Chris Hansen
Also, it is notable that Mark gets practices, scripture, geography, and more all wrong at times.
Steefen to Chris and Robert
In another thread, you two said Mark was written to include a Gentile audience. Now, Chris admits, what Mark was telling Gentiles was not reliable.
Steefen said
Chris HansenAlso, it is notable that Mark gets practices, scripture, geography, and more all wrong at times.
Steefen to Chris and Robert
In another thread, you two said Mark was written to include a Gentile audience. Now, Chris admits, what Mark was telling Gentiles was not reliable.
I never said Mark was reliable. I have maintained consistently that Mark was written for Gentiles, and written by a Gentile who did not know about ancient Palestine, and an entire part of my argument was hinged on the fact that Mark is unreliable on various aspects. Next time, present what I said with a modicum of accuracy.
Debra Carey
Thanks. You quote Paul saying exactly the things I agree are known about Jesus. Jesus existed. Jesus had followers, that might have included at least one brother. Jesus died. The followers didn’t agree with Paul.
Regarding the last supper, we have a chicken and the egg situation. Did this happen and Paul heard about it even though he never met Jesus and didn’t care much for his followers? Or is this one of the things Paul learned from one of his visions and the gospel writers fleshed it out in the stories they wrote later? Paul says pretty much everything he knows about Jesus came from a vision. In other words, Paul made it up. He says so.
I think the quote about Jesus’ teaching on compensation for missionaries is quite convenient, seeing as how Paul is a direct beneficiary of that teaching. And since according to the gospels Jesus was expecting the kingdom of heaven immediately and was fine keeping his message as close as possible (see Mark 4), it seems pretty odd that Jesus would care whether missionaries got paid.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy: Which Sad Calamity Has Caused God to Turn His Face Away?
Wasn’t there a time when Jesus sent disciples out and told them not to accept payment?
Anyway, what Paul recalls of Jesus does not include much of what Jesus picked up from John the Baptist and it does not include the second part of Jewish Apocalypticism: after Tribulation and Judgment, the Glorious Kingdom of God and Righteousness. Paul gives us living people getting caught up in the air with the resurrected dead. I prefer governments of righteousness.
Debra Carey
So I am back to my point. All the deepities attributed to Jesus. All the miracles. The parables he told to make sure very few people could understand. Yet he claims that he wants all to understand. His total contradictions – Not one bit of the law shall pass away, but the law is no longer applicable. All who come to me will be saved, except not every who says “Lord Lord” will be saved. etc. etc. It is very plausible that Jesus never said or did most or all of what is reported in the gospels. Paul told of a spiritual Jesus. Paul’s followers wanted to know more. So they created stories. These may have started out knowingly as myth, but later generations took them as “gospel.” And eventually some anonymous people, whose background and agenda are not known, wrote them down.
Chris_Hansen said
Steefen said
Chris Hansen
Also, it is notable that Mark gets practices, scripture, geography, and more all wrong at times.
Steefen to Chris and Robert
In another thread, you two said Mark was written to include a Gentile audience. Now, Chris admits, what Mark was telling Gentiles was not reliable.
I never said Mark was reliable. I have maintained consistently that Mark was written for Gentiles, and written by a Gentile who did not know about ancient Palestine, and an entire part of my argument was hinged on the fact that Mark is unreliable on various aspects. Next time, present what I said with a modicum of accuracy.
Steefen
You say, “an entire part of my argument was hinged on the fact that Mark is unreliable on various aspects.”
You did not bring up other aspects. Robert brought up various aspects because I said Mark was making a point that the Pharisees and scribes were being overly legalistic. Robert said there were other aspects where Mark provides explanatory information for the benefit of Gentiles.
#1 Mark’s reliability was not an issue in the Jesus’ disciples eating wheat.
#2 I did not challenge Robert about the other places where Mark provided information for the benefit of Gentiles
There’s your accuracy, Chris; and you are back to being an adversary — being ignored.
Steefen said
Chris_Hansen said
Steefen said
Chris Hansen
Also, it is notable that Mark gets practices, scripture, geography, and more all wrong at times.
Steefen to Chris and Robert
In another thread, you two said Mark was written to include a Gentile audience. Now, Chris admits, what Mark was telling Gentiles was not reliable.
