James Patrick Holding's shocking stupidity on Mark's ending

This is my reply to a video by James Patrick Holding entitled

Detective Joe Fundy, Episode 4

In the past I have argued the reasonableness of denying Jesus rose from the dead, in part, on the following facts:

a)  The Christian scholarly consensus says Mark was the earliest gospel
b) The Christian scholarly consensus says Mark's long-ending, 16:9-20, wasn't part of the original,
c) so it is reasonable to conclude the earliest gospel did not say anybody actually saw a risen Jesus.
d) if Mark's original ending did mention Jesus' resurrection appearances, it wouldn't matter, since such a thing cannot be demonstrated to be a historical likelihood.

I further justified skepticism toward Mark's gospel by a quotation from Eusebius, to the effect that when Peter heard that Mark was writing a gospel, Peter neither forbade it nor encouraged it.  I argued that one reasonable conclusion to Peter's apathy toward Mark's written gospel was that Peter didn't approve of Mark's literary effort.

For starters, as usual, Holding's bloated ego comes shining through in this video.  He presents himself as a policeman who is physically larger and imposing, while often hovering over the smaller dischevled bum who is supposed to represent me.  Holding is a pathetically conflicted clown:  he always backs away from live one-on-one debates (but will compromise his divinely-inspired  morals on that if the price is right, as was the case with his live debate against Carrier), but cannot shake the need to show the world how forcefully he can beat back atheist opposition.  So it is by means of him drawing cartoons portraying himself as the sinister powerful intellectual, and his critics as retarded weak bums, that he fulfills this fantasy that will never actually become reality.


Holding, why didn't you call Habermas a "moron" and otherwise talk down to him the way you talk down the Context Group members, when Habermas told you he was glad you were backing off of the "strong comebacks"?   After all, that sounds like Habermas agrees with all other Christian scholars that there is no biblical license for Christians to insult their critics.  If that's a stupid moronic position to take, then why didn't you tell Habermas he was a stupid moron? 

Worse, Holding's cartoon fantasies of steamrolling me with his great intellect and size as I cower before him are in total contradiction to his 2015 testimony to his lawyers that he was genuinely frightened I'd try to kill him, which I documented in another post, see here.

Holding cannot say that he talks so big now because over the last three years he learned that I wasn't such a threat, because that then means he was lying about me in 2015 when saying I was dangerously mentally ill.

So if Holding wishes to sound consistent, he must admit that he is still afraid I am dangerously mentally ill enough to try to kill him.  So his brood of followers might like to ask:  Do you think it makes sense to post so many insulting, degrading and defamatory things on the internet about a person whom you are afraid might actually try to kill you...especially given that you know that he keeps up on your videos and posts?

The normal person would know what it means to taunt a dangerously mentally ill person, and would likely not do it.  But Holding is not normal.  His pathological obsession with needing to justify himself to his follows is so strong, it even causes him to violate common sense.  But it sure is consistent with his long history of acting like an inconsistent attention-deficit child.


Anyway...Starting a time-code 1:20, Holding informs the viewer that my argument "begs the question of Markan priority".

That's rather stupid. If Holding believes Jesus rose from the dead, is he "begging the question" of biblical reliability?  No, "begging the question" is a "fallacy".  If Holding has previously provided arguments to justify trusting the biblical story of Jesus' resurrection, then his reliance on that prior conclusion is not "begging the question", even if his arguments for bible reliability are incorrect or weak.

It is the same in my case.  Yes, I've done a lot of research into the question of Markan priority.  Yes, I accept Markan priority as a better theory that a theory that says Matthew or Luke came first.  My assuming Markan priority is a mere reliance on my prior research and its conclusions.  For that to be "fallacious" would render ALL argument fallacious, since most arguments contain premises whose truth the speaker has already decided are true. Holding is free to say my presuppositions are wrong, but he cannot blame me for relying on those.  Everybody is relying on prior presuppositions when drawing conclusions and arguing.

It is only when they have not previously justified a premise, that their assumption of its truth constitutes "begging the question".

