Would Jesus put up with the very wealthy and very poor?

[oldbadger]

What has been demonstrated is that Mark wrote the gospel using older fiction, Pauls letters and based on other evidence Jesus is a made up character.

I've already told you that Paul never ever described anything that Jesus ever said or did (apart from those last hours) and so Carrier can't use Paul letters to rebunk the Jesus story.

It's just simple evaluation........

 

[joelr]

Your occasional use of film stories like Star Wars characters cannot help you with a debate about the historical Jesus, Joel.
I notice that weak debaters often use analogies because they haven't got any sound evidence to offer.
I suggest you drop that type of approach, is all.

Uh, no. YOu have failed to produce one single piece of evidence or source, you only attempt at anything beyond opinion was to go down a John the Baptist road and when I acknowledged I believe he's historical you acted like you taught this to me. Even though I've been clear. You are not a weak debater, you are a non-debater.
Acusations about scholars without evidence, beliefs based on no evidence then dishonest responses? You think you are in a position to give tips? Oh, yeah, there is the delusional aspect thing again?
You bring up Crossan and assume his thesis is the definitive proof without evidence? All over the place?

 

[joelr]

I asked you 'What does Carrier say about the arrest in Gethsemane'!
I asked for a reason. I think much of that account is real and that it was witnessed by the author of G-Mark.

It's s myth. Of course Jesus was arrested, he had to undergo a passion to complete his dying/rising motif.

Mark did not witness anything, hence the reason for all Christian scholarship saying the gospels are anonymous.

 

[joelr]

I've already told you that Paul never ever described anything that Jesus ever said or did (apart from those last hours) and so Carrier can't use Paul letters to rebunk the Jesus story.

It's just simple evaluation........

Wrong. Mark created the Jesus story from Paul's letters, and other fiction


Scholars have long suspected Mark knew the Epistles because Mark is full of memorably Pauline themes.

Paul of course equated Jesus with both the Passover and the Yom Kippur sacrifice, both rolled into one (his death atones for all sins like the Yom Kippur, and saves us from death like the Passover lamb), even though they are months apart in the Jewish ritual calendar. And yet Mark also merges the two themes into one: having Jesus die on Passover (indeed at the very same hour as a temple sacrifice) and enact at the same time a Yom Kippur ritual (with Barabbas as the scapegoat; see OHJ, pp. 402-08).

Likewise Mark reifies Paul’s theme of a Torah-free Gospel (by use of metonymy, one feature standing in for all): Mark 7:15 says “nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them,” and in 7:19 that Jesus “declared all foods clean,” just as Paul says “I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean” (Romans 14:14) and “all food is clean” (Romans 14:20). Indeed, Mark 7 has Jesus speak of the clean and unclean, and literal washing, transferring it to a message about internal cleanness replacing literal cleanness, exactly as Paul does in Romans 14. Extending the same reasoning to every other Torah command would then form a major component of Mark’s community’s mission—which was also Paul’s.

Mark 10:1-12 has Jesus also teach the same thing about divorce that Paul did. Though in this case Paul does say he has that teaching from Jesus (likely, as we just saw, from some revelation or spirit conversation). But Mark still inaccurately has Jesus mention women divorcing husbands (Mark 10:12), as Jewish law did not provide for women to initiate a divorce (see Divorce in the Bible and Divorce in Judaism); whereas Paul, working with Gentile congregations, assumes they could as a matter of course in his own teachings on divorce (in 1 Corinthians 7). Mark then has Jesus teach essentially what Paul did. Which shows Mark has gotten Jesus’s teaching through the filter of Paul. Just as Paul says, “A wife must not separate from her husband, but if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband,” Mark’s Jesus says “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her and if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” It’s the same teaching. Yet this specific form of it can only have come from Paul, not Jesus.

Another example is how Mark 14:36 puts in the mouth of Jesus Paul’s repeated duplicative “Abba, Father” (despite both words meaning the same thing, in Romans 8:15 & Galatians 4:6), and does so in a similar context: Mark has Jesus utter it in a prayer for strength to endure and not fall away from his faith in God’s salvation; and Paul references it in discussing precisely the same subject (Galatians 4:7-20 & Romans 8:16-30). In fact the parallels are so apposite, the otherwise inexplicable narrative in Mark (why is Jesus, who well knows who he is and what will really happen, at all concerned about this?) makes more sense when read in light of these passages in Paul, as if Mark knew a reading of Paul would complete one’s understanding of what he was narratively portraying: Jesus as a model for the ideal Christian believer, and as a fellow heir to the promise of resurrection.

