Correct. Most atheists here are more thoughtful, nuanced, and evidence-based.
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It is when events have been arranged in temporal sequence to fit a form.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “literary crafting”. Do you suppose things in the trial just happened in the appropriate sequence or were some of them invented to fit the form?
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The thing is, as an Christian sympathetic to many objections made by atheists, I certainly can see why a rational and moral person could reject Christianity. There certainly are legitimate and informed objections, even if I personally think they are outweighed in the end by other factors.
Why not just focus in on the legitimate objections?
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(I’ll assume a chiasm in the text for the sake of argument, though I haven’t studied this passage in particular. [It’s often the case scholars posit chiasms that don’t convince the field.]) Assuming the text necessitates a strict sequence (which I don’t have a problem with for the most part, but even that would need to be established), I still don’t see a problem with a crafting that highlights shared features (of a real sequence of events) that would form a chiastic pattern (between A and A’, B and B’, etc.). It’s really not that hard to do. Nowhere does the text presume to present all the facts, or even do so in a balanced manner.
I don’t suppose anything here…just pointing out the non sequitur of the claim.
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Nowhere do any of the texts presume to present any facts. They’re stories, religious dramas, not history. Where do you get the notion that any of the biblical texts are relating remembered history and not mythology? Tradition? Omniscient authorship is sure sign of fiction. Many of the supposed statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while he was alone. So who heard him? It becomes even more obvious when evangelists “report” what Jesus thought. With whom exactly did Jesus share his thoughts? The author of Mark can even tell us what a crowd was thinking and that they were thinking wrong. It’s clear that the Gospels employ the techniques of other fictional writers. The Gospel writers were writing within the midrashic tradition and intended their stories to be read as interpretive narratives, not historical accounts.
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I think you are supposing something. You are supposing that any true story can be turned into an elaborate chiasm by selective choice of which true parts of the story to emphasize in turn. That seem farfetched to me.
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Caiaphas was a real person, but it is interesting to note how they gospels differ - one doesn’t name the high priest, one says Caiaphas, and another says Annas, and another some combination of both
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If the “form requirements” do not include standards of accuracy, then it seems to me that in general, yes it is.
Legal, scientific, and journalistic articles are actually mostly exceptions. It would be fatuous to think religious writings adhere to any comparable standards of accuracy. On the contrary, religious writing is particularly ripe with invention. Mormonism anyone?
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This is coming from AiG (Ken Ham). He’s claiming a sort of front loading of genetic information, and that evolution is the dividing and degradation of the originally perfect DNA since The Fall. I’m reasonably sure this is biologically impossible, and of course there is absolutely no evidence offered in support.
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I think that’s right. And I think it also overlooks the nature of the work, which is advocacy. As a lawyer, when one structures a tale about the facts to fit some pre-existing formula – as one does, constantly, because such things as tort claims have specific pre-determined elements which must be established in order to win – it inevitably results in emphasizing the views of one’s own client, whether well grounded or not, and omitting much that might have been said to the contrary. In the practice of law this is constrained somewhat by the fact that one usually has an adversary to directly contend with, who will be given the chance for rebuttal in a timely fashion, and so reckless disregard for the truth isn’t favored and there are good reasons to take the adversary’s expected answers into account and thereby give a more rounded account of things. But when there is no process for rebuttal, advocacy can easily become wholly dishonest.
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Sure this kind of oddities pop up during scriptural text analysis. However, Boris’ request was to provide evidence for the existence or occurrence of someone or something related to Jesus and that’s what I did for Caiaphas. I am not saying Jesus was definitely tried by Caiaphas, but considering that historical and archaeological data place the existence of Caiaphas during the time Jesus lived, it makes it quite likely he was indeed judge over Christ’s speedy trial.
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No I didn’t suppose this about any true story, and I certainly said nothing about forming something elaborate (the story in question doesn’t appear elaborate)
I actually agree with this…biblical narratives are not neutral, nor pretend to be. Fabrication is always a possibility, but it’s not a necessity; and “accuracy” should be judged by the genre/intent (not by modern expectations). I like the lawyer analogy b/c it shows the use of “crafting” but also recognizes a line that crosses over into fabrication.
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What trial? Was the trial held at night by Annas or in the morning by the Sanhedrin? Or was the trial by Herod Antipas? Was there a second trial by Pilate, after Herod sent Jesus back? The whole council had already determined to put Jesus to death and merely sought testimony against him. How did Mark know this? Because he made it up. There was no trial, no Caiaphas, no crucifixion, no resurrection, no disciples, no witnesses and no Jesus.
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Seems you missed this part in my earlier comment. I bolded it so that you don’t miss it again.
Yawn. Another baseless claim.
There was a Caiaphas, a priest, who lived in the time of Jesus. That’s fact and your denial won’t change it one bit. For the others, there isn’t good evidence for their existence but it doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Any audacious claim that these people were fictitious is basically a baseless assertion.
It’s not the story that’s elaborate, it’s the chiasm, which has six layers. And yes, you do suppose it about any true story, or at least you assume that the ability to form such an elaborate structure is not unusual and would likely be found in a randomly chosen true story. If you don’t assume that, the chiasm is evidence of fabrication.
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Certainly, fabrication is not a necessity to fit facts into a particular storytelling framework – at least, not for all stories and all frameworks.
As for “accuracy” I’d say that you’re right if what is meant is the accuracy with which the teller conveyed what he intended; if we are speaking, however, about accuracy in the ordinary sense of “correspondence between the telling and the actual details of the occurrences in question,” then I shouldn’t think there’s much difference between “modern expectations” and ancient ones – or, if there is, we surely have improved our expectations and should probably stay the course on that. Ancient authors might be cut some slack in relation to their own particular objectives, but not in relation to whether we regard their tales as truthful.
And that, I think, is why the nature of these documents is problematic. They are sales literature, and if in a thousand years the only record of time-share sales we have is a collection of sales brochures, time shares are going to look a lot better than they do presently. Being sales literature doesn’t make them untrue, to be sure; but it does mean caveat emptor.
So there was a person by the name Inquisitor?
One example of this is that the order in which results are presented in many fields of biology is not necessarily the order in which the experiments were performed. Papers must present the data in a linear way, but in the lab, very few things get done linearly.
The best way I’ve found to write is to start by sketching the figures, then tests potential orders for them on a conference table with my onsite coauthors, then turn each into a cassette of text+figure for the results section.
AFAIK, no one would claim inaccuracy if s/he learned that the experiments had not been performed in the order presented.
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There was a person named Caiaphas alias Joseph, a priest in Jerusalem.
The Christian marketing department has created or “found” hundreds of fake artifacts, tombs, ossuaries, a shroud, pieces of a cross, scrolls, cups, you name it, Christians have faked it. Oh but this one here, this ossuary, it’s the real deal! No, it’s just as fake as the others.
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