Amaleq13

Maccoby cites Tosefta, Sanhedrin 9:5 'Those who are put to death by the court have a share in the world to come.' against the notion that Pharisees considered the victim cursed.

After describing the interpretation I already provided, Maccoby has the following footnote:
"Rabbi Meir's explanation, Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 46b. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 6:4) gives another interpretation: that this punishment is given only in the case of blasphemy, when the accused has 'cursed God's name' (the translation is thus, 'He is hanged because of a curse against God'). This interpretation too involves no curse on the executed man, who expiates his sin by his death." pg 214, note 6.

He gives no source for the interpretation that the curse would be upon those who failed to take him down except to say that Deuteronomy 21:23 "was interpreted by the rabbis as follows:".

Peter Kirby

That there was an outer temple court for transactions is well known. For example, Fitzmyer refers to "to hieron, which in the concrete would mean the Court of the Gentiles, not the naos or sanctuary proper." (The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV, p. 1267) K. C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman writes: "The Court of the Gentiles, an extensive plaza of about thirty-five acres (Finegan 1992:194), so-called because gentiles were permitted there, surrounded the temple buildings. The court was separated from the temple by a balustrade, because only Judeans could enter the temple." (Palestine in the time of Jesus, p. 138) This is the place where, year after year, the unblemished animals were sold for sacrifice (bringing your own had the risk of damaging it along the way) and currency with pagan images were exchanged for that which was suitable for paying the Temple tax (which is prescribed in the Hebrew Bible and accepted by Jews). I don't know whether other types of business were conducted here (I don't think so, but don't know).

I will now be reading your subsequent essays (called "appendices").

best,
Peter Kirby

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Amaleq,

Funny that it never seems to have occurred to Maccoby that this passage wasn't really written by the Historical Paul...

It's clear as day that the so-called "7 authentic epistles" are not really authentic. They've been heavily interpolated!

So there's no need to suppose that the Historical Paul was not Jewish. Rather it's his later interpolator that wasn't Jewish...

Maccoby is certainly one step above the mainstream in pointing out the un-Jewishness of these late passages. But he's still fully with the mainstream in assuming that the "7 authentic epistles" are authentic...

Actually, I've been reading Maccoby's JUDAS ISCARIOT AND THE MYTH OF JEWISH EVIL recently. It's quite a good book, but unfortunately it's marred by Maccoby's uncritical acceptance of all the typical mainstream assumptions about such things like the one above, or about the Markan priority, etc..

Best,

Yuri

Ted Hoffman

More on Benard Muller's sources:
Why Papias is unreliable as a source of Anything

The arguments below are borrowed in whole from Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle.

a) Papias is unreliable because he falsely attributed a saying in 2 Baruch 29:4-8, to Jesus as Irenaeus indicates in Against Heresies Bk. V, 33:3-4. "This casts doubt upon everything Papias says and is an example of attaching the current wisdom, ethical and prophetic material to a historical Jesue" notes Doherty.

b) "Fragment 3 from Apollinaris contains a fanciful, gruesome account of the death of Judas" and fragment no. 11 from Philipe of Side has Papias relating how Barsabas was forced to drink snake poison and yet survived unharmed and that the dead raised by Jesus survived until the reigh of Hadrian(117-138 CE).
This was not a person who was interested in relating the truth/ history.

c) If Papias posessed documents containing the sayings and deeds of Jesus as recorded by Jesus' followers, as papias claimed, Papias would not have disparaged the written documents in favour of an oral tradition.

d) Papias states that Mark did not write an ordered recollection of the Lord's sayings. The Gospel of Mark is orderly and Chronological and not a loosely and unordered collection of sayings therefore its very unlikely that whatever documents Papias had included a proto_Mark.

e) It is impossible that Papias had in his posessions early versions of the Gospels for not only does Papias' own language, as quoted by Eusebius rule this out, not a single one of the fragments includes any saying from the canonical Gospels. This is astonishing and casts a shadow of doubt over whether Papias actually had canon material relating the life and deeds of Jesus.

