He is almost certainly is fictional. I don't see at all why you think it matters what people did after his supposed existence. Also not sure where you are getting bitterly opposed. Paul was sending money to the Church of Jerusalem. He argued but you don't give free money to people you bitterly oppose. You also don't write a letter saying how the leaders were good people. The fighting really started as Christianity moved into power and little spats made a difference. Plus you know we have no evidence that Buddhism had that fighting after Siddharth death and the Mormons didn't break out into civil war after Smith died. Scientologists are also doing fine.
Every detail of his supposed life was pulled from literature available and was to generate a specific result. We can also see where they were taking "known" facts at the time and misrepresenting them to try to get what they want.
Jebus never condemned Hummus. Look it up in the Bibble. It’s not there.
For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles.
2 Cor 11:4-5
Corinth then later on full on deposed Rome's appointees which led to the letter from the bishop of Rome, 1 Clement that's almost entirely devoted to trying to damage control the schism.
And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), “Let us do evil so that good may come”? Their judgment is deserved!
Romans 3:8
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!
Galatians 1:6-9
You can even see some of the specific concepts that there was a schism about, such as whether there was an over-realized eschatology:
As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 (likely a bit later than Paul)
Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying resurrection has already occurred. They are upsetting the faith of some.
2 Timothy 2:16-18
So I'm not sure where you get the notion there was one big happy family of Christian thought in Paul's time and the later 1st century CE when literally the earliest records of Christianity we have are so concerned with competing traditions and ideas. You may be mistaking the survivorship bias of cannonical Christianity eradicating most competing thought later on for a picture of unity (as that's what they try to project) which is why a closer read is warranted.
Plus you know we have no evidence that Buddhism had that fighting after Siddharth death
It had that fighting even before Siddhartha's death when his brother in law Devadatta broke away to form his own group.
Mormons didn't break out into civil war after Smith died.
You might want to look into the Free Zone schisms from Scientology near and after L Ron's death.
Again. Having small disagreements a generation after the fake death of Jesus doesn't prove that Jesus existed. You are goalpost moving now. You went from bitterly opposed to having literal anything but perfect harmony.
Now do you have anything better than Paul sounded a bit peeved in a letter and your claim with no evidence whatsoever that religious shishms are required for unknown reasons? Got to give you credit this is by far the worst argument I have heard for your Messiah existing. Because people argued he couldn't be real. I am glad no one ever argues about fiction and toxic fanbases don't exist.
Oh and for the record he didn't write Timothy. I am sure a biblical scholar such as yourself knew that already.
"Everything is permissible for me" is a small disagreement with canonical Christianity?
Oh and for the record he didn't write Timothy. I am sure a biblical scholar such as yourself knew that already.
It's largely based on outdated tautology dating anything with a whiff of Gnosticism to the 2nd century which only changed up around the turn of the 21st century.
I'd happily wager with you that attitudes around 2 Timothy's grouping with 1 Timothy and Titus (which are forgeries) won't last another 15 years.
P.S. How many of those scholars think there was no historical Jesus?
He was still sending them money and I am not going into the Duetropaul argument since it proves nothing.
P.S. do you know what an argument from authority logical fallacy is? Especially since you are going against the grain with your dating of the Gospel of Thomas. Did you know that around 60% of polled Bible scholars believe the resurrection is a true literal historical event?
Duetropaul, like the drag race? Holy Ghost, it’s real.
Huh? There are 13 letters in the NT that are ascribed to Paul. Of them 7 modern scholarship thinks he wrote and the others are forgeries. It was a rampant problem in the Roman Empire people would write books under a different person's name for revenge or other reasons. Some people believe however that there are still elements of Paul spoken word in the fake letters, I am on the fence about that.
It is kinda interesting to consider it. There are 27 books in the NT, and of them only 8 are written by the person who was ascribed as the author traditionally. So much for the Bible being a good source of knowledge about what was going on.
Thanks. I did not know this. Guess I have to get back to watching the Gnostic Informant.
No problem. Really anything from Bart Erhman would give you much more than you would ever want to know. Yes I disagree with the man on a few things but 99% of stuff we are in agreement on.
He just showed up in my YouTube recommendations, weird. I’m watching Doctor Who though.
He was still sending them money
How do you know? Because he says so in the letters?
It's worth looking a bit closer at the fine details...
For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.
Philippians 4:16-18
Interesting. Paul is getting fancy fragrances sent to him?
Should we be upset about this?
Well wait a second, what do those later cannonical gospels say?
While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me.
