Christians Vote! Was Mark Mark? (feat Dr James Tabor) (@MikeLiconaOfficial response)

Shortly after the series of videos by Licona were released, I asked him to share Pelletier's master thesis so that I can check his work. To my shock and horror, he refused, arguing that Pelletier wants to develop the research in his PhD thesis and will only publish then. I was also shocked to find that the university Pelletier studied at does not in fact publish all graduate theses. This means that both Licona and Pelletier are making arguments based on research which nobody can see except them! This is in effect no different from them just making up numbers out of thin air. I haven't heard any update on this for TWO YEARS. For example, I don't know whether Pelletier is even a PhD student at this point, let alone when he's supposed to finish. If he decides to drop for whatever reason, this whole thing is just going to disappear down a memory hole but I bet apologists will still throw these numbers around for years to come.

Breaking news: People who are asked after signing that the Bible is inerrant also agree that a claim of the Bible is correct about something

There is a contradiction when apologists claim to be “ critical thinking scholars “ . 😮

If Papius, the not so smart one, is right that Mark (whoever that is) wrote the gospel it would be hearsay according to him since Mark did not follow Jesus.

I find it interesting that Eusebius says that Mark did nothing wrong in writing down single points out of order. This presupposes that there were some who were concerned and criticized Mark's gospel and how it was written.

truth isn't a voting thing

Who wrote for John, Papias? or Prokhor? or Timothy?

To say that the reason Mark is pro-Roman because it is a Pauline text is insufficient. Mark presents an ideology during the time of the destruction of Jerusalem that no Messianic Jew (like the followers of James) would be interested in -- a demigod who abandons the Torah and instructs the defeated to be peaceful, dutiful taxpaying subjects of the oppressors who were crucifying them by the thousands? That would be like expecting a Jewish messiah in 1944 instructing the Jews to obey the Wehrmacht. I love Tabor, but he's not suspicious enough of the Flavian Caesars. That people don't remember that Flavius Josephus was their friggin' court historian is malpractice.

Peter died in the 60’s? Well at least he got to see the moon landing.

Wow! Great video, Paul.

So in Biblical Studies Methodology matters more than Jornal's impact factor.
In economics, the reputation of the journal based on Journal's impact factor or Scimago ranking is the deciding factor not the methodology.

If Peter was the source of Mark's material, why would he make himself look so bad? Asking stupid questions? Misunderstanding everything Jesus says? Denying Jesus with no reconciliation?

We’re you there?

James Tabor comes across as one of the nicest and one of the most thoughtful of the various popular writers on this subject.

One thing that interested me was he seems to accept the idea that Christianity began as a Jewish sect. I have come to doubt that, but my knowledge of all this is very limited.

Part of Tabor's argument seemed to be that parts of Mark seemed to have a Jewish slant. Even accepting that, there were Gentile groups around at the time that were following Judaism to some degree. Couldn't that explain the Jewish nature of Mark? A rough overview of my thinking about this:
1. Josephus wrote about four Jewish sects. He doesn't mention a Christian sect at all unless the Judas of Galilee led sect was a Christian predecessor or that the two small mentions of Jesus by Josephus are authentic and actually refer to the Christian Jesus.
2. The Gospels are written in Greek. This, for me, is the big elephant in the room. I have never seen reliable evidence of a connection between the Gospel writers and a Jewish sect. We do not know today what fact set Mark used to create the Jesus character.
3. The Gospels are written in the third person exactly as if they are historical fiction. Without reliable external evidence no reliable facts can be extracted from the Gospel
4. The writings of Paul which might be a clue about the nature of a real Jesus barely touch on the nature of an historical Jesus. Most strangely of all to me is that Paul meets with what might be the biological brother of Jesus and does not record any discussion with him about the life of Jesus.
5. Christianity as we know it is immediately a different religion than Judaism. Many of the Jewish Noahide laws are dropped, the Jewish festivals are dropped. Again some evidence that Gentiles created created Christianity with very little if any input from Jewish Christians.

Altogether the above plus other considerations makes it plausible IMO that Jews didn't invent Christianity or that early Jewish Christianity was lost almost immediately after it had been invented.

