Roger Pearse

As an exercise (not to be 'clever'), I have highlighted the words that indicate that we have in this sentence a modern expressing an opinion as to what ancients 'must' have said and what 'must' have been preserved. These words by themselves indicate this, you see.

Do we consider the opinion of an amateur poster in this forum living 2,000 years later on these topics valuable? I wouldn't consider my own amateur opinions on what a first century writer 'must' include in his book very valuable!

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Steven Carr

P52 does not mention Jesus.

It is, of course, quite irrelevant that there are anonymous manuscripts from the second century claiming Jesus of Bethlehem existed.

Steven Carr

So we would not expect contemporaries to mention Jesus?

This is an admission that there is no contemporary evidence.

Ben C Smith

There is no admission about it. There is no strictly contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus. So we have to make do with what we have, which is exactly what we have for so many ancient figures, to wit, nearly contemporaneous evidence.

Ben.

Gamera

Well, P52 quotes John more or less verbatim, which suggests it's a quote for John, which does mention Jesus. It is difficult to put any other construction on it.

I don't quite know what you mean that it is "irrelevant" that anonymous mss from the 2nd century mention Jesus. That's what history is: mss mentioning people. So when a person is mentioned in an ancient ms, it is always relevant. The next issue is to determine the reliability of that reference, and that is a complex process. But proximity in time is certainly a factor, and as far as antiquity goes, a mss within a 100 to 200 years of a person's purported death is darn good. Indeed, virtually unprecedented. I would note the only convincing proof of Alexander's existence (using your standard) is the Astronomical Diaries, which are anonymous, and as far as that goes, could have been written by Greeks engaging in some historical rewritting. They do appear to be tendentious.

Gamera

Surely Paul was a contemporary, and surely his letters are evidence, though they appear to have been written several decades later and the extant mss are much younger of course (but infinitely closer in time to the events than most texts purportedly from antiquity)

Steven Carr

I see.

So you are comparing manuscripts which don't contain the name Jesus with manuscripts that do contain the name of Alexander, and claiming the manuscript evidence is better for Jesus.

And then you took great care to point out that one manuscript for Alexander didn't have his full name, while trumpeting a manuscript which didn't contain the name of Jesus at all.

Is it possible to get just the one set of standards to use please?

And 'verbatim' is a strange word to use for P52 which I don't think contains 3 consecutive whole words.

All that the early Christian manuscripts show is that early Christian scribes would change what was written when they wanted to make them comform better to Christian doctrine.

We know from Paul's letters that people were preaching a different Jesus to the one he preached.

Perhaps one of the different Jesus's was the Jesus of Mark's and John's Gospels.

Steven Carr

It was Roger who claimed that people would not write about an 'obscure figure'.

Paul was hardly close to the events of the Exodus which is where he places Jesus.

Gamera

I think you're protesting too much. The combination of words in P52 can only be explained by being a quote from John, which we have fine mss of from 300 or so onward, or by being a bizarre anagrammical coincidence.

Take your pick.

So it appears John's gospel existed within 100 years of so of Jesus's death, at the very least, which in paleographic time is darn good.

Regarding Paul and the preaching of a different Jesus, well, I think that makes my point not yours. The historical Jesus had already spawned by the time of Paul's ministry, legends and alternate histories and revisions, as is often the case with historical figures who make a local impact and then get universalized. Joseph Smith comes to mind. As does Alexander.

Gamera

I think you're mistaking the gravamen of Roger's post, but in any case I honestly don't understand your reference to Exodus, which I take to be some obscure reinterpretation of the rather staightforward references to Jesus by Paul.