Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

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TedM
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

Post by TedM »

Peter Kirby wrote:This sounds like a testable hypothesis. All we have to do is to look at fiction where we know it is fiction and see whether we can find examples of:
  • replacing nobody figures with other nobody figures
  • characters involved that were CHANGED that were so terribly unimportant
  • remove and replace and interject new characters that nobody seems to care about
Very valid idea. I find your choice to be badly deficient however. The stepsisters were HUGELY important to the story. They had very strong personalities that evoked emotions in Cinderella and in the readers. They weren't nobody's at all. Not even close. Whereas the women at the cross had no personality in the account at all and readers would have no reason to change them, unless perhaps they simply took offense at their names for some reason.
The OP attempts to apply a very deterministic and rationalistic paradigm to what is a very haphazard and subjective process. Whatever else you want to say, the OP has a very limited and incorrect understanding of how writers of fiction operate. They are not robots. They are not only able to calculate differences of meaning intended and able to transform that into different symbols for their story. They are not limited to making choices that are explicable or in evidence. They do not need reasons.

The desire to explain everything is being imposed on the text and its author.

The simplest explanation is not very satisfying to a certain lot, but it also makes the best sense: "because they can."
"because they can" is one of the worst explanations I ever care to hear people give. It is not an explanation at all. Of course fiction writers aren't robots and aren't immune to error or strange things. I do try and take a common sense approach to things though, and I've given my common sense reasons why I find the inconsistencies to be more likely to be due to a desire to reflect history by relying on a historical tradition of some kind more than anything else.

If anyone can come up with a good example of subsequent authors of fiction changing nobody's in their story for seemingly no reason at all other than 'because they can', I'm willing to admit that my idea of common sense about human nature could use a re-think.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

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TedM wrote:Very valid idea. I find your choice to be badly deficient however.
Of course you do.

Let us know when you've done the work to validate your weird beliefs about what fiction can be.
TedM wrote:"because they can" is one of the worst explanations I ever care to hear people give.
Haha, people are awful, aren't they?

Doesn't mean it isn't true. You expect way too much.
TedM wrote:It is not an explanation at all.
That's the point. No explanation is necessary.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
TedM
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

Post by TedM »

Peter Kirby wrote:
TedM wrote:Very valid idea. I find your choice to be badly deficient however.
Of course you do.
I do because it was badly deficient and you should be big enough to recognize and admit it instead of being snotty about it.
Let us know when you've done the work to validate your weird beliefs about what fiction can be.
I don't need to validate my beliefs. I didn't start this thread simply to validate my beliefs, although of course that's typically part of the motivation for these threads. I started it to challenge others to INVALIDATE my suspicions. So far nobody has come close to doing so.

TedM wrote:"because they can" is one of the worst explanations I ever care to hear people give.
Haha, people are awful, aren't they?

Doesn't mean it isn't true. You expect way too much.
No I disagree with this. People don't do things ONLY because they can. That's not how behaviour works. If you can't see that as true then there really is a problem here.
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Re: Is this interesting?

Post by TedM »

outhouse wrote:...
You aren't quite answering my question. Let's say they believed it was true - why does that have to serve a theological purpose in this case, and not simply what it looks like on the surface - that they believed something happened in the course of human events that really had no particular theological signficance at all. How does Joanna substituting for Salome serve a theological purpose? IT may, but why not just conclude that when Luke did his research he decided it WAS Joanna there for sure, and he didn't know for certain if Salome was there so he left her out? Either is possible but I notice that you typically say that the passages serve a theological purpose when to me that may not be the case at all on the minute details..
Last edited by TedM on Sun Apr 23, 2017 9:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Is this interesting?

Post by Peter Kirby »

TedM wrote:You aren't quite answering my question. Let's say they believed it was true - why does that have to serve a theological purpose in this case, and not simply what it looks like on the surface - that they believed something happened in the course of human events that really had no particular theological signficance at all. How does Joanna substituting for Salome serve a theological purpose? IT may, but why not just conclude that when Luke did his research he decided it WAS Joanna there for sure, and he didn't know for certain if Salome was there so he left her out? Either is possible but I notice that you typically say that the passages serve a theological purpose when to me that may not be the case at all on the minute details..
I can't tell what and who this is a reply to. (Other than that it's part of the inconsistencies and theological purposes thread here, I think.)

EDIT: Okay, here it is.
outhouse wrote:
TedM wrote:
All 3 of those implications do not seem to me to be something one would expect from a fictional account,

It does not fly that way.

It could only be they believed it was true, that does not show historicity, only a possible belief held at best. This was simply something the community found important and valuable.

Often times context is lost because many paragraphs and stories were written in response to negative traditions so these communities could defend a particular belief in question

All of these text are a reflection of the authors, more so then of any possible event.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Re: Is this interesting?