If Eusebius had Papias' work, he would have highlighted a saying and Philipe of Side would have hardly limited themselves to the ridiculous and repugnant things that Papias had to say.

f) W. R. Schoedel in Apostolic Fathers, Vol 5, p.106, states that the style of the quote of Papias about Mark in "the rhetorical balance of the lines", is the same as the prologue which Eusebius quotes earlier. Schoedel notes: "This means that Papias has reworked whatever he received from 'the elderd' and its therefore impossible to distinguish Papias from his source at this point".

Amaleq13

I thought the same thing about how much of Acts he accepted, seemingly uncritically, as history.

However, I did find something consistent with, if not supportive of, Maccoby's theory that I don't recall him mentioning. I've been reading Goulder's St. Peter versus St. Paul and he concludes the author of Mark was Pauline in opposition to the Jerusalem group. What was specifically relevant to Maccoby, IMO, was an observation he makes about "Peter's Confession" (8:29-33) in Mark. Peter is depicted as calling Jesus only by the human title "Christ" where the author makes his own view quite clear (Mk 14) that the more appropriate reference is the divine title of "Son of God". I just thought it was interesting to find something supporting Maccoby from a source that wasn't trying to do so on purpose.

Ted Hoffman

INTRODUCTION

Rhetorical Questions And 'Matter of Fact Data'

Muller states:
How do we identify these matter-of-fact data? Does Muller have a criteria for sorting them from the mounds of myth, embellishments and miracles?

We don't know and he doesn't tell us (as yet). What he does is ask us a series of questions.

Muller asks rhetorical questions with which he attempts to make the argument that "against the grain" pieces and bits cannot be outright inventions (hence must implicitly be "matter of fact data").

Does being against the grain convert these 'bits' and 'pieces' to 'matters of fact'? Is it proof that they are historical?

Of course not. Does the fact that they are not consistent with a son of God mean they are facts? No. Readers must bear in mind that disproving the idea that Jesus was a son of God, or the idea that the evangelists were fictionalizing a heavenly saviour figure is different from proving that Jesus actually existed.

In the same way, one who has proved that a cat cannot chew a big bone will have to prove separately that its a particular dog that chewed it.

Non-Supernatural does not equal 'Historical'

Placing the factoids in the contrasting background of a perfect, heavenly son of God in mind is a way of leading the reader to the world of historicity. There is an implicit false dichotomy at play here: that if Jesus doesn't fit the motif of an infallible, perfect and glorious figure, then he must be historical.

What is important to remember is that the fact that some bits in Jesus' life are not consistent with a son of God is not proof that Jesus was a historical figure.

And it is certainly not proof that those pieces are factual. It just gives us less reason for believing that Jesus was the perfect son of an omnipotent God, but it gives us no reason for believing he was historical or that those bits are historical.

For example Robin Hood was poor and robbed people. Does the fact that those are not supernatural feats render them historical? No.

Historicity must be proved via corroboration with external, reliable and independent evidence. And that is what we should be looking for in Bernard's reconstruction: use of external, reliable and independent sources.

Its clear that Muller's approach involves first dispelling any doubts of historicity in the mind of the reader then presenting his material as definitive.

It is clear that asking questions does not inform a reader, what it does, especially for the kinds of questions that Muller asks, which have no obvious answers, is make the confounded reader offer his/her hand to Muller so that Muller can show him/her around.

Its a beautiful and clever approach. Its like asking someone: "if God doesn't exist, how do you think the universe came to be?" Inability to provide a cogent answers is an admission of ineptitude or ignorance, which exposes a need to be guided or assisted by the rhetorician. This tacitly provides the questioner with the upper hand and the former naturally adopts a subaltern position.

I examine his rhetorical questions below and offer a few responses. The point I would like to make is that the fact that something doesn't fit our expectations does not make it true or historical, because our expectations could be wrong or misguided.
Muller's questions are effective against the idea that the evangelists were fabricating a perfect figure of a son of God. He dispels that view, but offers no evidence that the bits are therefore facts.

In the absence of a rigorous methodology, Muller is appealing to our intuition. Human intuition, which once led us to believe that the earth is flat, has been proved as unreliable and has no place in rigorous discourses on questions of historicity.