Holding then says I cannot maintain my view without answering numerous important text-critical questions. 
First, Holding is dishonest, as it is clear that he conjured up this video after reading my blog post where I go into an important text-critical question on Mark 16:8.  See here.  In prior blog pieces, such as the one where I rebut the views of Jonathan McLatchie,  I took on other text-critical issues of Mark's long ending and quoted conservative Christian scholars who opine that Mark intended to end at 16:8, for example, Daniel Wallace. See Rebuttal to Jonathan McLatchie's best evidence for the resurrection of Jesus .

I also attacked J. Warner Wallace's arguments for Petrine influence on Mark's gospel, which, if my attack is strong, would change any resurrection appearances in Mark from first-hand Petrine source to either "unknown provenance" or "hearsay at an unknown level of remove from the event".  Historians and courts agree that there is a presumed great difference of quality between eyewitness sources and hearsay sources.  So my attack would justify viewing Mark's long ending with suspicion even assuming the resurrection appearances therein were what Mark himself wrote.


So Holding is either dishonest for knowing I took on some text-critical issues on my blog and yet pretending that my view of Mark 16:8 ignores those questions, or Holding is more incompetent in research than he wants the world to believe, since it take very little brain power to search google for "turchisrong" and "Mark 16:8".

Second,  I've reviewed the relevant literature, including the best efforts of James Snapp, Nick Lunn and others.  I found none of their arguments compelling.  Unfortunately for Holding, I am like other aspiring authors...I don't just dump all of my best stuff onto the internet for free just because I can.  If Holding doesn't want his own books to be copied into pdf and pirated around the internet, then apparently he agrees with me that if you come up with good arguments and wish to put them in a for-profit book, it is reasonable and rational to decide that you shouldn't put the book's contents on the internet for free.  And it wouldn't matter if Holding says he doesn't care whether people pirate his published books or not...most authors are reasonable to not want their book material being given away for free on the internet. 

Holding is free to say I got something wrong in disagreeing with the conclusions of those who advocate for Mark's long ending, but he is simply being the asshole he's always been by pretending that because I didn't justify my conclusion with a 5-mile long blog post that answers every possible objection, that I'm thus "ignoring" things and "begging the question".

Well gee, Holding leaves an awful lot of scholarship untouched in his own video...should I accuse him of "begging the question" because he doesn't, right there in the video, justify all the presuppositions that hold up his conclusions?

at 1:36, he again says the first begged question is Markan priority, because he will show the viewer later that Matthew came first.  So Holding can hardly fault me for not justifying all of my presuppositions in a single article, when he himself is perfectly content to leave a presupposition of his own without argument and merely promise to provide argument later

at 1:44, Holding then says the other begged question is that Mark ended at 16:8 and Holding will show there are "many" considerations showing that it didn't.

And again we see Holding's dog-shit attitude..about as often as we see trees.  He cannot dare to tell himself that I might have already reviewed the arguments of N.T. Wright, Snapp, Lunn, and others who try to argue that Mark surely wrote something after 16:8, and that I simply haven't posted much of my reasons for disagreeing with them.  No, Holding has to pretend that my reasons don't exist because I haven't already posted them somewhere.  And people wonder why I call him a high-strung pretentious cocksucker?

Then proof of Holding's characteristically superficial "scholarship" shines through.  At 1:52 ff, he lists those considerations in conclusory fashion, no scholar quotes and no argument.  That's right holding.  If you make a bulleted list of "considerations" that lacks scholarly support or argumentation, the reasonable reader has no choice but to conclude that God hath spoken.  FUCK YOU.

For the reader unfamiliar with this stuff, I would suggest Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, Maurice Robinson, Darrell Bock, Keith Elliott, Daniel Wallace (B&H Publishing 2008)

 Literary Approaches To The End Of Mark’s Gospel

Joel F. Williams, JETS 42/1 (March 1999) 21–35.

