assumptions and presumptions but no fact that you admit at 6 minutes. and for your information no, no one would have any obligation to give you the information that some manuscripts lack a phrase or a word much less purposefully hide additional information. that is simply a scholar doing an honest job and if you had any legitimate historical criticism of this then you would have the information about what manuscripts had the passage and which did not instead of making these lame assumptions.
@TruthSurge So you are an earl doherty believer. A man with a BA in ancient history (a joke degree at virtually any university), who comes to his historical perspective from a man with NO historical education. I don't particularly have any desire to track down these books and pick apart all their interpreting, research and conclusions. I prefer to do that with scientific bullshit and not theological bullshit. Your comments indicate that you are butthurt, I suggest a proctologist.
@Uhlbelk If you haven't watched my Jesus Myth vids, then do. Any day, any time, you and me, blogTV. we can talk about Earl Doherty, G.A. Wells, Bart Ehrman, anyone you want. But instead, why don't we talk about the details of the theory? Wouldn't that be better? To actually address the pts instead of saying it CAN'T possibly be correct because 99.999% of scholars don't buy it. 99.8 % of scholars are religious. go figure.
B4 you strut your stuff, you should probably think a bit.
@TruthSurge If your other vids are no better then this one then I have no desire to listen to more assumptions whether they are your own or simply a regurgitation of doherty. I already said I wasn't going to go dig his crap up just to point out its flaws. You want any real respect, go learn early greek and aramaic, go get a degree in history, and write a thesis on the subject where your ideas and conclusions are so well put together that other historians can't dispute you.
What I noticed though is that the Greek word that is used for "apostle" is used once more in the gospels, namely Jn 13:16, where it is translated as "he that is sent". Just click on the Strongs number (652) and it renders the list of all variations of the word. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks for the info. You are correct. The word apostolos is in John 13:16 but it is not being used to denote THE disciples or even ONE in particular but more of a parable-like messenger. So, in this case, it doesn't come into play but thanks for that. I missed that one. I always like people to add corrections or point out mistakes because I like to keep proving I'm open-minded. :) I wasn't very thorough with this because I did it hastily. THANKS!
And just think how little I do compared to the giants who do it all day for a living for 30 years. I just enjoy digging under the surface and discovering that things are NOT as I've been told they are. And it has nothing to do with conspiracy theories. It's just digging beneath the layers of overlaid theologies to try and recover what might be considered original but even then it's a calculated guess.
I'd be more willing to bet that, if the scribes were familiar with both the epistles and the gospels, made a mistake rather than a conscious edit. It was a brain fart because they were familiar with two different tellings of Jesus, meant to cater to the gospels, and made a booboo that suggests the gospels they adhere to contradicts the earlier epistles.
Some edits were "honest" ones in that they felt they were adhering to what really happened but again, to change ANYTHING in a letter or story by someone else is to alter the original meaning. They knew that then. Even the Apokalypse of John gives a warning to those who might add to or take away from the words of his writing. But yeah, countless edits ocurred and Ehrman says it prob numbers into the HUNDREDS of thousands.
Indeed. Just to play devil's advocate a sec, if the Bible ever once was infallible *holds back laughter* it clearly was turned into a pile of crap by man.
Well, that is the position of many Christians and apologists. The originals were error-free and the copying introduced errors. It doesn't help their case one bit. We don't HAVE the originals and now they must answer why God allowed his all-important message to mankind - upon which their eternal disposition rests - to be so corrupted and confusing. No answer really works unless you really DO believe that God did it intentionally to confuse the ones he already destined for hell.
If I were not an atheist, I'd say that the "God" of the bible was in fact Satan. It was never divinely inspired because if it was it would never have been corruptible. How else could good christians allow themselves to do bad things? Because the bible allows it as written by the devil.
In regards to Mark 3:14, it is the Alexandrian manuscripts that include the reference to "apostles." This includes both א and B. Since the Alexandrian Manuscripts typically give the shorter sayings and since Mark has the tendency to be redundant when he writes, it seems to me that there's good evidence for the authenticity of the mention.
