rgprice wrote: ↑Wed Oct 04, 2023 9:40 am
@DrSarah A few things. For one, it had been a while before I had read any of your posts about my book, so a lot of my commentary has been from recollection of what you wrote in the first three or four posts, and its been a while.
Oh, sure, I figured the reason was something like that. My point is that you were making some pretty definite statements about what I did and didn’t believe. No ‘To the best of my recollection’, no ‘this was the impression I got’, no ‘I think Dr Sarah believes this but I’d have to go back and check’. You were willing to make definite statements based on having read part of what I’d written some considerable time ago. That indicates that you’re not particularly careful about checking sources.
That’s common enough, and goodness knows there are worse flaws, but it’s something that should give people pause when considering your cites. Bluntly put, it demonstrates that claims from you that so-and-so believes such-and-such aren’t actually reliable and shouldn't be accepted without checking.
(...)
Do you think that the editors of the NT collection ONLY modified the endings of these Gospels and write 2 Peter? Hardly. They very likely made sweeping changes throughout all of the works, some of which can be teased out with careful analysis.
I’m getting pedantic here, but it depends on what you mean by ‘sweeping’. We certainly know that they made changes that were
significant in terms of theology, because we have enough manuscripts to pick up the extra post-crucifixion appearances that were added in to gMark and gJohn. However, ‘sweeping’ seems to imply that they rewrote particularly
extensive sections of the works. I doubt this for purely practical reasons; if such large parts of a work contradicted their theology, it would have surely been simpler for them to discard that work altogether and write something from scratch that supported them. I think the fact of a particular work being included at all is good evidence that these unknown editors supported at least the majority of it, or alternatively that it was so well known at that point that they couldn’t leave it out (which in fact seems to be what happened with gMark). So, I would quibble over the word 'sweeping', while still agreeing with you on the more important point that significant deliberate changes and outright forgeries took place in the name of whatever theology the editor or author was promoting.
(...)
The first Gospel is a fictional allegory that was written as an introduction to the Pauline writings.
Well, as you know, I've already gone into considerable detail as to why I don't feel you've adequately made a case for this. (Links listed at the bottom of
https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhuman ... roduction/, with the relevant links being the six that are to discussions of your first two chapters.)
(...)
What I suspect happened is that these writings were part of a mystery religion of Romanized Judaism and the writings go exposed outside of the original cult and then took on a meaning and following all their own. In order words, that the readers of these writings from outside the original cult imparted their own meaning to them and read them literally.
Thus, I propose, "orthodox Christians" are essentially a group who misunderstood the writings of the mystery cult.
So, according to this theory:
Point A (some undefined time after 70 CE): Someone/some group gets hold of the supposedly secret writings of a mystery cult, which contain a not-terribly-inspiring story in which a man claims to be the Messiah but is humiliatingly executed, an ending of apparent failure redeemed by an anonymous person claiming that really he rose from the dead at the end. This story is in fact a fictional allegory, but the non-cult person or people getting hold of it don’t realise this. OK, so far so good.
Point B (by around the middle of the 2nd century CE, so less than a hundred years after point A): A group exists who are absolutely convinced that this man did in fact live on earth, to the point where they are unconvinced
by the original group trying to explain that, no, he lived on heaven and their original writing was a known allegory. They have written multiple accounts of the story of this man who did not in fact ever live on earth, plus a history of the development of his group of followers starting shortly after his supposed death, all apparently without noticing, or at least without caring, that they were completely wrong about the very basic facts of whether this man ever lived on earth or whether the followers whose history they’ve written ever believed this man lived on earth. Despite having gone into this deeply enough to piece together a rough account of how things supposedly went in the history of the original group, they are convinced that their belief is the truth and that the original group claiming this man lived only in heaven are the heretics.
What I can’t see here is any remotely plausible way in which this group could get from point A to point B.
Sure, there are always individual people who will believe absolutely any weird belief. There are groups in which the weird beliefs of all members feed off one another in a self-perpetuating bubble. But what your theory would require is an
entire and growing group who not only remain convinced of this belief even in the face of the original group pointing out that they’re completely wrong (i.e., even once they get outside the bubble) but start a determined forgery campaign to prove the original group wrong. And who then
win that campaign, obliterating the original group without trace, even though by this time this group had multiple outreach branches.
And all… for what? For the belief that their founder lived on earth instead of in heaven? What’s so emotionally vital about that belief that people would feel the need to cling to it when faced with members of the original group telling them ‘No, this account is only a story meant to teach deeper truths, and the truth is that the Lord lived and died in the heavenly realm’?
You’re not giving any sort of plausible way in which this could have happened. You're responding to queries by talking in general terms about all the people who believed fictional accounts. Of course there were lots of people who believed fictional accounts; that’s not the bit I’m disputing. What I’m disputing here is the idea that people would cling so strongly to these accounts that they’d end up committing this whole elaborate (and successful) attempt at discrediting the people with the original account as heretics, all rather than just accepting ‘huh, maybe this Lord did live in heaven after all’.
