Mythicism: Anything Goes?

Reblogged from The New Oxonian:

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The Jesus Process

1.  Plausibility and Possibility

In a few previous posts I've talked about the weight of "plausibility" in assessing arguments for the historicity of Jesus. A few commenters have correctly said that plausibility is not evidence. That's true.  No one said it  was.

Plausibility is a precondition for managing the kinds of information that would be suitable for discussing a character like Jesus of Nazareth.  

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Is Adam Carolla a bigot?

 Listen to this pod cast from Adam Carolla, Adam Carolla Blames Califorina’s Woes on Mexican Immigrants. Is Adam Carolla a bigot? Ask yourself; if someone says Western culture is imperialistic or America is forcing war and Big Macs on the world do you think they are bigots? If not, why? Is it race? Would it surprise you that not all Mexicans are the same “race”?  I think it is no more bigoted to say “Mexicans don’t study enough” than it is to say “Americans don’t exercise enough.”

Creationism and Politics: Krugman’s Hypocritical Charge that Republicans are Anti-Rationalist

Democratic shill, Paul Krugman has seized on a recent GQ interview of Marco Rubio, in the way the editors of GQ hoped, to paint Rubio as a panderer to the anti-science fundamentalist that supposedly make up the Republican party. Rubio was asked by GQ how old he thought the Earth was and Rubio responded with a vague answer calculated to offend no one. Of course the liberal pundits know the correct answer is 4.5 billion years and any one who disagrees is to out of touch with reality to be able to govern the nation. Except of course for Barak Obama. Obama was asked a similar question to Rubio and gave basically the same  answer as Rubio. Of course the left sees the glass as half full for Obama and half empty for Rubio. Obama was merely pandering to the uneducated poor that his candidacy depended on and who otherwise know what is best for the nation and doesn’t really believe this stuff, how could he, the left loves him. Rubio on the other hand probably does believe creationism and if he doesn’t he is pandering to neanderthals who have no idea what is good for them. The facts are that much of the country believes superstitious nonsense about the creation of the world and those votes are just as important as those who maintain scientific theories. None the less, ones beliefs concerning events that are beyond ones own observations are not a good gauge as to ones rationality in those areas one can more readily observe. remember, unless you have done an investigation yourself on the age of the world, you are basically accepting an opinion on faith. This has nothing to do, as Rubio says, on how you understand the GDP or how to grow the economy. Keep in mind the discover of Newtonian Physics (Issac Newton if you were curious) also believed God created the world and that Revelation was a mathematical code to determine the end of the world.

The Case for Mitt Romney

Reblogged from Swampland:

Mitt Romney does not naturally inspire adulation. In school, he should have been voted least likely to engender a cult of personality. It is almost surprising to hear crowds at his rallies chant his name.

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Huffington Post Goofs It Up

. The article here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/paul-ryan-gm-plant_n_1841723.html
claims that Ryan mislead with his convention speech. Not true. Here is Huff Po’s quote of Ryan, Ryan said, “Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.’  That’s what he said in 2008.”

“Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year,” Ryan continued. “It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.”

The article says Ryan mislead because Obama made no such promise and the plant  “halted production” in ’08, when Bush was in office.

Obama, did however make the promise Ryan mentioned, it can be seen in a transcript of the speech found here, http://www.cfr.org/us-election-2008/obamas-speech-janesville-wisconsin/p15492 

“And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years”

The speech was made at Janesville, so clearly it was the Janesville plant he spoke of. The plant in 2008 had in fact halted production and it still is not producing. I suppose he may have meant that the physical structure of the empty plant will remain for another 100 years, so we can look foward to future of industrial ghost towns. Here http://www.jsonline.com/business/130171578.html you can read about the sorry prospects for the plant.

special thanks to http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/obama-lied-about-janesville-gm-auto-plant-not-ryan/ for bringing the jsonline article to my attention.

Why don’t the poor want to get married and go to church? Is it the lack of money or just that fornication and booze are so much more fun?

 

 

“The decline of marriage among poor and working-class Americans is partly a consequence of changes in the American economy. In today’s postindustrial economy, it is harder for less-educated Americans, especially poor and working-class men, to find stable, decent-paying jobs. This makes these men less attractive as marriage partners, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of their partners. Hence, less-educated Americans are less likely to get and stay married, even when they are having children.

 

But my research also suggests that changes in the culture—the kind of changes that Roiphe largely applauds—are implicated in the growing marriage divide between college-educated and less-educated Americans. Specifically, the growing secularization and liberalization of American society seem to be playing out differently by class. Surprisingly, college-educated Americans are now more likely to attend church than their less-educated fellow citizens, and they have also become more marriage-minded since the 1970s—in their attitudes toward divorce, for instance—whereas less-educated Americans have become less marriage-minded over the same time. These cultural changes are only reinforcing the marriage divide in America, insofar as religious attendance and marriage-minded norms tend to strengthen marriage”

From the article “The Kids Are Not Really Alright” at Slate http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/07/single_motherhood_worse_for_children_.html

I would argue that the reason college educated people are marrying more and going to church more has to do with the fact that getting through collage requires a rational as opposed to emotional approach to life and and the ability to defer pleasure. America’s poor and working class are largely the remainder that did not have the self control to complete collage. Manuel laborers have always been less desirable marriage partners than white collar workers and I would argue that an unskilled worker today could provide as well as his 1950′s counterpart. The difference is today no one thinks the life style of of a 1950′s family is desirable. What encouraged marriage in the past was strong social taboos against divorce, against unmarital sex, and single parent hood. Of course given the welfare system of yesteryear single motherhood was a a life sentence to poverty. In our time the stigma is much reduced and the risk partly alleviated so for men marriage offers little incentives if you expectation from women is purely about sex. Collage teaches kids on the other hand to think of women as friends and partners, not just sex objects, while working class and poor culture encourages a more macho understanding of women’s roles. essentialy, if you thought school was a bore, and couldn’t finish collage because you couldn’t stop partying at the frat house, then trying screw a bunch of girls and boozing with your buddies migght seem like better options than marriage and Church.