It all depends on who is making the determination and what is the total picture in mind. With entire chapters added to John and 6 diff ending to Mark and hundreds of thousands of variances in the NT documents, it doesn't stretch the imagination to see a scribe of the orthodox flavor writing apostles INTO the text so that some have it and some don't. And if it could happen to Mark 3:14, it could easily happen to Matthew 10:2 and Mark 6:30 as well. ?
It's certainly possible that the mention was a scribal addition, but I'm not sure that the evidence points that way. The reading is supported by both Alexandrian and Caesarean manuscripts, and most importantly it's supported by א and B. א and B are both very early manuscripts, and they both have the tendency to leave out words (very rarely do they add). So for both of them to mention the phrase in question gives great backing to the authenticity of the text.
Well, the only thing I'd say in response is that Mark 3:14 is almost certainly an insertion and with the 12 being called "disciples" just one verse earlier, for my money, I'm calling it an insertion. Again, do you, as an author of the gospel of Mark or Matthew, use disciple 60 times in your story and suddenly ONCE use apostles immediately after having just written DISCIPLES? That we have no manuscript without the insertion is actually a fairly weak support because...
...we don't know how many hundreds of copies came before the ones we DO have in our possession.
The same goes for 1st Thessalonians 2:15-16. It is present in ALL manuscript copies and yet, many scholars have still pronounced it a later insertion. I covered the reasons why in my 5A-5D Jesus Myth vids.
I'm not trying to bash you over the head and say I'm right. The evidence for my claim is weaker than I'd like. But given all I know, it makes the most sense to me.
SO.... thanks for the info. I don't really have access to all of the manuscripts unless they have now been placed online somewhere. If so, let me know! hahah I don't have a lot of heavy scholar books, either. So, feel free to reply with whatever resources you can offer.
It seems we will just have to disagree about Mark 3:14. :)
But in regards to Mark 6:30, I don't think it's necessary to say that Mark didn't use the term απόστολοι. Want not simply interpret it to mean "sent ones"? This would makes sense considering that earlier in the chapter (verses 6-13) Jesus actually sends the disciples out. This interpretation does no harm to the mythical Jesus argument, and it doesn't force you to argue for a scribal addition without any real external evidence.
Unfortunately I don't know of any online resource with all the manuscripts. The Goodspeed Manuscript Collection is pretty good though (and free, which is great).You should Google it if you get the chance.
I'll check it out and bookmark it. Man, I can't believe that ALL the manuscripts couldn't be scanned, put online in a sort of Gutenberg project kind of way as well as putting the actual TEXT up underneath each manuscript so you can read the ACTUAL writing and the TEXT version of it also. Man, that'd be smoking. I'll bet you it happens eventually.
man, they have a whopping... 68. hahah out of > 5000. well, it's a start, eh? But wouldn't it be crazy to have all 5000+ scanned, zoomable, with greek text below AND english (literal) translation of EACH manuscript below that. wha? THEN for people like me who are not familiar with all of the locations they think originated them, have a short paragraph above explaining any pertinent info like region, guess on the dating of the writing AND mss copy itself, etc.
It's not a bad assessment but to me, the better answer would be an insertion but then, you knew that. :) heheheh
But you are correct. It doesn't directly contradict the JM theory. The disciples WERE messengers and Jesus DID send them out as messengers (per the story). So it does nothing to help the fact that 22 other documents flatly refuse to use the word "disciple" when referring to James, John, Peter, Paul, etc. There IS a huge chasm between the gospels and the epistles.
That would be awesome. You can find some of the more popular manuscripts online, but other than that it's pretty difficult.
And I do agree that there is a definite difference between the epistles and the gospels. I'm just not sure if that difference is the result of the JM theory or not. Doherty's defense of the theory is interesting to be sure, but I'm still not completely convinced. A lot of the points raised by Doherty seem to be arguments from silence (especially when talking about Paul).
