tanya

Four authors. Can you identify the writer, and the approximate date of his work of fiction? Can you predict precedence?

Genre: Science fiction

1. Inspired by Kepler, the author, in recounting the adventures of our hero, identifies two moons of Mars, several decades (more than a century) before the first visualization of them by telescope.

2. Our heroes find themselves embroiled in a conflict between two armies regarding colonization of Venus. The battles with the extraterrestrials, take place on the moon.

3. Our hero inhabits a planet in a distant solar system within our galaxy. He travels to our solar system, first stop Saturn.

4. The hero is fighting Martians, in the streets of London.

I do not share your optimism Andrew, regarding our ability to identify publication dates for any of the gospels, or the epistles.

It is also unclear to me, that it should follow, that material common to both gospels and epistles, "must be very early". Jules Verne's De la terre a la lune, from 1865, describing a mechanism for transporting earthlings to the moon, does not, in my opinion, draw upon the writings of any of these four authors, though several discuss lunar adventures.

Yes, the material shared in common, could have preceded the Gospels or the epistles, but, it also, could have been roughly contemporaneous, with their arrival on the scene.

I am unable to comprehend why you, or Ehrman, or spin, or anyone else would imagine that material in the epistles is either "earlier" than the synoptic gospels, or "more specifically Christian" than the gospels.

The sine qua non, it seems to me, for a believer in Christianity, is faith in the divinity of Jesus. That faith must supersede logic, and all available material, sensory information. Other than faith, what can you offer, to explain a rationale for concluding an earlier publication date for the epistles?

aa5874

Your assertions are highly illogical. Based on your absurdities then the resurrection of Jesus was early since it is common in the Gospels and the Pauline writings.

Steven Carr

'Chronologically very early'?

Let us see that Ehrman quote one more time....

'Later Christians--including most notably Paul (see, for example, 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18)...'

So the very same passage turns from early to late, depending upon what time of day Ehrman has reached in his 10,000 words a day plus schedule....

Meanwhile his intepreters explain that when Ehrman uses the very same passage as both late and early, and as both more developed and less developed, there is absolutely no need to regard his work as errant.

Inerrancy is alive and well , and plenty of people exist to harmonise contradictory passages.

andrewcriddle

1 Thessalonians is chronologically early in the sense that it is probably the earliest NT book. It is late in the sense that it was composed 15 or more years after the Gospel date for the death of Jesus.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi Andrew,

Exactly. He is early and late. Paul is the X factor in the equation. You like what Paul is saying, then he is early, getting it straight from Peter, James and John. You don't like what Paul is saying, then he is making up his own gospel and any similar thing in the gospels comes from him.

This makes him deeply problematic. If there was a lot of other good evidence for the sayings or opinions of an historical Jesus, this would not be a problem. However, for Ehrman, Paul is the "Go-to" guy.

Its kind of like having a main witness who has been arrested for perjury numerous times. Its okay if the jury does not know about the arrests, but if they do, what can you say? -- Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, My witness always tells the truth...except when he makes things up. Therefore you can have complete trust in everything he says...except for the occasional times when it is obvious that he is fantasizing and lying."

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

sotto voce

Major distortion alert.

Paul got everything from the widespread, common knowledge of Jesus' ministry and the OT, which he knew and understood probably better than anyone alive. Anyone could do the same today.

:frown:

anethema

Than you and very well argued. Ehrmann is playing both sides against the middle, a familiar political ploy ie. Romney in the US, where is the assumption that JTB was talking about the end of time as people knew it? In Josephus ? He could have been extrapolating about an an entirely different phenomena, such as a persons own death impending on him. The politics of this are a micro/macro of acedemia.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Tanya,

I would guess

1) Cyrano De Bergerac
2) Baron Muchassen
3) Voltaire
4) H.G. Wells

It is difficult to know which came first when dealing with ancient texts. Even text that is as recent as 100 years old can present a problem. Lets take the case of the first pie thrown in a motion picture.

One might have supposed that pie throwing was a part of theater history, but apparently not. It developed out of the cinema. In 1909, Ben Turner had a pie pushed in his face by a waitress in the movie "Mr. Flip" when he tries to kiss her. This comes at the climax, around 3 minutes and 40 seconds of the 3:46 film. This was directed by Broncho Billy Anderson. The name of the woman is unknown. One should perhaps credit the director Anderson for this innovation. He acted in the first Western "The Great Train Robbery" in 1903 and became a huge star as "Bronco Billy," the first Western hero, in a Series of 148 Westerns that ran from 1910 to 1917. Turpin is probably best known as the cross-eyed comedian in a number of Laurel and Hardy films from the 1930's.

