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.
(1) You’d have a difficult time showing the dependence of John on Mark, and John also has Peter’s denials. That work claims to be based on an earlier work by the beloved disciple who is depicted as separate from the later apostle tradition within the work, so there may have been an earlier narrative work both John and Mark share, absent the sayings work Mark would have been relying on which is one of the places it differs noticably from John. I agree that Mark is largely written to set up Paul (if you haven’t, check out Dykstra’s Mark, Canonizer of Paul), but given Paul’s claims are that Peter directed him to the areas he was active in and that he had studied under Peter (but no one saw him except James) in Gal, the work still needs to prop up Peter as the successor who then passed things on to Paul.
(2) Where is Mark 4:3-9 in Elijah? Or Mark 13:1-2? Both public statements that are expanded upon in private instructions in the text. These were very likely known to the audience Mark was being written for and proceeded the work in saying form, which is why it characterized them as being said in public while trying to spin them with the private parts (which it should be noted may well be a later reactive layer to Mark anyways). You might find it interesting to reread Mark closely paying attention to when it breaks off for private instructions or secret disclosures (such as the secrecy around Messianic claims - claims completely absent in something like Thomas).
(3) Correct, the empty tomb was likely a later embellishment, which would make sense given Paul himself likely developed a lot of the eschatology around resurrection and a sin sacrifice. The Corinthian Creed did possibly predate him, but even then it would have only been a core part of it, and Paul expanded on the mythos quite extensively. It’s not that Mark is introducing the empty tomb that’s remarkable, it’s that he’s having his only witnesses not tell anyone about it. You see something similar in John where Peter and the unnamed beloved disciple race to the tomb, Peter loses the race, but then the other disciple doesn’t go in. There was clearly an effort to try to fit figures like the women or the unnamed beloved disciple (who takes the women into his household at the end of John) into an empty tomb narrative as silent or reluctant witnesses, which would make sense if a competing tradition connected to such ‘superapostles’ wasn’t saying anything about the tomb or resurrection.
all 4 quests have failed
Quests? Like Arthur and the holy grail?
you can deal with actual scholars not amateurs like me who suck at Greek.
It was pretty awesome spending nearly every day for years participating in /r/AcademicBiblical alongside PhDs and very knowledgeable fellow contributors. I definitely learned a lot, and was honored to be labeled as one of the sub’s Quality Contributors (their label for a handful of participants without a Master’s or PhD who had high quality comments or posts). But unfortunately Reddit administration killed a good thing with their greed, and now I’m on Lemmy and probably won’t be back to Reddit again.
If I do get around to a video series one day, the network of some of the people I befriended in that sub who produce the same kinds of material will be a good sounding board though - it’s one of the things motivating the eventual effort.
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.
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?
They keep needing to adjust their interpretations based on new results, and I haven’t yet seen a compelling adjustment that explains the results of https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x (2020). That conflicting measurements of a superposition can be made seems to go against the inherent realism of pilot wave theories.
There have been a few attempts to address the classical Wigner setup from a Bohemian point of view, but the experiment above was more “a two layered Bell” than Wigner’s friend despite being inspired by the latter.
It actually looks like there’s already just a paper from two weeks ago (Li, Wigner’s friend scenario and a new interpretation of quantum mechanics (2023)) attempting to rework the pilot wave theory into a new interpretation predicted on a different interpretation of Born’s rule to square it with the no go experiments.
So while I agree that it’s too early to call realist interpretations misunderstandings, I suspect the writing is on the wall and over time we’re going to see them drop off more and more, especially if the recent trend in experimental results throwing objective measurements into question continues.
Do you include the 1804 massacres of the French with the mass rape of women and killing of children by Dessalines which followed the Haitian revolt in that intrinsic good?
The real issue at hand is whether or not we’re talking about moral relativism or absolutism.
If we are endorsing relativism, then all actions have a relative frame of reference by which they are justified (i.e. Bob’s killing Jane).
My stance is that in terms of absolutism, there is no such thing as justified mass violence, and that while it is certainly possible for mass violence to be a lesser evil absolutely, and thus easily argued as a moral good relative to the alternative, that ultimately it remains an evil under all circumstances objectively, and at best can be a lesser evil regarded absolutely.
If you want a diamond necklace that you can’t afford, it is necessary to steal it in order to have it.
It is not justified to steal it simply because it was necessary to meet your goals.
You are implicitly assuming that the necessity of self-preservation equates justification on the premise that self-preservation is a just result.
I don’t agree.
If two soldiers are fighting for their lives against each other, it may be necessary for each to survive to kill the other.
But the family of the one that dies may not see their loved one’s death as justified even if the family of the one that survived sees it that way.
Your self-preservation is worthless to me, and thus justifies nothing. My own self-preservation is literally worth everything to me - and yet if still does not justify my taking everything from you, even if I deem it necessary to achieve my own desires and goals, any more than my desire for a necklace I cannot afford justifies its theft.
There is a distinction between things like stealing bread to save a life where a necessary action is justified by the good that comes out of it and stealing bread to throw away in order to achieve a thrill. Both are necessary to their goals, but one has a goal that justifies the necessary action while the other does not.
I’m saying that there is no goal or good in existence that justifies the inherit evil of mass violence, even if there are a myriad of ways in which mass violence might be necessary to one’s goals, with those ranging from ethnic cleansing to fighting tyranny.