There are basically three areas of evidence that support the JM theory. 1) the silences that are truly astounding. Silences where we should expect to hear SOMETHING of Jesus' teachings/miracles. 2) the positive evidence showing the early beliefs about a heavenly Jesus (check out all my JM vids for that) and 3) the pagan/Jewish parallels that support the idea that Jesus was based upone previous ideas/characters. Just compare David and Joseph to Jesus. So, it's MUCH more than silences.
I certainly agree that there is more going for the JM theory than just arguments from silence. I just don't find the silences mentioned by Doherty to be that astounding. Paul does seem to allude to Jesus' sayings at points. And he does reference what seems to be the last supper and even Jesus' mother. Of course the JM theory has explanations for these verses (which you've covered if I recall correctly), but it seems to me that the most natural reading is one including a historical Jesus.
I haven't covered the mother thing and it isn't mother it's merely "woman". Usually translated as "born of woman" but the Greek for "born" can also be translated as "made" etc. IOW, at every turn, when you dig past the translations, you can see that the subtle inferences introduced by the translators goes away and it ALLOWS for the JM slant. Why would paul say "born of woman" instead of "born of a virgin"? or better "born of Mary"? Just saying. :)
I have covered a FEW of the contradictions but not the woman thing or the last supper allusion. will do so someday. I don't have solid answers for ALL of the contradictions but I'd say 90%.
"I just don't find the silences mentioned by Doherty to be that astounding."
Do you find the fact that out of 22 NT writings (epistles) there isn't one mention of ONE of Jesus' miracles and excluding 1 Cor 11:23, there isn't ONE mention of anything Jesus supposedly said?
Even when it would have made Paul's point in cases, he quotes the OT INSTEAD of Jesus!
I find this so unlikely that the only viable explanation is that they did not KNOW of a gospel Jesus. ?
Well, I'm assuming that the woman that Jesus was born to was his mother. You're right in that γενόμενον can be translated as "made," but I hardly see how this helps the JM theory. Either way the natural reading seems to be that Jesus had a mother. The virgin birth may not have been added to the story yet, but this doesn't discredit a historical Jesus.
You are right. The face-value reading DOES lend itself more to the gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke. But what we're trying to do is see if, perhaps, THEY gleaned their tidbits (or maybe at least Luke and Matthew was edited later to add the virgin birth acct) FROM Paul. If Paul said "born of woman, born under law", that could very well lead to the historical Jesus of the gospels. But this passage is one of the harder ones to explain and I'm not sold on a particular answer yet.
"Do you find the fact that out of 22 NT writings (epistles) there isn't one mention of ONE of Jesus' miracles and excluding 1 Cor 11:23, there isn't ONE mention of anything Jesus supposedly said?"
Well, the resurrection from the dead can be counted as a miracle. (After all, if that isn't miraculous I don't know what is!) But of course this doesn't contradict the JM theory in any way. But other than the resurrection, I really see no need for the miracle stories to be brought up in the epistles.
These writers weren't chronicling a history of Jesus, and I'm not sure that it's fair to assume that they would mention every highlight of Jesus' ministry. (This is especially true of Paul, who would not have been around during Jesus' ministry.)
But it may be that's Jesus' sayings were alluded to at times in the epistles. For instance 1 Corinthians 13:2 may be a reference to the saying found in Mathew 21:21.
assumptions and presumptions but no fact that you admit at 6 minutes. and for your information no, no one would have any obligation to give you the information that some manuscripts lack a phrase or a word much less purposefully hide additional information. that is simply a scholar doing an honest job and if you had any legitimate historical criticism of this then you would have the information about what manuscripts had the passage and which did not instead of making these lame assumptions.
Uhlbelk 1 year ago
@Uhlbelk butthurt apologist?
TruthSurge 1 year ago
@TruthSurge So you are an earl doherty believer. A man with a BA in ancient history (a joke degree at virtually any university), who comes to his historical perspective from a man with NO historical education. I don't particularly have any desire to track down these books and pick apart all their interpreting, research and conclusions. I prefer to do that with scientific bullshit and not theological bullshit. Your comments indicate that you are butthurt, I suggest a proctologist.