Similarly, Mark 8:31-33 crafts Jesus’s rebuke of Peter after Paul’s rebuke of Peter (Galatians 2:11-14). The many congruences are well analyzed in Dykstra (Mark, pp. 97-99). For example, Paul says, “Am I now seeking the favor or men, or of God?”; Jesus says, “You are not thinking of the things of God but of the things of man.” Then Mark 8:34-37 adapts material from Philippians 3:7-8. For example, Paul says, “Whatever gain [kerdê] I had, I counted as a loss [zêmian]” and “I suffered the loss [zêmian] of all…that I may gain [kêrdêsô] Christ”; Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain [kêrdêsai] the whole world and lose [zêmiôthênai] his life?” rather than, Jesus explains, “losing” all for Christ and his gospel in exchange for eternal life. The links continue (as summarized by Dykstra), but you get the point.

 

[joelr]

I've already told you that Paul never ever described anything that Jesus ever said or did (apart from those last hours) and so Carrier can't use Paul letters to rebunk the Jesus story.

It's just simple evaluation........

And on and on…

• Mark also reifies Paul’s teachings about Christian baptism being an adoption by God as his son (compare Mark 1:11 with Romans 8:14-17 and Galatians 3:26-27).
• Mark repeatedly has Jesus refer to his future Christian followers as “children” (at least thirteen times), just as Paul did (at least twenty-eight times: in Philippians, Romans, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians; likewise Hebrews).
• Mark is conspicuously as fond of the “stumbling block” metaphor for sin as Paul was (compare Mark 4:17, 6:3, 14:27, 14:29, and especially Mark 9:42-47, with Romans 9:32-33, Romans 11:9-11, Romans 14:13-20, 1 Corinthians 1:23, 1 Corinthians 8:9, 1 Corinthians 8:13, 1 Corinthians 10:32, 2 Corinthians 6:3); and in another odd agreement, both include frequent admonishment against “causing” others to stumble.
• Mark is equally as fond of the “kingdom of God” metaphor as Paul was.
• Mark gets the idea from Paul (in Philippians 3:5-6) that “Pharisees” persecute Christians, and thus makes the Pharisees into Jesus’s main foils—even though in fact most real Pharisees would have actually taken Jesus’s position in nearly every argument Mark depicts (more then being in the tradition of Hillel than the more conservative Shammai: see Harvey Falk, Jesus the Pharisee from 1985, and Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee, from 2003).
• Mark gets the idea from Paul (in Galatians 2:7-9 and 1 Corinthians 15:5) that there were originally twelve apostles and that the “pillars” were Peter, James and John, with Peter at the top, and James and John his right hand men; and in exact accord with Paul’s criticism of them, Mark depicts them as hypocritical and faltering (as well analyzed in Dykstra, Mark, pp. 109-25).
• Mark also gets from Paul the idea of messianic secrecy, a weird yet repeated theme in Mark’s Gospel, Paul having said Jesus’s identity was kept “a mystery,” “hidden,” so that “none of the rulers of this age understood it,” lest by knowing who he was they’d stop the crucifixion (from 1 Corinthians 2:6-10).
• Mark could even get the idea from Paul of having Jesus announce himself everywhere as a “Son of Adam” (the actual meaning of “Son of Man” as adapted from the then-familiar Septuagint expression), Paul having called Jesus “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), and Hebrews 2:5-9 identifying Jesus with a prophesied “Son of Man.”

These curious parallels continue. For instance, have you ever wondered where Mark got the idea of inventing a whole narrative sequence of Jesus emulating Moses in miraculously feeding the multitudes in the desert and crossing and manipulating the sea? Just read Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:1-4:

Our ancestors were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

The coincidence is improbable even unto itself; even more so in conjunction with all the other examples, above and below. As I show in OHJ, this sequence in Mark is elegantly constructed and definitely fictional (pp. 412-18). We can see now he was allegorizing the teachings of Paul. By contrast, Paul has no knowledge of any such stories about Jesus. The direction of influence is thus apparent.

