannot allow Jesus, a) not to be recognized by the baptizing holy man, b) yield to cleansing by John without requisite protocol.

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

There were no such thing as Matthean Christians. There is no author named Matthew.

There is no actual evidence that gMatthew reflects real historical accounts.

The Baptism event as described in gMatthew must have been or most likely was made up.

spin

I'm now calling this approach, ie the cutting out of undesirable materials to get to the clean bits that are left, by the deliberate misnomer "reductio ad absurdum". Christians do it. Scholars do it. Anti-christians do it. Get hold of a text and strip it of the dirty bits. They want to end up with clean bits. You, here, want to end up functionally with nothing. But what you all are manipulating is a tarball of tradition, for chrissake.

Consider the legends concerning Dietrich von Bern. In the middle ages they were known over the geographical area from Sweden to Austria. They tell of a hero who hailed from Verona (<-Bern) and "Dietrich" is a form of the name we know as "Theoderic", as in the famous Gothic king of Italy who ousted Odoacer. In fact Dietrich of legend is Theoderic, who inspired a vast body of stories, mostly unrelated to any historical events, though some of the other figures are also known from the past, including Attila (called "Etzel"), who died the year before Theoderic was born. If we only had the legends, you could strip away all the stories and end up clutching a few names. Through "reductio ad absurdum" you could then conclude that there is no history to be found in these stories and dismiss Dietrich von Bern as having been a figment of middle ages storytelling. Fortunately, we have external indications that Theoderic was a successful leader ("Theoderic the Great"), though not located at Verona but at Ravenna, and ultimate source on whom the legends developed.

The religion that has maintained the tradition around Jesus doesn't need the translation of the figure of Jesus into a historical figure. That translation reflects the desire of scholars wanting to have a version of Jesus to suit their historicizing consciousness.

I don't follow the relevance of this bunch of Jesuses stuff, nor the rationale for the certainty that we "have all of this extrabiblical material that is pertinent". You seem to be making something out of the gospel material, when I see no way that you can.

So we also get random droppings. Josephus talks of a few hundred towns in Galilee, despite the fact that there were thousands. Perhaps because Josephus only talked of hundreds, so should we?

And how do you turn the content in the tradition about the death of Jesus into something that may represent an event in the real world? How do you change the modality from story to real event? The black hole concerns knowledge of what happened in the past, not directly the content of text at all. There is so little information about the real world of the time. The rest has disappeared down the clapper. What was the name of Pilate's wife? How many children did they have? What was his prior and successive posts? Did he retire from the military? How and when did he die? Was his death natural? And many more questions one can reasonably ask about Pilate, but about which the past does not respond. We don't have any data from the past on these things. That's the black hole.

I must need glasses.

Some arguments are certainly better than others, but a better argument doesn't make it right. It merely eliminates the argument that it is better than. It could still be wrong. And how the fuck does the statistician in you decide the certainties, when you are basically pulling everything out of text? Can you wave a magic wand and turn Dorothy Gale into a real person from Kansas. What's in text stays in text unless you have outside assistance to point to a reality beyond the text.