Excavating The Empty Tomb

[Angrboda]

Well, there are some legitimate and not so legitimate responses to the Oddyseus stuff (that's as far as I've gotten). The first is the question whether our notion of fiction being opposed to history being valid, both in general and in this time frame. It was a perfectly well recognized practice in the past for historians to simply "recreate" a famous speech in the author's best recollection of what was said. There was not the same tension between invention and truth that we recognize in today's genres. Historical narrative as a genre didn't even really exist at this time. Just as we have historical fiction which may not be totally fiction, nor totally historical, the notion of literal truth of a historic narrative may be an anachronism here. (I recall how it used to be a standard part of higher education to have people practice writing or speaking in the idiom of someone famous; mimesis had a long life as both a creative and pedagogical technique.) The other key point to consider is whether many of the inclusions or parallels were intentional, or simply the unintentional fusings of culture and craft in a writer's mind.

I enjoy this stuff a great deal, because it's a fascinating subject. However, the subject of these videos seems aimed squarely at literalists and inerrantists, as I don't think this would be as troubling to anyone else. The problem with aiming arguments at such people is that they aren't interested in evidence; they've already made up their mind about what "the truth" is, so a search for the truth becomes simply doing whatever is necessary to make the facts conform to their preconceived belief. You can't win such an argument. That being the case, such a person might offer two responses. The first, as above, denying that fiction and truth are antithetical. The more common response though is likely to deny the consensus of higher criticism and argue that Mark is not primary (whether because of being reliant on Matthew, or being a codification of an oral tradition). If you deny the primacy of Mark, then you've not cut the gordian knot, only weakened one of the strands.