I never said Mark was reliable. I have maintained consistently that Mark was written for Gentiles, and written by a Gentile who did not know about ancient Palestine, and an entire part of my argument was hinged on the fact that Mark is unreliable on various aspects. Next time, present what I said with a modicum of accuracy.
Steefen
You say, “an entire part of my argument was hinged on the fact that Mark is unreliable on various aspects.”
You did not bring up other aspects. Robert brought up various aspects because I said Mark was making a point that the Pharisees and scribes were being overly legalistic. Robert said there were other aspects where Mark provides explanatory information for the benefit of Gentiles.
#1 Mark’s reliability was not an issue in the Jesus’ disciples eating wheat.
#2 I did not challenge Robert about the other places where Mark provided information for the benefit of Gentiles
There’s your accuracy, Chris; and you are back to being an adversary — being ignored.
“You did not bring up other aspects”
If you are going to lie, don’t do it when everyone can just show you wrong. Seriously, I don’t know any other way to describe something that is so obviously wrong when it was in a conversation you were a part of, and multiple people here were a part of it too.
Chris_Hansen said
Robert said
The question of genre in the gospels is, I think, best answered by placing the gospel story within its Jewish scriptural context. The Jewish scriptures were a combination of myth, history, and biographical stories, and the apocalyptic worldview out of which the gospels were born was especially prone to the adoption of a perspective of ultimate authority. Although the ‘Christian’ movement was quickly overtaken by gentile dominance, it is nonetheless remarkable how important the Jewish scriptures were for the role they played in the very earliest ‘Christian’ literature such as the gospels. The gospel authors saw themselves as consciously writing a continuation of scripture. For example, Mark begins his story as having its foundation in the prophetic literature of Isaiah.
That still makes it mythological. Jewish scriptures were very mythological. Myths are also, quite often, combinations of legend, myth, history, biographical stories, etc. That being said, I think people seriously overplay the Jewish elements of the Gospels. The Gospel of Mark is… well… incompetent when it comes to its links to Judaism, making regular and consistent mistakes of geography, practice, and religion, not to mention not even being able to really cite scripture accurately. The Gospel of Mark is, imo, a Greco-Roman biography in mythic fashion. I am fully in agreement with Dennis R. MacDonald on this (though I disagree with him on what the sources for the Gospel are).
** you do not have permission to see this link **
No only did I bring them up, they were a key part of my argument.
Also, I couldn’t care less if you “ignored” me. Mostly because (A) you never do, and (B) if mispresenting me is all you can do, then you are just doing me a favor.
And again, why do you keep just ego boosting yourself with “Steve Campbell, author of historical accuracy” or “Steve Campbell, argumentation specialist” and stuff? Do you have any real credentials?
Steefen
Holy Fable, Volume II: The Gospels and Acts Undistorted by Faith
by Robert Price
A New Testament Introduction and Commentary from the perspective of radical “Higher Criticism,” but informed by scholars from a wide spectrum of opinion and spiced with humor. It is facile to say that the Gospels (and Acts) are not accurate history reporting. It is more complicated, but also much more fascinating to dive deep into these texts to discover why they differ from one another and what their authors were trying to do rather than writing history.
Holy Fable volume II employs
– source
– form, and
– redaction criticism
to make these scriptures newly intelligible. Author Price has a unique knack for making this kind of specialist scholarship understandable in plain speech. And he shows how even critical scholars have been timid in following these methods to their logical conclusions.
Debra Carey
My opinion is that there is no reason to think that one thing written in the gospels has anything to do with the semi-famous wandering preacher named Jesus. Quoting the gospels and saying “Jesus said this” or “Jesus did that” is silly, because it is all made up by followers of Paul, who may not have even expected their stories to be taken as “gospel.”
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy: Which Sad Calamity Has Caused God to Turn His Face Away?
There is no Oral Tradition for you?
None of the people standing here before the biblical Jesus was executed made it to the early 70s C.E. to inform the Gospel of Mark?
Chris_Hansen said
vergari said
Debra Carey said
I think it is likely the educated Greeks living in Asia Minor who wrote the gospels had never met Jesus, had never conversed with his Aramaic speaking followers and had never been to Palestine.
There is a very good reason that virtually no scholars of First Century Palestine — whether their discipline is history, textual criticism, papyrology or the like — would agree with this:
An educated Greek living in Asia Minor, who had no access to Aramaic and had never traveled to Palestine, would have zero ability to produce this material, which not only includes highly specific names, structures, cities and villages, cultural and religious practices, geographic and botanical features, and political and religion offices, etc., etc., but also includes transliteration of Aramaic and Hebrew words. It’s just an absurd hypothesis on so many levels.