My PhD in unicorn powers and lifecycle was well worth it.

No.

Personally I have no idea how anyone who subscribes to Biblical Inerrancy can be called a Critical Scholar of the Bible. When you start out assuming one of the answers subject to criticism, and will brook no testing of that assumption, you aren't being a critical thinker. If the Bible isn't inerrant, and has many contradictions, as many scholars believe, you end up making more ridiculous assumptions and leaps of logics to try to show they aren't contradictions.

Wikipedia:
The Gospel of Mark is anonymous.
"Most scholars date Mark to c. 66–74 AD, either shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.They reject the traditional ascription to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Peter – which probably arose from the desire of early Christians to link the work to an authoritative figure – and believe it to be the work of an author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative. It was traditionally placed second, and sometimes fourth, in the Christian canon, as an inferior abridgment of what was regarded as the most important gospel, Matthew; the Church has consequently derived its view of Jesus primarily from Matthew, secondarily from John, and only distantly from Mark."

One thing for sure, the young man running from the scene of Jesus's arrest fits the profile of a skittish John Mark - befitting Paul's early impression. That would identify him as a follower and witness to many of the events he records. And this may have been Mark's clever intention. No wonder Paul later finds him to be quite useful.

Dr.Tabor - steel logic. Thank you .Brilliant

Is licona straight up lying now? Mark getting his data from Peter is the majority of critical scholars? The term critical scholar is getting fuzzy

I was intrigued by the idea of Mark as the first post-temple Jewish document. Given that Mark comes first, I wonder to what extent all of Christianity might be seen as the same thing. The death of Jesus as a final once-for-all sacrifice dovetails very nicely with the post AD 70 reality that there is no way to even make sacrifices. Has anyone developed this thesis? it would be interesting to read about it.

Love this.mark wrote mark. Ok great " who's mark ? " BOOOOOM

It's cute that they think that all of those fictional people in the gospels were real enough to write books.

Check and make sure you’re subscribed and turn on notifications! I got unsubscribed without my knowledge.

Who cares what a young student thinks.....

Just wanted to say I’m walking on a beach at night as a first-generation immigrant and atheist, who was raised as a Christian fundamentalist/Christian nationalist, married to one, and now divorced and with a nonreligious partner in my new country. The first thing I thought to listen on my walk was one of your videos. So soothing and cathartic as well as informational. I wish high-school me could see me now. Things do get better and choosing what is best for you is so important. Sometimes that’s religion. And sometimes it’s most definitely not. Thanks for being my virtual cool atheist uncle who supports my rebellion even if the rest of my family doesn’t 🙃

Christians scholars are going to claim positions that make their position seem right. Muslim scholars are going to claim positions that make their position seem right. That is why secular scholars are most trusted because they can look at the evidence and make more unbiased conclusions.

Have you ever determined “truth” by a vote? Well, I vote NO.

How cute, the "gods-believers" think reality is a democracy....

The 'Critical' investigation did not discriminate heterogeny. "Two to One"? If all of those "critical" scholars were Christians (many even signing statements of faith) then Why do 1 out of 3 NOT believe that Mark wrote Mark? That's the real question. Compare this: The vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Now there's a consensus.

Poor baby didn't read German or French, so he didnt try. I read German language papers for my masters degree in mathematics, despite not knowing a word of German. And that was long before the internet. 1979.

they are the perfect constituant, they are used to doing things on faith alone

Centuries of endless opinions of opinions of the opinions of people who never met Jesus yet
magically "cherry pick" themselves to the "real truth of Jesus". LOL
(but of course, they confirmed it in their "heart")

Papias explicitly states that Mark was accurate in what he wrote. The passage also indicates that Mark was well-known in the early church. The logical reason why Mark's Gospel was accepted in the early church is that it was well-known he was a companion and translator of Peter, an apostle. In other words Mark's Gospel originates from an apostle.

Eusebius' attitude towards Papias seems to stem from his theological differences. He doesnt cast doubt on Papias' understanding of the origin of Mark's Gospel.

