Vorkosigan

It's on his website. Clearly he hasn't done his homework.

Why not? And if not there, we can try Gaul, Galatia, or Gavelston.

Juliana, what is Simon of Cyrene carrying in 15:21? Stakes and palisades? and in Mk 8:34, do you think that Jesus wants his followers to carry his stakes and palisades?

Simple question. What is the rule by which we can transpose MURA to get PURA? Can Carotta specify one?

Vorkosigan

andrewcriddle

STAUROW originally in classical Greek meant to palisade or drive down stakes, (See eg Thucydides). After the ugly punishment of crucifixion was introduced into Greek speaking areas STAUROW (or ANASTAUROW) became used for this type of execution.

In the first century this meaning had probably become the most frequent usage of the word.

I've deleted a point here that on reflection I'm not sure is accurate

Andrew Criddle

Chili

I agree that biblical scholarship resembles a drunk looking for the key to the kingdom in bible passages: "you search the scriptures wherein you think you have eternal life; they testify on my behalf . . . :" (Jn.5:39).

Having said this I wonder why you think that finding Caesar's key will open someone else's door to the kingdom? I think it is foolish, evil, deceiving and much worse than claiming to have found a piece of the ark to say that you have found the Jesus of history because, he, Jesus, is the final passage to the sacred and is no more than that.

The story of Jesus is the reality of Purgatory that thousands of Catholics have gone through in real life. This means that Jesus was not a person but was only the final stage in metamorphosis:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones:
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,

Emphasis mine to show that Brutus was the faith of Caesar here now slain as the ego of Mark Anthony who is giving this speech as the final victor in life. Valiant Casca was the cause of his ambition who was spurred by Magdalene from the very flesh and bones of Mary as is shown by the Pieta. None of that matters here, except that Caesar was just another one called home to Rome (unless they torched him in real life).

Aquitaine

I think the resistence that you and many others feel against Carotta's theory is based upon the discomfort it causes: namely the uncomfortable situation that nearly of all the extant scholarship on early Christianity is a lot of fancy arguments and talk about wrong information and wrong assumptions!
So of course: Who wants to admit or even face the possibility that they have devoted years of their life to studying what amounts to a bunch of medieval pedantic theologists whose understanding of their own religion was based upon gross misunderstandings and mistranslations?

"Carotta simply makes all Jesus Mythicism and Jesus-agnostics look bad."

No he doesn't. The text placed on his website is only a part of his book. There IS a lot scholarship in his book. You want to make a scholarly assessment of his book? THEN READ IT. Making a serious attack when you have only read some excerpts isn't very "scholarly".
I have a hunch that what seems to annoy you the most is that his scholarship is not your scholarship. Carotta is approaching this matter from an entirely different aspect, different from the traditional ones of you and your vaunted sources. If he had approached things as you do, then he would have ended up right by your side. But who needs the same path mapped-out over and over and over again? Heck, it's not a just a "path" any longer, it's a 12-lane mega-freeway leading to the gridlock you find yourself in, along with so many other "scholars".

If new evidence shows that the previous scholarly speculations were wrong, then should we attack the new evidence? And for that matter, how "scholarly" is it to attack the new evidence by using arguments based upon the old speculations?

Carotta simply refused to enter the onramp to the freeway you are on. And the result is: he's got a far better view of the REAL landscape.

Hmmm...
I never denied you of having "reason, open-mindedness, and intellectual integrity" when I said you were prejudiced! To jump to such a conclusion is in YOUR thinking, and not MINE.

Vorkosigan,
If you read my previous two posts again, hopefully you can understand that I was never trying to insult you. If you are insulted when someone says that your "understanding of Carotta's theory is flawed" and you must then immediately go into what appears to be a RAGE, Hey, your skin is a way too thin, V! [ I didn't say your understanding of something like MARK was 'flawed', but your understanding of Carotta's theory, of which you have not even read the entire book yet. ]
If I had wanted to insult someone, surely I would have said far worse things than that...