Likewise, Mark 4:9-20 describes spreading the Gospel as like “sowing” seeds, exactly as Paul does (1 Corinthians 9:11); equates evangelizing as cultivating a field, exactly as Paul does (1 Corinthians 3:9); uses the “root” as a metaphor for one’s inner depth of commitment, exactly as Paul was believed to have (Colossians 2:7 & Ephesians 3:17); and uses the same words in the same metaphor of increasing one’s agricultural yield by spreading the gospel on good ground (auxanomena, “increasing,” and karpophorousin, “bearing fruit,” in Colossians 1:5-10). Which is another case where “Paul” is speaking his own mind, in his own words and his own metaphor, which Mark has converted into something taught by Jesus. The author of Colossians had no idea Jesus ever could be quoted in that passage, because Jesus never said any of that. Mark invented it—using Colossians.

 

[joelr]

I've already told you that Paul never ever described anything that Jesus ever said or did (apart from those last hours) and so Carrier can't use Paul letters to rebunk the Jesus story.

It's just simple evaluation........

Likewise Mark 12:1-11 relates the parable of the wicked tenants, in which “the beloved son” they kill (obviously Jesus) after several other messengers had been sent and abused (obviously the prophets of old), specifically because this son is the designated “heir,” and so they will inherit, which is a peculiar detail to add, unnecessary to the story. Indeed it would be weird that mere renters would think they were next in line to inherit the property. But this all tracks exactly the teachings of Paul: the Epistles often describe Jesus as God’s “heir” (e.g. Hebrews 1:2, Romans 8:17, Galatians 3); and with respect to the parable’s message, in Romans 11:1-10 Paul speaks on the same subject, quoting scripture in verse 3, “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me.” This is then immediately explicated using a similar tending-to-agriculture metaphor (Romans 11:11-24), teaching exactly the same lesson as Mark’s parable. Basically Mark’s entire parable comes out of Romans 11. Paul, meanwhile, had never heard of it, and thus never knew he could have quoted Jesus to bolster his teaching the same point. Because Mark invented it—using Romans.

Even overall Mark’s whole Gospel feels like it has been inspired by Paul’s teachings. Its narrative is inordinately concerned with Gentiles and the criticism of Jewish legalism. Jesus is portrayed as constantly trashing Jewish laws and traditions, embarrassing and pissing off their advocates, even while justifying it all as a superior actualization of Judaism—just as Paul does throughout his letters (see Dykstra, Mark, pp. 82-90). And Jesus visits Gentile lands, dines with Gentiles, interacts with Gentiles favorably quite a lot, and Mark has even carefully structured his whole book to emphasize this fact (see OHJ, pp. 414-17, with further support in Dykstra, Mark, pp. 69-82, 131-32). It’s all an important part of Mark’s message—which makes little sense as history, but perfect sense as a narrativization of Paul’s mission and theology.

In fact, Mark’s entire choice of Galilee as the land Jesus comes from and spends most of his time in—and after his resurrection tells his followers to go to to find him (Mark 16:7)—may have been inspired by this very connection: for it was known as “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 9:1) precisely because of its peculiar Gentile connections and presence. Mark’s messaging could hardly be clearer. And indeed, the fact that it was so-known in a prophecy that the messiah would indeed come from there (Isaiah 9:1-7) would give Mark a double cause for choosing it as his primary setting.


Specific Examples
There are many more examples. Just consider the following list, adapted from a list collected by Michael Turton that David Oliver Smith also subsequently worked from, and which I’ve expanded with a few examples from other scholars I listed, especially Dykstra and Nelligan:

• Mark 1:1 uses Paul’s phrase “the beginning of the Gospel” verbatim (Philippians 4:15); and “Gospel of Christ,” otherwise unique to Paul (e.g. Romans 15:19, 1 Corinthians 9:12, 2 Corinthians 2:12, Galatians 1:7, 1 Thessalonians 3:2).
• Paul then goes on to talk about how he was sent forth to preach it; likewise Mark immediately follows with a quotation of Isaiah declaring God hath sent his messenger, only switching the reference from Paul to John the Baptist introducing Jesus, the Gospel-reified. Dykstra also makes a good case that Mark has modeled his John the Baptist after Paul (Mark, pp. 147-48).
• Mark 1:14 uses Paul’s phrase “Gospel of God,” verbatim (Romans 15:6; 2 Thessalonians 2:2), and when introducing the rest of his narrative purpose (just as Paul does in Romans 1:1).
• Mark then immediately juxtaposes the Gospel with manual labor (in Mark 1:16-20) just as Paul does (in 1 Thessalonians 2:9).
• Mark 1:29-31 indirectly reveals Peter was married, just as Paul indirectly reveals Peter was married (1 Corinthians 9:5).

