Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

(Edited because I left out the links)

rgprice wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 6:38 amThe first Gospel was based on the Pauline letters and the Jewish scriptures. We can see how the writer constructed his narrative from those materials. We can determine that the writer did not work from outside traditions or other information because we can see how those materials account for the narrative.

RG, this is the cornerstone of your argument, and I’ve spent a lot of time on my blog discussing the ways in which it doesn’t stand up.

Yes, there are a number of passages in gMark that are clearly allegorical and derived from scriptures, and I believe you’ve made a reasonable case that at least some are derived from Pauline passages as well. But the problem is that you’re also including claims like ‘this Markan passage mentions fishermen and hunting and so does this OT passage' (https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhuman ... ne-part-3/) or ‘this passage has a list of vices and so does this passage’ (https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhuman ... -part-one/) and taking those sorts of superficial points of similarity as good enough that those Markan passage are derivations.

What that gives us is an inconclusive argument in which the best you can show is that Mark might have made the whole gospel up up but which also, at the very least, leaves open a plausible theory that Mark was embroidering a real story with symbolic allegorical material (something you’ve stated yourself to have been common at the time).

I would in fact say that gMark as it stands is better explained by the latter theory than by the former. But, even setting that aside, there are so many other problems with trying to explain the first century of Christianity under your theory that Occam’s razor still gives us ‘originated with a real rabbi and stories were then embroidered with allegory’ as a simpler option.

Huh. This theory fills in a couple of gaps and opens up a ton of questions.

rgprice wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 10:00 am
More likely, I think, the original story, along with the Pauline writings and whole Pauline ministry, was all part of a secretive mystery cult. The initial set of works, all of which depicted Jesus as having a heavenly origin, were all produced within the mystery cult. Marcion participated in the cult, but then copied the writings and published them publicly.

First question: From all accounts, Marcion’s publications were of several Pauline letters (which do depict an earthly Jesus in human form; see https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhuman ... -9-part-3/) and a form of the gospel of Luke (ditto). My understanding is also that, while Marcion believed Jesus had been in spirit form disguised as human, he did believe Jesus had been on earth as an apparent human. So, if the writings he published were from the cult who believed Jesus had a heavenly origin, why did they all depict an earthly Jesus?

Secondly, your claim all along has been that the original writing that got taken out of context was gMark and that every significant part of gMark can be shown to be a symbolic derivation from somewhere else. Setting aside for a minute that I strongly disagree with you on that last, I don’t get how this fits with you now attributing the leakage to someone who’s known to have used the gospel of Luke in his writings.

Once the writing were publicly published, they took on their own life. The mystery cult made no efforts to correct or address the public interpretation of the writings.

Yes, but where was Marcion during all this? You’re claiming he was the one who leaked the writings in the first place. Unless he was just a random shit-stirrer, that seems to imply he wanted other people to follow the faith. So, he leaked the writings and then… did absolutely nothing else regarding recruitment or follow-up? Even though people would pretty easily be able to track the writings back to him and ask him?

And, jumping ahead for a minute, how in this scenario did Marcion come to be universally regarded as a heretic by all the church elders who mentioned him? Why is the story we have about him that he was a johnny-come-lately who joined the existing church but then branched off into wrong and misguided teachings? If his selected teachings were the ones that effectively founded the existing church, how did we then get to a situation where the existing church considered those teachings heretical and told stories of Marcion as a breakaway?

The public set of writings gave rise to a religion that believed Jesus was a real person and the writings were modified accordingly.

Why ‘modified accordingly’? I thought the key point in this scenario was supposed to be that an allegorical story about an invented earthly life for Jesus got misunderstood as literally true. So this seems to be saying the group would have modified the writings that gave rise to their belief so as to make them in line with the belief that they've already gotten from those same writings? That doesn't make any sense.

This is why all of the sudden all of these writings seem to come out of nowhere. The original works were all developed in secret, then some got leaked out, but the original secret cult never engaged or revealed the real details of their teachings, so everyone just made up their own interpretations of the material.

So, hang on… are you trying to say that the rest of the gospels/Acts were also produced by the original group? How do you think that worked? Either way, how do you think people got from ‘one gospel taken out of context’, to multiple gospels with lots of added material plus a form of early church history?

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 7:15 am To clarify, I think it’s actually that the original group did stick to the Law and that Paul was the one who took the leap away from it.

Thank-you Dr Sarah, what is your view of the Odes? I've been on here a while saying they pre-date the epistles and are the good stuff

The idea the original group stuck to the Law is problematic, how does it go from that to what we find in the epistles?

