Polaris
Penultimate Amazing
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Especially when the sale of soft drinks is involved.
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What counts as a historical Jesus?
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Especially when the sale of soft drinks is involved.
Josephus recollections
Greek Version
Josephus, Antiquities 18.63, probably in a Christian redaction
Tr. I. H. Feldman, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 9, pp. 49ff.
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not cease. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life. For the prophets of God had prophesied these and myriads of other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still up to now, not disappeared.
Arabic Version
Arabic summary, presumably of Antiquities 18.63, dates earlier than any extant ms. From Agapios' Kitab al-'Unwan ("Book of the Title," 10th c.).
The translation belongs to Shlomo Pines. See also James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism.
Similarly Josephus the Hebrew. For he says in the treatises that he has written on the governance of the Jews:
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.
Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1
Since Ananus was that kind of person, and because he perceived an opportunity with Festus having died and Albinus not yet arrived, he called a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought James, the brother of Jesus (who is called 'Messiah') along with some others. He accused them of transgressing the law, and handed them over for stoning.
So-called "Q" passages in Luke keyed to sequencing in Mark
3:7 Then said [John the Baptist] to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
9 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
[SNIP]
Jesus quotes in Paul's 1 Corinthians
7:10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.
9:14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
11:23 The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.
25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.
Edited by kmortis:
Removed extensive quoted material.
Do not quote large swaths of material that is available elsewhere. Post a link.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: kmortis
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Well "John Frum" has picked up attributes of Keraperamun the local volcano god so it is hard to say. As it stands now John Frum is supposedly sitting in Yasur volcano crater with an army ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 men.
Oh on a side not in 1943 the native Neloaig took of the name John Frum and convinced people to build an airstrip which continued to be built even after he his main followers were throw in jail. Not long after the native Iokaeye took up the name John Frum, proclaimed a new color symbolism, and caused enough problems to get himself and his followers thrown in jail.
So we don't have one historical John Frum but three of them...in the space of perhaps 5 years (ie 1940-1945).
I should point out that the very name Christian is based on a title NOT a name. With so many would be Christs running around wouldn't their followers also be called "Christians" ie follows of christ?
eight bits
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max
Had I ever been more interested, I would find what? That there is no controversy that American military cleaned up some trash in the desert on July 7, 1947. There's also no controversy that Pilate nailed some Jewish men, either. The salient uncertainty in one case is what the trash was, in the other, whether one of the victims was the guy whom Paul was on about. In both cases, if I pursue the matter further, then I will have more of what I already have - journalistic reports.
For its stated purpose, as an illustration of applying one standard of evidentiary review rather than another, the comparison was just fine.
All analogies have their limits. Google invited me, among millions who had something else to search yesterday, to ponder this issue. Apart from that, I know Roswell only as a popular culture reference.
Had I ever been more interested, I would find what? That there is no controversy that American military cleaned up some trash in the desert on July 7, 1947. There's also no controversy that Pilate nailed some Jewish men, either. The salient uncertainty in one case is what the trash was, in the other, whether one of the victims was the guy whom Paul was on about. In both cases, if I pursue the matter further, then I will have more of what I already have - journalistic reports.
For its stated purpose, as an illustration of applying one standard of evidentiary review rather than another, the comparison was just fine.
Given that the interesting alternative hypothesis was an extraterrestial spacecraft and its pilot, I'll take that as close enough to a weather balloon for government work.
Couldn't fit in the previous post --
Here is a smaller selection of the "Q" sayings cited above, restricted to the only ones that appear in as many as three independent strata: GThomas, GMark and the parallels in GMatt./GLuke --
Luke 11
[SNIP]
Luke 12
[SNIP]
Luke 13
[SNIP]
Luke 19
[SNIP]
Here are all the references to a human Jesus with a human bio in the 7 authentic Paulines --
Born into a Jewish family of a Jewish mother.
Galatians 4:4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law
The family may have been partly related to the David line, or "descent from David" may have simply been an emblematic way of saying he was of David's people -- i.e., a Jew.