Also, the most complete treatment of the issues was done, ironically, not by a Christian, but by atheist and committed anti-Christian Richard Carrier, Ph.d, Mark 16:9-20 as Forgery or Fabrication

This is  more than sufficient to show that Holding is rather childish in this video, pretending that the issues are simple and can be resolved with little more than his bulleted lists and assurances that he'll get around to making some arguments later.

For now, Holding's dog-shit attitude makes it seem as if my view that Mark originally ended at 16:8 was just crazy stupid, which must then mean that legitimately credentialed Christian scholars whose qualifications are light years beyond those of Holding, are also crazy stupid, which of course, is consistent with Holding's 20-year long history of besmirching anybody, including other Christians, who won't back down from his cocky bravura.

In other words, Daniel Wallace and Craig Blomberg, who in the past once publicly endorsed some of Holding's work, are crazy stupid because they don't think anything in Mark 16:9-20 is authentic.  Wallace says:

He [Blomberg] then discusses the two major textual problems that Ehrman zeroes in on: Mark 16.9–20 and John 7.53–8.11. He makes the insightful comment that the probable inauthenticity of these passages is news to laypeople because they tend not to read the marginal notes in their Bibles and because “more and more people are reading the Bible in electronic form, and many electronic versions of the Bible don’t even include such notes” (15).

See here.

And Holding must think J. A. Brooks, an inerrantist Christian scholar, is crazy stupid:

If, however, internal evidence is considered, the decision is overwhelmingly in favor of ending at v. 8...It is virtually certain that Mark wrote nothing after v. 8, i.e., he did not write the long ending (vv. 9–20) or the short ending.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 272). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Likewise, Holding must think Metzger, otherwise the "goto" textual scholar for fundamentalist Christians, is crazy stupid:

(3) The traditional ending of Mark, so familiar through the AV and other translations of the Textus Receptus, is present in the vast number of witnesses…
The longer ending (3), though current in a variety of witnesses, some of them ancient, must also be judged by internal evidence to be secondary.

(Textual Commentary, 2nd ed. 5th printing, 1994).  See also here.

Holding's first "consideration" is

 "it would be an abrupt and inappropriate ending for a laudatory biography".

Well gee, should I accuse Holding of begging the question because he didn't supply argument to support that premise right then and there?

No, the gospel ending at 16:8 means it ends on the laudatory note that Jesus has risen, this is proclaimed by an angel to some women, who then rush in reverential awe to repeat the good news to the disciples (that's right, I'm an atheist bible critic, but i don't jump onto the "the women said nothing" as if that's all that was meant.  It's pretty clear Mark intended the reader to infer that the women were overly excited in reverential awe, and maintained silence only until they got back to the disciples). So ending at 16:8 is not ending on a sour note but a "good news" note.

It is only one's lifetime familiarity with the "better" endings from the other three gospels, that cause the modern Christians to automatically assume Mark would likely have intended to convey a similar level of detail.

Holding's second consideration is 

"it would end with a word similar to our "because" or "for"

Well gee, should I accuse Holding of begging the question because he didn't supply argument to support that premise right then and there?

Holding doesn't give the reader the Greek, which tells us what kind of audience he is expecting will view the video.  Apparently, he is only expecting newbie Christians who know nearly nothing about the issue, and who therefore are more likely to mistake entertaining cartoons and unsupported assertions about social realities of the ancient world, for actual evidence. Mark 16:8 looks like this in the Greek:

 8  Καὶ ἐξελθοῦσαι ἔφυγον ἀπὸ τοῦ μνημείου, εἶχεν γὰρ αὐτὰς τρόμος καὶ ἔκστασις· καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν· ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. (Mk. 16:8 NA28, BNT)

 In other words, under my theory, Mark would end with "γάρ", which is not "yap", but "gar".

But scholars have found non-biblical examples of works that ended in "gar", and inerrantist Christian scholar Brooks considers this to justify somewhat the notion that Mark ended like that:

Some considerations would seem to indicate that Mark did not intend to end with v. 8. It seems inappropriate to end a book or even a sentence with a conjunction (the conjunction gar, translated “because” in the NIV, is the last word in the Greek text). It seems inappropriate to end a Gospel—an account of the good news—on a note of fear and without appearances in Galilee, especially to Peter.