The info the odes provide suggest a loosening / spiritualising of the requirements already such that they are followed 'in spirit', but do not have the Pauline theology that goes further, even creating a second covenant that is by faith (in his gospel)

So the original group had a looser, spiritual approach to sticking to the law which Paul lept away from is one option
Then, when Paul runs into opponents requiring literal law observance, they are drifting away from the original thing as well

davidmartin wrote: ↑Sun Oct 15, 2023 1:21 am

dbz wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 2:28 pm gMark is Pauline, thus is aware of the Unter/Uber Torah issues of Paul. But gMark is not an encyclopedic playbook of Paul's theology/dogma.[/list]

i'm open to an 'awareness' of things pauline but these documents are not really pauline in any meaningful way
where's "Christ", the atonement, and, ahem, where's freaking Paul? he's not even a disciple
then you have paul saying Jesus becomes Christ at his resurrection and the gospels at his baptism. there's major differences

Really interesting point about the atonement. I can only find one line (Mark 10.45) that suggests the atonement, and, of course, it’s possible that could have been an interpolation. However:

a) Mark does seem to be strongly suggesting that Jesus died for some reason, even if he doesn’t say what that reason was. It’s not played as a martyr story, but more as if it’s part of some kind of Greater Plan. I’m open to suggestions about what that could be if not the atonement, but the only obvious explanation I can think of is that Mark did know atonement theology and trusted his audience to know it as well.
b) Mark definitely seems to be trying to retcon Jesus as abandoning the Jewish law. By this, I mean that what Mark is describing in terms of Jesus’s words is apparently fairly typical of Second Temple rabbinic Judaism, but the spin Mark puts on it is that this is Jesus tossing the law out of the window, even when that’s not actually what’s shown. This suggests Pauline influence to me.

To clarify, what I believe is that the group started with an actual rabbi Yeshua whose followers believed he was the Messiah in a more traditional sense, went on believing this after he was executed, and still kept to the Jewish law, and that the breakaway happened with Paul, who decided the execution was actually a sin sacrifice that meant the law could be abandoned. In that sense, I think Mark is of Paul’s school of thought rather than the original group’s school of thought, though he would not necessarily agree with Paul on every detail.

As for your other points: ‘Christ’ is just a different term for ‘Messiah’, which is a term that shows up all the time in gMark (both translate as ‘anointed; ‘Christ’ is an anglicisation of the Greek word and ‘Messiah’ is an anglicisation of the Hebrew word). Paul wouldn’t be in gMark even according to the Biblical story, as both Luke and Paul have Paul only becoming a Jesus-follower some time after Jesus’s death, hence after the time period covered by gMark. And the question of when Jesus was supposed to have become Christ strikes me as a fairly minor one; I don’t even remember Paul making a statement about when it was that this happened. (I mean, it’s entirely plausible that I missed something, but if I don’t remember this even after reading the Pauline letters several times then I doubt it was that major a part of Paul’s beliefs.)

and what's the reason for this, folk have decided Paul has to be first then force the gospels to fit into this theory, but they don't
i think all these paul priority theories have major unanswerable problems, but if he's secondary those problems disappear, barking up the wrong tree
forget Paul, he's what he says he is himself "the last apostle", an offshoot, a reviser... secondary / late. the thing existed before him and the few documents prior found their way into the gospels and surprise surprise they are not very pauline, as expected, cause he wasn't primary. he is merely another source of information it never started with him

If you mean the Jesus-followers didn't start with Paul, I agree. If you mean the chronological order of the writings, I still hold to the idea that the original Pauline letters were the earliest and that the gospels came later (well, maybe some overlap given how imprecise dating is).

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 12:58 pm
More than happy to admit this particular reader is ignorant! But I'd like to understand this.

Mar 12:35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David?
36 For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.
37 David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.

How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David, when David calls his son Lord? And why did the common people hear him gladly? What does it all mean, in your opinion?

I think most likely this stemmed from disputes about whether Jesus actually was a descendant of David (this, or at least descent from David’s father Jesse, was considered a vital criterion for being the Messiah, as per Isaiah 11:1 and some other passages). The Markan passage you’ve quoted was somebody’s attempt at dealing with this by quoting Jesus as attempting a scriptural argument that the Messiah didn’t actually have to be a descendant of David. This argument might have originated from Jesus, but might also be from a later follower of Jesus defending Jesus’s Messiahship and simply have been put back in Jesus’s mouth; on the whole I think the latter is more likely.

So, we’re given an argument for considering Jesus as a viable Messianic candidate even though he doesn’t seem to descend from David, and told that ‘the common people heard him gladly’ to indicate that they were glad to know that he could indeed still qualify for Messiah.

JoeWallack wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 8:24 pm
"1. Contemporary? Yes; Paul is referring to someone he’s personally met and to financial arrangements in the church that were current at the time he was writing."

I meant contemporary to us. Extant evidence does not age well. The time alone makes an individual piece of evidence weak.

