show_no_mercy

But the Jews presenting Jesus to Pilate for execution makes no sense until after Judea was ruled directly by the Romans in 44 CE. Mark might have gotten this scenario from Josephus in which he has the Jews present Jesus (ben Ananias) to Albinus. Prior to 44, Jesus should have been presented to Herod, as gPeter intimates.

Of course, Mark's Pilate is wholly fictional, as it's at odds with how he's presented in Josephus and Philo.

Steven Carr

The elephant could have crushed me with his big foot.

But Hurtado is too much of a gentleman to bury me beneath evidence or refute my arguments.

Steven Carr

Of course, nothing I said on that thread was undiplomatic, at least until Hurtado started claiming that Luke/Acts corroborated Paul's description of James as the brother of Jesus.

Which, of course, only a professional NT scholar would think was true. We amateurs go and check.

Solo

Oh, how clever, Toto !

BTW, on the related blurb of puerperal fever: it is plain rubbish to say that there was a substantially lower puerperal fever mortality with midwives than trained obstetricians before Semmelweiss. The infant/mother mortality has always been higher in midwife perinatal care than with doctors, which is something even today responsible midwives recognize. It is not that midwife deliveries are unsafe per se, but that in situations where either the mother or the infant are at some larger medical risk, the trained obstetrician in a medical setting has a much wider range of options at his or her disposal.

There is simply no evidence that doctors in the old days had lower standards of hygiene than midwives that would make them more septic. This is the kind of dumb feminist psychobabble which helps or dignifies no-one. One of its early pioneers, Mary Wollstonecraft died herself of puerperal fever after her midwife mishandled a complicated delivery of her daughter Mary (Shelley) !

The story of Semmelweiss is a little more complicated than the wiki tendetious agenda, or a silly BBC documentary with identical catechism, indicate. For one, the news of the training physicians not washing their hands after handling cadavers caused a great embarrassment to the hospital where Semmelweiss worked because it was at variance with accepted norms of medical practice - even in his time (the 12% mortality at one of the two wards studied was impossibly high !). Florence Nightingale did not invent hospital sanitation; she simply insisted on it ! Two: Semmelwiess 'discovery' and crusade for antisepsis made him a celebrity and the news of his success in Vienna (after he addressed the Viennese Imperial Academy in 1851) travelled far and wide. He left for Budapest and stayed there even though he had a number of offers of prestigious posts. His methods were emulated. Among other things, the idiots at BBC maintained that his maternity hospital in Budapest had 33% mortality when Ignaz entered. In reality it was 6% and he brought it down to under 1%. Three: it is of course true that Semmelweiss suffered from mental illness and his 1861 book unfortunately witnesses his struggle with paranoia. But to paint his personal misfortune as the inevitable result of some generalized rejection by the medical establishment is utter nonsense. Both Lister and Pasteur learned about Semmelweiss' ideas and success the same year that he died. In case anyone's interested in the general 19th century developments in obstetrics and midwifery, I recommend Roy Porter's The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Best,
Jiri

mountainman

Firstly I would run a background check against the publisher and the editor and see whether any of these guys involved themselves in the collusion. Secondly, I would check the archaeological record with a fine tooth comb.


Compared to the final penalty of earlier centuries is it not encouraging
to contemplate that people may now laugh at these things?
Is this not a step forward in itself?

As far as Hurtado is concerned he seems to have made
an impression amidst the theories of the origin of the
nomina sacra in the Greek new testament, and is often
cited for this observation ....

“There is no undisputably Jewish manuscript
in which any of the nomina sacra are written.”

(Hurtado, “The Origin of the Nomina Sacra”, p. 662).

spamandham

History is a subject where laymen can actually understand what's going on. Sure, we may not be able to grasp the nuances of the various primary sources, we are certainly not as well read on the subject, do not speak the ancient languages, and may not be familiar with the jargon....but if the scholars have already done the translations for us, explained the nuances of the primary sources and the culture, then it really is possible to follow the remainder of the reasoning. You are certainly already familiar with enough of what the scholars have used their special skills to produce to come to your own conclusion.

In this case though, I wouldn't take Hurtado's nonresponse as evidence that you are right. As others have stated, he probably just doess't want to waste his time on you. That doesn't mean he *could* present evidence that would sway you, but neither does it mean that you stumped him.

Steven Carr

He did respond.

He claimed that Luke/Acts corroborated the existence of a brother of Jesus called James.

spamandham

He does seem to be assuming that the James mentioned in Acts 12:17 is the same James mentioned in Luke 24:10, who is the same James referred to as "the brother of the lord", by Paul. I don't think this is a valid analysis.

I overlooked this, and upon further reflection I think your original objection is justified.

ApostateAbe

Guys like Dr. Hurtado, though they are experienced in debate, do not encounter the sort of positions and arguments that we, who are part of the mythicist and normalskepticist debates every day, are intimately familiar with. He said:

We do have corroboration of some characters. E.g., in Paul’s letter to the Galatians we have first-hand references to Kephas (Peter), James (Jesus’ brother), John (Zebedee), Barnabas, and Titus (all of whom are also mentioned in Luke-Acts.

His point about James was part of a larger point about the corroboration of many people between the letters of Paul and Luke-Acts. If he was a regular member of the debates here, then he may have been familiar with the objection that we don't know who "James" is in the Acts. It may be an established belief in the scholarship, but I don't think a mythicist or a normalskeptic is likely to accept the premises that lead to such a belief. If Hurtado were more familiar with such a way of thinking, then he may have said, "...all of whom are also mentioned in Luke-Acts, Mark and Matthew," since James the brother of Jesus is most certainly mentioned in Mark and Matthew, though I know that the mythicists and the normalskeptics hold that Paul's mention of James, the brother of the Lord, still isn't the same James, which is where it really starts to look ridiculous for impartial observers. Come to think of it, if Hurtado really were familiar with such debates, I figure that he would have dismissed Steven Carr much more hastily. Hurtado seemed to be especially generous with Steven Carr.

Iskander

What arguments do you encounter here? Usually something like: lies, lies, lies. This argument is used as a reply to everything.
The enterprising ones provide repetitive ‘truthful’ assertions like a song: My darling Constantine, you know I love you. My darling Clementine, you know I do.


What can anyone say to anybody that keeps repeating that what you are saying is a lie?