“What is your definition of “pious”? Is it honestly your position that the birth narratives are not pious?”
That’s certainly an interesting red herring since I didn’t mention “pious” at all in my post. What I’m interested in is your definition of “added”, as in your statement here:
“Later versions added pious stories to fill in and supplment. How much of the later versions are actual, we don’t know. Matthew in particular was still being changed in the 4th Century.”
Clear up the ambiguity. Are you saying that the pious stories were added by later editors, or that Matthew filled out Mark’s slim account with events that he knew of?
You’re taking the position that “we don’t know” how much of the gospel accounts are actual. What parts of the accounts do you believe to be actual? What is your method for separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?
I stated that the pious stories were added by later authors.
Virtually all of Mark is included in Matthew. I don’t know what the author of Matthew knew, or didn’t know, or knew imperfectly, or heard second, third, or umpteenth hand. That he added the non-Mark sections, material, or narratives to the Mark narratives seems to me to be fairly obvious. Adding material, or encorporating material from others without modern conventions of footnotes was common, and at that time thought to be a virtue. A repeat of something that was heard before, back then, would be as comfortable as a hollywood show about true love, triumphant underdogs, and evil corporations would be to us.
Do you know which is true and which is not? If so, please tell me, and please relate how you came to this knowledge.