“zero ability”
Umm… actually most scholars think that at least Mark was probably living in Rome, Asia Minor, or Syria. Firstly, Mark does get the geography of ancient Palestine wrong… a lot. Which is almost universally recognized by scholars. I know a number of scholars who have suggested a range of possibilities, anywhere from Rome to Galilee itself. So, you are kinda just talking out of your butt.
Also, it is notable that Mark gets practices, scripture, geography, and more all wrong at times. Literally his opening citation of scripture is cited incorrectly, which caused later redactors to try and change it. IMO, Mark is basing his work on Paul and was likely a gentile. It explains his cursory familiarity with Jewish practices, and also his rampant errors.
However, if you are assuming he had “zero ability” because he lived in Asia Minor “who had no access to Aramaic and had never traveled to Palestine” well… I guess you are kind of ignorant about how much information was available, or do you now think that Tacitus’ Agricola and Germania are nonsense? Tacitus never traveled to Germania. He never talked to Germans first hand there. He definitely had access to information about them in the first-second centuries though. Likewise, he wrote highly specific details about Jesus all the way from Rome. So, the idea that Mark could not be like Tacitus in this capacity is… well, a demonstration of your unfamiliarity with the topic.
Tacitus was a wealthy Roman politician who tells us that his political status had been elevated by Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. He was effectively the court historian for the Flavian dynasty. He had access to extensive Roman records. It’s even been credibly speculated that his father was the procurator of Germania. I don’t know what to say when you want to compare a figure like Tacitus to someone of a galactically more modest status like Mark the Evangelist.
As to Mark’s geography and knowledge of customs and practices of Palestine, here are the towns and villages from the region he writes about: Tyre, Sidon, Caesarea Philippi, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Gennesaret, Gerasene, Decapolis, Bethphage, Bethany, Gethsemane, Golgotha and Nazareth. He also tells us about the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, Perea, the synagogue and tax booth of Capernaum, the Temple, the treasury, the upper room, the High Priest’s house and the praetorium in Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives. He knows about the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians and the council. He discusses traditions of the Pharisees, the practices of the sabbath and Passover, anointing rituals and rules regarding Jewish burial. There’s plenty more. This not someone writing with only a remote connection to the region. Mark has either spent a significant time in Galilee and Judea (highly likely) or has spent hours upon hours with people who have.
As to Mark “getting the geography of ancient Palestine wrong… a lot,” you cite no examples, but the typical ones mentioned are Jesus traveling “through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,” Mark 7:31, and the order of the mentioning of Bethpage and Bethany in Mark 11:1.
Let’s take Tyre and Sidon first. Mark 7:24–26 introduces this journey; from that passage, we glean that Mark knows the general locations of Tyre, Syrian Phoenicia, the Sea of Galilee, and Decapolis. This is hardly someone who gets his geography “wrong a lot.” As for accounting for the trip through Sidon, a common explanation is that Mount Meron stands between Tyre and the Sea of Galilee, and that a pass exists from Sidon through the mountains to the Jordan river valley, which has easy access to fresh water. Maybe that works, maybe there’s something else going on. But, this is interesting: go to Google Maps and put in a search for a trip from Tyre to Irbid (the modern location of ancient Decapolis). ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Note that whether you go by car or by foot, the route takes you north out of Tyre — toward Sidon.
In any event, the fact remains that the author knows about the regions of Tyre and Sidon, he knows they are within reasonable distance from each other, he knows they are located in Syrophoenicia, and inhabited by gentiles. This is not the kind of information one would know, unless we quite familiar with Palestine and the Levant.
As to the oft-cited example of Bethany and Bethpage being disordered in the trip from Jericho to the Mount of Olives. First, again note that the author knows these towns exists and he knows they are located in between Jericho and Jerusalem, near the Mount of Olives. How many people from that time period, who had not lived in Judea, would have that information?? Bethany and Bethpage are a half mile apart from each other. It’s possible the author mixed the two up; and it’s possible he didn’t. But this is hardly some error that would demonstrate the author didn’t have very intimate knowledge of the region.