None of the above considerations is decisive, however. Various examples have been collected of sentences ending with gar, including John 13:13. One probable and several possible examples of books ending with gar exist.⁵ The fear may not be natural fright but religious awe...

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 273). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Holding will of course say that Mark "intended" to write more, but I don't suspect he recognizes how the historiography shifts.  At that point, the historical evidence would not be direct but inferential.  It hardly needs arguing that inferential evidence is more subject to ambiguity than direct evidence.  Such conjectures would necessarily have less probative force than actual tangible Markan text.

Holding's next consideration is

Mark builds up an anticipation for appearance in Galilee

Well gee, should I accuse Holding of begging the question because he didn't supply argument to support that premise right then and there?

Feel free to infer that the disciples went and saw Jesus in Galilee.  Not only do I not see how "they went and saw Jesus in Galilee" is sufficiently probative as to intellectually compel the reader to view the statement as strong historical evidence, but that inference gets you in more trouble, since that's all you can legitimately infer from the prior internal evidence, since Mark 14:28 says as much, but nothing more.

Which requires the conclusion that Mark didn't say anything about the specifics of what the risen Christ said or did...after writing a lengthy biography of all that the pre-resurrection Jesus said and did.  


 Sorry, but Mark's strong interest in what Jesus said and did, makes it virtually certain that IF he knew anything specific about what the risen-Jesus said and did, he surely would have mentioned at least some of it.  That implies Mark did not know any such specifics...or that if he did, he did not consider any such details to be historically reliable.

Sure, you can always continue to mistake your trifles for substantive argument, and pretend that Mark's silence on the specifics of the words of the risen Christi might imply something pro-Christian, but it's hard to say what.  

So Mark's silence on the specifics would shit-can whatever benefit you think you get when we allow that he wrote "the disciples saw Jesus in Galilee".  And Mark's failure to provide specifics on the risen Christ is a silence that screams if we assume he and his requesting church were as fanatically excited about such details as today's apologists are.  "The disciples saw Jesus in Galilee" would be a laudatory ending, even if it wasn't as richly detailed as the later gospel versions.

Holding's next consideration is

Resurrection appearances were shown to be part of the tradition in Paul (1 Cor. 15).

 Well gee, should I accuse Holding of begging the question because he didn't supply argument to support that premise right then and there?  Problems with that "creed":

• Paul is low on credibility in general and specifically regarding his lies about being received favorably by the other apostles.  If he loses on general credibility, there's no rule of reasonableness that says I have to stick around and trifle about things he said that might have been true.  But the argument against Paul's credibility is so complex that sufficiently documenting it here would sidetrack from the goal of refuting Holding's specific points.
• Holding's harmonizations between this "creed" and the canonical gospel resurrection narratives are not convincing to anybody except weak-minded Christians whose assumption of inerrancy causes them to mistake "possible" for "likely" whenever it will help them feel better.
• Licona (223) thinks Paul wrote 1 Cor. about 25 years after Jesus died, and since false rumors about apostles could and did spring up within their own lifetimes (Acts 21:18-24), I'm perfectly reasonable to say that 25 years is one hell of a long time for false rumors and legends to modify historical truth.
• Nobody pushes the creed all the way back to the 3rd day after Jesus died.  They usually place it a few years after Jesus died. Habermas says:

Paul probably received this report from Peter and James while visiting Jerusalem within a few years of his conversion.[46] The vast majority of critical scholars who answer the question place Paul’s reception of this material in the mid-30s A.D.

And I see no problem with the conservative belief that the traditions in Mark 16 go back equally as early as the conservative think the 1st Cor. 15 traditions do, in which case Mark's silence about specific resurrection-appearances continues to be early and thus an objective reason to be suspicious that the traditions are ambiguous and confused.