Romans 1:3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David
He was born into a family with at least two brothers, one of them named James.
[SNIP]
He preached that a wife could not leave her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.
He preached that those who taught the gospel should earn their living from it.
[SNIP]
To the day of his crucifixion, he maintained a humble station in life.
Phillipians 2:7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!
On the last night of his freedom, he and his followers instituted a custom of memorializing his time with them through bread and drink.
[SNIP]
He told his followers he'd come back miraculously after his execution, and those who might die in the interim would join him in the resurrection when he'd return.
1 Thessalonians 4:15 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
He was crucified.
[SNIP]
He was buried.
Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death
After he was buried, a few traumatized followers thought they saw him raised from the tomb.
1 Corinthians 15:3 that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
Very useful retrospective of all the non-Biblical data, excepting Josephus, found at this page here (http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/resource-historical-sources-for-jesus-t267.html). EVerything below this paragraph is lifted from that on-line page and is not my exegesis.
Enjoy,
Stone
Pliny the Younger, writing in Bithynia c.111AD Pliny is concerned about how to handle an outbreak of Christianity in his region. He writes to the Emperor Trajan, and the relevant part for our inquiry is
[SNIP]
Let's move on to Suetonius, 115CE
Early Christian Writings ( http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html ) is excellent as usual here - so it seems pointless for me to rehash what is said already there.
Suetonius wrote in The Life of Claudius (25.4)
[SNIP]
Phlegon of Tralles, c130-160??? EDIT: or possibly much earlier, writing circa 80CE - see links for detailed discussion.
[SNIP]
The events referred to are from 32CE, a possible date for the Crucifixion and darkening of the sky. Yet in Jerome's translation Jesus is never mentioned! My suspicion is that he was referring to Jesus, and that Jerome was honest here, as that is his implication. However Phlegon was clearly extremely credulous and loved fortean phenomena - see his
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegon_of_Tralles - Wikipedia entry
, so I hesitate to put much emphasis on him. Still he mentioned Jesus and prophecies fulfilled, and was a secular historian.
This brings us to Thallus, writing somewhere between 50 and 150CE
The key passage here by being quoted by Julius Africanus in alost work, but quoted by George Syncellus in a 9th century text! Does not inspire confidence does it, but very normal for recovering historical data
[SNIP]
Here is a smaller selection of the "Q" sayings cited above, restricted to the only ones that appear in as many as three independent strata: GThomas, GMark and the parallels in GMatt./GLuke --
Luke 11
[SNIP]
Luke 12
[SNIP]
Luke 13
[SNIP]
Luke 19
[SNIP]
Here are all the references to a human Jesus with a human bio in the 7 authentic Paulines --
Born into a Jewish family of a Jewish mother.
Galatians 4:4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law
The family may have been partly related to the David line, or "descent from David" may have simply been an emblematic way of saying he was of David's people -- i.e., a Jew.
Romans 1:3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David
He was born into a family with at least two brothers, one of them named James.
[SNIP]
He preached that a wife could not leave her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.
He preached that those who taught the gospel should earn their living from it.
[SNIP]
To the day of his crucifixion, he maintained a humble station in life.
Phillipians 2:7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!
On the last night of his freedom, he and his followers instituted a custom of memorializing his time with them through bread and drink.
[SNIP]
He told his followers he'd come back miraculously after his execution, and those who might die in the interim would join him in the resurrection when he'd return.
1 Thessalonians 4:15 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
He was crucified.
[SNIP]
He was buried.
Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death
After he was buried, a few traumatized followers thought they saw him raised from the tomb.
1 Corinthians 15:3 that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
Very useful retrospective of all the non-Biblical data, excepting Josephus, found at this page here (http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/resource-historical-sources-for-jesus-t267.html). EVerything below this paragraph is lifted from that on-line page and is not my exegesis.
Enjoy,
Stone
Pliny the Younger, writing in Bithynia c.111AD Pliny is concerned about how to handle an outbreak of Christianity in his region. He writes to the Emperor Trajan, and the relevant part for our inquiry is
[SNIP]
Let's move on to Suetonius, 115CE
Early Christian Writings ( http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html ) is excellent as usual here - so it seems pointless for me to rehash what is said already there.