Uhlbelk 1 year ago
@Uhlbelk If you haven't watched my Jesus Myth vids, then do. Any day, any time, you and me, blogTV. we can talk about Earl Doherty, G.A. Wells, Bart Ehrman, anyone you want. But instead, why don't we talk about the details of the theory? Wouldn't that be better? To actually address the pts instead of saying it CAN'T possibly be correct because 99.999% of scholars don't buy it. 99.8 % of scholars are religious. go figure.
B4 you strut your stuff, you should probably think a bit.
TruthSurge 1 year ago
@TruthSurge If your other vids are no better then this one then I have no desire to listen to more assumptions whether they are your own or simply a regurgitation of doherty. I already said I wasn't going to go dig his crap up just to point out its flaws. You want any real respect, go learn early greek and aramaic, go get a degree in history, and write a thesis on the subject where your ideas and conclusions are so well put together that other historians can't dispute you.
Uhlbelk 1 year ago
Great work! It does make sense.
What I noticed though is that the Greek word that is used for "apostle" is used once more in the gospels, namely Jn 13:16, where it is translated as "he that is sent". Just click on the Strongs number (652) and it renders the list of all variations of the word. Just my 2 cents.
uthamal 2 years ago
Thanks for the info. You are correct. The word apostolos is in John 13:16 but it is not being used to denote THE disciples or even ONE in particular but more of a parable-like messenger. So, in this case, it doesn't come into play but thanks for that. I missed that one. I always like people to add corrections or point out mistakes because I like to keep proving I'm open-minded. :) I wasn't very thorough with this because I did it hastily. THANKS!
TruthSurge 2 years ago
You're very welcome, but it's tiny compared to the immense work you do. :)
uthamal 2 years ago
And just think how little I do compared to the giants who do it all day for a living for 30 years. I just enjoy digging under the surface and discovering that things are NOT as I've been told they are. And it has nothing to do with conspiracy theories. It's just digging beneath the layers of overlaid theologies to try and recover what might be considered original but even then it's a calculated guess.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
I annotated the vid. thanks!
TruthSurge 2 years ago
★★★★★
Katalyzt 2 years ago
I'd be more willing to bet that, if the scribes were familiar with both the epistles and the gospels, made a mistake rather than a conscious edit. It was a brain fart because they were familiar with two different tellings of Jesus, meant to cater to the gospels, and made a booboo that suggests the gospels they adhere to contradicts the earlier epistles.
Deioth 2 years ago
Some edits were "honest" ones in that they felt they were adhering to what really happened but again, to change ANYTHING in a letter or story by someone else is to alter the original meaning. They knew that then. Even the Apokalypse of John gives a warning to those who might add to or take away from the words of his writing. But yeah, countless edits ocurred and Ehrman says it prob numbers into the HUNDREDS of thousands.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
Indeed. Just to play devil's advocate a sec, if the Bible ever once was infallible *holds back laughter* it clearly was turned into a pile of crap by man.
Deioth 2 years ago
Well, that is the position of many Christians and apologists. The originals were error-free and the copying introduced errors. It doesn't help their case one bit. We don't HAVE the originals and now they must answer why God allowed his all-important message to mankind - upon which their eternal disposition rests - to be so corrupted and confusing. No answer really works unless you really DO believe that God did it intentionally to confuse the ones he already destined for hell.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
If I were not an atheist, I'd say that the "God" of the bible was in fact Satan. It was never divinely inspired because if it was it would never have been corruptible. How else could good christians allow themselves to do bad things? Because the bible allows it as written by the devil.
Deioth 2 years ago
yeah, the old "god moved david to number israel" or "satan moved david to number israel" hmmmmm veeeery interesting.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
More like "Satan wrote the bible" =P The ultimate deceiver, after all...