Mark 14:3-6
Pretty weird how Paul accepting an expensive fragrance is paralleled in the gospels with Jesus being gifted an expensive fragrance as being a good thing.
I'd be very skeptical of just how much of the money Paul was collecting was being used for its stated purposes.
How much would be enough money to no longer be bitterly opposed? Be exact. The exact coinage needed.
Or you know you can drop this indefensible position that if there is a schism it means there was founder. Since again you have zero evidence of this theorem. I promise to let it die.
Thanks you for admitting the Mark was not writing the history of Jesus, he was writing the history of Paul. I am glad we agree that Mark said nothing about the historical Jesus.
Thanks you for admitting the Mark was not writing the history of Jesus, he was writing the history of Paul. I am glad we agree that Mark said nothing about the historical Jesus.
That's not what I said and you know it.
You seem in this reply and your others to be much more interested in debating a strawman than actual nuance around textual criticism.
That's arguably even easier to do without me replying at all where you would need to twist what I was saying to do so.
If you are ever interested in actually discussing the material seriously, I'll be around.
Pretty sure you did say that. The best source we got for the guy you have admitted wasn't even talking about him.
In one small, nuanced part.
Fine answer me this. Given what we know about the book. That the author lied when it suited narrative flow, that he copied off the OT, that he was trying to tell Jesus in the image of Paul, and that he was trying to downplay the 12+Cephus+James...given all this tell me how you objectively determine which parts are from the oral tradition (that we can't prove existed at all or that it was accurate) and which are not?
There's a number of ways to sort out what predated Mark or was in an earlier redactional layer and what's in the latest layer of Mark.
One way would be looking at the fringe details that are at odds with canonical church theology and organization at the time it is written.
For example, "carry no purse" in Mark 6:8 would inhibit the ability to make monetary collections. It is very problematic for Paul, and you can even see in 1 Cor 9 that the Christian community in Corinth who he later accused of accepting a different version of Jesus and later depose Rome's appointees have attitudes against Paul's doing so which he's arguing against.
This makes its way via copying into both Matthew and Luke, but then in a post-Marcion version of Luke a line is added at the last supper explicitly reversing not carrying a purse.
Another is Mark 11:16, where he doesn't allow anyone to carry sacrifices through the temple. This isn't found in Luke or John, and Matthew who is copying it verbatim explicitly left out this part. It's a problem because what was carried through the temple were sin sacrifices, and Jesus hasn't died yet. Cannonical theology is that it was his death that wiped the record clean. So while the other gospels have no issue with his criticism of selling the sacrifices in front of the temple, prohibiting any sacrifices at all from being carried through the temple is a big problem.
Here too this seems more in line with the attitude in Corinth Paul was arguing against that "everything is permissible for me" - which it's worth noting he doesn't outright reject but instead tried to make a relativist argument around in interpretation.
Another way we can evaluate Mark is looking at competing textual traditions.
So in the first case above we see a similar but different statement in the middle of Thomas 14 which only endorses accepting food and shelter, and a number of unique sayings in agreement with the concept of not paying for religious service such as sayings 88, 21, and 109.
And again, we can see the similar attitudes pre-existing Paul's first letter in 1 Cor 9.
For this to be originating in Mark sometime after 70 CE seems highly unusual as it opposes Paul's fundraising efforts, mirrors earlier attitudes in Corinth, and reflects positions in sayings unique and similar to it in an extra-canonical text.
In terms of the second, an identical pattern emerges.
In Corinth Paul is arguing against the position that "everything is permissible," then later on in Mark is a line effectively prohibiting sin sacrifices, and in Thomas we see a similar attitude rejecting propiation and instead furthering a relative picture of morality in sayings 6 and 14.
As a bonus, saying 14 doesn't just cover no propiation and not carrying a purse, both mirroring ideas Paul is arguing against in Corinth, it also covers absolutely eradicating eating restrictions which Paul also argued against with Corinth without directly opposing it and instead appealing to a counter-interpretation based on relative mortality.
So you end up with this picture where Paul is arguing against something, Mark contains some offhand mention supporting the thing Paul was arguing against, later cannonical texts attempt to reverse that, and Thomas contains sayings similar but not identical to canonical sayings supporting those things in entirely different contexts as well as unique sayings that support the same positions.
This is exactly the pattern we should expect if Paul and the canonical tradition was actively working to undermine an earlier and separate tradition of teachings attributed to Jesus.