Yet, this seems to have been a one-off. Nobody noticed the pie scene or repeated it afterwards. Most importantly the pie was pushed in Turpin's face, not thrown. The first thrown pie occurs in "the Ragtime Band" released May, 1913. The film from Mack Sennet's Keystone Company stars Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, and Raymond Hatton.

Ford Sterling is the leader of a Ragtime Band. Towards the end of the film, he is on stage with his band trying to impress Mabel Normand seated in the audience. Raymond Hatton, who has been kicked out of the band, and also likes Mabel, sits down next to Mabel. Raymond incites the audience to start throwing fruits and things at Sterling. Near the end, at about 10 minutes and 15 seconds of the 11 minutes and 44 second film, Raymond throws a pie and hits Sterling in the face. Sterling throws the pie back at Hatton, but it hits Mabel. Sterling apologizes to his love for the mistake, but Mabel picks up some things (which may or may not be a pie) and throws it at Sterling. Sterling, pelted with more things by the audience, runs off-stage and gets a fire hose and turns it on the audience.

Apparently, Mack Sennett, the director, must have thought that the pie throwing gag was successful. Two months later, another film "A Noise from the Deep" starring Mabel and Roscoe (Fatty Arbuckle) also has a pie throwing scene.

In some literature, "Noise" is referred to as containing the first pie throwing scene, yet it was released two months later.

Although, we probably have the chronology of the films correct, we still have the problem of who came up with the pie-throwing idea. Sennett, the director, Mable Normand, the real star of Keystone Films, Ford Sterling (called "the funniest man" in Hollywood by Harold Lloyd) or Raymond Hatton (the first actual pie-thrower) could all have come up with the idea).

Sennett later graciously gave Mabel Normand the credit. Sennett suggested that she really threw a pie spontaneously at either a propman or Ben Turpin. This would fit in perfectly with Mabel's feisty image.

Personally, I would love to give Mabel the credit. However, there is something in the film "The Ragtime Band" that leads me to question this folktale of Mabel originating the pie throw prior to this scene. The movie ends with Sterling spraying water on his tormenting audience. In "Mr. Flip" just before the pie scene, Turpin gets sprayed with bottles of seltzer water. It seems to me that this is too big a coincidence to ignore. Whoever came up with the idea for the throwing pie must have had "Mr. Flip" in mind. The sequences are reversed -- spraying and pie in "Mr. Flip" and pie and spraying in "Ragtime Band"

My best guess would be that Sennett came up with the pie-throwing idea based on his viewing of "Mr. Flip." It is probable that Mabel came up with the idea for the topper -- that she be accidentally hit by the return throw of the pie.

Pie-Throwing soon became a staple of the comedic-cinematic art. In a sense, one can see it as the comedic form of baptism.

Because it only happened 100 years ago, we are able to give a good guess at how it actually and quite accidentally originated and evolved. In talking about the texts of early Christianity the record is much harder to reconstruct.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Note: I have never seen Raymond Hatton credited with throwing the First Pie. I am not sure why researchers have not noted this before now.

Vorkosigan

Very sensible. Now I have to re-read that pile of crap to see what it actually says.

tanya

Terrific guesses, Jay!! You were correct on two of them, and taught me something in the process! Wonderful.

In L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune, published in 1657, Cyrano travels to the moon using rockets powered by firecrackers and meets the inhabitants.

That's a great guess, Jay, however, Cyrano was writing about the terrestrial moon, not the moons of Mars.

No, the correct answer here, was Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels, written in 1726, in which the author describes, relatively accurately, the two moons of Mars, first observed by telescope in 1877 by USA astronomer Asaph Hall.

It is really question number two, that represents the point of this apparently foolish exercise.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Here is where we find out who are the mice, and who are the men, (and women) of this forum.

How many brilliant minds have discussed countless topics of interest here on BC&H, without realizing that the second century science fiction author, Lucian of Samosata, (not to be confused with the third century instructor of Arius, Lucian of Antioch, born in Samosata!) had written stories, derived from Homer, and others, about extraterrestrials fighting (on our moon) to gain control of Venus? What is of interest, here at BC&H is that this science fiction author, second century Lucian of Samosata, ALSO wrote about Christianity:

Baron Munchhausen, Jay, represents a very good guess, since he did describe traveling to the moon on a canon ball.
Later, his name was changed, at least in the English speaking world, to Munchausen, and a famous syndrome in psychiatry, is named in his honor.

Yes, Micromegas, published in 1752, by Voltaire, is the novel about a giant extraterrestrial visitor from the star, Sirius, in our own galaxy, visiting Saturn.

Yes, you are correct, H.G. Wells published a story about Martians invading earth, in 1898, but the question remains, is he a relative of our own, G.A. Wells, famous "mythicist"?

Well, the main point here, was to attempt to respond to Andrew's posts, by illustrating that it is relatively unreliable to draw conclusions about chronological sequence of original ideas, based upon works of fiction.