If a narrative is plausible, free of obvious unhistorical parts, with every parts documented, does not involve the extraordinary, does not require great gifts to the characters, yes I would say the plausibility goes a long way into establishing the narrative (such as http://historical-jesus.info/digest.html) as having a good chance to be true to the facts.Are you saying that plausibility of a narrative is a reason we should believe it to be true?
Yes, after a lengthy analysis of gMark, with complementary ones on other texts, more so the Pauline epistles, Josephus' works, Q, I could tell fiction from history with about 80% to 90% of confidence.Are you saying that we can tell fiction from history by reading implausible details in fiction and plausible ones in history?
The gospel of Mark is not clean smooth fiction in the sense it entails all these against the grain bits that "Mark" had to answer for damage control.If so, I have to wonder if you have read very much fiction, including ancient fiction, at all. Pick up Rosenmeyer's Ancient Epistolary Fictions, or better still, read ancient critics discussions of rhetoric, including literary criticisms. Verisimilitude, plausibility, were what fiction writers very often strove to achieve, and very often did so most successfully. And even ancient biographies and histories included some very plausible details we learn from other sources were in fact fiction.
All of that could have been accomplished by Jesus being acclaimed "Christ" instead of "king" and being crucified as "the Christ" rather than "the king of the Jews", which is not something you would invent for a gentile audience.What if Mark wanted to use "king of the Jews" because it fit in with a lot of other possible agendas of his -- including the culmination of the triumphal procession to the cross, and the dramatic effect it accomplished.
And what would they be? How reasonable would they. Just because you can throw all kind of alternatives to some historicist evidence does not mean that evidence is voided.There are dozens of reasons we can imagine why our unknown author chose to use "king of the jews"
I do not have a clue about what you are trying to say here.If you want plausible historicity, then you imagine a scene where no-one sympathetic to Jesus even saw such a sign on the cross before it was taken down that same afternoon.
You are imagining an ironic agenda. Why would "Mark" use irony in a text meant for strengthening the faith of his audience?you would not plausibly have had a historical sign that just so neatly happened by luck to serve Mark's ironic agenda.
The preconception of the initial audience of gMark was that Peter & other Galilean disciples, were Christians, because they were the eyewitnesses of "wonderful" Jesus. But they did not hear a confirmation from them, more so Peter. That had to be explained.It sounds like you are implying that an author is incapable of creating confusion and doubt for some of his readers. But surely whether confusion and doubt is created among readers depends entirely on the preconceptions of the first readers. How do you know who those first readers were and what their preconceptions were?
William Wrede was a Lutheran theologian. I do not think you would be approving of his methods.Have you heard of a book by a certain WIlliam Wrede titled "The Messianic Secret"? That, and not a few other scholarly works since then, explain Mark's theological agenda by referencing the evidence of Peter's "secret confession".
Again, by lengthy thorough analysis. The gospel was in favor of Christianity, that's rather certain (with Peter calling Jesus Christ and his disciples witnessing Jesus' extraordinary miracles. etc.). But bits here & there are not. That's what attracted my attention.On what grounds do you determine the gospel's theological agenda by denying that parts of the gospel serve his theological agenda? That sounds like you are choosing to select just bits of the gospel that support what you think "should" be the gospel's agenda. That's a circular argument.
What story? If you mean the one where Peter says Jesus is the Christ but Jesus answered that the disciples should not say it, yes, I thing it is invented. And invented for the purpose of explaining why Peter never was heard saying Jesus was Christ.Why can't the whole story simply be a holy-fiction about Peter? Why do you think it has to be historical?
Cordially, Bernard