And here too, the concepts Paul and the later texts are arguing against happen to be in line with the Greek philosophy of Epicurus as recorded in Lucretius who complained that people were too caught up in worrying about what gods thought and there was no point in sacrificing, giving money to religion, or other religious obligations. A philosophy that has its other elements heavily engaged with across multiple sayings in Thomas and attributed with the opposition to the physical resurrection Paul is arguing against in 1 Cor 15.
Which then brings us back to things like Mark 4 where a saying about randomly scattered seeds where only what survives multiplied which even uses the specific phrase of "seed falling by the wayside of a path" - just like Leucretius used decades earlier to describe failed reproduction - is being depicted as being said in public. Followed by a private explanation which is one of only two explanations in antiquity about this parable, with the other being provided by the Thomasine tradition interpreting it in line with Lucretius's depictions of seeds as atomos and also using language identical to Lucretius's in doing so. A parable which appears in Thomas without the secret explanation of Mark and the other Synoptics.
I very much doubt Mark was inventing a parable paraphrasing Lucretius, then having it said in public but secretly explained with an interpretation at odds with Lucretius in private, and then a later tradition well after Lucretius was no longer popular reinterpreted it back to Lucretius using his language again in doing so, and that tradition just so happened to also have variations of several sayings in Mark which were problems for the earlier church and in agreement with opposing views in Corinth but in line with Lucretius's perspectives, as well as multiple unique sayings with similar attitudes. (Along with multiple sayings and ideas Paul seems to be quoting in his letter to Corinth.)
This is all much more easily explained by a pre-Pauline tradition that was influenced by and engaged with Epicurean philosophy and Lucretius specifically which was problematic for Paul's associations in Jerusalem which he and what later becomes the canonical church attempt to spin back towards conservative Judaism with increasing success over the next century, with Mark as one of the earliest attempts to do so in narrative form. But as the first attempt, it did so sloppily enough small parts of the opposed positions peek through before being better corrected by later efforts.
Wells argued except none of this tells me about what I asked. How do you know you are right? These are balance of probability arguments and I don't disagree that Mark had some element of an oral tradition he was bringing up, if nothing else the king of sabbath phrase proves that.
First we need a way to figure out what was part of the oral tradition and what was part of other books. Then we need to prove the oral tradition comes from an accurate source. We are not only dealing with generational hearsay we are dealing with it filtered through the mind of a liar.
To address your points more specifically. I don't have an explanation about the carrying purse and contradiction between that and the fundraising of Paul. I will look into it. It is an interesting point.
You mention Mark borrowing from Greek thinkers and while probably true does nothing to prove a historical Jesus. All it proves is that Mark was widely read which we know because empty tomb novels were floating around prior to his work.
He is almost certainly is fictional. I don't see at all why you think it matters what people did after his supposed existence. Also not sure where you are getting bitterly opposed. Paul was sending money to the Church of Jerusalem. He argued but you don't give free money to people you bitterly oppose. You also don't write a letter saying how the leaders were good people. The fighting really started as Christianity moved into power and little spats made a difference. Plus you know we have no evidence that Buddhism had that fighting after Siddharth death and the Mormons didn't break out into civil war after Smith died. Scientologists are also doing fine.
Every detail of his supposed life was pulled from literature available and was to generate a specific result. We can also see where they were taking "known" facts at the time and misrepresenting them to try to get what they want.
Jebus never condemned Hummus. Look it up in the Bibble. It’s not there.
Corinth then later on full on deposed Rome's appointees which led to the letter from the bishop of Rome, 1 Clement that's almost entirely devoted to trying to damage control the schism.
You can even see some of the specific concepts that there was a schism about, such as whether there was an over-realized eschatology:
So I'm not sure where you get the notion there was one big happy family of Christian thought in Paul's time and the later 1st century CE when literally the earliest records of Christianity we have are so concerned with competing traditions and ideas. You may be mistaking the survivorship bias of cannonical Christianity eradicating most competing thought later on for a picture of unity (as that's what they try to project) which is why a closer read is warranted.
It had that fighting even before Siddhartha's death when his brother in law Devadatta broke away to form his own group.
You might want to read up on the succession crisis
You might want to look into the Free Zone schisms from Scientology near and after L Ron's death.
Again. Having small disagreements a generation after the fake death of Jesus doesn't prove that Jesus existed. You are goalpost moving now. You went from bitterly opposed to having literal anything but perfect harmony.
Now do you have anything better than Paul sounded a bit peeved in a letter and your claim with no evidence whatsoever that religious shishms are required for unknown reasons? Got to give you credit this is by far the worst argument I have heard for your Messiah existing. Because people argued he couldn't be real. I am glad no one ever argues about fiction and toxic fanbases don't exist.