Wait; are you saying that you don’t think evidence from the time period concerned is valid? Surely by that standard it wouldn’t be possible to believe in the existence of anyone at all from that long ago. (And if that’s what you believe then it’s what you believe, but at that point you’re beyond just throwing out Jesus-historicism and into considering history as an invalid discipline generally.) If that isn't what you believe, I'm happy for you to clarify.

"2. Confirmed? Josephus also mentions a ‘brother of the Lord’ called James who was involved with the church, so that’s confirmation of that mention, although the mention of other brothers involved with the church isn’t reliably confirmed."

[sarcastic]So a passage in Josephus from 2,000+ years ago that is generally believed to have been at a minimum edited by Christians is your confirmation[end sarcasm].

Clearly not, since the ‘brother of the Lord’ quote is completely separate from the TF.

"3. Credible? Yes; it’s perfectly plausible that both that Jesus would have had brothers and that a couple of them might have been interested in joining the group who gave them the hopeful message that he was still alive despite his apparent tragic death."

I meant Paul. You explain that Paul is credible when he is not incredible.

I explain that people who are not credible at some points can still be credible at others. Mention of someone’s personal experience, made briefly in passing (i.e., context and tone doesn’t suggest that these are things the person’s inventing for self-aggrandisement), typically fall into the latter category.

Let's try that out:

"Jesus died on Friday and was resurrected." So we can reliably believe that this is very good evidence that Jesus died on Friday.

Anachronisms aside… If Paul was saying, for example, that the church members told him that Jesus died on such-and-such a date, then that would be good evidence that the church at that time was claiming Jesus died on such-and-such a date. It wouldn’t necessarily be good evidence that Jesus did die on that date, but it would be evidence of what the church was teaching at that point.

Similarly, when Paul reports that James was Jesus’s brother or that such-and-such-a-group with financial privileges were Jesus’s brothers, it’s a reasonable conclusion that this is information he learned from church members, and thus that the church saw certain specific people as Jesus’s brothers.

"4. Credibly transmitted? Not quite sure what this one means, but the fact that these are both passing comments made in the course of rants about other things makes them sound a lot more credible than if, say, Paul were using these claims in some sort of self-aggrandising way."

Church transmission.

Ah, I get you.

(...) You think the Church would have incentive to posture that Paul communicated with those close to Jesus (see previous note).

They might indeed have had that incentive, but for that to be the explanation for the ‘brother(s)’ comments we’d have to hypothesise that a) the Church were unbothered by the passage’s overall focus being how little communication Paul had with those close to Jesus (if they wanted to make amendments to imply the opposite, they could have left the passage out altogether or made more extensive amendments to it) and b) they also added in a whinge elsewhere from Paul about Jesus’s brothers’ financial support from the church, which doesn’t particularly sound like something the Church would bother to interpolate.

Paul's theme is that his spiritual knowledge of Jesus is superior to a physical knowledge of Jesus, like I don't know, a brother would have. His comment is intended to discredit James as a witness to Jesus. A spiritual witness.

Seems more focused on emphasising that he’s avoided knowledge from such people; the emphasis of the passage is on how little contact he’s had with the other church members so that he can avoid his own knowledge being contaminated by any misguided ideas they might have.

You don't note this because the Christian apologists you follow don't want to confess it.

(snort) Out of curiosity, which Christian apologists do you think I follow and how did you reach that conclusion?

Oh but then there's that second best potential witness, the uBarquitus "Mark", unknown but has a lot of scope with an entire Gospel that looks like the original one. He/she/they/it say that the brother James was opposed to Jesus and the disciple James was not Jesus' brother. And "Mark" quite famously says that his Jesus says that whoever is not his brother is his brother. So many James, so many "brothers" and so much expired time.

Not sure what your point is here, I'm afraid.

So how does the evidence for Jesus being historical compare to the evidence for Caesar (or David) being historical. Won't know until your next post.

Considerably less than for Caesar. Probably rather more than for David, but that’s a guess as I don't know whether there's any good evidence for David.

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:44 am a) Mark does seem to be strongly suggesting that Jesus died for some reason, even if he doesn’t say what that reason was. It’s not played as a martyr story, but more as if it’s part of some kind of Greater Plan. I’m open to suggestions about what that could be if not the atonement, but the only obvious explanation I can think of is that Mark did know atonement theology and trusted his audience to know it as well.

The interest of Mark's authors if gentiles could have been in Jesus 'handing the baton' of God's attention over to themselves rather than the Isrealite people. Like the centurion saying 'surely this was the son of God'. Reading the church fathers that are not Pauline ones (eg the preaching of peter) that's an impression I get. This is a massive deal for these guys it's what they want. They doesn't have to come via the Pauline route cause it seems it's floating around already in the non-Pauline nether regions.