As to Mark’s citation to Isaiah for the composite quotations from Malachi and Isaiah in his introduction … I’m a little surprised you went to this argument. The author of Mark has quite clearly merged two scriptural (to him) passages — one from Malachi and one from Isaiah. It would have been extraordinarily awkward for him to introduce his gospel by saying “as it is written in Malachi and Isaiah.” Instead, he simply chose the prophet with most authority for the message he was seeking to advance. It’s a literary trick, but it’s hardly evidence that Mark didn’t know that part of his quote was from Malachi. Certainly, whoever wrote Mark had unfettered access to the Hebrew Bible; he quotes from it nearly 30 times, includes several times from the Septuagint.
Debra Carey said
My argument is unchanged. The fact that the main character of a story is a real person does not provide a basis for concluding whether the words and actions attributed to that person actually happened. A modern American who did extensive research could write an accurate book about Gandhi. A modern American who did a fair bit of research could make up a number of believable stories about Gandhi. A modern American with or without research could write a ludicrous story about Gandhi. My point is that the existence of a real person named Gandhi tells me nothing about the accuracy of stories written about Gandhi by authors who lived decades later on a different continent. The stories could be true. They could be false. The existence of a real Gandhi in the mid 20th century does nothing to indicate that a story written by an American named Joe Whatever in 2021 is accurate.Likewise, the existence of a real Jesus in Palestine circa 33 CE does nothing to indicate whether a story written / written down by anonymous authors decades later is accurate. Especially since those authors did not write in the language spoken by the main character and his followers. Also, while they may have visited the region, their level of education indicates they did not live there.
You either have not been able to comprehend the argument I am making or you simply can’t respond to it.
Of course it’s possible that the gospel writers made up their facts about Jesus. The same can be said about EVERY SINGLE ancient document, every work from antiquity purporting to be history. It’s possible that the ancient historians as we know them — whether Herodotus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch or Xenophon — all took real historical figures and then made up facts about them.
That’s possible.
But that’s not the way we do history. There is a process for evaluating whether invents are real or fictionalized. It’s not full proof, but it’s the best we have.
You are suggesting that authors with only the very remotest of connections to the times and places and people of Jesus invented the facts about Jesus. Well, it’s a fascinating suggestion; but you offer nothing to support this conjecture.
What I have merely attempted to demonstrate is that the gospel authors — and, in particular, Mark — had a very familiar knowledge with the times, places and culture Jesus lived in. You have offered NOTHING to refute that.
Instead, you have gone on with increasingly bizarre and misplaced analogies. Now you’re onto suggesting that a modern American can go on the Internet, read all about Gadhi and then write a fictionalized history about him; or, conversely, that “a modern American without research could write a ludicrous story about Gandhi.” I don’t think it’s even possible to miss the point more dramatically.
Anybody can come up with outlandish stories about anyone. But would those stories have gotten dozens of names correct? Would they gotten the names of the town and regions correct? Would they have gotten the local customs and rituals correct? Would they have known the names of political and religious offices??
Obviously, not.
I’m not going to bother with your conjecture as to whether any of the gospel authors ever lived in Palestine. It’s just ridiculous speculation on your part, for which you offer nothing.
Steefen said
SteefenHoly Fable, Volume II: The Gospels and Acts Undistorted by Faith
by Robert Price
A New Testament Introduction and Commentary from the perspective of radical “Higher Criticism,” but informed by scholars from a wide spectrum of opinion and spiced with humor. It is facile to say that the Gospels (and Acts) are not accurate history reporting. It is more complicated, but also much more fascinating to dive deep into these texts to discover why they differ from one another and what their authors were trying to do rather than writing history.
Holy Fable volume II employs
– source
– form, and
– redaction criticism
to make these scriptures newly intelligible. Author Price has a unique knack for making this kind of specialist scholarship understandable in plain speech. And he shows how even critical scholars have been timid in following these methods to their logical conclusions.
The Holy Fable books are knock off atheist books without a shred of academic credibility. Cite a peer reviewed source.
vergari said
Of course it’s possible that the gospel writers made up their facts about Jesus. The same can be said about EVERY SINGLE ancient document, every work from antiquity purporting to be history. It’s possible that the ancient historians as we know them — whether Herodotus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch or Xenophon — all took real historical figures and then made up facts about them.
That’s possible.