Tabor appears to become confused regarding Mark/Papias. Noone claimed that Papias was a companion of Peter, but rather Mark was. That is what Papias claimed.

Daniel has 'one like a son of man'. In other words he appeared human. That is not the same as saying he was simply human as Tabor implies. And Jesus clearly identified himself as that son of man. His coming on the clouds describes his ascension, approaching the Ancient of Days (the Father).

Mark has a high Christology. The very first words is a quote from Isaiah which relates to a messenger being sent ahead of God. Mark says this is John the Baptist being sent ahead of Jesus. The implication is clear.

I hate to burst anybody's bubble here but I will just say that James Tabor has some extremely wacky views based on his own personal beliefs that he brings to his scholarship. I think James taybor is actually an interesting character study into how people bring their own personal feelings into their work.
Basically James believes in a judeo-christian monotheism that's pretty exclusive just to him. Anybody who's ever looked into it will know that judeo-christianity isn't really a thing that has ever existed prior to the 19th century.
What all of the traditions have always been in and even the Evangelical movement is primarily based on today is Rome and Christianity
In fact if Mark the First Gospel is written in 70 AD there was no Judea to have a judeo Christian
Not to mention the fact that Paul being of some type of Pharisee origin was a citizen of Rome and lived in Asia Minor primarily it seems
all of his letters and missionary interest seemed to be nowhere near Judea
So the have sort of a judo, based Christianity where it's monotheism and Jesus is this hardcore Pharisee Jew and he really doesn't want to start a new religion, and he's having sex with his wife who's this former prostitute and they probably have children. And he's the son of this Roman soldier; who's not of Aryan ancestry but is it some type of Jewish Heritage who they found the statue of in Germany, of course this was a part of Nazi ideology but somehow James is made this statue in this entire fake story all about sort of like this Jesus Manson family cult
Ioshva; iacov; iosef being unbelievably generic iewish names in 1st century AD and 1BC Palestine/iudea creates a paradigm of sketchy archaeological hoax possibility. As those are some of the most prominent names of patriarchs.
Actually think that the focus of twentieth-century after the end of World War II and the Nazi archaeology era has been really hyper focused in on trying to prove a narrative that iesvs was a Jewish conservative as opposed to what is obvious from the text which is an extremely liberal universalist ideology that was rejected by the Jewish conservative extremist caste .
So it's interesting that this video is based on Mark because there's two extremely overt passages that are only in Mark that Luke and Matthew redacted into saying something very different, and this absolutely overturns and destroys a lot of James table as iewish iesus research .
Mark 12:29; and Mark 11:17; both verses are used in Matthew and and Luke but they're both redacted to take away the elements of monotheism and add exclusivity back into the text. This is because Matthew Luke and John consider the Jews to be worshiping Satan ( or just promoting evil); where is it Mark Jesus is trying to eliminate the minds of the temple priests back and chew would he views as the original intent of Jewish temple in Jerusalem which is based on a very specific interpretation of Judaism it's based more so on Samuel and Kings as opposed to the later redaction of Chronicles which changes the narrative dramatically.
Jesus is anti Pharisee, which means anti Persian era second temple Judaism. This is the reason that the offshoot of that which is modern rabbinic Judaism is in complete opposition to Christianity
As what we refer to today is modern Judaism is the Babylonian import to Judea after the Persian Empire conquered the old neo-babylonian Empire. Because they came down and considered only Babylonian imports to be the real Jews and anybody who still lived in the region as being either false Jews or half-breeds. Of course anybody who looks at the accounts closely will see that the establishment of the temple in Jerusalem from the foundation is from the king of Tyre, it is a pagan Temple by every sense of the word and it is directly reported in the Samuel and Kings histories. Monuments to Molech and other Canaanite deities or put up at the temple specifically by Solomon himself. This is where the House of Prayer for all nations comes from because it was supposed to be the city of peace and the place for all people, all races, to come worship the universality of the one God, theoretically who is manifested at the Pinnacle of all of these seemingly separate nationalist religious beliefs. As we all can see that there's Patron deities of all of these different tribes, obviously the original effort of Jerusalem was the idea of uniting all of these separate believes together, whereas during the Ezra redaction every period, a brand-new exclusive acoustic tribal theology is reinstituted and then a fake revisionist history that was intended to replace the old one was written and that's what the book of chronic as is. So you have to absolutely opposed histories in the Old Testament in Samuel/Kings and Chronicles; and with Mark being the oldest Gospel, it is very apparent that the original intention of the Jesus movement was too re-instill this value of universalism back into the belief system. This is what the accusation of Jesus being a Samaritan infiltrator came from, and it's also the reason that there is a heavy emphasis on bringing the Roman ideology in with the Samaritan and the Jewish into one universal peaceful united belief system.
The beautiful irony of it is is that every reactionary. Be at Matthew Luke and John redacting Mark or Chronicles redacting the older Jewish tradition; they take something that was liberating and it's the illogical implications and turn it back into a narrow exclusive istic oppressive Force wear one cast can rule over all others as inferiors
Anybody who follows James will know that James believes that John 's Resurrection narrative, one of the most obvious later additions to any gospel; is somehow the most ancient Resurrection account that we have. His evidence for this is the fact that he really wants that to be what really happened; and it's really disappointing that John is dated so late

