Reddit mentions of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark

>what were your sources for your reply?

I've spent over four decades reading, researching, etc. I know some stuff about other religions too but naturally focused on Judaism and Xianity.

There are a couple specific things, I guess.

https://www.amazon.com/Homeric-Epics-Gospel-Mark/dp/0300172613 Richard Carrier's review: https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/homerandmark.html

This site isn't too bad http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/ShreddingTheGospels.htm

This guy http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/sanhedrin.html covers it pretty well. It is instructive to search out and read Jewish commentary on Mark. Devastating. It's no wonder Xianity spread much quicker among gentiles than among Jews - they would have seen that whole Sanhedrin story arc as completely bogus, obvious fiction.

Fantastic book! If you want a couple other ones that just add to this, check out Dennis R. MacDonald's The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Richard I Pervo's The Mystery of Acts, and Robert M. Price's works such as Deconstructing Jesus, and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. These all add to the conclusion that the gospels (and Acts) are works of fiction, or at best, could go either way...meaning that there is very little (or no) historical truth about Jesus in them.

The book I found the first two reviews to be insightful.

a YouTube series from the book

This is a response by JP Holding on the book making the claims mentioned. I'm no big fan of Holding, but if he's not misrepresenting it, the claim sounds a bit weak.

http://www.amazon.com/Homeric-Epics-Gospel-Mark/dp/0300172613/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323404191&sr=8-1 is the book it's based on.

This is also interesting and slightly related,
http://www.amazon.com/The-Homeric-Epics-Gospel-Mark/dp/0300172613

Yes! I agree 100% with everything you stated!

I think one can see heavy Greek influences in the scripture. Here's a rather amazing book:

https://www.amazon.com/Homeric-Epics-Gospel-Mark/dp/0300172613

Here's a video on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJAcX_K5YA4

You write: "I went though the Christian Bible in its entirety before meeting stoicism. I greatly enjoyed the wisdom in the teachings of Jesus." Yes! So did Thomas Jefferson!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

"Jefferson accomplished a more limited goal in 1804 with The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, the predecessor to The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.[7] He described it in a letter to John Adams dated October 13, 1813:

In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

Enjoy!

Dennis MacDonald in The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (2000) deduced

> Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad, and [MacDonald] wanted his readers to recognize the Homeric antecedents in Mark's story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes. Much like Odysseus, Mark's Jesus sails the seas with uncomprehending companions, encounters preternatural opponents, and suffers many things before confronting rivals who have made his house a den of thieves. In his death and burial, Jesus emulates Hector, although unlike Hector Jesus leaves his tomb empty. Mark's minor characters, too, recall Homeric predecessors: Bartimaeus emulates Tiresias; Joseph of Arimathea, Priam; and the women at the tomb, Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache. And, entire episodes in Mark mirror Homeric episodes, including stilling the sea, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, the Triumphal Entry, and Gethsemane.