But that’s not the way we do history. There is a process for evaluating whether invents are real or fictionalized. It’s not full proof, but it’s the best we have.
Yes, there is a process for evaluating whether events are real or fictionalized.
How do we do this?
We consider other works by the author. What else has the author written? How well do those works align with other reports of the same topics? Does the author tend to be down to earth or does he sensationalize? Are other accounts written by this author reliable?
We consider what is known about the author. Is he Jewish? Is he Greek? Does he like Rome? Does he hate Jews? This gives us an understanding of what biases the author brings to the table. And then we can go back to his works and see if and how these biases affect his work.
We can study his writing style and word choice to spot possible alterations and additions to the original text.
We can learn about the sources the author tended to use, and judge the reliability of the author’s sources.
Now to the gospel authors. We have nothing. Nada. Zilch. No name. No identity. No background. No other unrelated works. No sources. No indication of biases. We can discern that they were educated Greek speakers. That’s it.
We know nothing of their sources. We know nothing of their biases. We know nothing of their motivations. We don’t know whether they thought they were writing a history, or just writing down the oral tales, or whether they were creating works from scratch to provide substance to the “spiritual Jesus” proposed by Paul.
We have no other documents to compare these texts to. Mark used an unknown source. Matthew and Luke plagiarized from Mark and maybe from Mark’s source. John, who knows?
There is no way to determine what parts of the stories reflect what a certain wandering preacher actually said and did 30, 40 or 50 years ago before being written down.
There is not way to determine which parts were embellished over time as the stories were told, retold, and translated into other languages and cultures.
And there is no way to determine which parts were created from scratch to reinforce the authors’ beliefs theological beliefs.
Paul states plainly he got most of what he said from visions. From Paul and his visions, we can guess that a person name Jesus existed. Jesus’s followers didn’t like Paul. Jesus died. A spiritual Jesus rose from the dead. A spiritual Jesus created a cannibalistic ritual. Aside from these few things that we get from Paul, there is no way to determine the accuracy of any word or event of the gospels.
Debra Carey said
vergari said
Of course it’s possible that the gospel writers made up their facts about Jesus. The same can be said about EVERY SINGLE ancient document, every work from antiquity purporting to be history. It’s possible that the ancient historians as we know them — whether Herodotus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch or Xenophon — all took real historical figures and then made up facts about them.
That’s possible.
But that’s not the way we do history. There is a process for evaluating whether invents are real or fictionalized. It’s not full proof, but it’s the best we have.
Yes, there is a process for evaluating whether events are real or fictionalized.
How do we do this?
We consider other works by the author. What else has the author written? How well do those works align with other reports of the same topics? Does the author tend to be down to earth or does he sensationalize? Are other accounts written by this author reliable?
We consider what is known about the author. Is he Jewish? Is he Greek? Does he like Rome? Does he hate Jews? This gives us an understanding of what biases the author brings to the table. And then we can go back to his works and see if and how these biases affect his work.
We can study his writing style and word choice to spot possible alterations and additions to the original text.
We can learn about the sources the author tended to use, and judge the reliability of the author’s sources.
Now to the gospel authors. We have nothing. Nada. Zilch. No name. No identity. No background. No other unrelated works. No sources. No indication of biases. We can discern that they were educated Greek speakers. That’s it.
We know nothing of their sources. We know nothing of their biases. We know nothing of their motivations. We don’t know whether they thought they were writing a history, or just writing down the oral tales, or whether they were creating works from scratch to provide substance to the “spiritual Jesus” proposed by Paul.
We have no other documents to compare these texts to. Mark used an unknown source. Matthew and Luke plagiarized from Mark and maybe from Mark’s source. John, who knows?
There is no way to determine what parts of the stories reflect what a certain wandering preacher actually said and did 30, 40 or 50 years ago before being written down.
There is not way to determine which parts were embellished over time as the stories were told, retold, and translated into other languages and cultures.
And there is no way to determine which parts were created from scratch to reinforce the authors’ beliefs theological beliefs.
Paul states plainly he got most of what he said from visions. From Paul and his visions, we can guess that a person name Jesus existed. Jesus’s followers didn’t like Paul. Jesus died. A spiritual Jesus rose from the dead. A spiritual Jesus created a cannibalistic ritual. Aside from these few things that we get from Paul, there is no way to determine the accuracy of any word or event of the gospels.