Suetonius wrote in The Life of Claudius (25.4)
[SNIP]
Phlegon of Tralles, c130-160??? EDIT: or possibly much earlier, writing circa 80CE - see links for detailed discussion.
[SNIP]
The events referred to are from 32CE, a possible date for the Crucifixion and darkening of the sky. Yet in Jerome's translation Jesus is never mentioned! My suspicion is that he was referring to Jesus, and that Jerome was honest here, as that is his implication. However Phlegon was clearly extremely credulous and loved fortean phenomena - see his
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegon_of_Tralles - Wikipedia entry
, so I hesitate to put much emphasis on him. Still he mentioned Jesus and prophecies fulfilled, and was a secular historian.
This brings us to Thallus, writing somewhere between 50 and 150CE
The key passage here by being quoted by Julius Africanus in alost work, but quoted by George Syncellus in a 9th century text! Does not inspire confidence does it, but very normal for recovering historical data
[SNIP]
Edited by kmortis:
Removed excessive quoted material
Last edited by a moderator:
True but I still say the Bermuda Triangle is a better analogy.
The story is that the area has had issues all the way back to Christopher Columbus in 1492 but when you try to look at the material (which is in far better shape then that of 1st-4th century Roman Empire) you hit a brick wall at 1950.
Furthermore as documented in the NOVA/Horizon episode "The Case of the Bermuda Triangle" (originally aired on June 27, 1976) you can trace how the writers were using those who came before totally trusting what had been claimed as factual.
It is akin to the evolution the Gospels likely went through both orally and as written documents before they settled into a more or less consistent form.
The Bermuda Triangle also shows how quickly a myth can distort history all the while creating its own psudohistory.
Ugh did we really need the data dump?
I removed much of that as it makes my head hurt worst then Binford.
Historicity Of Jesus FAQ (1994) by Scott Oser does much the same thing and doesn't wander all over the place.
"Pliny's writings provide no independent confirmation of the events of the New Testament, but merely show that there were indeed Christians living in Asia Minor." So that reference is useless
"However, there are serious problems with this interpretation:
1 "Chrestus" is the correct Latin form of an actual Greek name, and is not obviously a mispelling of "Christus", meaning Christ.
2 The passage seems to imply that there was actually someone named Chrestus at Rome at the time. This rules out a reference to Jesus.
3 Even if Suetonius is referring to Christians in Rome, this only confirms the existence of Christians, not the existence of Jesus."
On a side note "Chrestus" was not only a familiar personal name, but a name of the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis
So this references is also useless.
The earliest copy we have has been shown to have been tampered with "Chrestianos" being changed to "Christianos" and even that aside:
"Conceivably, Tacitus may just be repeating what he was told by Christians about Jesus. If so, then this passage merely confirms that there were Christians in Tacitus' time, and that they believed that Pilate killed Jesus during the reign of Tiberius."
Again useless reference.
The same Eusebius who in his The History of the Church claimed "It is also recorded that under Claudius, Philo came to Rome to have conversations with Peter, then preaching to the people there ... It is plain enough that he not only knew but welcomed with whole-hearted approval the apostolic men of his day, who it seems were of Hebrew stock and therefore, in the Jewish manner, still retained most of their ancient customs."
in spite of the fact Philo wrote not one word about the Jesus of the bible.
Yeh, Eusebius is reliable NOT.
Actually Thallus has a LOT of problems.
1) His three-volume history of the Mediterranean world supposedly goes from "the capture of Troy until the 167th Olympiad [112 B.C.]" For him to talking about Jesus we have evidence of the 100 BC Jesus...oops.
Se he get the Enron accounting and the apologists fudge the date. Wonderful. 2) Richard Carrier did an entire paper on Thallus (Thallus: An Analysis (1999)) "It isn't clear what Thallus actually said, or whether he even mentioned Jesus at all."
