This is wonderful news.


This post - which grew over time out of the Sheavian community - is clearly dominated by source material from the Drama Student Tradition, as is evidenced by the references to acting and stagecraft.

The disparaging comments about the historical-critical method are obviously spoken ironically, or may be part of some apocryphal story. They certainly aren't to be taken literally, as the Historical Critical Method is accepted by most modern scholars as the only possible way of determining the real meaning of the events surrounding the life of Jesus of Nazareth (assuming, of course, that he was only one person or that he lived at all, a topic on which we should certainly not encourage a rush to judgment).


The difficulty with any analysis of Sheavian texts is that they come from at least three sources: CAEI, IC and CE. The first source, while sharing some material with the other two, has a distinctly different writing style. The messages are generally shorter, more likely to make reference to seemingly irrelevant topics (see our analysis of the enigmatic "Homestar Runner") and generally more voluminous than the other sources. It seems likely, therefore, that the CAEI source is actually a compilation of many writings attributed to the Sheavian figure, but rather authored by various followers. Indeed, much of the material allegedly written in the year 2004 is indentified as being written by two distinct authors.


I think everyone here is missing the point. It should be obvious from the amount of time that has passed since the Shea Event, that the Sheavian writings are nearly all practically useless with respect to their actual content, aside from the issue of textual traditions, interpolations, etc. Really, the only thing that can be attributed to Shea in any realistic sense is the Bugs Bunny logo at the top of the page, which clearly indicates that the basic ambition of Shea was to advance a counter-cultural agenda in which the pre-Sheavian ethos is supplanted by one that is radically more open, inclusive, and leftocentric. The martial reference implicit in the graphic points obviously to a revolutionary spirit, an esprit de corps, if you will.


I used to have faith in Shea but, after being better educated by these comments, have decided to leave the literal Sheavian group I once belonged to and join an a-Sheavian group of similar disenchanted intellectuals.


Thanks. I needed that!


What you are all failing to acknowledge is that the Shea corpus arose as part of a reaction by the nascent Sheahanine community to its opponents in the pundit world.

Moreover, you have to account for the inherent conflict between the historical Mark and the Shea of faith, with the accretions on the latter distorting what we can say with scholarly precision about the former. For example, there is an inherent tension between the historic "Quarterly Tin Cup Rattles" and the certainly-mythological accounts of travel to such exotic destinations as "Australia" and "Ireland" where it is claimed that he preached to the multitudes. It is obvious that the latter accounts are whole cloth creations of the Sheahanine community back on to the historical Mark in order to buttress their claims for him as the promised jet-setting Shea.


"projected back on to"

Sorry--even tenured Sheavian scholars need their coffee.


"He who breaks something to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf the Grey


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