https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15086
Of course right out of the gate this confuses “historical” with “human.” The only viable mythicist thesis that has passed peer review to date holds that the original belief was indeed that Jesus became a human man, wearing a body of Jewish (indeed Davidic) flesh formed by God, in fulfillment of prophecy, long enough to be crucified in it by demonic powers, all to effect God’s cosmic plan to stymie Satan. The question is not whether the original Christians taught or believed that had happened, but where they believed that had happened. There is evidence some Christians thought it happened in the sky. Not on earth. Just as was thought of a neighboring savior god, Osiris. You can survey all the clues regarding that, and the background it makes sense in, in On the Historicity of Jesus.
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In just the same way they believed Satan existed, and lived in the sky; they would have believed exactly the same of Jesus. We only now say that means Jesus never existed, because we know sky lords don’t exist. If we conclude the evidence shows that’s what Christians believed, then we would know Jesus no more existed than Satan did. But that’s not a description of what they believed. They felt they were receiving revelations from Jesus. That was all they needed to prove to them he existed. But that is not valid historical evidence that any god or spirit actually exists....
So Gathercole must mean that “having a mother” entails more than humanity, but a known earthly life. That’s not strictly true. Irenaeus documents sects that believed Jesus had a celestial mother (some form of divine feminine being), and I do note this in OHJ (pp. 580-81). But Paul does link “having a mother” with being born of human flesh, so I don’t think that’s likely what he would mean in Galatians 4. It is rather more obvious that Paul isn’t talking about literal human mothers there, but allegorical ones (“these things are an allegory“). In OHJ (Ch. 11.9) I show that Paul is just as likely to have said this of a celestially born Jesus as an earthly one, in the context of what he is actually arguing in Galatians 3 and 4. And I’ve just recently written up a more thorough demonstration of that fact (Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical)..........
Paul repeatedly equated Jesus to Adam. Adam. Who was never literally born of a woman, but manufactured by God. And indeed Paul uses the exact same word for the formation of both Adam and Jesus. A fact that argues against Gathercole’s thesis..........
Rather, what Paul is obviously saying is that Jesus was briefly given a human body-suit to wear (in the manner illustrated in 2 Cor. 5). His outward appearance was human not because it was an illusion (hence I nowhere say the word schêma indicates this), but because it was an actual human body. What they didn’t know is what was inside it: an eternal celestial being (hence Philippians 2:6-7 etc.).
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Jesus is an English derivation from the Greek spelling of the Hebrew name Joshua (Yeshua), which means ‘Yahweh saves’. … That should make us suspicious from the start. Isn’t his name abnormally convenient? … [W]hat are the odds that his birth name would be ‘Savior’, and then he would be hailed as the Savior? Are historical men who are worshiped as savior gods usually so conveniently named? No, not usually. Indeed, as I conclude, when considering “the probability of any savior god being named Savior (among that god’s many names, and Jesus also had many names, from Christ to Lord to Emmanuel)” we have to face the fact that “probably most savior gods were called Savior.”...........
At last, of course, Gathercole wants 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 to be authentic and not an interpolation, because it says Jews killed Jesus, which would require Paul to believe Jesus did indeed live and die on earth (Gathercole, pp. 201-02 & 205). But it is a commonplace conclusion that those verses were not written by Paul—and with good reason: I lay out abundant evidence that Paul’s writing them is impossible, evidence repeatedly published by mainstream scholars for decades (OHJ, pp. 566-69)...........
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15057
Galatians 3:29, where he declares that “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Meaning, even non-Jews become born “of the seed of Abraham” at baptism. In other words, Paul is saying we come from the seed of Abraham allegorically, not literally; spiritually, not biologically
Claim: St Ignatius, a disciple of the disciple John (the Evangelist) writes about the God, Jesus.
"There is no authentic letter by Ignatius where he says he met an Apostle...Ignatius or Papias, both of whom could have written well later than the 110s... there is still contention as to whether the letters of Ignatius are even authentic, or which ones are authentic, or whether they have been edited or interpolated, or whether the one datable reference in them (to the reign of Trajan) is inauthentic... some scholars argue that the context of the Ignatian letters makes exactly zero historical sense....Polycarp, at some unspecified time in his life, wrote his own letter as a preface to the entire collection of Ignatian letters, and Polycarp was martyred sometime between 155 and 168. Or so we think. In actual fact the evidence is problematic and some scholars argue his martyrdom could even have been as late as 180.....Did Ignatius even quote Matthew? Now things get extraordinarily annoying. Most scholars agree only some of his letters are authentic and that several were definitely forged, and that even the 'authentic' ones were expanded by forgers later on--we think we have the earlier, undoctored versions, simply because we have shorter, unembellished versions, although there is no secure reason to be certain these shorter versions aren't just longer redactions of even shorter but now lost originals...which we might even have in Syriac translation (and so on and so on and so on). ...clearly Ignatius knows a completely different story. Ignatius does not appear to know Matthew's star story at all. He makes no reference to Magi, nor any moving star rising in the east and settling over the manger, no Herod, no Bethlehem. And in Matthew the star is but a sign, not the Savior Himself. Instead, Ignatius knows some completely different star story, one that arguably conflates (or more likely lies behind, as more original) the nativity stories that found their way into Matthew and Luke (e.g. Luke mentions a chorus of angels in heaven, but no star...Annoyingly, much of this evidence seems to imply the opposite: that Ignatius had no knowledge of Matthew's Gospel at all. For on several occasions when Ignatius is supposed to be "quoting" Matthew he uses the material in a completely unrelated context, as if he never knew how Matthew used it or even that he did. Problem number one. Ignatius also never mentions that he is quoting anyone (much less a Gospel, and much less a Gospel attributed to anyone named Matthew) or even indicates that he is quoting. Problem number two....For instance, Ignatius rails against the idea that Christians must obey Torah laws, but Matthew's entire Gospel was written to defend that position as endorsed by Christ (whereas Mark's entire Gospel was written to defend the position held by Ignatius), ....we are in the dark about essential facts like when Ignatius lived or when the NT Gospels were written....-the paradigmatic example being the way scholars claim to have dated Matthew from Ignatius (hence my entire original post). The argument is hopelessly confused and flawed and surrounded by controversy and a complete absence of actual consensus, yet you pick up a reference and it says the date of Matthew has been settled by reference to Ignatius. That's simply not true."