So that source buys the farm, a chicken coop, and two cows.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Are we still arguing about late, vague and altered passages ? I thought we had moved on from these pieces of non-evidence.
The Norseman
Meandering fecklessly
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So that's it? That's your evidence? That's what constitutes the single most attested figure in history? That's the evidence which is so tested, thorough, and unquestionable as to be equal to evolution?
LOL
You're straw-man-ing me shamelessly. Why am I not surprised? SHOW US WHERE I EVER SAID ANY SUCH THING. GO ON. SHOW US.
N O W !!!!!!!!
Welcome to ancient history. This is NOT just the type of data we have for Jesus the HUMAN teacher. This is the type of data we have for 99.9% of all the figures in ancient history.
Get
used
to
it.
And by the way, this is not the totality of the data. Just the earliest and most colloquial stuff -- which means **** to you, of course.
Do not circumvent the autocensor
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: kmortis
Stone
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The Norseman
Meandering fecklessly
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I never said you said it, now did I. It has been said in this thread by Yeshua histies. No other answer besides an evasion though? You obviously agree with it; you just don't want to specifically say that you do.
What you have said is that you had been exactly where Piggy is now. I figured you had evidence. In fact, twice I believe, Piggy had said that the best evidence that Yeshua existed is that a group of people thought he did. Thought you could do better.
LOL
Besides quoting the bible, what else is there? Everything you've posted has been thoroughly dissected and found inadequate. What else is there that hasn't been presented in this thread? How about links to those peer-reviewed papers that are most often apparently found behind paywalls?
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You know ******** well there is NO point of contact between my --
"Welcome to ancient history. This is NOT just the type of data we have for Jesus the HUMAN teacher. This is the type of data we have for 99.9% of all the figures in ancient history.
Get
used
to
it."
-- and your --
"single most attested figure in history"
I never said that, in fact quite the reverse. The latter is someone like Mandela or Obama --
21st century -- DUH.
"You obviously agree with it" is a total lie about my position. You ******** know that, and I'm calling you on it. Let the mods show how it ******** isn't, if they dare.
Your real game is deliberately evading and REVERSING my CHIEF POINT in my previous: THE FACTS ON ANCIENT FIGURES ARE ALWAYS SPARSE.
Get
used
to
it.
And by the way, I quoted plenty more beside the bible, pal. THAT'S ANOTHER LIE.
If the mods cite me for anything here, I'm going to haul you up as a blatant liar on this board. I'd like to see if there's anyone here with the sheer gall to pretend you aren't DELIBERATELY LYING ABOUT AND REVERSING EVERYTHING I SAY.
Stone
Do not circumvent the autocensor
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: kmortis
Last edited by a moderator:
Because you used THE two most brain dead, moronically idiotic, and morally bankrupt comparisons of Christ Mythers possible: Creationists and holocaust denialers.
As I also pointed out in that post which you seem to have ignored:
They are in NO way similar
Creationism require the ignoring of physical sciences and their proven principals along with ignoring the actual reason Darwinian Evolution came about (Creationism was being cut to pieces in the 19th century by Occam's Razor becoming more and more complex trying to explain discovery after discovery finally become a Rube Goldbergian mess by the 1820s)
Precisely what physical sciences and their proven principals does Christ Myth theory ignore? Answer: None.
Holocaust denial requires ignoring not only the hard physical evidence but the actual contemporary records by both the Allies and the Nazis. In fact much of this evidence was presented in Nuremberg 1945-1946 starting less then a year after the Holocaust ended.
Furthermore as I pointed out way back in post 1037:
Another point glossed over in such comparisons is that there are truly contemporary collaboration of people like Caesar, Socrates, and even Alexander the Great. NONE exists for Jesus.
It gets really STUPID when comparisons to Holocaust denial and Moon Landing Hoax are made...again the amount of truly contemporary evidence documenting these events (or nearly any event after the invention of the Printing Press) is staggering and yet Jesus has NONE.[/QUOTE]
---
As the link states above there were 3,000 tons of records every one of them truly contemporary to the event they were documenting presented at Nuremberg 1945-1946!
