Greg Boyd on the Resurrection

[Lucian]

I don’t accept or know that at all. What I read in book 11 coincides with what Greek historian Erwin Rohde wrote about it as well:

Down in the murky underworld they now float unconscious, or, at most, with a twilight half consciousness, wailing in shrill diminutive voice, helpless, indifferent.... To speak of an "immortal life" of these souls, as scholars both ancient and modern have done, is incorrect. They can hardly said to live even, any more than the image does that is reflected in a mirror.

But Rohde, too, is plainly mistaken. Odysseus dialogues with his former colleagues, at length, and even those, like Aias, who famously say nothing are clearly not 'indifferent'. Indeed, Achilles is said to be ruling over the dead (11. 485f.). This all gives the lie to your claim that in the Odyssey there's merely a "bland shadowland of Hades where all souls are treated equal regardless of lives led", and to your endorsement of Rohde.

I didn’t claim you supported Carrier’s position by introducing another Witch of Endor type story. It supported mine. But what you get wrong is stated above as well as you think because 2 slightly different narratives of an eschatology are presented - the animated spirits excited by witchcraft opposed to the dull half conscious pool they are called forth out of - makes the eschatology unclear and we are unable to derive anything solid about the presentation of an afterlife at all.

No, I don't think this, though it's very difficult to parse what you're trying to say here.

You understand that my position is different from Carrier’s in that I don’t necessarily have to believe Homer was used explicitly as an inter-text for Mark to make a case that Homeric themes entered culturally through those educated in Greek reading classical Greek. Again, I don’t feel it matters that Homer was written in a different type of Greek any more than I need to be concerned that Shakespeare is a different type of English. We still read it, we still use it.... to teach English no less.

But I'm not arguing about this, and never have been. I feel I've been as clear about this as I can be.

Homer isn't written in classical Greek, by the way.

 

[The Pixie]

Thanks for taking the time to address this so thoroughly.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Read the account in Mark below about Joseph asking for the body of Jesus. What is your problem? Do you have a problem with Joseph asking for the body of Jesus?
Jesus was special to many people in that area. He healed their sick, delivered those that were oppressed by demons and did many miracles among them as well as preaching and teaching about the kingdom of God.

I think Jesus being taken down from the cross is uncertain, but it is plausible, and for the sake of argument, I just accept it as true.

My point is that Jesus was not special to Joseph of Arimathea. Later gospels claim he was secretly a Christian, but that was almost certainly made up later. Mark tells us he was a member of the Sanhedrin, and that all the Sanhedrin condemned Jesus; so not a Christian.

Joseph took Jesus down from the cross because that was what was required by Jewish law. Mark notes that Joseph was a pious Jew "who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God", and was presumably the guy who took it on himself to ensure corpses were taken down off crosses. He did not do it because it was Jesus, he did it because it was Jewish law.

This is truly a surprise!

But it is what the evidence points to. We have a very early creed presenting what they believed just a few years after the crucifixion.

I doubt they really saw Jesus, but they clearly saw something they thought was him.

But not in the manner the gospels report. This was in Galilee, as Mark alludes to, not Jerusalem.

Whatever the creed consisted of this is the important part: 1Corinthians 15:3-4 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures
We know the disciples went out and preached the gospel so there was an oral traditions that was passed around. Acts 2 records how the early Christians fellowshipped with each other. This is some of the places where the oral traditions were taught...

Acts was written a long time later, and yet I still tend to think it is largely true.

It is interesting that the preaching recorded in Acts never mentions the empty tomb. Why not? This was great evidence! And yet virtually all the arguments the disciples used are based on the OT. I think it is recording what happened before the empty tomb was made up, even though the record was written after that.

Why would any of those appearances be in a creed? Perhaps Paul was showing his place in the order of appearances.

Absolutely that is Paul's purpose. He is telling us he is an authority because he was one of those Jesus appeared to - but that is incidental to our discussion.

The creed records the appearances, but put that together with Mark17:7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”, and it seems certain the appearances in the creed happened in Galilee, not Jerusalem.

