Is the Gospel Narrative a Conspiracy Theory?

[Secret Alias]

The white may win

How can white win with that arrangement?

[Giuseppe]

The white may win

How can white win with that arrangement?

the solution (by Ottó Bláthy) is found here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque_(chess)

[Irish1975]

What I mean is, Mark can be seen as doing what Alex Jones does in the video. Sandy Hook is too horrible to comprehend. It must be an inside job. The gospel is similarly saying - there's got to be this other explanation other than Romans were better soldiers or the Jews were idiots. Oh yeah, the Jews killed their messiah years before and God punished them with this.

There’s no getting around the fact that Mark’s passion narrative is great propaganda for the Roman cause against the Judaean rebels. Someone took the crucified Christ idea from Paul and said, “Let’s go with this. The climax of the story is a messiah hanging on a cross with a “king of the Jews” sign. Let’s get these troublesome Jews worshipping that.”

This is one reason why, given how obviously Pauline Mark’s theology is (Tom Dykstra), I suspect that Romans was not originally a letter, but a speech. Probably before an imperial audience (13:1-6!) that included elite collaborating Jews. Chapters 9-11 is a giant allusion to the Judaean catastrophe, contrary to the mainstream dogma that Paul must have died before the troubles. (Chapter 15 is not in Marcion’s bible, and reads like a cleverly forged addendum.) Paul’s theology and the political significance of his movement would have been discussed at the highest levels during the Flavian era. So maybe someone commissioned a story to go with the movement. This would explain the Latinisms in Mark’s text. The grotesque syntax and lowbrow diction would reflect an attempt to feign a plebeian origin for the author.

Why else was the Roman church so powerful, beginning as early as the 1st century? Why were members of the imperial family mixed up with it (Titus Flavius Clemens, Flavia Domitilla)? Why is Paul writing Philippians from the “Praetorium”? Why did the post-Constantine church destroy so many records of the 1st century, eg Tacitus’ Histories right at the point where he begins to discuss the Judaean War?

Well, you wanted to talk about conspiracy....

[Secret Alias]

Well thank you. At least someone can see things from a bigger perspective. It could well be a speech. Interesting points you bring up. But I think we agree on the underlying context here. Indeed by virtue of chapter 13 and its reference to Daniel chapter 9, the connection with the destruction of Jerusalem is assured.

[Joseph D. L.]

The white may win

[Giuseppe]

The white may win

https://media1.giphy.com/media/3o6ZtkK1 ... /200_d.gif

is it just more strong than you to post here only to insult me ?

[Joseph D. L.]

Learn to take a joke, Giuseppe, and how the English language works.

[Giuseppe]

I see three different views about the approach to the connection between the Fall of Temple and the Earliest Gospel:

• Indifference. The Fall of Jerusalem was not decisive in the formation of the first gospel;

• Theodicy. Substantially, an apology for YHWH. The Jews kills Jesus, therefore YHWH kills the Jews;

• Apocalypticism. The Fall of Temple is sign of the end of world. The need of new scriptures confirming that the Messiah is already arrived just before the End.

For example, Secret Alias and RG Price follow the point 2. The Christian scholars follow the point 1. I am for point 3.

[Joseph D. L.]

You’re thinking about this is all wrong. The Gospels do not have a reason for being written. They are apologies for Christianity at best, propaganda at worst, but they are not written in response to anything in particular.

[Giuseppe]

You’re thinking about this is all wrong. The Gospels do not have a reason for being written. They are apologies for Christianity at best, propaganda at worst, but they are not written in response to anything in particular.

I put myself in Mythicist paradigma, that claims that the Gospels euhemerized a previous mythical Jesus crucified in lower heavens. Hence, it is the paradigm itself to require a primary impulse, the more parsimonious possible, behind the first gospel. Secondary reasons listed by you are for the Gospel details, obviously, as separationism in proto-Mark, etc.