Were the Hebrew scribes "intellectually honest?"

M

Medicine*Woman

Jesus: Mythstory--Not History!
Valued Senior Member
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M*W: Burton Mack wrote in his book, "Who Wrote the New Testament: The Making of the Christian Myth," that the "scribes' game was to appeal to the Hebrew scriptures as precedent law, these Jesus people also turned to the Hebrew scriptures to find some arguments for their champion. What they looked for were stories that could work both ways, as embarrassing contradictions for the scribal position as well as positive precedent for the Jesus people."

If the scribes catered to their Hebrew masters in writing the New Testament under their guidance, they did it in such a way to prove Old Testament prophecies were revealed in the New Testament. That is "intellectually dishonest." Why, then, do christians believe the bible is the infallible word of god?

Interestingly, if the story of Jesus were true, why would Hebrew scribes be allowed to write about him? They would only be allowed to write about such a dying demigod savior if his story was only a myth!
 
As far as I know, no scribes participated in the creation of the New Testament?

What are his references that they did?
 
Medicine*Woman said:
*************If the scribes catered to their Hebrew masters in writing the New Testament under their guidance, they did it in such a way to prove Old Testament prophecies were revealed in the New Testament. That is "intellectually dishonest."
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Why? :confused:

If they they search for proof and find proof then that is the pinnacle of intellectual honesty!
Interestingly, if the story of Jesus were true, why would Hebrew scribes be allowed to write about him? They would only be allowed to write about such a dying demigod savior if his story was only a myth!
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Really? How so? :)
 
Prince_James said:
As far as I know, no scribes participated in the creation of the New Testament?

What are his references that they did?
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M*W: That is what the writers of the NT would want us to believe. It is only on assumption that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John authored these four gospels. The fact is biblical scholars really don't know who wrote them. The titles of the books are Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, but that does not designate them specifically as the authors.

Atwill and Carotta make their cases for certain elite Roman citizens like Flavius Josephus and Titus to be the authors of the NT who attributed the Epistles to someone named "Paul," whom I believe is another name for "Apollo," "Apolyon," or "Apollonia," who may have been just another pseudonym. Atwill and Carotta both deem that the NT was written as a parody on the Roman Emperors. Roman scribes may not have written the original NT, but they surely copied from the originals and fell victim to human error, I'm sure.

Although it hasn't been proven (as yet) that scribes wrote the NT, it follows that because there were so many versions, one author couldn't have written it all.
 
Michael said:
Medicine*Woman,

Aren’t all 4 gospels just copies of Mark?

Michael
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M*W: That's what some people think since Mark was the first gospel written circa 70 AD. It is common belief among the scholars that Matthew is taken directly from Mark. Burton Mack states, "It is also the case that, with the exception of seven letters by Paul and the Revelation to an otherwise unknown John, the writings selected for inclusion in the New Testament were not written by those whose names are attached to them. Many modern Christians find this fact difficult to comprehend, if not downright unnerving. The problem seems to be that, if so, someone must have been lying. A better way to understand this phenomenon is to realize:

(1) that most literature of the early Christian period was written anonymously,

(2) that the concept of an apostolic age was a second-century creation, and

(3) that the later attribution of this literature to names associated with apostles can be explained in ways that show it was not considered dishonest."

Burton continues, "One helpful observation is that anonymous authorship of writings was standard practice in the scribal traditions of the ancient Near East."

(Prince_James, Burton Mack may answer your question regarding scribes' writings of New Testament documents). Apparently, he thinks scribes wrote some of it.

Burton states that "...all the other narrative gospels would start with Mark. None would change his basic plot. And the plot would become the standard account of Christian origins for the traditional Christian imagination. What an achievement! Mark succeeded in collapsing the time between Jesus in the 30s and the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Ever after, Christians would imagine Mark's fiction as history and allow this erasure of time as a wink in the mind of Israel's God. And yet, Mark's fiction could not have been conceived before the war. It would not have made sense before the war had runits course and the tragic fate of the city was known. Why Mark imagined the life of Jesus as he did, and how he came to write his gospel, are the questions that now need to be addressed."

Mack stresses that all the gospel accounts were written as fiction.
 
Matthew and Luke are derived from Mark and "Q" but John is an animal all to itself.
 
Medicine Woman:

Do you mean versions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and JOhn? As I am not aware of multiple versions of any of the gospels, considering we only have copies going back to the second century or so.

But yes, the apostles writing the Gospels is a pretty absurd thesis. Also, the discrepancies in the accounts demonstrate a great deal of time passing and human corruption.
 
Mark and "Q" are the earliest known progenitors, and John is an outlier. But even each of these may have sources from which they originated. Indeed, it seems likely given the geographic ignorance of the authors and the level of embellishments that are obviously present.
 
Medicine Woman said:
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M*W: Who cares what color faith is? What is your point?
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Never mind, clearly you don't care.

But if you do (change of mind), reread the post I replied to and maybe you'll see my point.

Think - you can do it. Otherwise, don't think. :)
 
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