• When Paul in Gal. 1:12 denies receiving the gospel from any human agency and relegates it solely to divine telepathy, he uses the same Greek word that he uses in 1st Cor. 15:3: παραλαμβάνω/paralambano.  It doesn't matter if Holding can show a possible way to reconcile these statements:  Holding doesn't know exactly what bits of Paul's gospel knowledge came from telepathy and came from stories he heard from others.  Holding's "harmonizing" these two Pauline statements is not ever going to be any more reasonable than the skeptical theory that says Paul could have gotten the resurrection appearance stories straight from invisible sky people.

• I am not unreasonable when I consider Paul's uncorroborated statements to be fully lacking in credibility because of what he alleges in 2nd Cor. 12:1-4, wherein he admits that even 14 years after the fact he still doesn't know whether his floating into the sky and seeing heaven was done spiritually or physically.  If somebody THIS stoned on drugs was the prosecution's witness against you in a murder trial, how would you react when he said he flew to heaven and god at that time showed him a vision of you pulling the trigger?

Would you ask the judge to instruct the jury that they are allowed to seriously consider supernatural testimony to be actual truth?

Or would you ask the judge to dismiss the charges since it is not possible for any reasonable jury to give the least bit of credit to such delusion?

I could go on and on but I have to make my own subjective decision about how far to push a presuppositional point.


Holding's next argument is:

 

 My gosh, when did Holding first read Josh McDowell's ETDAV?  Yesterday?

Yes, Holding, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.  But then again, if the tooth fairy actually didn't exist, an absence of evidence is what you'd reasonably expect to find.  So you cannot write off absences of evidence and pretend that the alternative explanation is always more reasonable.  Worse, Mark's not saying anything about the specifics of the risen Christ's words and deeds, is a silence that screams, it is not what we'd expect given his strong interest in the pre-resurrection Jesus.   And yes, the argument from silence is forceful when the silence is unexpected:

"A failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural to assert it, amounts in effect to an assertion of the non-existence of the fact."

Lebowitz v. Wainwright 670 F. 2d 974, 980 (11th Cir. 1982),

quoting 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1042

 Would it have been "natural" for Mark, had he really been Peter's companion, to mention everything or nearly everything Peter told him about the words and deeds of the risen Christ?  Yes, obviously.  You aren't going to suppose Peter kept silent toward Mark or anybody else about such appearances, so you are stuck with a silence that screams.  Sort of like a book entitled "Sex Scandals during Bill Clinton's U.S. Presidency" which doesn't mention the Monica Lewinsky affair.  Possible?  Yes.  Likely?  FUCK YOU.

At time-code 2:18 ff, Holding has me state the general rule of textual criticism that the shorter reading is preferred because the tendency of later scribes was usually to make the existing text more understandable through expansions.  That is, the very fact that Mark's shorter ending sounds so abrupt and unexpected and apparently textually justified in the eyes of the majority of conservative Christian scholars, is precisely the reason we should say that's what the author intended, since a longer version of the ending is slightly ore likely to be a mere scribal interpolation.

Holding responds that the issue is not Mark having a shorter ending but Mark's longer ending being "lost". 

Well sorry Holding, but conservative inerrantist Christian textual scholar Daniel Wallace and other scholars think Mark intended to end at 16:8.  See Daniel Wallace, "Mark 16:8 as the Conclusion to the Second Gospel" in Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, supra.

I do not cite that reference to "prove" anything. I only cite it to show that Holding is a liar, and that the problem of Mark's ending is not limited to the issue of how the ending became "lost" , but includes legitimately arguable points that Mark intended to end at 16:8. Holding is guilty of misleading his readers by pretending that the issues are more simple than they really are.

Holding then has me quoting Eusebius (showing he is responding to my blog and nobody else), who said when Peter learned of Mark's literary endeavor, Peter neither directly forbade it nor encouraged it, from which I conclude that Peter's supporting Mark's writing of a gospel is far less supported from the ancient sources than apologists usually preach.