Oh and for the record he didn't write Timothy. I am sure a biblical scholar such as yourself knew that already.
"Everything is permissible for me" is a small disagreement with canonical Christianity?
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
It's largely based on outdated tautology dating anything with a whiff of Gnosticism to the 2nd century which only changed up around the turn of the 21st century.
I'd happily wager with you that attitudes around 2 Timothy's grouping with 1 Timothy and Titus (which are forgeries) won't last another 15 years.
P.S. How many of those scholars think there was no historical Jesus?
He was still sending them money and I am not going into the Duetropaul argument since it proves nothing.
P.S. do you know what an argument from authority logical fallacy is? Especially since you are going against the grain with your dating of the Gospel of Thomas. Did you know that around 60% of polled Bible scholars believe the resurrection is a true literal historical event?
Duetropaul, like the drag race? Holy Ghost, it’s real.
Huh? There are 13 letters in the NT that are ascribed to Paul. Of them 7 modern scholarship thinks he wrote and the others are forgeries. It was a rampant problem in the Roman Empire people would write books under a different person's name for revenge or other reasons. Some people believe however that there are still elements of Paul spoken word in the fake letters, I am on the fence about that.
It is kinda interesting to consider it. There are 27 books in the NT, and of them only 8 are written by the person who was ascribed as the author traditionally. So much for the Bible being a good source of knowledge about what was going on.
Thanks. I did not know this. Guess I have to get back to watching the Gnostic Informant.
No problem. Really anything from Bart Erhman would give you much more than you would ever want to know. Yes I disagree with the man on a few things but 99% of stuff we are in agreement on.
He just showed up in my YouTube recommendations, weird. I’m watching Doctor Who though.
How do you know? Because he says so in the letters?
It's worth looking a bit closer at the fine details...
Interesting. Paul is getting fancy fragrances sent to him?
Should we be upset about this?
Well wait a second, what do those later cannonical gospels say?
Pretty weird how Paul accepting an expensive fragrance is paralleled in the gospels with Jesus being gifted an expensive fragrance as being a good thing.
I'd be very skeptical of just how much of the money Paul was collecting was being used for its stated purposes.
How much would be enough money to no longer be bitterly opposed? Be exact. The exact coinage needed.
Or you know you can drop this indefensible position that if there is a schism it means there was founder. Since again you have zero evidence of this theorem. I promise to let it die.
Thanks you for admitting the Mark was not writing the history of Jesus, he was writing the history of Paul. I am glad we agree that Mark said nothing about the historical Jesus.
That's not what I said and you know it.
You seem in this reply and your others to be much more interested in debating a strawman than actual nuance around textual criticism.
That's arguably even easier to do without me replying at all where you would need to twist what I was saying to do so.
If you are ever interested in actually discussing the material seriously, I'll be around.
Pretty sure you did say that. The best source we got for the guy you have admitted wasn't even talking about him.
In one small, nuanced part.
Fine answer me this. Given what we know about the book. That the author lied when it suited narrative flow, that he copied off the OT, that he was trying to tell Jesus in the image of Paul, and that he was trying to downplay the 12+Cephus+James...given all this tell me how you objectively determine which parts are from the oral tradition (that we can't prove existed at all or that it was accurate) and which are not?
There's a number of ways to sort out what predated Mark or was in an earlier redactional layer and what's in the latest layer of Mark.
One way would be looking at the fringe details that are at odds with canonical church theology and organization at the time it is written.
For example, "carry no purse" in Mark 6:8 would inhibit the ability to make monetary collections. It is very problematic for Paul, and you can even see in 1 Cor 9 that the Christian community in Corinth who he later accused of accepting a different version of Jesus and later depose Rome's appointees have attitudes against Paul's doing so which he's arguing against.
This makes its way via copying into both Matthew and Luke, but then in a post-Marcion version of Luke a line is added at the last supper explicitly reversing not carrying a purse.
Another is Mark 11:16, where he doesn't allow anyone to carry sacrifices through the temple. This isn't found in Luke or John, and Matthew who is copying it verbatim explicitly left out this part. It's a problem because what was carried through the temple were sin sacrifices, and Jesus hasn't died yet. Cannonical theology is that it was his death that wiped the record clean. So while the other gospels have no issue with his criticism of selling the sacrifices in front of the temple, prohibiting any sacrifices at all from being carried through the temple is a big problem.