The Questions and Some Answers

1. Make Jesus a regular guy. A regulay guy fits best in the messianic secret motif.

2. Because they have no identity (who they later got married to, occupation, where they lived etc) - nobody can verify from them whether Jesus lived. Nobody in history is known to have come out and claimed they were Jesus' blood relative - only Mark knew these alleged relatives of Jesus. Since you have mentioned Illiad, Eurybates was a herald and Odysseus' squire. Semele his mother. Polyxenus 2 was An Aetolian leader who entertained Odysseus after the war. This doesn't prove Odysseus was a historical character.

3. Its also important to remember that Jesus' alleged siblings are very marginal characters in Mark's gospel thus framing the question to imply that mentioning them means neglecting to emphasize Jesus' uniqueness is misleading. The two are not related issues.

Circular reference. We need external, and independent sources verifying that JBap had a 'larger audience'. You cannot use Mark to prove that what Mark is stating is true.

Why have a great harbinger? to stack up the odds against Jesus. Good for messianic secret since pursuant to JBaps grisly murder, it wouldnt cross anyone's mind that any one else would come up and carry on the torch JBap lit.
To show the humility of Jesus and elevate JBap. Endorse the life of poverty - a cynical stance towards the rich elite in Jerusalem.

The star of the messiah would start to shine in Galilee (Isaiah 9:2), his birth in Bethlehem Micah 5:2.

Isaiah 9: 2 "but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles"

Messianic secret.
Because getting her out of bed was a miraculous feat since she was sick. Only he could make the fever leave her.
Simplicity and abasement help sustain the messianic secret its not honourable, or enviable to be poor and illiterate.
Why say: "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head"?
Why tell us a naked young man was following Jesus and fled naked?
Why be incredulous about the second feeding miracle yet they had alredy witnessed the first feeding miracle?
Messianic secret.
Show success (or good chances of success) of the messianic secret.
Why have a delegation of armed men come to arrest Jesus, and have this delegation require Judas to point out Jesus to them? Someone who was well known and made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem?
Why kiss Jesus warmly and not simply point him out?
Because the messianic secret was to be sustained to the end.
This statement is based on an unstated, 21st century assesment of what a son of God would be.
How can we know this?

Vinnie

""""""""""However, I did find something consistent with, if not supportive of, Maccoby's theory that I don't recall him mentioning. I've been reading Goulder's St. Peter versus St. Paul and he concludes the author of Mark was Pauline in opposition to the Jerusalem group."""""""""""

The Antioch vs. the Jerusalem tradition (as described by Koester in v.2 of Intro NT). Mark and Paul are on the former, the "twelve apostles", Peter and James are in the latter. Why do you think Mark shatters them so harshly (see my article)?

Also, I would recommend v 3 of Meier's Marginal series for problems with using Rabbinical literature of the third century (Tosepta) to reconstruct Pharisees in the first third of the first century c.e. See pp. 305-310 and also Meiers overall discussion.

Volume three is probably Meier's least referenced work but its a good one. Has 100 pages of discussion on the Pharisees!

Vinnie

Amaleq13

Thanks for the reference. Maccoby's assertions about 1st century Pharisaic thought have been questioned here before but I don't recall anyone mentioning a specific scholar's response.

Within the context of Maccoby, it would be because they were exclusively focused on the human Messiah named "Jesus" rather than his true identity as the divine Son of God. That is why Goulder's observation seemed to me to be (unintentionally) consistent with Maccoby's theory.

Ted Hoffman

Since Muller is vocal about the historicity of JBap and Jesus, could he explain why Photius' readings of Josephus' works indicate that there was no mention of JBap and no Jesus of Nazareth - which has led some writers like Zindler to argue that JBap never existed but was inserted into Josephus by later Xstians?

Do you have an explanation why Jesus called Christ was excluded in Photius' account yet Jesus son of Ananias, Jesus, son of Gamaliel are mentioned and especially, exclusion of Jesus in Josephus while Photius talks of his mention on the Gospels and the works of christian apologists in the first four centuries.

What is Muller's take on this?

Toto

The material on Hegesippus has been split out here:

Eusebius forged Hegesippur