Actually, that is not the process. Quite often in historical circumstances we do not have other work by the author. For example, we do not have other works by the author of the Historia Brittonum (it is falsely written under Nennius’ name). We do not have multiple works written by the author of Beowulf. We do not have multiple works written by the author of the Hildebrandslied. We figure out if things are historical based on comparison to other sources, independent (and/or earlier ones) if we can, to see what can be cross examined and corroborated by multiple attestation. We also often don’t know anything about the author (again, see examples above).
** you do not have permission to see this link ** How about you stop with the heavy handed antagonistic rhetoric.
Also, I can list a lot of things about Mark:
He was not a native of Palestine (he doesn’t know the geography); he does not seem to be the most literature scholar of the LXX (he makes citation mistakes literally in the first chapter); he knows and uses Imperial cult imagery for Jesus, implying Gentilic origin; Mark is clearly writing for an audience familiar with Imperial Cult imagery; etc. I would add that when historians deal with sources we cannot properly scrutinize the author of, we often apply a principle of charity, this is standard in all historical practice. So, we would not just sit assuming that Mark was making stuff up, specifically because we have quite literally no evidence that was his goal. Also, we know a bit about the sources of some of the Gospels (Luke probably used Josephus, Mark probably used Paul, Matthew and Luke used Mark, Matthew and Luke probably used Paul, and John probably used all of them).
Also, again, Paul wrote about the historical Jesus on a lot of matters… as we explained before.
Also no, Paul does not state “plainly he got most of what he said from visions.” In fact, Paul only speaks of personally receiving revelations on two occasions (Gal. 1:12; Gal. 2:2). And the occasion you are outright misrepresenting is when he writes: “I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (Gal. 1:11-12). At best, you could try and misconstrue Gal. 1:16 this way, but Paul never says he never learned information from others here, he says that his immediate response after being called to ministry by God was to not consult man at that time. He never says he did not do so later. In fact, as James D. G. Dunn notes, the passage of Gal. 1:18-19 indicates that he did learn information from humans (“The Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem According to Galatians 1 and 2” NTS 28 [1982]).
Gospel = good news. The Gospel is not a biography. In fact, if you read Paul, the “Gospel” he speaks of in Galatians has to do with his specific spiritual vision of Jesus, not do with Jesus’ earthly biography. I would add, that Paul specifically denotes a difference between his revelation (ἀποκαλύψεως) and that which he received from humans (παρέλαβον). And if you look at 1 Cor. 15 or 1 Cor. 11, what does he use? He uses παρελάβετε not any form of the word for “revelation.” And as numerous scholars like James D. G. Dunn, Maurice Casey, Richard Longenecker, note, the term παρελάβετε and its related forms is used in Jewish texts to refer to, specifically, human information being passed down. In fact, every time Paul uses the form παρέλαβον is has to do with something being transmitted. He never says he had a revelation “παρέλαβον” to him, ever. Even in 1 Cor. 11 where he states that he παρέλαβον “from the Lord”, this is a common Rabbinic way of citing human transmission of information, they cite it by the person to started the tradition (read Gordon Fee’s commentary on First Corinthians for NICNT, page 607).
Also, communion is not a cannibalistic ritual. Do you actually have a single genuine reason for being here, or are you just here to diss Christianity? Because I am detecting a staunch lack of honesty in the way you continuously react to us and vehemently act rude. It is consistently seems like your only purpose in being here is to be degrading. You also don’t seem to care to have your questions answered, instead you seem to just want fight and be derogatory.
Anyways, virtually everything you’ve said in response can be demonstrably shown to be flawed. It is the kind of stuff that just permeates the atheist community, by a bunch of people whose knowledge of the Bible doesn’t amount to more than a Richard “buh muh Bayesian probabilities” Carrier, and Aron “Job is the oldest book of the Bible” Ra, neither of whom are remotely respected in academia.
Of course, if you consider Mark independent of Paul, or that you can’t say Mark used Paul, then you do give us independent sources, and Paul therefore confirms quite a few things about Jesus’ life. So, you would actually give us multiple attestation rather easily.