Deioth 2 years ago
In regards to Mark 3:14, it is the Alexandrian manuscripts that include the reference to "apostles." This includes both א and B. Since the Alexandrian Manuscripts typically give the shorter sayings and since Mark has the tendency to be redundant when he writes, it seems to me that there's good evidence for the authenticity of the mention.
trumpet152 2 years ago
It all depends on who is making the determination and what is the total picture in mind. With entire chapters added to John and 6 diff ending to Mark and hundreds of thousands of variances in the NT documents, it doesn't stretch the imagination to see a scribe of the orthodox flavor writing apostles INTO the text so that some have it and some don't. And if it could happen to Mark 3:14, it could easily happen to Matthew 10:2 and Mark 6:30 as well. ?
TruthSurge 2 years ago
It's certainly possible that the mention was a scribal addition, but I'm not sure that the evidence points that way. The reading is supported by both Alexandrian and Caesarean manuscripts, and most importantly it's supported by א and B. א and B are both very early manuscripts, and they both have the tendency to leave out words (very rarely do they add). So for both of them to mention the phrase in question gives great backing to the authenticity of the text.
trumpet152 2 years ago
Well, the only thing I'd say in response is that Mark 3:14 is almost certainly an insertion and with the 12 being called "disciples" just one verse earlier, for my money, I'm calling it an insertion. Again, do you, as an author of the gospel of Mark or Matthew, use disciple 60 times in your story and suddenly ONCE use apostles immediately after having just written DISCIPLES? That we have no manuscript without the insertion is actually a fairly weak support because...
TruthSurge 2 years ago
...we don't know how many hundreds of copies came before the ones we DO have in our possession.
The same goes for 1st Thessalonians 2:15-16. It is present in ALL manuscript copies and yet, many scholars have still pronounced it a later insertion. I covered the reasons why in my 5A-5D Jesus Myth vids.
I'm not trying to bash you over the head and say I'm right. The evidence for my claim is weaker than I'd like. But given all I know, it makes the most sense to me.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
SO.... thanks for the info. I don't really have access to all of the manuscripts unless they have now been placed online somewhere. If so, let me know! hahah I don't have a lot of heavy scholar books, either. So, feel free to reply with whatever resources you can offer.
Thanks!
TruthSurge 2 years ago
It seems we will just have to disagree about Mark 3:14. :)
But in regards to Mark 6:30, I don't think it's necessary to say that Mark didn't use the term απόστολοι. Want not simply interpret it to mean "sent ones"? This would makes sense considering that earlier in the chapter (verses 6-13) Jesus actually sends the disciples out. This interpretation does no harm to the mythical Jesus argument, and it doesn't force you to argue for a scribal addition without any real external evidence.
trumpet152 2 years ago
Unfortunately I don't know of any online resource with all the manuscripts. The Goodspeed Manuscript Collection is pretty good though (and free, which is great).You should Google it if you get the chance.
trumpet152 2 years ago
I'll check it out and bookmark it. Man, I can't believe that ALL the manuscripts couldn't be scanned, put online in a sort of Gutenberg project kind of way as well as putting the actual TEXT up underneath each manuscript so you can read the ACTUAL writing and the TEXT version of it also. Man, that'd be smoking. I'll bet you it happens eventually.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
man, they have a whopping... 68. hahah out of > 5000. well, it's a start, eh? But wouldn't it be crazy to have all 5000+ scanned, zoomable, with greek text below AND english (literal) translation of EACH manuscript below that. wha? THEN for people like me who are not familiar with all of the locations they think originated them, have a short paragraph above explaining any pertinent info like region, guess on the dating of the writing AND mss copy itself, etc.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
It's not a bad assessment but to me, the better answer would be an insertion but then, you knew that. :) heheheh
But you are correct. It doesn't directly contradict the JM theory. The disciples WERE messengers and Jesus DID send them out as messengers (per the story). So it does nothing to help the fact that 22 other documents flatly refuse to use the word "disciple" when referring to James, John, Peter, Paul, etc. There IS a huge chasm between the gospels and the epistles.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
That would be awesome. You can find some of the more popular manuscripts online, but other than that it's pretty difficult.
