> And on the other hand, if Mark received his Gos-
pel from Peter, why is it that the other Gospels have more anecdotes about Peter, including for example, Je- sus telling him, “You are Peter the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church”? Would Peter himself for- get such an incident? It gets worse. Mark shows no un- derstanding of the social situation in the Holy Land, making numerous errors that no one living in early first century Judea would have made. Interestingly enough, when you compare Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, one finds that the author of Matthew is constantly correcting Mark’s blunders about all aspects of Jewish society, re- ligion, the calendar, holidays, customs, attitudes – even repeated misquotes of scripture.
I'm afraid this is just not informative at all, and doesn't give me a good impression of the rest of the book.
Why did Mark not include it? The simplest answer is that he didn't think it was important. Mark is the shortest book -- there are lots of things that mark could have included and didn't. His implication is that somehow Mark didn't know where Peter / Cephas / Rock's nickname came from, which I find much more hard to believe than that he just decided not to include it. This is hardly the kind of evidence you can follow with "it gets worse".
But it gets worse. There's absolutely no detail here -- what social situation is Mark allegedly showing no understanding of? What kinds of "errors" is he making? I can't go and verify what he's saying, or consider the claim critically myself. Is Mark's change an "error", showing a basic lack of knowledge about the societal situation? Or is it a deliberate "contextualization", to make the stories accessible to a Greek audience without having to explain loads of irrelevant cultural background? No way to check and judge for myself; I'm expected to just take it on his authority.
And re the geographical "blunder" -- I someone in Cambridge, UK today said, "I'm going by way of Manchester to London", nobody would say they were committing a "geographical blunder". They'd understand that person to mean that they are going to first visit Manchester briefly, and then go to London.
This sort of thing is exactly in line with other things I've read claiming that Jesus didn't exist; I've never seen anything to make me think it's worth spending more of my time digging into.
> I'm afraid this is just not informative at all, and doesn't give me a good impression of the rest of the book.
Coincidentally, this fairly describes the reaction of a sceptic reading the book of Mark.
Anyway, you quoted entirely the wrong section, given your earlier question.
> "“from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis,” a trip 50 miles out of his way, on foot!"
Someone going from Cambridge to London via Manchester .. would take the train, or a bus, or drive.
As noted, this was a walking journey. It could be hand-waved away, but aren't you curious why someone would mention an 80km detour but not give the reader any tidbits about why, or what went on in Sidon that was worth a) the massive detour & effort, and b) mentioning?
I agree, however, that this is not, by itself, a compellingly damning piece of evidence. I hope you don't think it was meant as such.
> But it gets worse. There's absolutely no detail here.
Again, you're echoing the sentiment of people reading these works and wondering why there's no source citations, why the authors don't identify themselves, why there's no record of dates, why there's no critical analysis offered.
That book I pointed you at contains a lengthy bibliography, and in fairness was intended to provide an overview of the field.
There are certainly much more detailed works - including that author's follow-up trilogy Mything In Action, which I can highly recommend.
Obviously Price, Carrier, et al, provide a wealth of very detailed analysis, if you are indeed genuinely interested.
> I've never seen anything to make me think it's worth spending more of my time digging into.
Are you perhaps strongly invested in a particular position on this subject?
> Are you perhaps strongly invested in a particular position on this subject?
I'm strongly enough invested in the truth to ask you for references, read them, and engage critically with them. I can honestly say that if I was wrong, I would want to know. I've even thought carefully about what kind of evidence could be presented to me to convince me that I was wrong. Can you say the same?
> Again, you're echoing the sentiment of people reading these works and wondering why there's no source citations, why the authors don't identify themselves, why there's no record of dates, why there's no critical analysis offered.
The difference is, Mark isn't a 21st century skeptic claiming to represent scholarship. He's a first-century author trying to write down what's happened for common people to read. The proper thing to compare him to is other books of his time to which we give credence.
> As noted, this was a walking journey. It could be hand-waved away, but aren't you curious why someone would mention an 80km detour but not give the reader any tidbits about why, or what went on in Sidon that was worth a) the massive detour & effort, and b) mentioning?
The key thing here is that Tyre and Sidon are "foreign" places in the same region. You make a big deal about how far away they are, but almost everywhere in the New Testament they're lumped together. For example, in the Matthew version of this story (15:21-29), Matthew says, he "withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon". It then tells the story, followed by "Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee". Mark, on the other hand, says "Jesus... went to the vicinity of Tyre"; then tells the story, and then says "Jesus left Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee".