The 1958 finding aids (eventually the index to the Holocaust evidence) was 62 volumes--just 4 books shy of the number of books (66) traditionally in the entire Bible! Then between 1958 and 2000 they added another 30 volumes bringing to the total to 92 volumes.
That means for the comparison of a Christ Myther to a holocaust denier to be valid:
1) there would have to be 3,000 tons of records dating from 6 BCE to 36 CE showing Jesus existed
AND
2) A 62 volume index of such evidence dating no later than 44 CE and a 92 volume index of such evidence dating from no later then 92 CE.
Since there is no such evidence even remotely close to this this is why I stated when a HJ proponent goes for the Creationism and Holocaust denial comparison cards you are nearly guaranteed that their position has less credibility then a Enron accounting report.
Actually that is a cultural thing. Thanks to their burial practices we have more information on commoner ancient Egyptians then we have for many rulers of the Early Middle Ages.
davefoc
Philosopher
The passages in question:
I think we probably are mostly in agreement on this issue, but perhaps not.
I think that it was the intent of the author of that passage to convey the fact that Jesus had supernatural powers and he used them their to heal this guy's hand.
It is certainly conceivable that there was a real incident that served as a seed for this story. But what might that real incident have been?
Ok, maybe grahbubb was right and in the real incident Jesus was a sort of faith healer type and the guy with the withered hand faked some improvement for one of the reasons that people do that kind of thing today. But that is not all that needs to be changed to make the passage plausible.
Is it plausible that the pharisees saw Jesus do some little stunt and they immediately went out and began to plot how to kill Jesus together with the Herodians. Maybe if we assume that Jesus had been pissing people already and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back, or maybe the pharisee leadership didn't like fake faith healers horning in on their territory and they just decided they were going to kill one of them to make a statement or maybe out of the thousands of possible scenarios here one of them was true and the Pharisees really did see Jesus do his hypothetical faith healer schtick, got pissed and decide to off him.
Is violating the rules of sabbath observance something an HJ would do? It doesn't seem to fit well with the HJ described elsewhere but once again since we have so little to go on here, who knows. Maybe Jesus was a less law observant Jew than is often claimed.
Who might have been the source of this story? Was it somebody that was with Jesus? So this hypothetical witness goes out with the Pharisees and they talk loud enough that he can hear them plotting? OK but was it standard practice to plot the killing of somebody back then so that just any old guy that happens by can hear the plotting? Probably not but we can probably come up with some plausible scenario for this also.
So, yeah, it is possible to come up with some possible ways that the passage might be changed so that it describes an incident that might have really happened. And if we stretch our minds a bit we can probably come up with ways that the passage might have been true. But what would be the evidence that we would have any way of knowing what really happened?
I think there is none. Every bible expert, amateur NT sleuth and anybody else one might like to include could stare at that passage for their entire life and still it would not be knowable whether some part of it might be true or not.
I think Mark reads like it is fiction. I think that is one of the big elephants in the room here. People have been staring at this stuff for 2,000 years and they just don't come around easily to the idea that there might be no connection to any real HJ in Mark. Somebody or several somebodies just made Mark up perhaps by capturing oral traditions that were floating around at the time they wrote the Gospel. But I'll concede that maybe it isn't fiction. Maybe somehow oral stories that originated in Aramaic about a very poorly known guy in his own time made it into a religious book written in Greek long after those oral stories were created.
Belz...
Fiend God
If that's true, then we can't say anything for certain about these ancient figures, and that's that.
You don't need to reach a conclusion when you don't have enough evidence. You can say "I don't know", and leave it at that.
It is possible to reach a conclusion without certainty. What is required is an assessment of probability, just as is the case in a court of law, in a civil case. If high probability is attainable, the conclusion may indeed be "beyond reasonable doubt" as required in a criminal verdict. But it is never certain in any absolute sense.
