Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
perseusomega9
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by perseusomega9 »

John T wrote:
Blood wrote:
So, the gospels are written just as we would expect them to be if Jesus was real.


lol wut

and the Elijah/Elisha narrative being a reworking of Genesis-Kings history ala Brodie is just as we would expect them to be if those prophets were real?
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
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John T
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by John T »

perseusomega9 wrote:
John T wrote:
Blood wrote:
So, the gospels are written just as we would expect them to be if Jesus was real.


lol wut

and the Elijah/Elisha narrative being a reworking of Genesis-Kings history ala Brodie is just as we would expect them to be if those prophets were real?
"The question of whether Jesus is portrayed [idioms] as a Jewish prophet or as a pagan divine man is completely independent of the question of whether he existed."...Erhman, Other problems with Parallels pg 214.

Mocking and ridicule is no substitute for facts but if you got no facts, well then, what else can the mythicits do?
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
perseusomega9
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by perseusomega9 »

So literary reworking of a literary reworking is what we would expect if those respective characters were historical people?
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
-Giuseppe
Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

perseusomega9 wrote:and the Elijah/Elisha narrative being a reworking of Genesis-Kings history ala Brodie is just as we would expect them to be if those prophets were real?
Apropos, I've been thinking a little about the style in the Gospel of Mark, as Ulan has described it.
Ulan wrote:All scenes are static, movement happens between scenes and the "immediately"'s may have been stage instructions.
further: a little bit action, some discussion back and forth, short, fast, a bit enigmatic

It seems to me that the style of the stories of Elijah and Elisha might be related most closely to the Markan style. Does anyone know texts in ancient literature or in the Bible (before Mark) which are stylistically more "markan"?
Clive
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by Clive »

Ever since the Enlightenment, when the gospels began to be studied in a rationalistic frame of mind as literary works within their ancient context, parallels have been drawn between the passion of Jesus and the rituals and mysteries of the dying and resurrecting gods such as Dionysus and Osiris. The death and resurrection of Osiris was enacted annually in a dramatic performance. Greek tragedy evolved from sacred plays in honor of Dionysus. Did primitive Christianity, too, begin as ritual drama?

The economy of the Gospel narratives is related to the ritual commemoration of the Passion; taking them literally we run the risk of transposing into history what are really the successive incidents of a religious drama,

so wrote Alfred Loisy, one of the most perceptive New Testament scholars of our time.[2] J. M. Robertson went even further, claiming that the story of the passion is

the bare transcript of a primitive play... always we are witnessing drama, of which the spectators needed no description, and of which the subsequent transcriber reproduces simply the action and the words...[3]

Even theologians who are less daring in framing hypotheses continue to stumble upon traces of some ancient drama that appears to underlie the passion narrative.[4] S.G.F. Brandon is impressed by the superb theatrical montage of the trial of Jesus[5] ; Raymond Brown finds that John’s gospel contains touches worthy of great drama in many of its scenes and suggests that our text may be the product of a dramatic rewriting on such a scale that little historical material remains.[6] But none of these scholars has succeeded in reconstructing this drama or identifying its author. They came very close to the truth but missed a crucial element - the drama that constituted the kernel of the passion story was not a primitive ritual performance, but a tragedy of considerable subtlety and sophistication.

The gospels themselves contain evidence that the creator of this tragedy was someone imbued with the cultural values of the early Roman Empire, a playwright of unusual abilities, who used drama as a vehicle for expressing specific philosophical concepts. The gospels of Mark and Luke originated in Rome in the late fifties or early sixties A.D., a period that coincided with the last great flourishing of Roman tragedy in the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (3 B.C.–65 A.D.). Seneca was the author of at least nine tragedies, all modeled on other, more ancient dramas. His philosophical writings are still admired for their elegant exposition of the Stoic view of life. Was it Seneca who wrote the tragedy on the passion of Jesus that the evangelists used in constructing their narratives? A question such as this can never be answered with certitude. It can be, however, adopted as a working hypothesis, whose success can be judged by the extent to which it helps solve the innumerable enigmas of the passion narratives.


http://www.nazarenus.com/0-4-tragospel.htm
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by neilgodfrey »

John T wrote: I'm not sure if you are aware but the first Christians were mostly Jews and Moses and Elijah are exactly who they would compare and contrast Jesus too.
Likewise, the genitals would compare and contrast their mythical gods to Jesus in the same manner.

So, the gospels are written just as we would expect them to be if Jesus was real.

The mythicists are grasping at invisible straws.

Sincerely,
John T
The patronizing tone aside, this is classic muddled thinking inspired by New Testament scholars themselves. Ancient historian Arrian compared Alexander the Great with Dionysus; Hadrian compared himself with Hercules. But Aeneas in Virgil's epic was a transvaluation of Odysseus and Achilles. Alexander can be identified apart from Dionysus and Hadrian apart from Hercules.

We know they were not Dionysus or Hercules or emulations of these gods because (among other things) we can see what is not Dionysus or Hercules and stands quite alone and apart from anything related to Dionysus and Hercules.

But strip away everything that is Odysseus and Achilles from Aeneas and you have no person left. Aeneas is an extrapolation of O and A. It is the same with Jesus and figures from which the evangelists transvalued/emulated him.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by MrMacSon »

John T wrote:
"The question of whether Jesus is portrayed [idioms] as a Jewish prophet or as a pagan divine man is completely independent of the question of whether he existed."
... Erhman, Other problems with Parallels pg 214.
That, on its own, is not true.
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Blood
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by Blood »

John T wrote: Likewise, the genitals would compare and contrast their mythical gods to Jesus in the same manner.
I think I'm going to start translating 'gentile' after this suggestion.

Galatians 2:14
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Genital and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Genitals to follow Jewish customs?

Matthew 6:31
For the Genitals eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

Romans 15:12
And again, Isaiah says, "The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; in him the Genitals will hope."
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
Ulan
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by Ulan »

Blood wrote:I think I'm going to start translating 'gentile' after this suggestion.
Ironically, Paul's texts deal a whole lot with genitals and what to do with them.

But yeah, when I type on my smartphone, I always have to carefully check what it made out of what I typed.
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Blood
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Re: Wrestling With Greco-Roman Bio. Is GMark Greek Tragedy?

Post by Blood »

So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Genitals, so as to make Israel jealous. Romans 11:11
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
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