Here too this seems more in line with the attitude in Corinth Paul was arguing against that "everything is permissible for me" - which it's worth noting he doesn't outright reject but instead tried to make a relativist argument around in interpretation.
Another way we can evaluate Mark is looking at competing textual traditions.
So in the first case above we see a similar but different statement in the middle of Thomas 14 which only endorses accepting food and shelter, and a number of unique sayings in agreement with the concept of not paying for religious service such as sayings 88, 21, and 109.
And again, we can see the similar attitudes pre-existing Paul's first letter in 1 Cor 9.
For this to be originating in Mark sometime after 70 CE seems highly unusual as it opposes Paul's fundraising efforts, mirrors earlier attitudes in Corinth, and reflects positions in sayings unique and similar to it in an extra-canonical text.
In terms of the second, an identical pattern emerges.
In Corinth Paul is arguing against the position that "everything is permissible," then later on in Mark is a line effectively prohibiting sin sacrifices, and in Thomas we see a similar attitude rejecting propiation and instead furthering a relative picture of morality in sayings 6 and 14.
As a bonus, saying 14 doesn't just cover no propiation and not carrying a purse, both mirroring ideas Paul is arguing against in Corinth, it also covers absolutely eradicating eating restrictions which Paul also argued against with Corinth without directly opposing it and instead appealing to a counter-interpretation based on relative mortality.
So you end up with this picture where Paul is arguing against something, Mark contains some offhand mention supporting the thing Paul was arguing against, later cannonical texts attempt to reverse that, and Thomas contains sayings similar but not identical to canonical sayings supporting those things in entirely different contexts as well as unique sayings that support the same positions.
This is exactly the pattern we should expect if Paul and the canonical tradition was actively working to undermine an earlier and separate tradition of teachings attributed to Jesus.
And here too, the concepts Paul and the later texts are arguing against happen to be in line with the Greek philosophy of Epicurus as recorded in Lucretius who complained that people were too caught up in worrying about what gods thought and there was no point in sacrificing, giving money to religion, or other religious obligations. A philosophy that has its other elements heavily engaged with across multiple sayings in Thomas and attributed with the opposition to the physical resurrection Paul is arguing against in 1 Cor 15.
Which then brings us back to things like Mark 4 where a saying about randomly scattered seeds where only what survives multiplied which even uses the specific phrase of "seed falling by the wayside of a path" - just like Leucretius used decades earlier to describe failed reproduction - is being depicted as being said in public. Followed by a private explanation which is one of only two explanations in antiquity about this parable, with the other being provided by the Thomasine tradition interpreting it in line with Lucretius's depictions of seeds as atomos and also using language identical to Lucretius's in doing so. A parable which appears in Thomas without the secret explanation of Mark and the other Synoptics.
I very much doubt Mark was inventing a parable paraphrasing Lucretius, then having it said in public but secretly explained with an interpretation at odds with Lucretius in private, and then a later tradition well after Lucretius was no longer popular reinterpreted it back to Lucretius using his language again in doing so, and that tradition just so happened to also have variations of several sayings in Mark which were problems for the earlier church and in agreement with opposing views in Corinth but in line with Lucretius's perspectives, as well as multiple unique sayings with similar attitudes. (Along with multiple sayings and ideas Paul seems to be quoting in his letter to Corinth.)
This is all much more easily explained by a pre-Pauline tradition that was influenced by and engaged with Epicurean philosophy and Lucretius specifically which was problematic for Paul's associations in Jerusalem which he and what later becomes the canonical church attempt to spin back towards conservative Judaism with increasing success over the next century, with Mark as one of the earliest attempts to do so in narrative form. But as the first attempt, it did so sloppily enough small parts of the opposed positions peek through before being better corrected by later efforts.
Wells argued except none of this tells me about what I asked. How do you know you are right? These are balance of probability arguments and I don't disagree that Mark had some element of an oral tradition he was bringing up, if nothing else the king of sabbath phrase proves that.
First we need a way to figure out what was part of the oral tradition and what was part of other books. Then we need to prove the oral tradition comes from an accurate source. We are not only dealing with generational hearsay we are dealing with it filtered through the mind of a liar.
To address your points more specifically. I don't have an explanation about the carrying purse and contradiction between that and the fundraising of Paul. I will look into it. It is an interesting point.
You mention Mark borrowing from Greek thinkers and while probably true does nothing to prove a historical Jesus. All it proves is that Mark was widely read which we know because empty tomb novels were floating around prior to his work.