 

[joelr]

I've already told you that Paul never ever described anything that Jesus ever said or did (apart from those last hours) and so Carrier can't use Paul letters to rebunk the Jesus story.

It's just simple evaluation........

• Mark 2:16 describes Jesus being wrongly chastised by Pharisees (Mark’s principal stand-in for any arch-conservative Jews) for eating and drinking with “sinners and tax collectors” (i.e. Gentiles), just as Paul describes Peter being wrongly chastised by conservative Jews for doing the same thing (Galatians 2:11-14). Mark and Paul’s message is the same.
• Mark 3:1-5 borrows themes and vocabulary from Paul’s discussions of the very same issue: Jesus looks upon his Jewish critics “with anger [orgês] and grieved [sullupoumenos] at their hardness [pôrôsei] of heart”; in Romans 9 Paul said he was for that very same reason grieved [lupê, v. 2] and God was for that very same reason angry [orgên, v. 22] at their hardness [v. 18], which Paul later describes with the same word used by Mark [pôrôsis, 11:25].
• Mark 4:10-13 relates Mark’s model for the whole Gospel as disguising deeper truths allegorically within seemingly literal stories (“parables”); and in doing so declares that the uninitiated will not be allowed to see or hear the real meaning, just as Paul says (in e.g. Romans 11:7-10, 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, etc.).
• Mark 6:7 imagines Jesus sending missionaries in pairs; Paul often says he was paired with someone on his missions (1 Corinthians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 9:6; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Philippians 2:22; Philemon 1:1).
• Mark 6:8-10 has Jesus assume missionaries will be fed and housed by others, reifying into visceral and poetic terms Paul’s mention of the fact that “the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14).
• Mark 7:20-23 lists as the sins that make one unclean “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” Accordingly, Paul says, “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) and likewise those who pursue “envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice” and are “gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful” (Romans 1:29-31); and elsewhere says those will be excluded from the kingdom who pursue “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21). The other lists are nearly identical, Mark only ending with the catch-all “arrogance and folly” to encompass the otherwise-unmentioned idolatry, God-hating, insolence, drunkenness, strife, boasting and gossiping and so forth (while lewdness is a catch-all that would include “men who have sex with men” and “orgies” etc.).
• Mark 7:26-29 reifies into a whole story the sentiment of Paul that God’s rewards must go to the Jew first, the Gentile second (Romans 1:16).
• Mark 8:12 has Jesus lament to the Jews, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it,” reifying Paul’s declaration of the very same thing, that only in their folly “Jews demand signs,” which renders the Gospel “a stumbling block” to them (1 Corinthians 1:22-23).
• Mark 8:15 has Jesus warn against “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod,” thus reifying into allegorical story-form Paul’s more general warning against “the leaven of malice and wickedness” (1 Corinthians 5:8).
• Mark 8:17-18 has Jesus declare, “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?” echoing Paul’s citation of scripture on the same point, that only insiders will correctly see and hear, and thus “get the point” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10); a concept I just noted Mark had reified earlier in Jesus’s explanation of secret teachings (Mark 4:10-13), which really is a key to Mark’s entire Gospel, including the scene in Mark 8, which isn’t really about Jesus having historically created food, but is an allegory for the Gospel itself.
• In that same passage, Mark has Jesus seemingly quote Isaiah 6:9, just as Paul does in making the same point in Romans 11:8. But in Isaiah the order is hearing, then seeing; Paul switched the order to seeing, then hearing. Thus the fact that Mark also did that further evinces his reliance on Paul.
• Mark 9:34-35 has Jesus say, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and the slave of all” (and Mark 10:43-44 likewise); Paul said he was the “last” of those chosen and “the least” of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:8-9) and had made himself “a slave to all” (1 Corinthians 9:19).
• Mark 9:43-47 has Jesus advocate cutting off your hand or foot or eye that provokes you to sin, lest you be cast into hell; but this may be an allegory for banishing members of the community who provoke brethren to sin—because Paul likened the brethren to limbs of a body (1 Corinthians 12:12-31), and recommends banishing sinners from the community, literally “handing them over to Satan for destruction of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 5:4-7), just as Mark has Jesus speak of sinners being cast into hell to destruction.
• Mark 9:50 has Jesus declare “be at peace with each other,” which teaching comes from Paul, not Jesus: Paul says “be at peace with each other” (1 Thessalonians 5:13), again without any knowledge of Jesus having said this.
• Mark 10 has Jesus give the same reason God burdened the Jews with Torah law that Paul does (e.g. in Romans 7 and Galatians 3).
• Mark 11:22-26 has Jesus claim faith can move mountains, as long as one has belief and forgiveness in one’s heart. Paul wrote, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).
• Mark 12:35-37 quotes the same messianic verse that Paul does (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).