Nobody would at all wonder why, if I was in Paris, I decided I wanted to visit Lyon first before returning to London; or why if I was in Manchester I'd visit the Lake District before returning to Cambridge. Mark mentions Sidon for the same reason Matthew mentions Sidon: they think it's important to let us know that Jesus wasn't stuck south of Galilee, and/or that opposition at some point literally drove him out of the country. He doesn't tell any stories about Sidon for the same reason Matthew doesn't: nothing that happened there was worth the space on the scroll. That he went there, not what he did there, was the point. If anything, the fact that Mark feels it necessary to add a chronology (Tyre first then Sidon) when he could well have glossed over it like Matthew did, is a small amount of evidence that he's trying to be more accurate.
A more evidentiary approach here would be to look at other uses of the word "dia" (the word translated "by way of" in that verse) in ancient Greek. If other ancient sources exclusively use "ek X dia Y eis Z" (from X through Y to Z -- those are the prepositions used in that verse) to mean that Y is between / on the way from X to Z, then that lends credence to the "Mark is bad at geography" theory. If we have other examples of that pattern being for large-ish detours, then it undermines the "Mark is bad at geography" theory.
> That book I pointed you at contains a lengthy bibliography, and in fairness was intended to provide an overview of the field.
What you'd normally do in this case is to include the most convincing or most representative pieces of evidence. If among the top bits of evidence against Mark are, "He didn't include the story of how Peter got his name", and "He said Jesus went from Tyre to Galilee through Sidon", it gives me a lot more confidence in Mark.
I mean, sure, I'll take a quick look at Price et al; but my experience so far leads me to expect more like this -- people eager to find something to quibble with, uncritically making large lists of things that don't really mean anything.
You haven't stated your position, which highlights your side-stepping of revealing what kind of evidence you'd need to change your mind.
You refer to 'Mark' a lot - are you aware we don't know the author's name?
Comparing that work to actual historians of the time does that work no favours at all. Generally (at least the ones we have the most trust in) were identifying themselves, identifying their sources, writing about contemporary events, and so on.
It's unsurprising the mistake in Mark is repeated, slightly modified, in Matthew, given the way the latter lifted much of the former.
You're writing a lot of words to try to rationalise this one fairly trivial mistake. A simpler explanation exists - whoever wrote Mark wasn't familiar with the area, did not have access to maps (unsurprising), was not referring to any earlier source material, etc.
If you're relying on etymologies around via to provide legitimacy to this story, I'd suggest your complaints that I'm not providing substantive evidence in neatly tied up packages are disingenuous.
I don't believe you're sincere in your research, but on the off-chance I'll reiterate my recommendation for Fitzgerald's three-book work, Mything in Action.
If you find the material insufficiently detailed then his bibliography is a good place to pursue your search for points of view orthogonal to your beliefs.
> And on the other hand, if Mark received his Gos- pel from Peter, why is it that the other Gospels have more anecdotes about Peter, including for example, Je- sus telling him, “You are Peter the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church”? Would Peter himself for- get such an incident? It gets worse. Mark shows no un- derstanding of the social situation in the Holy Land, making numerous errors that no one living in early first century Judea would have made. Interestingly enough, when you compare Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, one finds that the author of Matthew is constantly correcting Mark’s blunders about all aspects of Jewish society, re- ligion, the calendar, holidays, customs, attitudes – even repeated misquotes of scripture.
I'm afraid this is just not informative at all, and doesn't give me a good impression of the rest of the book.
Why did Mark not include it? The simplest answer is that he didn't think it was important. Mark is the shortest book -- there are lots of things that mark could have included and didn't. His implication is that somehow Mark didn't know where Peter / Cephas / Rock's nickname came from, which I find much more hard to believe than that he just decided not to include it. This is hardly the kind of evidence you can follow with "it gets worse".
But it gets worse. There's absolutely no detail here -- what social situation is Mark allegedly showing no understanding of? What kinds of "errors" is he making? I can't go and verify what he's saying, or consider the claim critically myself. Is Mark's change an "error", showing a basic lack of knowledge about the societal situation? Or is it a deliberate "contextualization", to make the stories accessible to a Greek audience without having to explain loads of irrelevant cultural background? No way to check and judge for myself; I'm expected to just take it on his authority.
And re the geographical "blunder" -- I someone in Cambridge, UK today said, "I'm going by way of Manchester to London", nobody would say they were committing a "geographical blunder". They'd understand that person to mean that they are going to first visit Manchester briefly, and then go to London.
This sort of thing is exactly in line with other things I've read claiming that Jesus didn't exist; I've never seen anything to make me think it's worth spending more of my time digging into.