➡📚Get his book! amzn.to/4ap5zQm (The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon) ➡📚Get his book! amzn.to/4appj63 (The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts)

This is one of the best organized mimesis videos I've seen so far. When the whole New testament is covered it becomes overwhelming. Seeing what the author of Acts was trying to do also very important. Finding out that the triumphal entry statement was also precisely from Homer was eye opening.

Great interview, Jacob! Great questions and presentation of questions.

Top notch presentation/interview. True research and scholarship are always essays on what research and scholarship are and should be. Dr. McDonald's 'lecture' is a masterpiece with constants reflections on his premises, methodology and conclusions. Each thought or line of thinking feels like a loop, with the vector that returns to point 0 but with more energy and stronger arguments.The same happens when his research and reasoning lead to a dead end. At that point he is willing to concede and accepts the outcome of "insuccess" (lack of evidence, impossibility to falsify hypotheses etc.) I was particularly impressed by his ability to trace the sources of tropoi and literary-cultural conventions back to what to us are obscure minute points in classical literature and old lore. Two thousand years from now humanity -- if it still exists in this form -- will need someone to find the roots of our mental cliches' about big brothers and 'beam me up Scotty" to explain the weirdness of our times.

Dr. Macdonald is always worth watching twice. Jacob is a thoughtful and patient interviewer as always. I recommend a necktie.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

Or a bowtie. Opportunity knocks.

@jimgillert20

4 ай бұрын

Or a cravat.

Thank you Dr MacDonald, thank you Jacob

Jesus said that not a word not even a part of a word of the law and the prophet could be changed and they were to be followed even more rigorously than the scribes. Then Paul comes along and says not only that the law does not have to be followed but a good christian gentile is forbiden from following the law. I understand that Paul was facing a near imposible job, demanding that adult men get their members mutilated without anestetics and a risk of permanet injury or death was going to stop the westward expansion in its tracks. What did Paul know about Jesus? He does not mention the virgin birth, miracles, parables, his travels, the beatitudes, the trial, his diciples. Paul mentions the crucifiction, love god, love your neighbor and he mentions sharing the blood and flesh in the upper room. Paul , like Jesus, also believed that the tribulaion was to be in his lifetime. It never happened. I am reminded of the saying about false prophets . They will be known by their fruit. Failing to correctl predict the return of Jesus would be predicted hudreds of times down through the centuries. Just my opinion.

@a_lucientes

4 ай бұрын

Supposedly said anyway. And then Jesus goes on to say a slew of things completely incompatible with the petty and jealous war lord Yahweh, like: _turn the other cheek_ etc. The words attributed to people in these texts does not mean they actually said those things, or even that they existed at all. Same with authorship attrbutions. In the ancient world, it was common to attribute authorship to antiquity bc it was seen as more authoritative. [see Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon & thats already the 19th c]. This is something the Kabbalists did as well and that was in the 13th century. The author of the Zohar attributed it to a rabbi who lived many generations before him and for that reason. The Hermetica is another excellent example. We know Hermes didnt write it and it was composed around the 2nd c CE yet it's attributed to _Hermes Trismegistus_ and he speaks in the first person and purports to be ancient Egyptian wisdom. So, this is definitely not the exception, but the rule, at least when it comes to _inspired_ or _mystical_ texts.

awesome guest!

Jesus was a meme.

Fascinating discussion. ❤

Opportunities missed. Thomas Brodie researched the most important mimesis used for the gospels - the Greek Septuagint, especially the EEN. Unfortunately Brodie got hung up on his proto- Luke idea. Macdonald reviews a test case for Brodie's theory and concludes that Luke copies Mark. Yet Mark uses mimesis (imitation) of the EEN extensively. Luke simply recognizes Mark's sources and expands on Mark's use of the EEN. Here is why this is important: using Greek sources could be applied as legend to a core itinerant prophet. Using the Hebrew Bible Jesuses (Jesus Nun, Jesus Jehozadak, Elishua) makes a historical Jesus extremely unlikely. Jesus of Nazareth is simply a particular installment of Jesus mythology.

👍👍👍👍 Though i think Marcion's gospel was first [before Luke-Acts]. Of the five points of intersection between Josephus and the Author of luke-acts, 2 are in the infancy narrative section. I think this was something written after Marcion recieved his gospel. Like Dennis says, Luke is patterning his narrative after Matthew, and some have argued that Matthews birth Narrative was added later, so this can push the luken additions after the time Marcions discussions of his gospel. Did Marcion alter his source, probably. Could his source be Q, plausibly, but I think it make just be roughly borrowing Q. I think what the Mark Q Matthew Marcion Luke spectra shows us is that were text and bold men were not afraid to alter these texts for their own theological reasons.

