by Gaedhal
This is an excellent article by Richard Carrier on all the impossible and magical events in Mark’s Gospel. And remember: Mark’s gospel is really the only historical ‘evidence’—if such it be—that this Jesus character even existed. The other Gospels are really only fictitious elaborations of Mark; novels plagiarised from the Marcan source-text. If a Jesus incident occurred, and Mark doesn’t relate it, then either Matthew, John or Luke made it up so as to advance a theological agenda.
The above is a slight exaggeration. I actually do believe in hypothesised sources such as Q; however we have zero historical, archaeological or documentary evidence of Q. Mark is the only source of the alleged life of Jesus that we have any empirical evidence for.
The German-rationalist view was that the magical events in the gospels actually occurred, but that their cause was natural [Editor’s note: see the classic 1906 work of Biblical historical criticism The Quest for the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer]. Jesus walked on a puddle, and this was misconstrued as his walking magically on water. However, this view was ultimately destroyed by David Friedrich Strauss. Strauss proved that the magical events in the gospels are completely mythological or ahistorical.
It simply will not do to delete the magical lies of the Gospel of Mark, and then claim that the remaining mundanity actually happened historically.
In my estimation, there is zero history in the New Testament.
However, the likes of Mike Licona tell us that the Gospels are sober history that give us the ‘gist’ of events that actually occurred, albeit embellished by special effects like zombie-uprisings, earthquakes, and Temple veils’ being split. However, the problem with the con that Licona is trying to pull is that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, the conversation that the disciples had with magical disembodied beings called ‘angels’, and Jesus’s levitation into the sky followed by his magical disappearance could likewise be classed as ‘Apocalyptic special effects’. Remember: Licona is a con-artist, just as all apologists are. He is just slightly less of a con-artist than the likes of Gary Habermas and J. Warner Wallace. YouTube atheists should stop patting Licona on the head, for this.
Aubrey Plaza once described Acting as ‘lying for money’. This also describes the Apologetics’ profession.
David Madison recently wrote a blogpost about the article from Richard Carrier.
5 replies on “Marcan myth”
I never cease to be amazed at the American racial right’s ignorance of the extremely intensive studies that have been made of the New Testament since the Enlightenment (which has culminated this century with the work of Carrier and other mythicists).
On a complimentary note, I ordered Gospel Fictions by Randal Helms recently, and was pleased, early into chapter II to encounter the critical proposal:
He goes on to say:
I see Chapters IV and V deal with miracles, but I haven’t got that far yet. David Skrbina’s The Jesus Hoax (which goes further towards the truth of the non-existence of ‘Jesus’ than Helms) was a very enjoyable read. Incidentally, Skrbina’s books on panpsychism are well worth a read also.
Skrbina also seems to agree with friend of this blog, Dr Robert Morgan on the dangers of technology.
CT,
From my experience, the Dissident Right knows of the anti-Christianity writings of the authors who write on Biblical exegesis. They ignore or mock them, ie “fedora wearing atheists”, because they are leftists (like Carrier). They can’t see past the irrelevant (in this case) leftist beliefs of these scholars and focus on the legitimate and crucially important knowledge that these scholars offer. They also can’t relate the important project of destroying religious literalism in general and Christian literalism in particular to the saving of the White race. In so many of their minds, Christianity is linked to traditionalism and traditionalism is linked to being pro-White. Being anti-Christian is being anti-White.
It drives me crazy and I know it does the same to you. It is through reading you that I realize how much of a minority the anti-Christian pro-White movement is. For me, I love reading Carrier and his peers. But most racial right wingers just can’t be bothered.
But it was precisely for them that I posted entries abbreviating the book of a Christian, Ian Wilson, who is honest enough to recognise that the NT is full of problems. Racialists don’t even recognise that.
I bought that book by Wilson–fully illustrated as it’s a book for normies—in 1987 in California. That was long before atheists became so intensely interested in the NT. But the medieval backwardness of the racialists amazes me, since apologist Ian Wilson even wrote a famous book about the Shroud of Turin. His credentials as a pious Christian writer are impeccable. But even so, a book that popularises textual criticism of the NT with lots of images, like the one linked above, doesn’t cause the slightest interest to these racialists…!