You are arguing from silence. Paul mentions Jesus' resurrection many times. Why would Paul have to mention the tomb when he is speaking to Christians that know the story of the resurrection? Paul's epistles (letters) that he wrote to the churches are not historical accounts of the life of Jesus like the gospels. I truly don't see this as the problem that you would like to believe it is.

It is specifically that creed in 1 Cor 15. It is the absence of the empty tomb there that indicates it was made up later. It says Jesus was buried; it is reasonable to think it was say the tomb was empty - if that was the case.

I think when you put the whole thing together as Boyd has done, it is compelling. You have to read the entire essay to know what that evidence is in its entirety. You have to take in the evidence that Boyd presents with an open mind.

I disagreed. I think you need to already be convinced Christianity is true to take in the evidence. Viewed with an open mind, the evidence is pretty weak.

"The evidence for the historicity of the resurrection, if examined without foregone conclusions about what could and could not have happened, is extremely good. In other words, if you don’t start with the assumption that the evidence is all lying, you find that the evidence is remarkably compelling. Indeed, many historians and New Testament scholars who are not committed to strictly naturalistic presuppositions (viz. who do not believe the resurrection is impossible) have argued that the historical evidence for the resurrection is at least as strong as what we have for any other documented event in ancient history"

I did not start with the assumption that the evidence is all lying, and yet I find the evidence pretty poor.

 

[stiggy wiggy]

Or that was made up decades later

You have no shame with your lame all-purpose, unintentionally ironic, not to mention hypocritical MADE UP excuse that that which you don't believe is MADE UP, do you?

Mark invents ..........

the author of Matthew invents......

As you invent the above. No shame at all.

It may be someone else made up ........

MAY BE? Well, get your story straight. Who was it? Why not MAKE UP a name?

 

[stiggy wiggy]

.........but that was almost certainly made up later.

No shame, I say.

He did not do it because it was Jesus, he did it because it was Jewish law.

Wow. Your powers of ESP stretch back through 2,000 years of time. Impressive!
The word of Pixie is "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

I doubt they really saw Jesus,

I doubt you can back up your feeble doubt.

This was in Galilee, as Mark alludes to, not Jerusalem.

Hell, I can't even walk through walls, yet I'm capable of being in Galilee and Jerusalem on the same day.

It is interesting that the preaching recorded in Acts never mentions the empty tomb. Why not?

Uh, because Luke had already told his readers about the empty tomb in his gospel. But I guess you were ignorant of the fact that Luke wrote Acts, weren't you?

 

[stiggy wiggy]

.......... is highly unlikely.

I guess because ............

It is very unlikely .......

I think it more likely he .........

........ very unlikely.

.........extremely unlikely.

Which do you think is more likely?

My guess is .....

They guessed .........

A whole lotta guessing going on. Let us know when you have something substantial.

 

[docphin5]

Teleportation in “Acts of the Apostles”

Religious myth or actual history?

“And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away [teleportation], and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus,” (Acts 8:38)​

This is the nonsense christians want us to believe as historical fact. That a human was teleported from one place to another place. And this is only one example of the nonsense being promoted by christians in “Acts”.

Therefore, Acts of the Apostles falls in to the same category of literature as the Gospels, that is, myth or allegory or esoteric stories. People do not teleport, humans do not reassemble their decomposing bodies, water does not turn into wine, and five loaves of bread do not feed five thousand people.

Wake up people!

Stop entertaining these stories as possibilities. Christians have deluded themselves because they long for supernatural signs and wonders just as the pagans longed for Zeus or Aphrodite to supernaturally intervene in human affairs.

news flash!

Just as moral philosophers rejected Greek pagan myths so did Paul reject Jewish pagan myths. And just as moral philosophers perceived a transcendent Good God so did Paul perceive the same. Paul‘s Jesus the Christ is exactly the same as the moral philosophers Wisdom. The distinction Of Jesus is that it is a type from Hebrew scripture, namely, Joshua, son of Nun, who leads those called by God out of Egypt which represents the material world. It is types, figures, and symbols people. This is not complicated.