Zeichman

Vork is making my day with this thread. I love how rather than actually addressing his arguments or questions, the mythicists resort to ad hominem attacks.

Toto

I don't think you understand. That is the assumption many of us start with, or would like to start with. But you can't look at the extent of scholarship related to the NT, including linguistic and historical research, from so many ideological points of view, and decide to ignore it, and expect to get anywhere.

The problem for mythicists is to be taken seriously by unbiased scholarship. Check out the thread on Acharya S and read Robert Price's review of her book.

Unfortunately, the history of Christianity is one of those subjects that attracts amateur crackpots (perhaps because the standard scholarship is so inadequate at making sense of the whole period.) But progress in scholarship only comes when the scholar interacts with a community of scholars who challenge and refine one's theories. It does no good to rely on fake linguistic, superficial similarities in key words.

Aquitaine

"Ad Hominem attacks"! Where?

You want to know why I am not addressing his "arguments or questions"? I'll tell you why...

Oh... "What is the rule?" ???
Vorkosigan doesn't know "the rule" or the methodology behind finding this link or any other links between the Latin texts and the oldest Greek versions of the Gospels BECAUSE VORK HASN'T READ THE BOOK.
And yet, he attacks the book AS IF HE HAS.

It appears that his logic is that if HE doesn't know Carotta's reasoning, then Carotta doesn't use any reasoning.

Who wants to waste their time explaining complex ideas in a book to someone when he is ALREADY expressing VERY STRONG opinions against it, without even reading it?!
He claims to attack it as a scholar, and yet how scholarly are his arguments if he has not actually read all that Carotta has to say on the subject, and he bases his arguments on a reading of excerpts only?

Zeichman

The whole "you can't handle the truth" thing that you guys have been playing up.

And I don't want to take over Vork's game here (as he's doing a good job), but you still haven't answered the question.


And the bolded stuff TOTALLY wasn't ad hominem.

Aquitaine

[ the bolded stuff: "He claims to attack it as a scholar, and yet how scholarly are his arguments if he has not actually read all that Carotta has to say on the subject, and he bases his arguments on a reading of excerpts only?" ]

It certainly wasn't "ad hominem". I don't attack him based on emotional grounds, or attack him personally. I merely explain my logic in questioning how valuable or accurate his attacks are if he doesn't even adequately research or read what he attacks!

JohnHud

I have actually read both Carotta and Atwill's books so unlike the others on this forum I can comment on both. Both books use systems of parallels. The criterion for deciding whether a parallel is legitimate or not should
should take into account the considerations James R. Davila in his paper 'The Perils of Parallels', University of St Andrews Divinity School, (April 2001). Davila stated that “patterns of parallels are more important than individual parallels� and “the larger and more complex the pattern of parallels, the more we should take them seriously.� Atwill's work has three advantages;

1.He has a large system of consistent parallels to a limited set of texts (in Josephus, not to random events in the life of Julius Caesar)
2.He supports them with a probability analysis
3.and several of Atwill's parallels are supported by other scholars. Namely
Chad Myers in his book on Mark noted the parallel to the Gadara battle and John Blunt in 1828 had spotted the parallel of the Samaritan woman to the Battle of Samaria. The parallel between the two crucifixion accounts involving Josephus bar Matthias and Joseph of Arimathea, had been spotted independently by Leidner, Carrington and Blackhirst . The latter pointed out that the spelling of the character's last name given in Gospel of Barnabas - 'Barimathea' - makes the pun especially clear. Chapman noted parallels between the 'Cannibal Mary passage' in Josephus and the symbolic Passover Lamb of the Gospels in her SBL seminar paper 'A Myth for the World', Early Christian Reception of Infanticide and Cannibalism in Josephus' Bellum Judaicum' (2000), She noted that the language in the passage “partly resembles the words attributed to Jesus at the last supper�.