And I do agree that there is a definite difference between the epistles and the gospels. I'm just not sure if that difference is the result of the JM theory or not. Doherty's defense of the theory is interesting to be sure, but I'm still not completely convinced. A lot of the points raised by Doherty seem to be arguments from silence (especially when talking about Paul).
trumpet152 2 years ago
There are basically three areas of evidence that support the JM theory. 1) the silences that are truly astounding. Silences where we should expect to hear SOMETHING of Jesus' teachings/miracles. 2) the positive evidence showing the early beliefs about a heavenly Jesus (check out all my JM vids for that) and 3) the pagan/Jewish parallels that support the idea that Jesus was based upone previous ideas/characters. Just compare David and Joseph to Jesus. So, it's MUCH more than silences.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
I certainly agree that there is more going for the JM theory than just arguments from silence. I just don't find the silences mentioned by Doherty to be that astounding. Paul does seem to allude to Jesus' sayings at points. And he does reference what seems to be the last supper and even Jesus' mother. Of course the JM theory has explanations for these verses (which you've covered if I recall correctly), but it seems to me that the most natural reading is one including a historical Jesus.
trumpet152 2 years ago
I haven't covered the mother thing and it isn't mother it's merely "woman". Usually translated as "born of woman" but the Greek for "born" can also be translated as "made" etc. IOW, at every turn, when you dig past the translations, you can see that the subtle inferences introduced by the translators goes away and it ALLOWS for the JM slant. Why would paul say "born of woman" instead of "born of a virgin"? or better "born of Mary"? Just saying. :)
TruthSurge 2 years ago
I have covered a FEW of the contradictions but not the woman thing or the last supper allusion. will do so someday. I don't have solid answers for ALL of the contradictions but I'd say 90%.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
"I just don't find the silences mentioned by Doherty to be that astounding."
Do you find the fact that out of 22 NT writings (epistles) there isn't one mention of ONE of Jesus' miracles and excluding 1 Cor 11:23, there isn't ONE mention of anything Jesus supposedly said?
Even when it would have made Paul's point in cases, he quotes the OT INSTEAD of Jesus!
I find this so unlikely that the only viable explanation is that they did not KNOW of a gospel Jesus. ?
TruthSurge 2 years ago
Well, I'm assuming that the woman that Jesus was born to was his mother. You're right in that γενόμενον can be translated as "made," but I hardly see how this helps the JM theory. Either way the natural reading seems to be that Jesus had a mother. The virgin birth may not have been added to the story yet, but this doesn't discredit a historical Jesus.
trumpet152 2 years ago
You are right. The face-value reading DOES lend itself more to the gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke. But what we're trying to do is see if, perhaps, THEY gleaned their tidbits (or maybe at least Luke and Matthew was edited later to add the virgin birth acct) FROM Paul. If Paul said "born of woman, born under law", that could very well lead to the historical Jesus of the gospels. But this passage is one of the harder ones to explain and I'm not sold on a particular answer yet.
TruthSurge 2 years ago
"Do you find the fact that out of 22 NT writings (epistles) there isn't one mention of ONE of Jesus' miracles and excluding 1 Cor 11:23, there isn't ONE mention of anything Jesus supposedly said?"
Well, the resurrection from the dead can be counted as a miracle. (After all, if that isn't miraculous I don't know what is!) But of course this doesn't contradict the JM theory in any way. But other than the resurrection, I really see no need for the miracle stories to be brought up in the epistles.
trumpet152 2 years ago
These writers weren't chronicling a history of Jesus, and I'm not sure that it's fair to assume that they would mention every highlight of Jesus' ministry. (This is especially true of Paul, who would not have been around during Jesus' ministry.)
But it may be that's Jesus' sayings were alluded to at times in the epistles. For instance 1 Corinthians 13:2 may be a reference to the saying found in Mathew 21:21.
trumpet152 2 years ago
Interesting.
CousinoMacul 2 years ago
yeah, the plot thickens! haha
TruthSurge 2 years ago