The fact is that Paul’s epistles provide NO biographical data to support the Gospel Jesus: no miraculous birth, no parents, no friends, no employment, no ministry, a brief mention of death (all prophets indwelled by the spirit of Jesus die), no Golgotha, and no alleged physical resurrection of a human corpse. None! Nowhere! Completely absent!

IMO, Paul’s epistles are allegorizing Hebrew scripture to describe a transcendent Good God, namely, El Elyon, manifesting himself in our consciousness as the “spirit of Jesus”. Paul’s epistles are all about consciousness people. Consciousness! Specifically a moral consciousness perceiving the absolute Good. All the metaphors about “light”, “sun”, “sons of light”, “spirit”, “resurrection”, “Joshua”, etc., pertain to consciousness of the absolute Good. And the “body of Christ” is pertaining to the structure of the cosmos that holds the “consciousness” of the absolute Good One. It is why WE the saints are called the “body of Christ” because We possess the ability to perceive the Good One.

In contrast, The Gospels may have served an esoteric purpose in the first century but as soon as they became promoted as historical events they dragged everyone down with them into superstition and myths just as the Moses stories dragged Jews down into myth and superstitions. These stories were ALWAYS meant to be allegorized. As soon as they became promoted as literal events minds became enslaved to myths. Here we are debating religious fundamentalists whether a decomposing human reassembled his corpse and physically presented himself to others. How absurd, especially in todays educated world filled with the wonders that science has discovered! Please stop! Stop believing in myths and superstitions. Stop debating whether a man can walk on water or turn water into wine. Stop! Instead seek what it could possible mean, given the culture and times of Greek moral philosophy.

Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras were geniuses. They entertained a belief in God outside of myths and superstitions and I think the Jewish-Christian Essenes, to include Paul, were doing the same, allegorizing their own scriptures. Then the Gospels were written and civilization went backwards into myths and superstitions again. Two thousand years later we are still debating whether a dead human reassembled his corpse and physically presented himself to others. Stop, please stop!

 

[stiggy wiggy]

How absurd, especially in todays educated world filled with the wonders that science has discovered! Please stop! Stop believing in myths and superstitions. Stop debating whether a man can walk on water or turn water into wine. Stop! Stop, please stop!

No need for me to stop debating whether Jesus walked on water or turned water into wine, since I've never even started or engaged in such a debate. I KNOW He did.

Just because your "christ consciousness" is too weak to perform miracles, it hardly means Jesus Christ was, or is, for that matter. I'm just wondering why the beliefs of Christians make you so angry. Your beliefs don't anger me in the least.

 

[The Pixie]

I have gone through the rest of Boyd's article. Quotes are from there.

In history, as in a court of law, the more witnesses you have for an event, the more certain your knowledge can be about that event. For most events in history we have to rely on single sources, and usually these sources are quite far removed from the event being reported. Most of our knowledge about Alexander the Great, for example, comes from a single source written some four hundred years after his life.

Worth noting that claims of the supernatural with regards to Alexander the Great are universally rejected by scholars!

A big problem with Boyd's argument here is that we have no accounts from the witnesses themselves. Luke and Mark never saw Jesus, and most scholars agree Matthew and John were not written by the disciple. Of courser, if Boyd can shown Mathhew was written by Matthew, he has a point. But he does not - he just assumes it.

A second big problem is that we can be pretty sure Matthew and Luke are based on Mark, so in fact that is just one witness account, and it is quite possible John is too, even if the author did not copy as extensively.

Still, since people do not usually systematically lie, historians are inclined to trust such sources. If they did not do this our ancient history books would be a great deal thinner.

So Boyd's remarkable compelling evidence is based on assuming the authors were not lying. He cannot support that, he wants you to just accept it. And of course his target audience will do just that.

Perhaps the authors did not lie, but believed the lies of others. Perhaps the authors embellished the story to make a point, or to fill in a gap. To say either they were lying or telling the truth is a false dichotomy.

