Vinnie

I agree that part of his statement can be seen as fuzzy without further clarification. The Twelve fit a number of independent criteria and sadly, for Twelve skeptics, the best argument against the twelve is one from silence: Some streams of thought do not show knowledge of a special authority group of Twelve designated by Jesus. That might actually be the basing of this statement. Attempts to turn the objection upside down.

Vinnie

spin

Vinnie, you are not doing history at all. You are shuffling textual data from one point to another and some of that back again.

I appreciate that you've put a lot of effort into it, but you are not concerned with historical methodology at all. You need to start by introducing your texts and their relevance, give their approximate dates based on evidence so that they can have a contextualised significance, and work from that starting point to relate it to external benchmarks. Picking data out on your arbitrary criteria, when those criteria have no external linkages, gives no connection with what really happened.


spin

Vorkosigan

<shrug> Maybe. I am not a Twelve skeptic, I just don't think they go back to Jesus.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

Spin, I have my stratification of sources written down. Time and again I have told mythicists here that they ignore questions of sources which are important. And if you think my criteria are completety arbitrary I have to question how much you know about history. You may claim I am using them arbitrarily, but not that they are arbitrary.

I assure you, I am doing history here. I have my source stratification going up:

First Stratum 40-60 C.E.

1 Thessalonians
Galatians
Philippians
Philemon
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Romans
GThomas / Q Overlapps
Passion Narrative Traditions

Second Stratum 60-80 C.E.

Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Q
Special L
Special M

Third Stratum 80-100

Gospel of John
Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Luke
II Thessalonians
Colossians
Ephesians
Barnabas
1 Clement
Gospel Hebrews
1 Peter
Josephus
Epistle James


Fourth Stratum 100-130

Tacitus
1 John
2 John
3 John
II Peter
II Timothy
Ignatius (7 Letters)
1 Timothy
Titus

I even have a "non-liquet" stratification in the works:

Non-Liquet

Fayyum Fragment
Oxyrhynchus 1224

These I can't date accurately.

I actually have to go through those texts and strike some. Every single one of them does not factor into my HJ reconstruction. As stated, I am just starting.

Second, most of my datings are the scholarly majority. Its not my goal to appease every fringe conscience on the internet, some of them will necessarily be documented and defended. But for now I have no desire or need to argue for the authorship or first stratum dating of the 7 genuine Pauline epistles. If someone disagrees with this I recommend they buy an Introduction to New Testament research.

I also suggested above that my method works with the earliest stratum up.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

<Frown> That won't help. None of them give any reason to date the authentic letters to the period before 70. Mostly they take it as a given, and attempt to work out a relative chronology of the letters under the assumption that they are authentic. You'd have to get a more specialist work on Paul to see why "hypercritical" (as Schnelle calls them) scholars like Bauer were rejected.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Stratification is worthless for determining historicity, Vinnie, although it is certainly fun. For one thing, pinning down the date depends on how you view a particular document's authenticity (most especially true for the Pauline letters); for another, mythicists and agnostics here are less certain than you are about the dates, and for another, when you have the earliest sources, congrats: you have the earliest sources. In no way are you any closer to determining historicity.

Vorkosigan

spin

In fact, you can't date any of them accurately.


To quote Billy Connolly, "well bugger me!"

Anyone can pull dates out of a hat. My preferred field of interest, the Dead Sea Scrolls, is full of this sort of stuff which a scholarly consensus adheres to,.. meaning nothing,.. other than they agree to arbitrary dates.

This is the fallacy of not showing one's antecedents. If you can't show where you are coming from (at any stage) you are talking sophisticated rot.

This may be correct, but it is irrelevant.


spin

Amaleq13

Paul's eucharist story has Jesus "handed over", apparently by God, to be sacrificed. Mark creates a narrative that utilizes the secondary meaning of "betrayed" apparently because he believed Scripture required it.

So the answer to Luedemann's question is: Anyone who believed Scripture contained information about Jesus' death.

Layman

I disagree with this, of course. I accept traditional authorship of the Gospel of Mark, and suspect some level of eyewitness source material in the Gospel of John. Also accepting traditional Lucan authorship of Luke and Acts leads me to accept Luke's prologue assertion that eyewitnesses had handed down traditions at face value.

This is why I do not see much merit in placing later dated stuff as necessarily less valuable than earlier stuff.

I think that's many people's general usage. Which was one reason I did the piece. It's not a wrong usage at all, but specificity helps a lot in these discussions.

Thank you for the clarification. But again I think it's just as important to determine possible sources as possible dates.

I found them persuasive. Not sure I would use the term convincing yet.

Well, while the source in its original form may be non-extant, the interesting thing about "L" is that, much like Mark and Q, it appears to be something more than just a source, but a literary phenomenon in its own right. And there is a reference to the temple in L at Luke 18:10-14a.

You are right that this would merely place it at the earlier part of your second stratum. However, given the significance of the destruction of the Temple and defeat of Jewish forces by Rome, I think a stratum that spans that event, such as 60-80 CE, may have some inherent problems.

I actually thought this was a good point.

Well, remember that even Papias considered himself something of an aberration by his interest.

Here is some more about Paffenroth that seems related:

Paffenroth, The Story of Jesus According to L, page 147.

We'd have to do an independent analysis of this. Paffenroth provides that quote and a list of L, but does not go into these in detail.

Because he had access to sources that the other surviving gospels did not, such as Palestinian Christians. I accept very seriously the idea that Luke traveled with Paul, and that he spent time in Jerusalem with Paul. Since he obviously had an eye for collecting sources about Jesus, there is nothing extraordinary in the proposition that he learned all he could from members of the Jerusalem Church. Of course, even if he was not traveling with Paul but had exposure to different sources to Matthew or different communities that had their own focus or bent. I doubt that every Christian apostle memorized everything Jesus did or said. Or if they did, that they used all the stuff all the time during their travels and evangelism.

I think that the topic deserves a much fuller treatment than I have given it in that article. But I found the book and topic intriguing. I will probably supplement the whole idea of the "L" source sometime in the future.

Thanks for a real topic Vinnie. It's nice to discuss these issues without the bloodletting or the Jesus Myth dominating the conversation.

Johann_Kaspar

No way. It never was "proved".
Which Bethlehem? No proof, no evidence for one rather than the other. Just fullfilling a "prophecy". Literature work. No facts.