Debra Carey said
Let’s say I wanted to start a religion in the US in 2021. I want my religion to have some oomph so I decide that my deity is Gandhi. Most Americans have heard of India. On a good day they’ve heard of Gandhi. But being rather clueless, most Americans couldn’t tell you who Gandhi was or when he lived or what he did or why he matters. They just know he is famous and rather special. India is pretty far away, after all. After my Gandhi Religion takes off, some of my followers, who still know zip about the actual Gandhi, create some fan fiction where they tell about Gandhi’s words and deeds, according to what they think a deity named Gandhi from someplace like India should say and do. But it is all fiction.Centuries from now, people will come along and say they can prove my religion is 100% true because a person named Gandhi really existed.
Now think about Paul. He lived in a time when mystery religions were a thing. He lived at a time when people might have heard about Jewish apocalyptic preachers but not know many details. So Paul decided to create a mystery religion for fun and profit. To make his mystery religion seem exotic, Paul decided to form his new mystery religion around the name of a semi-famous wandering preacher from Palestine. Paul doesn’t quote Jesus. Paul doesn’t talk about what Jesus did. Paul says more than once that his knowledge comes from the “spirit” and he tosses in some wisdom from ancient Jewish texts.
Paul mentions in his letter to the Galatians that some actual followers of a person named Jesus weren’t too happy with Paul’s religion. But by this time Paul’s version of Jesus had long overtaken any real wandering preacher by that name.
The gospels were written by fans of Paul living in Asia Minor decades after any real Jesus would have died. The writers spoke educated Greek, not Aramaic, and generally had poor knowledge of Palestinian life, people or geography. There is no reason to think they had ever met Jesus or anyone who knew Jesus.
If this is plausible, then the question of whether a wandering preacher with a name something like “Jesus” lived in Palestine circa 33CE is simply not relevant.
The real question is whether there is any reason to believe that the gospels are anything other than fan fiction. Is there one thing in the gospels that could be considered reliable? The gospel writers created stories to fit Jesus into Jewish messianic prophecy. Note the two mutually exclusive “How a preacher from Galilee managed to be born in Bethlehem” stories. The gospel writers pulled stories from urban legends and shared stories. Healing blind men. Walking on water. Turning water into wine. Feeding multitudes with a few fish. Standing on a hill telling stories and spouting deepities. They said things they wanted their deity to say, even though those things were often mutually exclusive. Jewish law is no longer valid, except it is. Jesus wants everyone to have salvation but only a few will be chosen. 12 or more people supposedly spent 3 years learning at the feet of god itself, and not once are they consulted on matters of theology.
My opinion is that there is no reason to think that one thing written in the gospels has anything to do with the semi-famous wandering preacher named Jesus. Quoting the gospels and saying “Jesus said this” or “Jesus did that” is silly, because it is all made up by followers of Paul, who may not have even expected their stories to be taken as “gospel.”
“The gospel writers pulled stories from urban legends and shared stories. Healing blind men. Walking on water. Turning water into wine. Feeding multitudes with a few fish. Standing on a hill telling stories and spouting deepities. “
Elisha healed, Elisha walked on dry land as the Jordan River was split by Elijah’s coat, Elisha turned undrinkable water into drinkable, Elisha fed a multitude. Elisha is the name Jesus (Jeshua) with the Yeho replaced by El.
So this was not random fan fiction. It was the latest, greatest, updated version of Superman.
But did Paul just use his name and make things up? I suppose the DSS should have some say in that. I have heard there is a fragment (4Q521) that has a quote thought to be in Q. If there is a relationship there, Q would have been known for quite awhile before even the time frame of a supposed historical Jesus.
So the moralistic teachings were there for the picking to attribute to Jesus. The Old Testament Jesuses had already entered Jerusalem as the first high priest, faced down Satan, and healed Israel in one day (Zechariah’s Jeshua/Jesus). This is the Jesus Paul would know well of, being a Pharisee. Still, he says very little about this Jesus constructed in the gospels.
With his high Christology, it seems this Jesus pops in and out of time frames to do Yahweh’s bidding. So it seems Jesus could have physically existed for Paul, if just to die on a cross – which is all that Paul seems to care about – for salvation of any who believe. Most of what Paul seems to be pushing is some form of freedom. In the time period, archaeology shows that most of those giving to the synagogues were God-fearers and proselytes, not born Judeans. So Paul’s Romanized Judeanism is the natural child in theology to the Palestinian Judeanism or rather the Judeanism of the scriptures that envisions a holy people with a shared bloodline. As mythicist, I definitely think Paul believed a Jesus Christ had recently expired on a cross to save our souls.