According to Crossan, Mack, and others, the followers of Jesus outside of Paul’s congregations didn’t believe in the resurrection until around the 70s A.D. when (according to their dating) the Gospel accounts began to be written.

This sounds to me like a fringe position. Boyd does not quote Crossan or cite a reference (and he does elsewhere), which makes me dubious of this claim about him. Personally, I am sure Christians believed the resurrection well before that.

A resurrection in the original body, however... That is a later belief, in my opinion, quite possibly from around AD 70. Is Boyd confusing the two?

But if this were the case, wouldn’t you expect the Gospel accounts to follow, at least in outline, Paul’s account? But they don’t! They are clearly not only independent of one another: they are quite independent from Paul as well.

The reason they disagree is different communities developed their own ideas of what happened independent of each other - and the truth. It is noticeable that the accounts are all pretty similar with regards to the crucifixion - that actually happened, and the narrative was established early on.

There are many other considerations that lend credibility to the Bible’s four Gospel accounts of the resurrection. Perhaps the most surprising of these is the fact that all the accounts agree that it was women who first found the tomb empty. This may mean little to us in our day, but in first century Jewish society women were, quite frankly, often regarded as being incurable talebearers. They weren’t in most circumstances even allowed to testify in court!

An easy explanation is that Mark wanted to have the discovery of the empty tomb in his gospel, but as it was made up, and there were people alive who would know that the disciples at the time said nothing about it. He had to rationalise it being found, but not reported. His solution was discovery by women so afraid they told no one about.

Later gospels had to work with that - Matthew flat ot contradicts it, saying the women immediately told the disciples. Notably, each successive gospel reduced the role of the women.


Boyd claims the fact that the gospel accounts have incidental details is evidence they are true. And yet read any novel, and it is chock full of incidental detail!

He claims "All of the Gospel accounts are remarkable restrained, sober, and realistic" but that would be because they are based opn a crucifixion that really happened and sightings of Jesus that were a bright light in Galilee. The original events were far more restrained and sober, and it is telling that each gospel account becomes less so. Just look at how much more fanciful Jesus' burial becomes by the time we get to John. He is comparing the gospel accounts to an entirely made-up story; again a false dichotomy.

He says "these accounts simply report what happened but do not take the time to try to explain much". So that would be like Mohammad splitting the moon then.

He says "When legendary accounts are written, they customarily go out of their way to answer the question, 'How do you know this is true?' " and yet the women at the tomb do exactly this. They were invented to explain how the author knew the tomb was empty. But he assumes the account is true, and so fails to see this.

And this simply confirms, once again, our previous point that the basis for denying the resurrection, and the uniqueness of Christ in general, is not historical evidence. It is, rather, a preconceived and highly arbitrary assumption about the nature of the world. If you rule out the possibility that the Paul and the Gospels are telling the truth from the start, then of course you have to come up with another explanation. But you must do so in spite of, not because of, the historical evidence. Get rid of this assumption, and the evidence can be allowed to speak for itself.

Boyd has fallen into the reverse trap, of course. He is assuming that Paul and the Gospels are telling the truth from the start. What he describes here is not compelling evidence. It is evidence, but it is pretty weak evidence. It certainly does not warrant the utter conviction that most Christians give it.

It may be that Jesus was resurrected in his original body, but unless you already believe that, the likelihood of that based on the evidence we have is vanishingly small.

 

[Lucian]

Teleportation in “Acts of the Apostles”

Religious myth or actual history?

“And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away [teleportation], and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus,” (Acts 8:38)​

This is the nonsense christians want us to believe as historical fact. That a human was teleported from one place to another place. And this is only one example of the nonsense being promoted by christians in “Acts”.

Therefore, Acts of the Apostles falls in to the same category of literature as the Gospels, that is, myth or allegory or esoteric stories. People do not teleport, humans do not reassemble their decomposing bodies, water does not turn into wine, and five loaves of bread do not feed five thousand people.