@ahmaduahmed8760

4 ай бұрын

There were men who were not afraid to alter the texts for their own theological reasons. I like that, very fair, and is the truth. I am a Muslim though.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

@@ahmaduahmed8760 Best current evidence is that the Koran also was compiled in large part by assembling revisions of older texts, and attributing it all to a mythical Mohammed/angel team, underwritten by a king to help his conquests be reconciled to their new status. The LXX itself seems to be the official doctrine for a monotheistic revolution in Palestine sometime after 400 BC.

An amazing discourse indeed

James G. Riley is nothing more than a Christian Apologist....

I don't think the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite sounds that similar: He was answered by the daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite: “Anchises, most glorious of mortal humans! Take heart, and do not be too afraid in your phrenes. You should have no fear of that I would do any kind of bad thing to you, 195 or that any of the other blessed ones would. For you are philos indeed to the gods. And you will have a philos son, who will be king among the Trojans. And following him will be generations after generations for all time to come. His name will be Aineias [Aeneas], since it was an unspeakable [ainos]18 akhos that took hold of me-grief that I had fallen into the bed of a mortal man.

So Marcion’s gospel is antiyahwist because it lacks an infancy narrative - so what does that make the Ebionite gospel? 😂 ????

Yes Paul existed and no, the Gospels were straight from THE HOLY GHOST

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

Which one? They contradict.

Here's the thing no Manuscripts of Homer's Odyssey exist that were written prior to the life of Jesus. Therefore we cannot examine any textual variations. It's about like trying to say Zoroastrianism influenced Christianity. The Avesta wasnt written till 6th century Ad. It's more or less an argument from silence. Speculative at best

@ToreMix7400

4 ай бұрын

I think it's all based on greek mythology and mystery cults. if Jesus existed in that sense you think it would be Markus and Peters gospels that defines the historical.¡¿!? I think it's all in the "Orfic Vox" as suggested by Otto Kern and now DCA Hilman

@cpnlsn88

4 ай бұрын

We know that Homer is far more ancient than the NT. Dates of the MSS are not relevant. Unless corrupted by Christians as is alleged in the case of Josephus and some other texts.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

We know Homer long predates the NT because it is mentioned, and copied from, in many other works older than the NT, not just in Mark. So, the date of the oldest manuscript tells us nothing about the date of its origin. The oldest manuscripts of the NT are _also_ from centuries after it was assembled, and that fact _also_ doesn't fool any of us. You have posted before about manuscript dating, and been corrected before. To repeat the assertion would be dishonest. We know that Zoroastrianism influenced Christianity because we know Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism from when the Jewish elite were exiled in Babylon, and that Christianity grew up out of Judaism. To pretend Christianity shows no traces of Zoroastrianism just because our oldest complete manuscript of its scripture is newer would thus be equally dishonest.

@mcosu1

4 ай бұрын

Andrew is right.

@AnyProofOfTheseClaims

4 ай бұрын

​@@mcosu1No unfortunately, if you take his logical conclusion and apply it to the NT than we can say none of it was written until 125AD

I agree Luke didn't borrow from Matthew. Maybe Matthew borrowed from Luke.

More like speculative nonsense.

@humblethinker8493

4 ай бұрын

Omg, apologetics is speculative nonsense.

@davethebrahman9870

4 ай бұрын

@@humblethinker8493 Indeed it is, but so is this imaginary parallelism.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

Each individual parallel MacDonald notes is not compelling, but to find them all in matching textual order means they support one another. Mathematically speaking, the probability that each inferred parallel is spurious is pretty high, but multiplying those all together brings each one's prior likelihood of spuriousness to a negligible level, making the conclusion that Homer and LXX supplied plot elements for Mark logically unavoidable. To argue against you would need to show that the parallels are really independent and not dictated by their order of appearance in the other texts, a tall order.

@davethebrahman9870

4 ай бұрын

@@sciptick The problem is that you are counting hits and not misses. Classic rookie error.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

​@@davethebrahman9870 Authors cribbing from a text are implicitly allowed to introduce their own plot elements and to omit elements from the reference text for their own reasons, so what you consider "misses" change the numbers little, either way. They might be used to argue for an additional reference text, if one matching could be identified. The fraction matters: are most plot elements parallel, or are just a few parallels scattered through a much larger number of untraceable elements? Similar calculations make Paul's opinions expressed in those letters we still have unavoidably the origin of most of what Mark has his Jesus say. It means Mark had at that very early date little more to work with than remains today. And it adds confidence to our identification of spurious letters that Mark does not have his Jesus express opinions found in them.