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What I actually said was:On the issue of the actual reliability of MacDonald's book, it looks like you've punted. You admit that much of what MacDonald says is "tenuous" but then insist that there are "a wealth of similarities" and link to a review by Richard Carrier, which proudly trumpets a lot of the issues that you have already admitted to be tenuous. So what exactly is not tenuous?
MacDonald may point out some tenuous comparisons, but there are a wealth of similarities between Mark and Homer that have convinced many that Homer was an inspiration to Mark. (See Review by Richard Carrier of Dennis MacDonald's 'The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark' )
So no, I did not say much is tenuous. The interested reader can read MacDonald's book and your criticism, and decide for himself.
For instance in Mark 8, where Jesus "was stating the matter plainly" and Peter doesn't get it so Jesus says, "Get behind Me, Satan"But where exactly in the Gospel of Mark are all the disciples depicted as "greedy, cowardly, potentially treacherous, and above all foolish"?
In Mark 9 the disciples still don't get it when Jesus talks about the cross.
In Mark 10 James and John ask to be ahead of the others in the resurrection.
In Mark 14 they fall asleep with Jesus facing death. Peter then denies repeatedly that he ever knew Jesus.
I don't have time to look into it. The interested reader can read MacDonald's book and your critique, and make up his mind.So if you want to defend this thesis, please tell me exactly what evidence you think to be convincing.
None of this changes the fact that Mark wrote long after the events he records and has nobody before him who back up what he wrote.
Information about the Greek and Roman Mithras cult can be found at:There was a character named Mithras in Persian mythology. There was none in Greek mythology, and I have no idea where you got that idea from. Around the year 100 A.D. the first traces of the Roman Mithras cult appeared. The Persian and Roman versions of Mithras do not have anything in common other than the name.
Mithras - Myth Encyclopedia - mythology, Greek, god, ancient, war, world, Roman, life, people
Mithraic mysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moreover, as I've repeatedly pointed out and you've ignored, there isn't actually any similarlity between the sacred meal of the Mithras cult and the eucharist. Both of them involved food and drink but that's where the similarity ends. All of this can be verified at the following well-documented article:
Robert Turkel! You turn to Robert Turkel?
No thanks. I will pass on that. He is famous for writing long diatribes with false information. See, for instance, Reply to Robert Turkel . I don't have the time to sort through all of that.
Tertullian and Justin Martyr admit that the Mithras cults had sacraments similar to the eucharist, but they don't give us the timing of when the cult began. See Mithras: all the passages in ancient texts that refer to the cult .
OK, the Internet has a lot of trash. And yet we should still click on your source on the Internet, yes?As I've said before, if you want to convince anybody, you'll have to stop believing everything that you read on the internet and start checking your information with credible sources.
Here is my problem. Everybody wants sources. If I mention a book or something that can be bought, ElijahW screams that I am selling books, and you complain that I am demanding that you read entire books! If I link to something on the Internet, you complain the Internet is not a credible source.
So what am I to do? You guys demand sources, but people refuse to accept books or anything that costs money as a source, and refuse to accept the Internet as a source. What exactly is there left to use?
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