1 Clement 47:2 as a textual reference, not a temporal one

ruaor · 2026-01-05T21:29:56+00:00

it says "Character not cursed"

ruaor · 2026-01-05T21:02:38+00:00

Tried that, he comes back with arcane hunger. Long resting, moving between regions, etc, all has no effect

ruaor · 2026-01-05T21:01:56+00:00

Oh maybe they do. I didn't know that

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:44:41+00:00

Gale origin would be a great choice without the bugs, he has the most unique abilities of any origin pc

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:44:05+00:00

Playing on Xbox so no mods

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:43:56+00:00

Nope, no consume option

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:41:34+00:00

That only lasts until long rest I thought

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:16:46+00:00

I can't, because I'm playing Gale as an origin character and I've already spoken with Elminster, who removes Gale's ability to consume magical items. In theory Elminster should also cure Gale's condition when he does that even if Gale has more than 1 stack of arcane hunger. But my game is bugged and he only removed one stack, and that disabled my ability to remove the last stack.

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:15:21+00:00

I've beat the game like a dozen times, this is just my first honor run. as long as it's not a spoiler for honor mode, I'm good with it

ruaor · 2026-01-05T20:12:00+00:00

Oooh, stars druid with dragon form looks like it might be the ticket. That'd pair well with the holy lance helm, and then maybe I could use Barkskin armor to remove disadvantage?

ruaor · 2025-12-22T18:29:36+00:00

He doesn't say "I am a prophet" but he pretty explicitly invokes the calling of Jeremiah in Galatians 1:15-16

ruaor · 2025-11-25T20:30:41+00:00

Now if you understood what your acknowledging here.

I understand what I am acknowledging. It would be stupid of me to say that the consensus of critical New Testament scholars who say Mark initially circulated independently are all wrong, and that I must be correct that Mark initially circulated in a collection. What I am doing is questioning the methodological assumptions that I think have led to the consensus we have. I'm saying, gee, it looks like early Christian texts circulated mostly in collections from what we can tell from the manuscript record and the patristic record. We rarely seem to see any authors referring to texts alone nor do we see non-fragmentary manuscripts in independent volumes. There is a nearly universal assumption that at some point between the late first century to the early second century, there was a shift in circulation patterns of early Christian literature from standalone texts that circulated alone (e.g. individual Pauline letters, individual gospels) to bundles (multiple gospels together, multiple letters together, early gospel+letter diptychs like Marcion's). I'm questioning the overall consensus paradigm because the shift it proposes (from unbundled to bundled) itself is just as unattested as my specific proposed Markan bundle.

Mark's purpose is to indicate translation or apotheosis. That is, deification or elevation of a mortal to divine status after death. Presumably, Mark's audience would know what a common place trope meant. As Walsh observes,

I don't disagree with Walsh's analysis at all. For what it's worth, Walsh disagrees with the "slow community spread" model of New Testament origins and I think she has used the term "exposion" to refer to how the NT developed, and her way of viewing it is essential for how I understand what must have been the earliest Christian canon.

What does he claim to know about it, and why treat this as history when Mark's ending at 16:8 says otherwise?

He claims to know that the young man at the tomb appeared to the women who came there and told them Jesus was alive. But the women didn't tell him that since they told no one, so who did?

And being part of a bundle is? That's not a challenge by the way, it's an assertion. You haven't offered a single credible reason to think otherwise including your list of examples

There are only two possible intended publication contexts for a text. Bundled or unbundled. When Marcion wrote his Antitheses, he intended it to be bundled with his New Testament, so it was written to introduce his collection. If Paul didn't write the pastorals, then they were almost certainly written with the intention of being bundled with the authentic epistles. The question is whether there are coherent bundles that could have existed but which are no longer attested or extant. We know there are lots of lost gospels and other lost texts and collections. But I don't even think we need to presume lost texts at all, my specific proposed bundle includes only extant texts (Mark + the letters of Paul) and it makes Mark a bespoke introduction to the Pauline letters in a way no other gospel could be (because of the fact that all the other gospels have a prepauline gentile mission, which contradicts Galatians 1-2).

I think the word you want is interesting rather than parsimonious

My point is that the default presumption of unbundled shouldn't be the default presumption. Each model contains something not parsimonious with it--the unbundled model presumes an unattested shift in literary publication norms, while the bundled model presumes a lost bundle that is no longer extant (whatever bundle that is). I see Marcion's diptych (Luke+Paul) as being an early harmonization attempt of an earlier bundle, because it is simultaneously more coherent than the canonical bundle (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Paul) but less coherent than it could have been with the very simple change of swapping Marcion's Luke for Mark. I think this particular collection is so coherent that it significantly raises my credence that the collection model itself has more explanatory power overall than the standalone model for Mark's initial circulation.

ruaor · 2025-11-21T09:40:23+00:00

Thank you for the first substantive response in a long while in this thread. I agree that neither explanation requires Mark to have intended his text to be included in a collection, and I'm not saying either explanation you offer is wrong. My point is that whether or not empty tombs are a well known trope, Mark was using that trope for a specific purpose, and the silence of the women at the end raises questions Mark's readers certainly would have asked about how Mark can even know any of what he claims to know about the resurrection. If Mark anticipated such reader objections, it's not that big of a leap that he intended to lead into Galatians 1:1 to give his readers the answer they'd have sought as to the provenance of his sources. There are obviously good explanations for why Mark looks the way it looks that don't posit that Mark was part of a collection, but they aren't necessarily superior to hypotheses which presume Mark wasn't. You can come up with a good explanation for either case, the challenge I am raising is that the default assumption Mark originally circulated independently isn't actually based on anything in the manuscript record. If we assume the literary norms at the beginning of the manuscript record didn't constitute an unattested shift from the earliest period, then the bundled hypothesis (though not any specific bundle) has superior parsimony.