The Odes give a great reason for Jesus's arrival, to pour out the spirit of God and dwell on this they don't know the atonement, the resurrection is proof of eternal life

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:44 am b) Mark definitely seems to be trying to retcon Jesus as abandoning the Jewish law. By this, I mean that what Mark is describing in terms of Jesus’s words is apparently fairly typical of Second Temple rabbinic Judaism, but the spin Mark puts on it is that this is Jesus tossing the law out of the window, even when that’s not actually what’s shown. This suggests Pauline influence to me.

Well, they'd kind of have to have that if they're gentiles looking to inherit the Jewish tradition, tricky area as balancing act needed. Suspect the 'easy yoke' is a lighter spiritual Torah of the original Jesus, no need for Paul for this!

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:44 am To clarify, what I believe is that the group started with an actual rabbi Yeshua whose followers believed he was the Messiah in a more traditional sense, went on believing this after he was executed, and still kept to the Jewish law, and that the breakaway happened with Paul, who decided the execution was actually a sin sacrifice that meant the law could be abandoned. In that sense, I think Mark is of Paul’s school of thought rather than the original group’s school of thought, though he would not necessarily agree with Paul on every detail.

Kind of this not far from the Odes information except replace 'traditional' with 'esoteric'

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:44 am If you mean the Jesus-followers didn't start with Paul, I agree. If you mean the chronological order of the writings, I still hold to the idea that the original Pauline letters were the earliest and that the gospels came later (well, maybe some overlap given how imprecise dating is).

If things didn't start with Paul could expect to find sources pre-dating him find there way into the gospels. The writings chronology follows the sects chronology! (Admittedly I might only count the gospel sources here rather than the gospels as such but got to have some wiggle room)

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 7:12 am But we don’t have the original Marcionite version.

I am sorry but from the time I wrote that post, I am more and more persuaded that, just as the historicist bits in the epistles are part of wider catholic interpolations, so also large portions of the epistles where there is the mysticism raised by mythicists as evidence of mystical-hallucinatory origins of the Christianity (i.e. of Mythicism) are marcionite interpolations. Basically, the date of death of the Christ Myth Theory happened when Turmel wrote the following words:


(my bold)

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 11:14 am Turmel wrote the following words:

Mais je ne cache pas que l'adhésion de M. Loisy m'a été très agréable. Aux apologistes qui objecteront que l'adhésion est seulement partielle, je demanderai de me dire si un catholique peut impunément tenir les grandes thèses des épîtres pauliniennes pour des produits de l'esprit humain dépourvus de toute estampille divine. Et si les critiques indépendents [=mythicists, n.d.r.] me font la même objection, je leur ferai remarquer que cette adhésion ne laisse rien subsister de leurs constructions si artificiellement échafaudées.

(my bold)

• Per GPT AI

[Line 1:] "Mais je ne cache pas que l'adhésion de M. Loisy m'a été très agréable."

In this sentence, Turmel states that he is not hiding the fact that Loisy's declaration was very pleasing to him. This is a strong statement of his satisfaction with Loisy's adherence.

[Line 2:] "Aux apologistes qui objecteront que l'adhésion est seulement partielle, je demanderai de me dire si un catholique peut impunément tenir les grandes thèses des épîtres pauliniennes pour des produits de l'esprit humain dépourvus de toute estampille divine."

In this sentence, Turmel addresses the first potential objection to Loisy's adherence. This objection is that Loisy's adherence is only partial, because he does not accept all of Turmel's views. Turmel responds to this objection by asking the apologists who make it whether a Catholic can hold the great theses of the Pauline epistles to be products of the human mind, devoid of any divine stamp. Turmel is suggesting that Loisy's adherence is actually quite complete, because he accepts the most important of Turmel's views.

[Line 3:] "Et si les critiques indépendents[=mythicists, n.d.r.] me font la même objection, je leur ferai remarquer que cette adhésion ne laisse rien subsister de leurs constructions si artificiellement échafaudées."

In this sentence, Turmel addresses the second potential objection to Loisy's adherence. This objection is that Loisy's adherence is not as significant as it seems, because it is also supported by the views of independent critics, who are often considered to be heretics. Turmel responds to this objection by pointing out that Loisy's adherence "ne laisse rien subsister de leurs constructions si artificiellement échafaudées" (leaves nothing remaining of their constructions so artificially constructed). Turmel is suggesting that Loisy's adherence is not just another example of the views of independent critics, but that it is actually a major blow to their theories.

In conclusion, this passage is an important statement by Joseph Turmel on the significance of Alfred Loisy's adherence to his views. Turmel believes that this adherence is a major blow to both the Catholic Church and the independent critics who oppose the modernist movement.

GPT AI has totally misinterpreted the real meaning of the Turmel's words.