The fact that Acts contains reports of miracles doesn't mean it's 'myth or allegory or esoteric stories', which, aside from being rather vague, are hardly adequate ways of classifying the book. 'Religious myth' and 'actual history' are not the only options.

 

[docphin5]

The fact that Acts contains reports of miracles doesn't mean it's 'myth or allegory or esoteric stories', which, aside from being rather vague, are hardly adequate ways of classifying the book. 'Religious myth' and 'actual history' are not the only options.

As usual you are lost in the details missing the big picture (at least you are consistent). In this case, condemning HOW I characterized the story of human teleportation in Acts as “myth”, “allegory”, or “esoteric” (I gave at least three options) rather than you conceding the point that human teleportation does not happen in reality. I must assume that you are butt hurt and trying to lash out at me anyway you can because not only did you ignore the big picture in the process of condemning how I characterized human teleportation, you did not even bother to offer a better alternative to the point being made. Simply, you posted only to criticize my characterization of human teleportation in Acts and offer nothing in return.

Please do tell in your anonymous online expert opinion how you would characterize human teleportation in the Bible if not myth, allegory, or esoteric? How does a human get beamed instantly from one location to another?

 

[Lucian]

As usual you are lost in the details missing the big picture (at least you are consistent).

I don’t see how my response could constitute getting ‘lost in the details’: it’s fairly broad.

Again, I note that you resort to abuse in the face of polite critique.

In this case, condemning HOW I characterized the story of human teleportation in Acts as “myth”, “allegory”, or “esoteric” (I gave at least three options) rather than you conceding the point that human teleportation does not happen in reality.

Obviously it doesn’t happen. But this doesn’t make your attempts at classification of this work correct.

I must assume that you are butt hurt and trying to lash out at me anyway you can because not only did you ignore the big picture in the process of condemning how I characterized human teleportation, you did not even bother to offer a better alternative to the point being made. Simply, you posted only to criticize my characterization of human teleportation in Acts and offer nothing in return.

This is little more than abuse.

Please do tell in your anonymous online expert opinion how you would characterize human teleportation in the Bible if not myth, allegory, or esoteric?

I wouldn’t.

How does a human get beamed instantly from one location to another?

They don’t, of course.

 

[5wize]

But Rohde, too, is plainly mistaken. Odysseus dialogues with his former colleagues, at length, and even those, like Aias, who famously say nothing are clearly not 'indifferent'. Indeed, Achilles is said to be ruling over the dead (11. 485f.). This all gives the lie to your claim that in the Odyssey there's merely a "bland shadowland of Hades where all souls are treated equal regardless of lives led", and to your endorsement of Rohde.

Two things I feel you are overlooking here to make exceptions look like the rule. 1). Greco-Roman eschatology, like Hebrew eschatology, allowed heroes afterlife identity. It was not for the Hoi Polloi. And 2) Homer is creating narratives of the underworld, not reporting facts of the underworld. He is attempting to portray the loss in it. It would make a very boring narrative to not animate characters to make his point, such as his mother and the hero Achilles himself reporting the mundane humdrum of death to Odysseus, “By god I would rather slave on earth for another man - some dirt poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive - than rule down here over all the breathless dead”.

Rhode was not mistaken by interpreting correctly what Homer’s narrative intent was.

 

[Lucian]

Two things I feel you are overlooking here to make exceptions look like the rule. 1). Greco-Roman eschatology, like Hebrew eschatology, allowed heroes afterlife identity. It was not for the Hoi Polloi.

This is false, but anyway irrelevant: we're not dealing with 'Greco-Roman eschatology' (a pointlessly broad category) but specific claims of yours about the portrayal of the afterlife in Homer's Odyssey.

And 2) Homer is creating narratives of the underworld, not reporting facts of the underworld. He is attempting to portray the loss in it. It would make a very boring narrative to not animate characters to make his point, such as his mother and the hero Achilles himself reporting the mundane humdrum of death to Odysseus, “By god I would rather slave on earth for another man - some dirt poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive - than rule down here over all the breathless dead”.

Obviously.

Rhode was not mistaken by interpreting correctly what Homer’s narrative intent was.