I think the balance of probability favours HJ, as I have chosen to define him. Therefore, that is my "conclusion".
eight bits
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dave
There's nothing here that Jesus' followers can't do much the same. The pericope at 11:20 is interesting in this regard. I also find it interesting what Jesus says at 10: 51-52. He asks the blind man what he wants Jesus to do for him, but Jesus doesn't do a damned thing - he says that the man's own faith has cured him. That's a modern, matter-in-motion-friendly statement.
In any case, you don't have to be God to do these things, according to Jesus via Mark. By the time of John, not only have the "miracles" been ramped up, but there's something wrong with people who see this stuff and continue to doubt Jesus' credentials as the hands-on creator of the Universe, speaking of things that get ramped up over the course of the four Gospels.
I take Jesus at his word (ironically enough). The idea of healing the guy with the withered hand is to be helpful. That sets up the message that the Law erects no impediment to being helpful, ever.
Suspending the natural order of things has no place in my criteria for a historical Jesus who counts. Being a teacher of Jewish manners and morals does. This would be an example of that teaching, in my opinion. It also makes Jesus' critics look like morons, which is a bona fide objective of this sort of writing. (I take their subsequent conspiratorial reaction to be an accusation, not a fact-claim. No witness is necessary, a judgment of character will suffice.)
I see the uses and invited interpretation of "miracles" to evolve as the canon develops.
There's nothing here that Jesus' followers can't do much the same. The pericope at 11:20 is interesting in this regard. I also find it interesting what Jesus says at 10: 51-52. He asks the blind man what he wants Jesus to do for him, but Jesus doesn't do a damned thing - he says that the man's own faith has cured him. That's a modern, matter-in-motion-friendly statement.
In any case, you don't have to be God to do these things, according to Jesus via Mark. By the time of John, not only have the "miracles" been ramped up, but there's something wrong with people who see this stuff and continue to doubt Jesus' credentials as the hands-on creator of the Universe, speaking of things that get ramped up over the course of the four Gospels.
I take Jesus at his word (ironically enough). The idea of healing the guy with the withered hand is to be helpful. That sets up the message that the Law erects no impediment to being helpful, ever.
Suspending the natural order of things has no place in my criteria for a historical Jesus who counts. Being a teacher of Jewish manners and morals does. This would be an example of that teaching, in my opinion. It also makes Jesus' critics look like morons, which is a bona fide objective of this sort of writing. (I take their subsequent conspiratorial reaction to be an accusation, not a fact-claim. No witness is necessary, a judgment of character will suffice.)
Or, some psychologically grounded impediment to natural movement was relieved. A contorted hand can easily look "withered," compared with the same hand in normal presentation. Mark is not on the scene here, so I wouldn't put too much weight on the specific variety of unnatural appearance that was supposedly remedied.
Paul seems impressed that following Jesus was liberating even for Jews. He remarks that Cephas doesn't live as a Jew in the Antioch encounter, for example. It's all vague. In any case,
I take the usual claim to be that Jesus is authentically and correctly observant. So, it's not a question of more or less observant than the Pharisees, but rather that the Pharisees, however much they intend to be properly observant, are doing it wrong. Less is more in some respects, but Jesus also imposes moral responsibility for intended, but unaccomplished, harm and contradicts black-letter law on divorce and remarriage.
I agree. But what tradition says is that Mark took a collection of real-life incidents and arranged them in a coherent but not necessarily correct chronological order. It's hard to see how, if that's what happened, the end-product would read much differently from fiction, regardless of whether or not some version of most of the incidents being "arranged" really happened or not.
Acleron
Master Poster
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That is a rational stance. We can debate the fine details between your greater than 50% probability and my own assessment of less than 50% with a reasonableness that may add greater insight, certainly on my part.
The attitudes of the extreme HJers allow no rational debate.
H'ethetheth
fishy rocket scientist
And my conclusion is that it's impossible to tell with any significant degree of accuracy, which is why I remain unconvinced either way.
In fact, my impression from these threads is that one of these two slightly opposing opinions hold for the vast majority of people arguing over this.
It shouldn't be enough to go foaming at the mouth over, nor does it require any crusading against for the good of mankind. (I'm looking at you, Stone.)
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