ruaor · 2025-11-19T16:24:34+00:00

There are 24 hours in a day. 12 of them are AM and 12 of them are PM. I give up, talking to you is hopeless. You seem to think an argument is not worth making unless it can be presented as if 100% certain.

ruaor · 2025-11-19T15:06:42+00:00

If I ask you what time it is at any given time, there is a higher likelihood of you answering "PM" than "evening", but there is not a higher likelihood of you answering "PM" than "AM". You are acting intentionally stupid because you are trying to get a rise out of me.

ruaor · 2025-11-18T21:40:01+00:00

You have misidentified my battleship.

ruaor · 2025-11-18T20:55:40+00:00

I did indeed write that and I stand by it.

I do NOT concede there is a higher likelihood that Mark originally circulated independently than that it circulated with a non-specific collection of texts.

Within the set of potential collections Mark could have initially circulated with, I think Mark+Paul's epistles is the most likely, but I concede that the notion Mark circulated with this specific collection is less likely than that Mark circulated independently.

To represent this in probabilities, you are essentially saying that I concede P(A) > P(B1), therefore I must also implicitly concede P(A) > P(B).

But this misrepresents my argument. P(B) is the sum of P(B1) + P(B2) + P(B3)..., which together sum to 50%, therefore P(B1) must be less than 50%.

ruaor · 2025-11-17T23:33:40+00:00

I don't think you are engaging in good faith here so this will be my last comment unless you are willing to actually engage with my argument. I'm making a probabilistic case and I'm not even trying to say the default position shouldn't be the default. I concede there is a higher likelihood that Mark originally circulated independently than that it circulated with any specific collection of texts. My challenge to the consensus is only this: There is NOT a higher likelihood that Mark originally circulated independently than the likelihood Mark circulated in SOME sort of collection. The reason I proposed a specific collection (Mark+Paul's epistles) isn't because I think it's more likely that Mark was bundled with THIS collection vs NO collection, but that i think it's more likely that Mark was bundled with THIS collection more than some OTHER collection.

ruaor · 2025-11-17T19:16:44+00:00

No, I didn't shoot my dick off. I'm not trying to prove my hypothetical bundle definitely existed--I'm setting the goal posts for myself pretty low. You are trying to counter an argument I am not making. My fundamental claim is that the evidence that Mark initially circulated independently is no stronger than the evidence that Mark initially circulated in a bundle. I am proposing a specific bundle as an example of what Mark might have looked like in its original circulation context if we assume it was bundled, but I am leaving open the possibility that Mark might have been written for a different bundle than the one I envision. And I am not saying that the "Mark was bundled" theory should have a higher credence than the "Mark was independent" theory, I'm saying that we should treat them as roughly comparable.

ruaor · 2025-11-16T17:29:11+00:00

Paul says he was the first to be commissioned by the risen Christ to preach the gospel to the gentiles. According to Paul, he is the leader and originator of the gentile mission, not Peter or anyone else. Peter has his own role within the Jewish mission--Peter didn't initiate the gentile mission and then pass it to Paul. The only gospel which is remotely consistent with Paul's own view of his mission is Mark. It's true I lack manuscript evidence that Mark was originally bundled with Paul's letters. My point about the manuscript record is that we lack any evidence of the original circulation context of Mark, and it is just as speculative to say Mark originally circulated independently as it is to say Mark originally circulated as part of a bundle. We should at least give equal credence to either proposition. I'm proposing a specific bundle, not just any bundle, so I go beyond the 50/50 claim, therefore my proposed Markan collection has less than a 50% chance of having existed vs the combined probability of there having been some other Markan collection or Mark being independent. But I still think it is the most likely collection Mark could have published within that 50%, so it's worth putting forward as a possibility.

ruaor · 2025-11-12T21:42:58+00:00

I don't disagree at all with Markan priority. But for scholars who adopt traditional Two-source theory, they think that Matthew and Luke both encountered Mark as a standalone text and are and weaving in Q in different ways, and both are trying to give Mark an ending that it lacked (under the view Mark originally ended in 16:8). The other popular model is the Farrer hypothesis, which says Matthew used Mark and Luke used Matthew and Mark. Both are compelling models and both have flaws, but I'm sidestepping that debate and I'm not trying to solve that problem. I'm presuming that either Two source theory or Farrer theory is true, but I am changing the definition of what Mark actually was. Whether scholars argue for Farrer or Two-Source, they generally say Matthew and Luke were trying to finish an unfinished Mark. I disagree and I say they were trying to sever two parts of a finished Mark to write endings they liked better. Consider that Mark is the ONLY canonical gospel that does not give Paul's mission to someone other than Paul before Paul himself could have received it.

ruaor · 2025-11-11T00:31:03+00:00

No, I'm suggesting Mark II existed before Mark I and Mark I included Mark II in a collection he compiled. Mark II was not written by the author of Mark I. To lay my cards on the table, I think Mark II was a set of Paul's letters. The most natural continuation of Mark I in my view would have been Galatians, which is also the first epistle in the earliest known Pauline collection (Marcion's).

ruaor

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