He was, for the reasons specified.

Your claim, recall, is that in the Odyssey there's "a bland shadowland of Hades where all souls are treated equal regardless of lives led". That's straightforwardly false, as the evidence I've cited from the Odyssey shows. Telling me, in not so many words, that Homer is preoccupied with heroes and is writing poetry is not only painfully basic, but no response to what I've said to you.

Rather than double down on a pointlessly doomed position, you need to go back and revise it in light of the evidence. I suspect that part of the problem is that you're not terribly familiar with what that evidence is, which makes it unwise to try to correct me, who is very familiar with it indeed.

 

[5wize]

This is false, but anyway irrelevant: we're not dealing with 'Greco-Roman eschatology' (a pointlessly broad category) but specific claims of yours about the portrayal of the afterlife in Homer's Odyssey.

Obviously.

He was, for the reasons specified.

Your claim, recall, is that in the Odyssey there's "a bland shadowland of Hades where all souls are treated equal regardless of lives led". That's straightforwardly false, as the evidence I've cited from the Odyssey shows. Telling me, in not so many words, that Homer is preoccupied with heroes and is writing poetry is not only painfully basic, but no response to what I've said to you.

Rather than double down on a pointlessly doomed position, you need to go back and revise it in light of the evidence. I suspect that part of the problem is that you're not terribly familiar with what that evidence is, which makes it unwise to try to correct me, who is very familiar with it indeed.

Sorry... your knowledge is just impotent at breaking through making me doubt you possess it. Forgive me if I don’t blame that on my capacities, but more your pedantic desire for perfect statements over broader ideas. I have provided a very substantial response that these narratives don’t support a separation of the wicked from the righteous which came later in the Aeneid - that all souls are headed to the same place regardless of lives led. In that sense they are all treated the same, the sense that is the actual context of the idea being presented. It’s so obvious I’m wondering why someone of your knowledge has trouble acknowledging that. And that other than the obviously animated narratives, that must use poetic license to get points across, the place is rather bland, and even the heroes that rule in it are not to be envied.

 

[Lucian]

Sorry... your knowledge is just impotent at breaking through making me doubt you possess it.

The fact that it hasn’t ‘broken through’ to you is hardly evidence of any ignorance on my part.

I hold a doctorate in Classics, and the Odyssey is one of the texts with which my thesis engaged at length. You, by contrast, were until recently unaware that the New Testament and Homer are written in different kinds of Greek, a basic fact.

Forgive me if I don’t blame that on my capacities, …

No, I won’t l, since it’s your ‘capacities’, or rather your disposition towards them, that are just the problem.

… but more your pedantic desire for perfect statements over broader ideas.

I’ve not demanded perfection from you, nor been pedantic. Rather, I’ve held you to the words you wrote, that you haven’t withdrawn.

I have provided a very substantial response that these narratives don’t support a separation of the wicked from the righteous which came later in the Aeneid- that all souls are headed to the same place regardless of lives led. In that sense they are all treated the same, the sense that is the actual context of the idea being presented. It’s so obvious I’m wondering why someone of your knowledge has trouble acknowledging that. And that other than the obviously animated narratives, that must use poetic license to get points across, the place is rather bland, and even the heroes that rule in it are not to be envied.

Adapting your position, as you’re trying to do here, in response to criticism is admirable. What isn’t is failing to acknowledge that you’re doing so, while claiming that my understanding is defective and that I’m being pedantic or unreasonably demanding.

 

[5wize]

The fact that it hasn’t ‘broken through’ to you is hardly evidence of any ignorance on my part.

I hold a doctorate in Classics, and the Odyssey is one of the texts with which my thesis engaged at length. You, by contrast, were until recently unaware that the New Testament and Homer are written in different kinds of Greek, a basic fact.


No, I won’t l, since it’s your ‘capacities’, or rather your disposition towards them, that are just the problem.

I’ve not demanded perfection from you, nor been pedantic. Rather, I’ve held you to the words you wrote, that you haven’t withdrawn.