 

[joelr]

I've already told you that Paul never ever described anything that Jesus ever said or did (apart from those last hours) and so Carrier can't use Paul letters to rebunk the Jesus story.

It's just simple evaluation........

Parables & Miracles: A Markan Invention
Depicting Jesus as teaching through “parables” appears to be an invention of Mark. It’s nowhere in Paul (or 1 Peter or Hebrews or 1 Clement or any earlier account of how and what Jesus taught). Mark is thus the most likely inventor of that technique, which later Evangelists picked up and riffed on, building their own parables on Mark’s model and attributing them to their versions of Jesus. Occam’s Razor leads to no other conclusion. No evidence of any kind leads to any other conclusion.

Most scholars still confidently assume parables were distinctive of Jesus…on a basis of no evidence at all, and some evidence against. More likely the parable was simply one of the innovative ways Mark chose to “reify” the teachings of Paul and the Pauline community by creating a version of “Jesus the clever preacher,” in much the same way as other ancients relied on cleverly contrived sage myths (from Aesop to The Seven Sages to legendary Rabbis) to communicate their own thoughts, values, and mores. It’s how Mark even composed his own Gospel, as merely a system of parables featuring Jesus as a character (as rightly argued in J.D. Crossan’s The Power of Parable).

This ancient practice of invention was literally a mainstay of Greek education at the time, taught everywhere at the composition stage of learning, which we know all the Gospel authors had gone through, for they could not be composing such literary works without it, and their techniques match what was taught in schools of the time (see OHJ, pp. 397-98), and resemble how other ancient authors composed fiction about both mythical and historical persons (see OHJ, pp. 218-19), albeit with a strong syncretic influence from Jewish literary traditions and techniques as well (such as found in Deuteronomy, Daniel, the Kings and Samuel literature, and more recent novels and mythography, too, from Tobit to the Biblical Antiquities).

Mark also invented all the miracle stories, which subsequent Evangelists again riffed on, constructing new like tales from Mark’s model. Because Paul has no knowledge of Jesus having worked miracles or exorcisms. In fact, Paul says Jesus abandoned all his powers in the incarnation (Philippians 2:6-7), and worked no wonders or signs (1 Corinthians 1:21-24). Rather, Paul implies Jesus acquired these powers after his resurrection (Philippians 2:9-10), and thus bestowed them upon those living “in Christ,” thereby sharing his spirit within his new body, the Church. Hence the only miracles and exorcising of demons (which Paul calls works “of power”) that Paul has any knowledge of are the eschatological powers now manifest in the Church (cf. 2 Cor. 12:12, 1 Thess. 1:5; a conclusion corroborated by Hebrews 2:3-4), which include exorcism, healing, and prophecy. So Mark must have invented the idea of Jesus as exorcist and miracle worker, as a model for, and based on, Christian missionaries.
Mark invented the miracle stories to the same purpose: in some cases as models for missionaries who likewise performed them (and thereby faced the same problems of miracles failing to succeed or evoking accusations of insanity or Satanic influence, and so on), but also as allegories for the message of the Gospel (the power of the Christian community to feed the poor reified as a miraculous multiplying of loaves and fishes, of faith moving mountains reified in walking on water and calming storms, of God’s cursing of the temple cult in the image of a fig tree, and so on). I analyze numerous examples in Ch. 10.4 of On the Historicity of Jesus. Mark is weaving these stories to convey a deeper meaning than the literal narrative pretends. And he is doing it creatively, using models from the Septuagint (e.g. Moses and Elijah) and other pagan and Jewish lore.

If most of it is like this—fiction Mark has obviously contrived for his own purposes and from various literary and contemporary models—why should we assume any of Mark is anything else but more of the same? Wholesale invention of discourses for Jesus, miracles for Jesus, storylines for Jesus, is unquestionably a fact, as much in Mark as in dozens of other Gospels. So “it can’t have happened” is no argument against concluding it did.


