Re: The Gospels

Responses below:

tina carson wrote:

>>
>> 1. Suppose, for just the reasons given in my last post, Christians
>> wanted to adopt the Fish symbol. Is it possible to draw a simple
>> icon of a fish without using an ascending and descending arc? Are
>> you prepared to say that everyone throughout western history who has
>> used the fish as a symbol has been influenced by Pythagorean
>> thought? In other words, why isn't it possible for Christians to
>> adopt a fish icon without making any reference to Pythagorean
>> symbolism? Suppose one early Pythagorean Christian invented the
>> symbol and everyone else just happened to like it, without knowing
>> its meaning to Pythagorean thought?
>
>
> Not really, Jim. You see, hmmm.... All right, how's this for an
> analogy? Suppose you and I started our own religion today, here in
> America. If we chose the cross as our symbol, is it possible to come
> up with that and not have any connection to reference to
> Christianity? Not bloody likely. If we put a line across the top &
> bottom like a capital I with a crossing line through the middle, then
> maybe. Likewise, if they had simply closed the tail with a straight
> line down the back, or if the fish were facing the other way, or...
> But no, it IS the gnostic symbol.

That's only assuming that the fish as a Pythagorean symbol was as widely
distributed across Greek and Roman culture as the cross is across
western civilization -- which it wasn't. I'm not denying that the fish
is a gnostic symbol, I'm just questioning if it has to be seen
exclusively as a gnostic symbol.

>> 2. I think it you look at religions with paired male/female
>> deities, or religions with female deities, and compared them to
>> Christianity across the boards, you'd find they were so incompatible
>> that this kind of dependence is very unlikely.
>>
>
> Huh? Don't get your point here. The gender of the deity means
> relatively little if you're talking about religious comparisons.

That's only because you really don't know anything about religions in
antiquity beyond what you read in books written by hack scholars. There
are significant differences in the role and treatment of women (usually
better in the male monotheistic religions) between male monotheistic
religions and religions with male/female paired deities, or just female
deities. There are significant theological differences as well. It's
almost like breathing a different atmosphere.

The Golden Bough by James Frazer is pretty interesting in this regard.
It's hardly up to date scholarship, but provides some interesting
examples. He relates how one city given to the worship of Artemis, I
think, used to have virgins present themselves to the temple the day
before their wedding, where they would be sold as prostitutes to anyone
who came by. Now if you think this at all is compatible with
Christianity, you don't know much about either pagan worship or
Christianity. While not every pre-Christian religion had these
characteristics (though I think the Pythagoreans had their own weird
practices), most were similarly incompatible with Christianity.

There's a wealth of evidence to the contrary of what you're saying, Tina
-- you didn't address Paul's anti-gnostic polemic, or the anti-gnostic
polemic in the epistles of John, nor can you account for the
anti-gnostic polemic in the earliest of the church fathers.

Here's a great quotation for you from the Gospel of Thomas, part of the
NH scrolls:

> 114. Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't
> deserve life."
>
> Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too
> may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who
> makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."
>

Wonderful, isn't it? Totally different from the NT, which says that
"there is neither male nor female in Christ" (Gal 3) and that "In the
Lord, man is not independent of woman or woman independent of man" (1
Cor. 11, I think). Other Christian pseudepigrapha has stories about
Christ as a kid making clay pigeons come alive to impress his friends,
and killing another kid for bumping into him (yes, I have translations
of all this stuff on my shelf).

There's good reason these documents were rejected by the church, Tina.
I wonder if you've read them yourself and really compared them to the
NT. I'm not saying they're unimportant historically, but they certainly
don't support your thesis.

>> Honestly, tina, if this is the best you can do you really have
>> nothing at all. Have you ever read Umberto Eco's _Foucault's
>> Pendulum_? Numbers can be made to mean anything -- it's very
>> dangerous to go beyond a very few basic numbers that obvious recur (7
>> and 3 and 12 are easy ones in the NT. 153 is not).
>>
>> Now, assuming this story was originally Pythagorean, since it only
>> occurs in one Gospel, how do you know this was evidence of widespread
>> Christian Gnosticism and not evidence of a later gnostic
>> interpolation, or evidence of gnostic influences on the author of
>> that one Gospel, or just sheer coincidence? All three equally
>> explain the evidence we have -- why do you choose one explanation
>> above all others as true without doubt?
>
>
> This was, as I stated earlier, only one example. I didn't want to
> drag out every example as I didn't want to write a textbook. There
> are many examples, especially in the Nag Hammadi scrolls, of Jesus and
> his followers as being gnostic. I mention the Nag Hammadi scrolls
> because in several instances they have an expanded versions of
> passages in the 4 canonical gospels that show the gnostic origin of
> these passages. I was, as stated, only concentrating on the fish
> symbology.

Ok, but you still haven't given me reasons to trust the Nag Hammandi
scrolls over the NT documents. I asked this quite some time back, and
still nothing.

>> Furthermore, this whole nonsense about the texts all being edited the
>> same way is simply impossible. There are literally thousands of
>> copies and fragments of the NT from Spain to the Middle East to the
>> Northern coast of Africa from antiquity, in addition to citations by
>> the church fathers. It's literally impossible for all of them to
>> have been edited the same way. There wasn't a monolithic religious
>> authority governing the entire region until well after the NT period,
>> even this authority didn't have the ability to account for every
>> manuscript, and it eventually divided into an Eastern and Western
>> segment, making the exercise of a single authority over the entire
>> Mediterranean region impossible.
>>
>
> I never said that they were edited in the same way, only that if they
> were aware of the gnosticism included they would have. A nasty
> speculation on my part.

That's what I meant by "edited the same way" -- removal of all gnostic
references. It's an impossibility no matter what you claim for the
reasons I've given. The mere existence of the NH documents is proof
that even if an attempt was carried out all across the Roman Empire (or
what was left of it), not everyone would have cooperated. Since we
simply don't have NT texts that show this kind of excised material, it's
most reasonable to assume they never existed.

>> This is all very well known history that your sources choose to
>> ignore. They're hacks telling you what you want to believe, Tina,
>> but not scholars.
>>
>> Jim
>
>
> Name calling is not an argument. Just because you don't agree with my
> point doesn't mean my sources are any less scholarly than yours. Do
> you have sources, by the way? You've not really made a point on your
> own, only refuted mine by saying "that's not true". It is possible
> for 2 highly qualified scholars to disagree, you know.
> tina

I'm doing a lot more than name calling, Tina. I've given you specific
historical data that's not disputed (such as the number of fragments of
the NT texts and their wide geographical dissemination) and calls into
question the claims you're making. I don't consider myself a highly
qualified scholar, but I'm pretty certain your sources -- if you're
reflecting them accurately at all -- are not either. I have read
qualified scholars from Jewish and Christian backgrounds, and liberal
and conservative scholars in both camps (with a little bit of Islamic
scholarship in there too, but much less), so I am familiar with the
types of arguments I'm seeing you repeat, and that they're not respected
among those who study these things.

You might as well be reading Chariot of the Gods. Or comic books.

Jim

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Received on Wed Aug 6 15:12:56 2003