Adapting your position, as you’re trying to do here, in response to criticism is admirable. What isn’t is failing to acknowledge that you’re doing so, while claiming that my understanding is defective and that I’m being pedantic or unreasonably demanding.

The alteration was slight, and it was for your behalf, not mine. So no, your doctorate has indeed made you far too pedantic for useful discourse on a topic. I could tell from most of your points across an array of conversations you tend to pick at chinks in armor, and then keep the points artificially narrow to a borderline of uselessness, as opposed to meeting the overall points in play. You haven’t countered Rhode’s scholarship at all except to say the few conversational examples in the narrative show expressions of the dead as opposed bland expressionlessness. Now that is obvious. It’s a narrative. It requires it. It in no way countered the overall theme that the bland shadowland of Hades treated the hoi polloi of souls, outside the needs of the narrative, with a disregard to their lives led.

Case in point... with Gus you are looking for an inter-text example when you know, with all the doctoral braininess you possess, by the time NT texts were written, oral tradition effected by Hellenization already took its course. The narrowness is disingenuous and betrays a weakness in your style of criticism.

 

[Caroljeen]

Case in point... with Gus you are looking for an inter-text example when you know, with all the doctoral braininess you possess, by the time NT texts were written, oral tradition effected by Hellenization already took its course. The narrowness is disingenuous and betrays a weakness in your style of criticism.

How do you know the bold in blue to be true?

 

[5wize]

How do you know the bold in blue to be true?

I trust the scholarship. It makes sense. Christianity never made sense to me.

 

[Caroljeen]

I trust the scholarship. It makes sense. Christianity never made sense to me.

It doesn't make sense to me.

See my response in the Heaven and Hell thread.

 

[Lucian]

The alteration was slight, and it was for your behalf, not mine.

On the contrary, it's substantive, regardless of for whom it was made.

So no, your doctorate has indeed made you far too pedantic for useful discourse on a topic. I could tell from most of your points across an array of conversations you tend to pick at chinks in armor, and then keep the points artificially narrow to a borderline of uselessness, as opposed to meeting the overall points in play.

It seems to me I've fairly and accurately answered the positions you've articulated. The fact that you interpret careful appraisal as 'pedantry' is telling, and ironic for the fact that I've relaxed normal standards of scholarly criticism for your benefit.

You're talking with someone with real expertise in a particular field (indeed, in this particular text), who can read the language in which the Odyssey is written. Rather than use this discovery to reflect on whether you may have got something wrong, as would be reasonable, you continue to insist that you're quite right, I'm quite wrong, and that my 'doctorate has indeed made [me] too pedantic for useful discourse on a topic', a stupid and insulting thing to say. And all this just to avoid the mere admission that perhaps you made a mistake, and need to make some adjustments!

You haven’t countered Rhode’s scholarship at all except to say the few conversational examples in the narrative show expressions of the dead as opposed bland expressionlessness. Now that is obvious. It’s a narrative. It requires it. It in no way countered the overall theme that the bland shadowland of Hades treated the hoi polloi of souls, outside the needs of the narrative, with a disregard to their lives led.

I cited evidence that I believe refutes the view of Rohde (or is it also pedantry to spell people's names correctly?) you supplied. If you wish to defend that position, you need to address that evidence, not try to blur matters by referring vaguely to 'an overall theme'. I agree that the evidence is 'obvious', though, which is why we can dispense with what Rohde had to say.

Case in point... with Gus you are looking for an inter-text example when you know, with all the doctoral braininess you possess, by the time NT texts were written, oral tradition effected by Hellenization already took its course.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here, I'm afraid. As a reminder, though, Carrier claimed that Mark 'used' Homer, and I supplied some reasons for finding this problematic. If you wish to challenge those reasons, then do so, rather than try to alter Carrier's position on his behalf.

The narrowness is disingenuous and betrays a weakness in your style of criticism.

Whereas a lack of intellectual humility, unwillingness to conduct discussion with care and precision, and inability to admit you may just have made a mistake constitute serious flaws in yours.