Perhaps a more interesting point might be where the salvific fiction of Jesus (Elisha, Jeshua, Joshua) began from. Its always been about salvation. That is why the name is Jesus.
Debra Carey said
vergari said
Of course it’s possible that the gospel writers made up their facts about Jesus. The same can be said about EVERY SINGLE ancient document, every work from antiquity purporting to be history. It’s possible that the ancient historians as we know them — whether Herodotus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch or Xenophon — all took real historical figures and then made up facts about them.
That’s possible.
But that’s not the way we do history. There is a process for evaluating whether invents are real or fictionalized. It’s not full proof, but it’s the best we have.
Yes, there is a process for evaluating whether events are real or fictionalized.
How do we do this?
We consider other works by the author. What else has the author written? How well do those works align with other reports of the same topics? Does the author tend to be down to earth or does he sensationalize? Are other accounts written by this author reliable?
We consider what is known about the author. Is he Jewish? Is he Greek? Does he like Rome? Does he hate Jews? This gives us an understanding of what biases the author brings to the table. And then we can go back to his works and see if and how these biases affect his work.
We can study his writing style and word choice to spot possible alterations and additions to the original text.
We can learn about the sources the author tended to use, and judge the reliability of the author’s sources.
Now to the gospel authors. We have nothing. Nada. Zilch. No name. No identity. No background. No other unrelated works. No sources. No indication of biases. We can discern that they were educated Greek speakers. That’s it.
We know nothing of their sources. We know nothing of their biases. We know nothing of their motivations. We don’t know whether they thought they were writing a history, or just writing down the oral tales, or whether they were creating works from scratch to provide substance to the “spiritual Jesus” proposed by Paul.
We have no other documents to compare these texts to. Mark used an unknown source. Matthew and Luke plagiarized from Mark and maybe from Mark’s source. John, who knows?
There is no way to determine what parts of the stories reflect what a certain wandering preacher actually said and did 30, 40 or 50 years ago before being written down.
There is not way to determine which parts were embellished over time as the stories were told, retold, and translated into other languages and cultures.
And there is no way to determine which parts were created from scratch to reinforce the authors’ beliefs theological beliefs.
Paul states plainly he got most of what he said from visions. From Paul and his visions, we can guess that a person name Jesus existed. Jesus’s followers didn’t like Paul. Jesus died. A spiritual Jesus rose from the dead. A spiritual Jesus created a cannibalistic ritual. Aside from these few things that we get from Paul, there is no way to determine the accuracy of any word or event of the gospels.
This post is just completely wrong, and completely misstates the tried and true principles of textual criticism as a historical discipline.
Debra Carey said
Paul states plainly he got most of what he said from visions. From Paul and his visions, we can guess that a person name Jesus existed. Jesus’s followers didn’t like Paul. Jesus died. A spiritual Jesus rose from the dead.
It’s almost like your entire understanding of biblical scholarship is based on watching a 3 minute youtube clip of a Richard Carrier speech.
“I agree that Jesus of Nazareth was described with biblical language; that is the language that would be used for anyone held in such high esteem, but it does not follow that Jesus of Nazareth therefore did not exist.
So what then do we have?
1) A Jesus whose life events is described by using Jesuses of past mostly Judean but sometimes Greek stories.
2) The leftovers after taking out the hero motifs are moralistic sayings that predate the Jesus Christ lifespan.
What is left after we attribute Mark and Paul to Old Testament scripture and Q to DSS sayings?
The clincher for me has always been that a particular religion was born at a particular time and in a particular place. That always pointed to a historical Jesus for me. Now all of that is gone and all I have left are “James the brother of Jesus” supposedly said offhand by a writer (Paul) who disdains hearsay and says he gets his info from the “scriptures” (ie OT) and his visions. Also That Paul thinks Jesus died on a cross. That I cannot reconcile. But that is from the mouth of a man who has vivid visions and has been to the third heaven. THATS all I got to think there was a historical Jesus.
Meanwhile, Judeans were writing Jesuses, Melchizedeks, and Logos into books before one of the four gospels was written.
Joshua was not the first high priest, merely the first to serve in this role after the Babylonian exile.
This Joshua ben Jehozadak (Jesus son of Yhwh the righteous) was the first high priest of the second temple according to the four gospels of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ was made to be the second temple as the physical structure was ended. Alpha and Omega. 😀
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