Comment on The Jebus Said So.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months agoFine 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?
kromem@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
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 Like 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 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 appeasing to an 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.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
kromem@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Most of history ends up boiling down to probability arguments when you dig into it. It’s one of the more surprising things as you actually read papers, where far too often you’ll see scholars speak with an attitude of certainty around rather spurious evidence. The best tend to make more effort to be conservative with surety.
But between several options of varying probability I don’t find it that difficult to identify what I consider very unlikely and what I consider likely.
For example, I rank the idea of people seeing Jesus alive three days after his execution and then watch him float up into the sky extremely unlikely. As many Christians like to point out, we can’t be certain it didn’t happen, but there’s enough reasons why it probably didn’t happen that I don’t think it did.
You’re talking to someone whose personal mantra in life has been Socrates’ “All that I know is that I know nothing.” Most of existence as far as I’m concerned is probabilities and not certainty, and I value the Epicurean view of entertaining multiple possibilities when it isn’t 100% clear which is correct - I think it’s a large contributing factor to how they were right about so much.
Within that though, I can look at the two scenarios I presented above and see that one poorly fits the available evidence described and other evidence not described, and the other matches much better, as represented by around five years of a deep dive into the subject matter including discussion and debates with scholars of various perspectives.
Likely liars. Paul has a number of characteristics of a narcissist and a habit of swearing he’s not lying, and even straight up talks about how he changes what he says depending on the audience. I wouldn’t trust him more than you could throw him, and maybe not even that much (he was allegedly smallish).
The gospel of Mark is also likely propagating lies, whether of original invention or secondhand inheritance.
Then Luke and potentially Mark have possible redactional layers which are further lying about things (like a 180° on not taking people’s money).
Matthew is probably worst of all with the outright lying, and evidentially had extra-cannonical resources in front of him that he was copying from and then making up secret explanations for while in general promoting a tradition of secret teachings (I think it may have come from an ex-Essene community).
John takes what I do think was some rudimentary earlier resource and then actively works to subvert and conceal the origin of that resource with what are likely additional lies, that span at least two redactional layers.
Later on people forge letters from Paul and Peter.
There’s quite a lot of liars involved in forming what we have.
But the thing with liars is that while you can’t trust their positive statements, they tend to reflect more trustworthy things in what they oppose or accidentally acknowledge. You kind of have to treat them like a hostile witness in a court case.
So for example with Mark, one of the most basic ways this manifests is the aforementioned public/private pattern. While I wouldn’t believe what Mark talks about occurring in public that supports his agenda or theology like a faith healing or Jesus telling people marriage is between a man and a woman (anachronistic relevance before Nero married two men in the 60s making same sex marriage an institution in the Roman empire), I tend to think the things it sets up as taking place in public before it immediately tries to contextualize them in a different direction with private explanations are one way to detect things that were part of an earlier commonly known record.
It’s tough work necessitating different approaches and maybe at best there’s about 3-4% of the material in there that I’d confidently label as preceding Mark’s earliest redactional layer.
Not Mark. Mark is oblivious to Greek thought, which is why it’s interesting. The Greek/Roman philosophical influence is very pronounced in Thomas, it is present in things discussed with the Christian community in Corinth, but it isn’t in Mark other than in a vestigial way.
And the specific ways it’s phrased in places in Thomas combines Greek/Roman philosophy with the phrasing and metaphors of prophets in the Old Testament. I’d be very surprised if that core work was from someone who wasn’t familiar with both.
So while no, I can’t be for sure that a historical Jesus existed, I am pretty confident that someone familiar with both Lucretius, Plato, and Hebrew texts composed a number of sayings which ended up attributed to a Jesus in the first century when he was a relative nobody, at least one of which was likely composed during Pilate’s reign, several of which predated Paul, several more of which predated Mark, more of which predated Luke, and more of which predated Matthew. All of which ended up inside the 3rd century only surviving copy of the Gospel of Thomas alongside additional sayings that were composed or taken from canonical texts later on.
To elegantly tie together Plato and Lucretius occasionally using language and metaphors from the OT in the first century seems like a pretty difficult task. It strikes me as bizarre that the person undertaking this Herculean accomplishment would then turn around and attribute it all to a relative nobody from a small cultic tradition who was allegedly executed by the Roman empire at its peak and whose adherents were actively being persecuted by the religious theocracy in Judea before being subverted by a growing splinter tradition largely owing itself to one of the people known to be persecuting them.
Maybe a better fitting version of events is that there really was a historical nobody who combined these things, pissed off the religious theocracy he was under with the conclusions he came to which undermined their authority such that he was killed by the state as soon as it was possible to justify it, then his followers and teachings were actively persecuted in areas the religious theocracy had authority while being actively subverted with a different version of events and interpretations in the areas they didn’t have authority in order to bring it all back closer to conservative Judaism - and then that subversion attempt was so unexpectedly successful that now a third of the world population believes it today.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You are actually conceding points I am not arguing. I am willing to accept that Paul always told the truth as far as he knew it to be. Because it really doesn’t matter to my argument. He knew nothing, had a dream of a celestial being, and told people. He doesn’t have to be a liar. I agree he probably did have NPD.
You are also conceding that the Gospel of Thomas has Greek thought in it. Again it could or could not and my argument isn’t impacted.
You are also not allowing Mark to be smart but demanding Jesus be smart. We know Mark was a Greek and an educated one. For him to sit down and study the OT wouldn’t have been all that hard. It would have been a lot easier than for an Aramaic illiterate in a society that punished studying Greek thought to have pulled it off. Which is easier an educated man in a free society to read a book in his native language or a non-educated person to learn how to read in a language he doesnt speak in a back water of the empire surrounded by people who would want to kill him for attempting it?
Jesus never existed that is why everyone builds him in their own image. You just did it. You want him to be a powerful mind who can synthesis multiple different thoughts of different cultures and come up with stuff against the grain. I have seen your work on the Gospel of Thomas and well…look in the mirror. Everyone is looking at this Rorschach image declaring something else and a small group of people are pointing out that there is nothing there except a mess of ink.
Isn’t it amazing that James who needed authority just happened to have a brother who granted it? Isn’t it amazing that James surrounded by Jews and Rabbis was told by Jesus that they had to follow Jewish law? Isn’t it amazing that Paul just happened to have the same injuries that Jesus suffered? Isn’t it amazing that Paul surrounded by non-jewish was told that Jesus is ok with pork and non-circumcision? Every single person in the first century had a Jesus who just happened to agree with them on every single thing and whose history was as malleable as needed.
The simplest explaination is that James and Cephus were running a grift, Paul took it seriously and literally, at some point they recruited a talented writer, other writers thought they could outdo what Mark had done, and the rest is history. William Tell, Moses, John Frumm, Ned Lud, and of course Jesus of Nazareth.