Conclusion
Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, possibly even Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left.

We have very good evidence for all these sources. For example, that Mark emulates stories and lifts ideas from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, the Kings literature, and so on, is well established and not rationally deniable. That he likewise lifts from and riffs on Paul’s Epistles is, as you can now see, fairly hard to deny. By contrast, we have exactly no evidence whatever that anything in Mark came to him by oral tradition. It is thus curious that anyone still assumes some of it did. That Mark’s sources and methods were literary is well proved.

 

[oldbadger]

Wrong. Mark created the Jesus story from Paul's letters, and other fiction.

Paul did not write down one single anecdote, account, action or anything else about Jesus (apart from the last hours).

Nothing. Zilch. So any scholar's proposals that Mark wrote the whole account based upon Pauline comments is........... junk.

 

[oldbadger]

L

Specific Examples
There are many more examples. Just consider the following list, adapted from a list collected by Michael Turton that David Oliver Smith also subsequently worked from, and which I’ve expanded with a few examples from other scholars I listed, especially Dykstra and Nelligan:

• Mark 1:1 uses Paul’s phrase “the beginning of the Gospel” verbatim (Philippians 4:15); and “Gospel of Christ,” otherwise unique to Paul (e.g. Romans 15:19, 1 Corinthians 9:12, 2 Corinthians 2:12, Galatians 1:7, 1 Thessalonians 3:2).

Mark 1:1 did not exist (as it does now) in the earliest copies. It's just a foreword about the gospel, is all.

• Paul then goes on to talk about how he was sent forth to preach it; likewise Mark immediately follows with a quotation of Isaiah declaring God hath sent his messenger, only switching the reference from Paul to John the Baptist introducing Jesus, the Gospel-reified. Dykstra also makes a good case that Mark has modeled his John the Baptist after Paul (Mark, pp. 147-48).
• Mark 1:14 uses Paul’s phrase “Gospel of God,” verbatim (Romans 15:6; 2 Thessalonians 2:2), and when introducing the rest of his narrative purpose (just as Paul does in Romans 1:1).

• This is yet more Christian editing....
• Can we get to the actual account about what Jesus actually did?

• [*]Mark then immediately juxtaposes the Gospel with manual labor (in Mark 1:16-20) just as Paul does (in 1 Thessalonians 2:9).

• No......... Jesus saw, walked up to and spoke with Peter and Andrew, working on/with their nets. A simple account .......

• [*]Mark 1:29-31 indirectly reveals Peter was married, just as Paul indirectly reveals Peter was married (1 Corinthians 9:5).

No. Peter/Cephas was definitely married.
Mark {1:29} And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the
house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. {1:30} But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her.

And since Paul knew Cephas personally, of course he knew that Cephas was married.

Who are these idiots you quote from?

I must go out, feed the ducks, the hounds, take my wife out. I'll come back to this mess later.

 

[Sheldon]

Yes.......... I think that every single law came about through human common sense and wisdom.
But that's my point.......... there is so much about bible accounts and the gospel accounts that is true.
They need reviewing with care, is all.

Like stoning your child to death? Or keeping slaves?

 

[Sheldon]

Mark did not witness anything, hence the reason for all Christian scholarship saying the gospels are anonymous.

That was my understanding as well, Mark is just a name (1 of 4) assigned to an anonymous gospels, most scholars date the text assigned the name Mark to no earlier than 66–74 AD. So to claim "he" knew Jesus or was an eyewitness to anything written in it is not supported by the evidence.

Though of course even were this not the case, supernatural claims can't really be objectively evidenced by bare claims in a book.

 

[joelr]

Paul did not write down one single anecdote, account, action or anything else about Jesus (apart from the last hours).

Nothing. Zilch. So any scholar's proposals that Mark wrote the whole account based upon Pauline comments is........... junk.

Paul wrote down things the spirit Jesus told him. Fiction.

Could you try to make one correct statement? First it's clear Mark used Pauls letters among other sources. But you failed to debunk even one example. Total fail.
Way to make a strawnam argument with YET AGAIN zero evidence or debunking one single example.

"Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, possibly even Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left."

 

[joelr]

Mark 1:1 did not exist (as it does now) in the earliest copies. It's just a foreword about the gospel, is all.

