Gospel of Mark vs. Republic of Plato

[liamconnor]

Just curious, as I don't doubt the attributions of either book, but...

1) Who wrote the so called Republic that we now have, and how do you know? What are the ancient resources that you consult? When were these written?

2) Who wrote the so called gospel of Mark as we now have it, and how do you know? What are the ancient resources that you consult? When were these written?

(Wikipedia is not an ancient resource).

[Zzyzx]

.

For people who don't care much to think about things other than their own day to day existence, probably not.

Observe that one can be concerned beyond their own day to day existence WITHOUT being at all concerned about Plato or Jesus.

Binary thinking (false dichotomies) would include Either you think about Plato and Jesus, OR you think of nothing beyond your own day to day existence.

But then one wonders why such people would participate in a site such as this;

Perhaps such people participate to help Theists demonstrate that the knowledge they claim about gods cannot be shown to be anything more than overworked human imagination " and encourage them to make foolish statements in the process and/or pretend to be what they are not.

more, why they would feel qualified to debate such topics as history, philosophy etc.

But it is such fun to debate those who pretend to be knowledgeable in history and philosophy " and help them demonstrate that they are just blowing smoke.

[Mithrae]

The problem with this is that it doesn't sound like our Gospel of Mark. Though that quote is often used as an apologetic explanation for why things happen in a slightly different order between Matthew and Mark, the document that Papias describes was made up of "instruction" from Peter rather than "a history of our Lord's discourses." Our Mark sounds much more like a history of our Lord's discourses than instruction from Peter. It's also mostly in chronological order, even considering the minor discrepancies with Matthew.

Edit: I've moved my response over to Tart's thread on Determining Biblical authorship, since it seems more appropriate there.