 

Is Mark’s Original Ending Found in John?

The link below is to James McGrath’s article on the ending of Mark where he suggests that John 21 is the original ending of  the Gospel of Mark.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/mcg.shtml

I find the argument for John 21 being the original end of Mark very persuasive. Against the suggestion that we should accept that there is evidence that Mark was intended to end this way and that this is the simpler theory, I would say that it’s difficult to work with that assumption as being true because it is an unusual ending for a story like this. It is odd that it didn’t have an ending attached sooner.  James is correct to say that the last words leave the listener thinking that the angels’ message is given in vain and does not advance the plot because the reader is told the women told no one. But our evidence from Paul suggests that Christianity had an appearance tradition even before Mark. It is strange that the confirmation of the resurrection is not shown in Mark. All the other gospels that narrate the resurrection do.  While the suggestion that the end is meant invite the reader to do as the disciples are going to do, go find Jesus in Galilee is clever, it is not explicitly explained and one wonders how much, if not all the audience would be left guessing, “did he rise?” even if they ultimately knew the ending. It would be like Star Wars ending with Obi-Wan telling Lea that everything is great, Luke destroyed the death star and skipping the attack scene. It is certainly possible. I once even wondered if it was a sort of circular story where the reader is to reflect back on the open chapters in Galilee in a new light, but most of the audience would be listeners not readers, so one couldn’t re read the work again at ones leisure. You would here it as a single performance, not examine specific passages.  So long as there is a suspicion, however, that the real end is missing, it is proper to look for evidence that this is so. Some have suggested that Matthew or Luke contain the original ending of Mark.  Both must be discounted since Mark ends with the women telling no one due to fear and Luke and Matthew both conclude with the women rushing off to tell the disciples (this shows how difficult some found Mark’s ending at the time).

The suggestion that the ending, which much more assuredly not part of the original composition, of the Gospel of John is the original ending of Mark has a number of features that make its case at least equal to the suggestion that Mark ended as it now does. As has been pointed out, the last words of Jesus in John’s boat story, other than the prophecy which is clearly an addition from the Johnian author from Jesus are “Follow me,” which in Mark would poetically link what would be Mark’s last words from Jesus, an invitation to follow the risen Jesus even to martyrdom, with the invitation made earlier in Mark, where Jesus calls the disciples who are fishing. Another convincing piece of evidence is the way that this tale is inserted in the gospel of Peter. Here it begins where mark ends with the women afraid at the tomb. It picks up with the apostles who by fleeing home have gone to where Jesus said he would meet them.  This is evidence that G. Peter is aware of the original Markan ending. If this how Mark ended, with the frightened apostles trying to get back to their old lives only to be confronted by the risen Jesus, then the end has a rather exiting and touching twist ending.

How this occurred, that this ending went missing from Mark and wound up in the Gospel of Peter and John is still a mystery. What we know is that Luke and Matthew don’t use it so it is likely that it was missing from the copy or copies they used.  I say copy or copies, because it has recently occurred to me that there may have been originally very few manuscripts of Mark to begin with. In the past I imagined church scribes copying books as soon as they received them and sending them out to other churches like a chain letter. But it is very likely such a divergent leaderless, apocalyptic sect would not use all its time and resources to distribute editions of stories they all knew to each other. Instead the first copy of Mark may have stayed with the same community or been carried on a circuit for many years without a duplicate being made. It is possible that mark and Matthew used the same copy of Mark but at separate occasions and without knowledge of each other.  It is also likely that most telling of the story in mark were from memory, not reading from the book (that is a paraphrase of mark, like when someone tells you the story of Mark or the Terminator) it is thus possible that the ending was somehow removed from the end of the monograph of mark, before copies were made. The Gospel of Peter may be based on a well-rehearsed recitation of the tale of Mark independent of tis text. This would account for both the general similarity and many specific differences. The ending in John may be adapted from one of these floating recitations of Mark’s tales. It is also possible that John’s community had an edition of Mark that had not lost its end (or was made of recitation of the original Mark) or they had the original missing end.  The latter is more likely given how John would have had to remove this end to insert the alternate tradition (also picked up by Luke).  The version in john seems to have retained a couple of elements that connect it to Mark, like the reference to Peter’s triple denial and the “Follow me” line. Had this tale circulated independently, the elements that reference the other narrative might be dropped as not adding to the central story of Jesus performing a miracle with the catch when revealing himself to disciples. This is not proof that John’s community had the original monograph of the end of Mark and from Luke it does seem that an independent short legend of Jesus providing a miraculous catch was circulated. But look how it is presented. I think it is more likely that this rather odd resurrection appearance, divorced from its original setting would be turned into a calling story than a calling story be reused as a resurrection appearance.

What do you think?