Dr. Richard Carrier
Papias claims that (although we can’t confirm that he was referring to the same Gospel we have) half a century after the fact. But Papias shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He thinks Matthew was translated from Hebrew when in fact it’s a direct copy of the Greek of Mark and relies on Septuagint Greek elsewhere, and the Greek edition of Q (if you believe in Q), and thus can’t ever have been in Hebrew. And he evidently doesn’t know that Mark is a Gentile Gospel, whereas Peter was a Torah-observant Christian, and thus would never have been preaching the version of the Gospel we find in Mark (but rather the version we find in Matthew, if anything). There are other quotes from Papias that show he was very gullible and believed all kinds of absurd stories. Even Eusebius said he was a man of very little intelligence. He’s pretty much the worst source you could ever base anything on.
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/425
Because regardless of how codex or scroll tags worked, Kata Markon simply means “as told by Mark,” not “as written by Mark” (a different Greek phrase was used for the latter). It is a designation of source, not authorship. Which, as a title, generally was something invented ad hoc (otherwise you would have the author, “as written by,” saying he got his information from Mark and who Mark was and so on). In any case it never means “written by.”
Christians (alone in antiquity, and solely in this case) quickly conflated these concepts because they needed the sources to be the authors themselves, and legends grew advocating that view (e.g. it’s obvious Irenaeus, and everyone else, got this idea from Papias, who says he learned it from dubious oral lore, even though Papias was a stupid and gullible man, as Eusebius reports, and what he wrote about the Gospels is either false or not even referring to our Gospels, since we can see it fails to match them).
…but there are others (Justin Martyr…
He never mentions who the authors of the Gospels are.
The others say nothing more than what Papias does (beyond elaborating on it with even more ridiculous legends) and they either identify Papias as their source (e.g. Irenaeus) or don’t even mention how they know what they report.
Another thing is that Mark is not an Apostle. Many times later writers used the names of the apostles, so it would not make sense to use Mark’s name.
Actually, we don’t know that Mark was not an apostle. Paul names numerous apostles we have never heard of otherwise, and it’s clear there were many more unknown to us. In fact, Christian legend knew Mark as not only an apostle, but the apostle who brought the gospel to the Alexandrians.
But what Christians in later centuries thought will not be the same thing earlier Christians were thinking (such as the Christians who attached names to the Gospels). So we can only speculate why they chose the names they did. Or when.
In this case, the name Mark was likely chosen because Paul mentions a trusted assistant named Mark (albeit in forged letters, nevertheless canonical; and Acts repeats this legend), and Mark is a Pauline Gospel (Papias errs in thinking it’s a Petrine Gospel, when in fact it is anti-Petrine and promotes Paul’s view, not Peter’s). Thus, one can infer an attempt was being made to connect it as directly as possible to Paul, without trying to claim Paul wrote a book no one ever heard of before (a claim that would raise immediate suspicion, since Paul’s writings were known, and known not to have included or referred to any such book).
Then someone in Peter’s sect got annoyed by this and “rewrote” Mark to sell Peter’s sect instead of Paul’s…that Gospel is known as Matthew. Since it copies verbatim from Mark, it clearly isn’t an honest book (they are pretending to tell the true story, but secretly stealing someone else’s story, word for word, and passing it off as their own, and changing it, rather than telling their own story). Matthew is an apostle’s name. So when this name became attached, someone was trying to bypass Paul and connect the Gospel directly to Jesus. And they chose the only apostle connected with a profession that would suggest knowing how to write (a crucial trick, since Acts claims the apostles were otherwise all illiterate, and therefore one would arouse suspicion if somehow an illiterate fisherman was writing a book in educated Greek).
Like Mark, Luke is mentioned as a trusted educated fellow in Paul’s company (again according to forged letters, albeit canonical). The Gospel of Luke is an attempt to refute Matthew and bring the Gospel back to the intended teachings of Paul, by rewriting Matthew (some will challenge that take, but IMO it’s far more plausible and explains the evidence far better than traditional Q hypotheses). Someone then naturally wanted to pass this off as a more educated and researched Gospel, by linking it to the only man Paul’s letters refer to as being educated and trusted. That made sense, since the quality of Luke is superior to what one would expect even from a taxman, much less an illiterate fisherman, so a name had to be chosen that could connect the Gospel with the authority of Paul, without being Paul (whom by then everyone otherwise knew had not written a Gospel), and who would most plausibly have had the requisite high degree of education, and only one name can be made to fit that bill from the canon: Luke.
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