Please link to an original source of the earliest Mark gospel to prove your point. Mark is on original work of fiction based on other fiction.
YOu have yet to debunk one example and have provided fantasy and speculation. It's beyond clear thyat you are content living in your fantasy world. I spend time debating to look for information. This is a giant waste of time with a dishonest debater.
Let's be clear on what we know bout Mark. Bart Ehrman -

"
Mark’s Gospel was written around 70 CE. We don’t have any copy of any kind of Mark until around 200 CE – and that copy is highly fragmentary: it contains *portions* (sometimes just a few verses) of just eight of the Gospels sixteen chapters. don’t have a complete Gospel until around 370 CE. That is to say, the *first* full copy is 300 years after the original, 300 years during which the book had been copied, and recopied, and recopied, with all the copyists making small or big mistakes (and then of course the errant copies are copied by scribes who make further mistakes and their copies are copied and… and so it goes for three centuries before we have any copy based on these copies of the copies of the copies.)

Given that state of affairs, how can we possibly know what Mark himself wrote? We usually suppose (or at least I do) that we have a pretty good idea for most of the pasages of the book. But can we be *sure*? And in *all* places? My view is: we *can’t*. There are lots and lots of places, some of them significant, where we simply don’t know and can’t know."
Finally! Now We Know. The "First-Century Copy" of Mark | The Bart Ehrman Blog

• This is yet more Christian editing....
• Can we get to the actual account about what Jesus actually did?

Jesus is fiction. If you think there is an actual account of a real Jesus give it and provide a source.

• [*]No......... Jesus saw, walked up to and spoke with Peter and Andrew, working on/with their nets. A simple account .......

Yes and Carrier is demonstrating how Mark uses a similar literary device as Paul. You are not commenting on that at all? How is saying "a simple account" making any point?
Carrier is detailing places where it appears Mark is using Paul to create a story. It's the bulk of the examples that is evidence. Some examples are close to definitive and others are a bit vague.
But we can say for a fact that Mark is reifying some of Paul's work, like with the last supper.
So if we can show he did in fact base his story on Paul at least one time then the other examples are very likely also true.

You already admitted the last supper story is an obvious creation based on a revelation where Jesus is giving Paul a message to future Christians about he is the "body and blood" and so on. Mark changes this to an actual supper. So we know he's doing this which gives weight to other suspicious examples.

No. Peter/Cephas was definitely married.
Mark {1:29} And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the
house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. {1:30} But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her.

And since Paul knew Cephas personally, of course he knew that Cephas was married.

Who are these idiots you quote from?

Yes Mark is writing fiction. If there is a point here you have to make it instead of rambling.

What Carrier is demonstrating is that Mark is taking things Paul said and using them in his narrative.
You don't even seem to understand the basic point of this post?
The only things you attempt to debunk are not even points being made. What a disaster???

 

[joelr]

That was my understanding as well, Mark is just a name (1 of 4) assigned to an anonymous gospels, most scholars date the text assigned the name Mark to no earlier than 66–74 AD. So to claim "he" knew Jesus or was an eyewitness to anything written in it is not supported by the evidence.

Though of course even were this not the case, supernatural claims can't really be objectively evidenced by bare claims in a book.

Right it doesn't matter either way but the lengths people go to keep their beliefs being true is really something.
I agree even if Mark claimed to be best friends with Jesus it wouldn't make a difference. It might with the historicity debate but it doesn't confirm miracles. Even most fundamentalists scholars won't make the claim that Mark knew Jesus.

 

[oldbadger]

Like stoning your child to death? Or keeping slaves?

I don't accept slavery today, nor back then............ I don't accept many of those old laws for today, but back then...... ?
Under what circumstances did the Israelites stone their children? Can you show the exact verses?

 

[oldbadger]

That was my understanding as well, Mark is just a name (1 of 4) assigned to an anonymous gospels, most scholars date the text assigned the name Mark to no earlier than 66–74 AD. So to claim "he" knew Jesus or was an eyewitness to anything written in it is not supported by the evidence.

To remember and write about incidents 30-40 years afterwards is not uncommon. I can remember incidents from up to 68 years ago myself.

Though of course even were this not the case, supernatural claims can't really be objectively evidenced by bare claims in a book.

So just dump the supernatural claims, or find out how they came about, maybe?

 

[oldbadger]

Paul wrote down things the spirit Jesus told him. Fiction.

This thread is about the gospels. To wander off to anything about Paul is just some kind of attention deficit, maybe?

Could you try to make one correct statement? First it's clear Mark used Pauls letters among other sources. But you failed to debunk even one example. Total fail.
Way to make a strawnam argument with YET AGAIN zero evidence or debunking one single example.

