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Old 07-02-2013, 09:55 PM   #181
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Teeple, in the 70s addressed this well in the paper "The Oral Tradition that Never Was."

Teeple addressed this but didn't come close to overturning any such known view.


There is no debate at all, that oral tradition was alive and well in these illiterate cultures.

try again
What stories about Jesus do you think were passed along by oral tradition from say 30 AD until written down in 40 to 70 decades later?
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Old 07-02-2013, 10:10 PM   #182
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Joel's blog

oops - better not quote it. He claims there is a glitch with Outlook on the mac.

At the end, he links to this thread and laughs about conspiracies - but no explanation.
Yes, Joel connects to Gmail and explains that there is a glitch with Outlook running on Microsoft Exchange servers.....
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Old 07-03-2013, 10:05 AM   #183
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Teeple addressed this but didn't come close to overturning any such known view.


There is no debate at all, that oral tradition was alive and well in these illiterate cultures.

try again
What stories about Jesus do you think were passed along by oral tradition from say 30 AD until written down in 40 to 70 decades later?
You mean what kernal of truth is there to any of it?" very little is my opinion.
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Old 07-03-2013, 10:09 AM   #184
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I was challenging the view that the Gospels are based on an oral tradition that originated with real events surrounding a real person. There are some problems with that view, you know?
Good luck with that.

There are only problems is one over attributes historicity to the oral traditions.


Oral tradition cannot be used to disprove historicity in this perticular case.



It factually shows us that early on sects of different views were emerging, and these particular people believed in a living man who died, within decades after his death.
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Old 07-03-2013, 10:45 AM   #185
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I was challenging the view that the Gospels are based on an oral tradition that originated with real events surrounding a real person. There are some problems with that view, you know?
Good luck with that.

There are only problems is one over attributes historicity to the oral traditions.

Oral tradition cannot be used to disprove historicity in this perticular case.
You have it backwards. No one is trying to disprove historicity using oral tradition. It is the historicists who are trying to prove something with "oral tradition."

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It factually shows us that early on sects of different views were emerging, and these particular people believed in a living man who died, within decades after his death.
What facts???

We know from studies of folklore and oral legends that it is possible for legends to arise within a few years of a person who never lived.

What point are you trying to make?
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Old 07-03-2013, 11:34 AM   #186
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that is where your underlying assumption begins to fail. The OT was committed to memory and recited. There was an authority that controlled what was passed on and that authority was a written a document that was committed to memory and passed on.

The Jesus story does not have any such authority. "Scripture" to the early Christians was the OT, since the NT was not written.

It doesnt fall a part at all. The question was not about a authority who controls said traditions. Its the fact that that much information has the possibility to be retained and passed along.

We see many traditions, from different geographic locations as far as the movement is concerned.






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Let's take any single event. Say, the sermon on the mount (or plain, wherever). How many people witnessed that?

None, it was a literary creation. It parallels the Emperors divinity as he spoke to large crowds.


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How many different versions of Jesus' sermon were told and retold?

When is the question, after the gospels came out, many emerged.

It is unknown how many actually existed prior to them being recorded on papyrus, by for our sake we see two different versions.



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How did the ones that came down to us survive the interlude of some handful or more decades? Those that did survive (assuming there was an event followed by oral tradition) would have done so because of the purpose they served, not the authenticity of the words.
No historian claims authenticity, they flat claim we dont know. Now this doesnt mean anything other then we think they were collections of parables people attributed to him. No one can say with certainty they even started with him per say, only that these later authors believed its origins were from the Jesus character.



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So even if we assume that these stories are based on events that actually occurred at some point in time, we are long way from knowing what actually happened based on this oral tradition.

Agreed.




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Even so, how do we sort out if any of the Gospel stories are based on oral tradition or simply creations of an author?

By years of formal education so that one can place the mythology into proper context, sometimes we will never know. Others lik ethe sermon on the mount we know are fiction. Reasons? Here is your example. For one, parables like that are not rambled off one after the other, they lose all meaning that way. Second, crowds like that would almost be a impossibility for crowds that size to assemble. Third discrepancies in gospel accounts as you already noted.





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The literary structure of the Gospels suggests the latter, in my opinion. We can find the sources upon which much of the story is based. How, then, is it an "oral tradition" that lies behind the Gospel story?
Lets work with a man was martyred at Passover who died a brutal death on a cross.

People would have talked about it. Hey what did you hear? I heard this xxxx xx xxx over time this grew far from the original events before they were gathered by people who found these phrases important.


We know within a few decades even Paul believed Jesus was a living man who died and was resurrected.




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Did Oral tradition exist in the culture? Yes.

Agreed


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Are the Gospels based on oral tradition? I am not so sure.
I am. I dont think even Price or Carrier would argue against it.

whether or not there is a MJ or a real HJ, the books were compiled from oral tradition. We know the earliest works were compilations of material, like Gmark
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Old 07-03-2013, 12:13 PM   #187
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What facts????


The facts that we have different versions of a Jesus character.



Quote:
We know from studies of folklore and oral legends that it is possible for legends to arise within a few years of a person who never lived.

What about Judaism?


If we look at real mythical characters like say Noah or Moses, the events were not recorded a decade or two after the mans death. They were created hundreds of years afterwards.

Even then, some have th epossibility of historical cores.


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What point are you trying to make?
Legends can arise from oral traditions in illiterate societies. HJ or MJ, legends arose from oral traditions about this character.
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Old 07-05-2013, 12:26 PM   #188
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UPDATE:

Joel Watts has been nailed as a forger. He seems to be admitting it here.

I guess this is just the latest in two millennia of Christian forgeries.
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Old 07-05-2013, 12:46 PM   #189
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joel probably thinks this is a big joke. I don't think he's admitting anything
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Old 07-05-2013, 12:52 PM   #190
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UPDATE:

Joel Watts has been nailed as a forger. He seems to be admitting it here.

I guess this is just the latest in two millennia of Christian forgeries.
His screenshot shows 25/06/2013 as 'Yesterday', although his screenshot also shows that he sent some emails from 27/06/2013.

But Watts still denies everything.
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