It’s all metaphor and allegory. The children are new initiates to Christianity. The dogs are outsiders who haven’t yet been inducted. The food is the gospel (or more particularly, the Christian mysteries). This likely derives from Paul’s use of the same food-children metaphor. See On the Historicity of Jesus, Element 13, pp. 108-14 (cf. pp. 122, 237).

If I had the time. Maybe if I become an android and live a thousand years. 😉

“Let the children first be fed, since it isn’t good to take bread out of children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs! [kynaria]” But as a rejoinder she says to him: “Sir, even the dogs under the table get to eat scraps dropped by children!”

does not portray him as an equal rights prince.

look at how matthew interprets mark

A Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ he answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’

But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘lord, help me.’ he answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ (Matthew 15:22-28)

so matthew does not say , “let the children first be fed” matthew’s jesus does not want the dogs to receive even the left overs.

in these passages ,is the jesus portrayed in them, alright with THROWING food at a people not from his house/race?

jesus says that it is not fair/good/proper to throw special bread/miracle to the jews. it would be sacrilegious to throw something holy to the unholy.

one cannot throw children’s food/jewish food to the dogs.

the question is , can one THROW that which is not HOLY to the dogs/non-jews?

It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ (Matthew 15:22-28)

does ” and throw it to the dogs” indicate how jesus would TREAT non-jewish dogs i.e throw stuff at them?

OK here is a more compact test: Did Mark write a history of a person who he believed to be the son of God incarnate?

If we take this as the starting point for the argument then things become a lot simpler because it is a test that I think a lot of folk who are agnostic on the point would accept as fair.

Given that as the test, it becomes clear that someone who thinks that they are writing the biography of the Son of God is going to make sure they get their facts right. And lets face it, if they are really writing the biography of the genuine Son of God then God is going to make sure they get their facts right.

What convinces me that the Gospels are bollocks is 1) the contrived structure, 2) the later gospels get longer and 3) every part of the gospels can be explained as serving an allegorical need.

The guy keeps giving away the key to the mystery. Chiasmus: “The last shall be first and the first shall be last” and the allegorical Jesus is teaching in the form of allegorical parables.

Yes, I read chapter 2. But the point is that folk can quibble about just how much grounding in actual people amounts to a historical Jesus. You set the bar rather high, other folk seem to instinctively argue to make the bar lower.

I completely agree that a historical Jesus has to have been rather more than some random person used as a basis for building a character. Otherwise we get into absurdities.

Since the climax of Mark is an allegorical version of the Passover sacrifice I think it rather safe to assume that part is pure fiction. And without a historical crucifixion there is no historical Jesus. Equally, if Mark is putting Paul’s words into the mouth of Jesus does that make Paul Jesus? Of course not.

Another thing, since the whole point of the sacrifice is to show that there is no longer a need for the temple sacrifice, isn’t that a point that would have taken on a completely different dimension with the temple destroyed and the temple cult actively suppressed?

Seems I was confused on the confirmed date of Asc. Is. Though it is hard to see how it could be later if there had in fact been a historical Jesus of consequence and Mark is his life history.

As I pointed out earlier, the symbolism here represents Paul inviting the Gentiles into Jesus’ community, while the requirement of Law observance insisted on by Jewish Christian leaders effectively barred the door to entry by Gentiles.

Yes, that’s spot on.

But the order of causation with respect to 1 Thess. 2 goes the other way around (if there is any link at all; these links are weak, considering how ubiquitously both Mark and Paul use the proselyte-children metaphor): at most we might say the interpolator is inserting a Markan-inspired diatribe. Because that diatribe makes no sense for Paul, for all the reasons I enumerate in OHJ. Mark is not basing his myth on the interpolation. To the contrary, Mark appears to have no knowledge of it (the interpolation damns the Jews for all eternity as the enemies of God; we don’t see anything like that in the Gospels until the Gospel of John).

…those two points can be true even under the assumption of minimal historicity?

No, only item 5 is shared in common with minimal historicity (as I actually say: OHJ, pp. 53, 55).

Item 4 says a “story of this same Jesus” so 4 thereby subsumes the implications of 1-3. That is, 4 is specifically excluding a historical Jesus later deified.

And even then, you have items 1-3.

So these two hypotheses do not make identical predictions. I explain in particular how this works with respect to Acts in ch. 12.2, esp. pp. 603-05.

Ditto the extra-biblical evidence, in particular that of ch. 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, and 8.8.

…you are denying the possibility (not only the probability)…

That is illogical. The possibility is included in the probability. For example, that the plot of Acts would show no knowledge of Jesus having a family or being a recently executed seditionist etc. is to some degree less probable on minimal historicity than on minimal mythicism (as the latter makes that more likely, whereas the former makes that less likely…and again, less likely does not mean impossible).

…authors of the epistles as Paul have totally eclipsed Jesus then forcing the authors of Gospels…

That is illogical.

Christianity in its first five decades consisted of thousands of persons, and over a dozen apostles, across three continents. They were not constrained to the information in Paul’s letters (much less the extant letters; Paul also wrote other letters that we don’t have now, and Paul cannot have been the lone Christian leader writing letters in his day: hence OHJ, ch. 8.4). So there is no way Paul could have forced anything. And to suppose even that Paul did that, much less all Christian apostles as well (as this supposition requires), is to propose an ad hoc supposition that is not entailed by either hypothesis, and not intrinsically probable on any background evidence. So the force is improbable, and therefore any consequence of said force is improbable. Consequently, this force thesis, like all other possibilities allowing e to exist on h, is already included in the probability estimates.

On structure to the elements, I tried that. Each first paragraph is a summary, sometimes even broken down into lettered parts. The problem with one-sentence summaries is that they will always be incorrect (for lack of nuance or qualification or specification). That’s not acceptable for peer review.

But thanks for all the typos. I have been building a list. I’ll add all those. (Only one of them someone else had already caught, the notation error on p. 519.)

(Except Georgic is a thing: it is sometimes used to refer to the dialect used in biblical manuscripts, now associated with Judeo-Georgian. Example. Judeo-Georgian is basically Georgian with loan words.)