Hot air and wind cannot win debates, Joel.
You just didn't like it when I threw your examples in the bin including the verses that you wanted to trash. ....... leaving you with masses and masses of verses which you haven't been able to touch.

"Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, possibly even Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left."

You've been asked to present the bad stuff, which I have trashed anyway, and you cannot find anything else. Your long winded waffle has been halted by short, concise and clear posts that anybody who has actually researched and reviewed the gospels for themselves could manage with ease.
Any 9yr old who know the gospels could beat you.


Specific Points:-
You have been forced to admit that:-
You have mentioned Cephas (Peter) who obviously was a real person. No myth.
You have admitted that the Baptist was a real person. No myth.
There was a Great Temple.
There was a corrupt Priesthood.
There was a corrupt and very fraudulent Money bazaar in the Temple. (Anna's Bazaar)

So the reasons behind what Jesus really did ......are all present.

So you cannot be a true myther, Joel, or you wouldn't admit to any of it, but you do.

 

[oldbadger]

Please link to an original source of the earliest Mark gospel to prove your point. Mark is on original work of fiction based on other fiction.

Already shown in the NIV Bible....... The NIV tells us that verse 1:1 was edited etc.

YOu have yet to debunk one example and have provided fantasy and speculation. It's beyond clear thyat you are content living in your fantasy world. I spend time debating to look for information. This is a giant waste of time with a dishonest debater.

Joel........ your long winded waffle got washed away as soon as you had to show that the basic story was speculation. All you could do was hide behind the miracles and events of the last days.
As soo as I told you to junk these you hadn't got anything to wave about, hence your aggression.

Let's be clear on what we know bout Mark. Bart Ehrman -

I do wish Ehrman would come here. Let's be clear about what we know about Bart Ehrman's ideas:-
He writes stuff like:-
One of the points I always argue in this kind of debate is that we simply don’t have early manuscripts to help us know what the originals of the New Testament said. I usually use Mark as an example. Mark’s Gospel was written around 70 CE. We don’t have any copy of any kind of Mark until around 200 CE .........
And on. Ehrman has no idea about when the first gospel was written...... none. He doesn't know when or where the true story was written, and he certainly doesn't know how the Jesus story survived through oral tradition until writ.

He goes on..... Given that state of affairs, how can we possibly know what Mark himself wrote? We usually suppose (or at least I do) that we have a pretty good idea for most of the pasages of the book. But can we be *sure*? And in *all* places? My view is: we *can’t*.

Bart Ehrmann cannot be sure....... if he would only investigate the background, the situation, the geography, the politics etc that was going on he might actually be a useful source of info.
It's no good to wave an Ehrman flag around, you need to be able to show a case yourself.

Jesus is fiction. If you think there is an actual account of a real Jesus give it and provide a source.

The Gospel of Mark, sieved of religious stuff.
Anecdotes and info from the other gospels.
Josephus's mention of Jesus.
Mention of Jesus by Christian enemies.

Plus the political, numismatic, geographical, archeological, historical backgrounds to early 1st century Palestine.

Get studying!

Yes and Carrier is demonstrating how Mark uses a similar literary device as Paul.

You already admitted the last supper story is an obvious creation based on a revelation where Jesus is giving Paul a message to future Christians about he is the "body and blood" and so on. Mark changes this to an actual supper. So we know he's doing this which gives weight to other suspicious examples.

So junk it!!!!! And then what? What's after that?

There could well have been some meal taken together that was memorable. The Passover meal was taken away for consumption although some researchers tell us that refectories were there in the Temple for those who chose to take the meal there.

I'm not bothered about Carrier's waffle about the copying of Paul's mentions in to the gospels! YOu can junk all that and there is still the original story left behind. I've already told you that Paul did not write and single sentence about anything that Jesus did or said in the whole campaign, (except for the last 36 hours). So anything that Carrier moans about can be trashed out, leaving the rest for scrutiny.

 

[oldbadger]

Like stoning your child to death? Or keeping slaves?

By the way, since Jesus was clearly a social justice campaigner, you can imagine what he thought about slavery and any unjust executions.

His whole campaign followed that of the Baptist for a fair deal for all the peasant classes (there was no middle class). He was the kind of man that I would have wanted to support, and maybe even you if you believe in ending unreasonable wealth and unreasonable poverty?