Holding replies that Peter's apathy would be expected in an pre-literate society where oral preaching was the preferred method of obtaining information.

But Eusebius, in book 2, ch. 25, also gives a contradictory version of the tradition, and says when Peter heard of Mark's literary endeavor, Peter rejoiced at it:

BOOK II, CHAPTER 15
And thus when the divine word had made its home among them, the power of Simon was quenched and immediately destroyed, together with the man himself. And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter's hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark. And they say that Peter when he had learned, through a revelation of the Spirit, of that which had been done, was pleased with the zeal of the men, and that the work obtained the sanction of his authority for the purpose of being used in the churches. Clement in the eighth book of his Hypotyposes gives this account, and with him agrees the bishop of Hierapolis named Papias. And Peter makes mention of Mark in his first epistle which they say that he wrote in Rome itself, as is indicated by him, when he calls the city, by a figure, Babylon, as he does in the following words: "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son."

Apparently, Holding's explanation that Peter's disapproval arose from his preference for oral tradition, is false.  Or this story about Peter approving of the written form of his preaching is false.

Since Holding always holds a gun to his own head, ready to kill himself should there be any genuine contradiction between any two statements arising from the bible or church history, let's make the job easier for him:

Eusebius Book 2, ch. 15

Eusebius Book 6, ch. 14

And thus when the divine word had made its home among them, the power of Simon was quenched and immediately destroyed, together with the man himself. And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter's hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel,  but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark. And they say that Peter when he had learned, through a revelation of the Spirit, of that which had been done,  was pleased with the zeal of the men, and that the work obtained the sanction of his authority for the purpose of being used in the churches. Clement in the eighth book of his Hypotyposes gives this account, and with him agrees the bishop of Hierapolis named Papias.

The  Gospel according to Marks had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out.     And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When  Peter learned of this,   he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.

It doesn't matter how Holding "harmonizes" these two accounts: He doesn't know whether these traditions are referring to a single event, and one account is simply wrong; or if these two accounts are referring to Peter's reaction on two separate occasions.  If he chooses to harmonize them, then we have to ask why Holding was so quick to assume Peter's preference for oral tradition, when another sources shows just the opposite about Peter.   Of course, the sources don't give that many details, and Holding doesn't even know if any of this bullshit is even true, but Holding will pretend that his speculative harmonization of these questionable sources will be as obviously true as the existence of trees.  He writes for childish types who automatically equate cocky confidence with spiritual maturity.

Holding goes on to say

In other words, when Peter learned by a revelation of the Spirit that Mark was putting Peter's preaching in written form, Peter believed that writing things down reduced a reliance on memory and thought this impacted the quality of learning.

In other words, Holding doesn't think the books in the bible were written by "people of the biblical world".

Well that wasn't Peter's reaction according to the alternative tradition from Eusebius book 2, ch. 15.

 And you actually don't know for sure that Peter's apathy toward Mark's written effort was for that reason.  Another equally reasonable possibility is that Peter found something wrong with Mark's version, or the report he heard about this literary effort said things Peter didn't approve of, etc, etc.  Yet Holding argues as if the one possibility he chooses to defend is the only possibility that any reasonable person would choose.  It is factually true to say that Holding is a confirmed and genuine egomaniac, which is apparently only news to his followers, nobody else.

And I have good reason to believe that if Holding had known about that secondary form of the Eusebius tradition on Peter before you created this video, you probably wouldn't have stuffed your foot all the way down your throat the way you did.  Now tell yourself that god thinks it important that you post endless reply videos to YouTube.

For all these reasons, Holding's attempted arguments in that video are total shit, he has done NOTHING to disturb the arguments upon which my skepticism of Mark's resurrection account hinge.

I am also quite aware that Holding doesn't have much influence with too many people of any significance, which means I might be dignifying a retard simply by taking the time to respond to his videos.

There will be times in the future when I do not respond to something Holding argued, because I don't think it deserves a response.  But if anybody notifies me that they would like to see my response, then I'll respond.