Post by TedM »

It was to outhouse, although his post seems to have disappeared. I used 'quick reply' but didn't realize his quote would not appear in my reply. Edited now.
Peter Kirby wrote:
TedM wrote:You aren't quite answering my question. Let's say they believed it was true - why does that have to serve a theological purpose in this case, and not simply what it looks like on the surface - that they believed something happened in the course of human events that really had no particular theological signficance at all. How does Joanna substituting for Salome serve a theological purpose? IT may, but why not just conclude that when Luke did his research he decided it WAS Joanna there for sure, and he didn't know for certain if Salome was there so he left her out? Either is possible but I notice that you typically say that the passages serve a theological purpose when to me that may not be the case at all on the minute details..
I can't tell what and who this is a reply to. (Other than that it's part of the inconsistencies and theological purposes thread here, I think.)
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

Post by Peter Kirby »

TedM wrote:I do because it was badly deficient and you should be big enough to recognize and admit it instead of being snotty about it.
Honestly, I just get a little tired of being asked to produce more evidence, because that takes time and work, and at the end of the day all the satisfaction I can get from it is that 1 out of a million weird and/or wrong and/or (at a minimum) non-evidenced/non-scientific/non-supported things that get touted out there really is wrong. Which is little. There's not much joy in proving people wrong on the internet.

But it seems to be the only way out of the impasse, so if I do find the time, I will share anything else I find.
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

Post by TedM »

Peter Kirby wrote:
TedM wrote:I do because it was badly deficient and you should be big enough to recognize and admit it instead of being snotty about it.
Honestly, I just get a little tired of being asked to produce more evidence, because that takes time and work, and at the end of the day all the satisfaction I can get from it is that 1 out of a million weird and/or wrong and/or (at a minimum) non-evidenced/non-scientific/non-supported things that get touted out there really is wrong. Which is little. There's not much joy in proving people wrong on the internet.

But it seems to be the only way out of the impasse, so if I do find the time, I will share anything else I find.
No problem. Only do it if you want to. We know it ultimately it may nudge us one way or the other but wont prove anything so yeah I hear you.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Peter Kirby wrote:
TedM wrote:I do because it was badly deficient and you should be big enough to recognize and admit it instead of being snotty about it.
Honestly, I just get a little tired of being asked to produce more evidence, because that takes time and work, and at the end of the day all the satisfaction I can get from it is that 1 out of a million weird and/or wrong and/or (at a minimum) non-evidenced/non-scientific things that get touted out there really is wrong. Which is little. There's not much joy in proving people wrong on the internet.
For whatever it may be worth, Ted, I agree that the stepsisters in Cinderella would not qualify as nobodies.

But Odo Proudfoot is a nobody in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The movies by Peter Jackson, however, credit him as Everard Proudfoot.

According to the always entertaining TV Tropes website, "[t]he movie adaptation of Beaches changed quite a few character names.... In the case of minor characters, Cee Cee's love interest John Perry was renamed John Pierce. Bertie's ex-husband also changed from Michael Barron to Michael Essex, and her Aunt Neet became Aunt Vesta." (I have seen the movie but never read the book.)
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TedM
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Re: Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

Post by TedM »

Ben C. Smith wrote:
Peter Kirby wrote:
TedM wrote:I do because it was badly deficient and you should be big enough to recognize and admit it instead of being snotty about it.
Honestly, I just get a little tired of being asked to produce more evidence, because that takes time and work, and at the end of the day all the satisfaction I can get from it is that 1 out of a million weird and/or wrong and/or (at a minimum) non-evidenced/non-scientific things that get touted out there really is wrong. Which is little. There's not much joy in proving people wrong on the internet.
For whatever it may be worth, Ted, I agree that the stepsisters in Cinderella would not qualify as nobodies.
Thanks. It's hard to get validation around here sometimes :)..
But Odo Proudfoot is a nobody in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The movies by Peter Jackson, however, credit him as Everard Proudfoot.

According to the always entertaining TV Tropes website, "[t]he movie adaptation of Beaches changed quite a few character names.... In the case of minor characters, Cee Cee's love interest John Perry was renamed John Pierce. Bertie's ex-husband also changed from Michael Barron to Michael Essex, and her Aunt Neet became Aunt Vesta." (I have seen the movie but never read the book.)
[/quote]

It would be interesting to know why these changes occurred. I don't know either of the examples to be able to comment on whether they really were nobody's. It may be that these were changed to reflect/honor people the authors knew. A Luke or Gohn or Matthew could have done this too - taken liberties almost just for the heck of it, seemingly with no good reason. I think ultimately these questions go back to the issue of genre -- what was the intent of those gospels, and how important was the message and the details to those writers?

I'm going to have to get back to real life now..thanks for all replies.
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