How do you get PHD for basically creating a excel spreadsheet totalling the results of surveys? 2 out of Every 3 dentists say...

Analyzing books in the Bible is like Analyzing fairy tales and first century folklore /fiction lol. A fools errand.

Regardles... even if Jeebus was a real dude, He wasn't a GOD or son of a GOD... Just a faith healer. (Which we all know are fakes)

4 out of 5 doctors recommend Paulogia.

To the methodology: I would have added the author's religious/non-religious affiliation to the analysis, and run an Anacor to see if there is significant correlation between their position on the authorship of Mark and their self-professed faith/not faith. Might be enlightening.
Also - you can't say "the majority of scholars" if you only count the literature written in English.

when Christians vote, we get Trump and the Gospel of Paul.

budget steven crowder

How likely is it that Simon of Samaria was co-opted
by anti-Marcionite christians who created the Saul / Paul character?

So, taking a sampling of writers with SOME credential, you get a consensus, and THAT'S a THESIS? All this without an understanding of how these "scholars" are selected for the sampling.
I would think that having to actually investigate WHAT these scholars use for their conclusions and doing a critical analysis of that criteria should be what a thesis covers. IMHO YMMV

Well, would you rather the dudes used the floor urinal, or released their cellular waste water more or less into the bowl where you sit?

Back when I played a few online games, I'd run across people who would like to chat a bit. I can't tell you how many times I've met people who would be like, "I'm off to college soon! I'm so excited! I'm the first person in my family to go to college." I would ask where they were going, thinking it would be like UCLA or something, and they'd respond, "I'm going to Bible College in Kentucky." My heart would sink, because they were studying "Divinity". And we wonder why education in the US produces people who don't know jack when we have "colleges" like this existing.

Hey Paul! You been keeping up with professor Dave explains against the discovery institute?

I think both Mark and Jesus were reading Daniel 9. The 483 years from the decree around 455-457BCE would have put Jesus smack dab in that last 7 years. Jesus knew he would be cut off and probably assumed the ‘people of the prince to come’ referred to his own subsequent followers. Mark didn’t need to elaborate a resurrection story because it wouldn’t fit Daniel anyway. If Jesus had any clue what became of his church, then calling the confession of Peter a Satanic invention was prophetic. Rev shows a cohesive picture of this with Antichrist religion and forced conversions. I think whoever wrote Mark understood Isa 53 as well and he seemed to paint that portrait of the suffering servant better than the other gospels. Tabor is one of my favorite scholars but his only blind spot is prophecy. Either he’s siding with the rabbis or just discounting the possibility any prophecy is true I can’t say. The majority of critical scholars are completely unwilling to collect the fragments of prophecy that does have a cohesive picture in spite of critical problems and smudged interpretations along with outright frauds. The remarkable thing is the prophecies themselves didn’t get lost in manipulative translations aside from people like Matthew and Jewish rabbis bending the truth as much as possible.