Roger Pearse

Sounds like Quentin has a new pseudonym.

By whom?

Curious. As far as I can see it only calls him Christ. So do all the Roman writers.

So?

No, it shows only that you have misunderstood the TF.

There is no evidence of this. Eusebius is the first author now extant to quote it. Since 99% of all ancient literature is lost, this tells us nothing.

There is no evidence of this either. Anyone who can demonstrate the existence of such an ms. will be doing us all a favour.

This particular bit of nonsense was invented by a member of this forum.

The short passage has almost always been considered genuine; the long one was generally considered an interpolation a century ago but has since come back to generally being considered 'genuine but corrupt.'

I'm not sure why this cheap low-grade polemic is being posted here. We have all been through this.

Misleading, as ever: Tacitus wrote his works at that time, which are one of the main sources we have for all events of the reign of Tiberius.

Quite why he had to use an anachronism, however, we are not told.

Such certainty about the content of non-extant records... but since Jesus is always referred to as Christ in Roman texts, this suggests real ignorance.

No sensible person believes this.

Nothing offered suggests this, and speculation about the origins of a statement is not a valid reason to ignore evidence.

Evidence?

Yes? So?

I'm going to chop these phrases being incanted at the start of each paragraph, since the author is trying to create an impression of unreliability without making rational argument for it.

So you say, but nothing in Pliny supports this. On the contrary only someone in a strange state of mind could read what Pliny says and presume he doesn't refer to a man Jesus.

Actually it is.

Nothing in the text requires this 'apparently'. Quite how Suetonius making a mistake is relevant is not explained.

Note that I think that the Suetonius reference is ambiguous. But I'm not addressing the daft idea. I'm addressing this post.

Nothing in what we have just read justifies any of this. Grasping at straws would seem to be projection.

Assertion: no content.

They are not 'notoriously corrupt'. What is the relevance of the existence of the later long version to this?

Why?

How awkward for you.

Why?

Couldn't you have gone and looked it up? He lived and wrote in the early years of the Christian era.

Indeed. Syncellus preserves large chunks of the Greek text of various writers. That he does so accurately is shown by the existence of Armenian translations of some of them. So we can take it that Africanus is recorded here OK, and quotes Thallus (to disagree with him).

This is wilfully obtuse. Africanus tells us that Thallus dismissed the darkness as an eclipse. The context is the death of Christ. In the absence of the text of Thallus, that is clear evidence that the eclipse of Thallus was associated with this event.

We can only work from what is actually there. Any fool can make up stories to ignore fragments.

Nope.

Only if you haven't seen debunking before, and are prepared to believe that numerals in ancient texts are transmitted more accurately than text (even though he knows that the authorities disagree).

Wishful thinking would seem to be the key factor here, certainly. But Thallus says what he says.

See above -- how desperate this poster is to ignore data!

Why on earth does Valentinus come into it?

He knew an apostle personally.

So?

So?

Except that he knew one of his friends... <sigh>

And you don't give yours. That's proof that you don't exist, no doubt.

So, in conclusion, we see that even the crudest obscurantism -- which is what we have here -- merely tells us about the poster, not about antiquity.

Whatever has this to do with anything? I have doubts that this poster could see an elephant in front of him, if he had decided that he didn't want to.

I have no idea what drugs people take to convince themselves that the gospels were originally anonymous, but I don't see that it needs any comment from me. If the gospels were anonymous, so was every text of antiquity.

I think that we have all seen the tricks of the debunker before, and usually done rather better.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

torquemada

Read Robert Eisler's The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist. It discusses the Old Russian version of Josephus which comes from an originally Aramaic version Josephus wrote before the Greek one. It tells the story based on Roman documents which the church destroyed or censored from the 4th century on. Jesus emerges as a popularly acclaimed anti-Roman king. That is why he was killed by Pilate. The early Christians were anti-Roman terrorists for the most part. All this had to be suppressed and was. But some of the original survived, in Russia a judaizing movement got a hold of it and translated it into Russian. It has survived.

The Gospels become the worst source for the truth. The Gospels tend to conceal rather than reveal the early Christian story. Jesus in the Gospels is not the Jesus of history.

Roger Pearse

Unfortunately Eisler wrote a long time ago, and in his day access to this text was rather difficult because all the mss were behind the iron curtain and few know Old Slavonic. Most of what was written was nonsense, unfortunately.

A critical edition was published in Russian by N.A.Meshcherskii in the 1958, but this did not greatly improve matters. I have placed an English translation of some notes from its introduction here, which you may find useful.

You may then wish to look at H. LEEMING, K. LEEMING, with L. OSINKINA. Josephus' Jewish War and its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison (or via: amazon.co.uk). Leiden:Brill (2003). Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und das Urchristentums 46. ISBN: 9004114386. This is in fact a full translation of Meshcherskii, including the preface but not the plates, with Thackeray's English translation of the Greek alongside and two additional prefaces on Meshcherskii himself. It weighs almost 5 lbs (2.2 Kg), which makes it hard to read, though.

The text is not actually a version of Josephus Jewish War. Rather it is an original medieval Russian text, The three captures of Jerusalem, made from whatever texts were available to the author. The last portion derives mainly from the account of Josephus in the Jewish war, augmented from Antiquities, John Malalas, the bible etc.

There is no valid ground to suppose that the text used was translated from anything but the Greek vulgate.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

pavlos

a lot written, nothing said.
some source material would not go amiss for your replies, if you want to condemn something aleast supply the evidence of verification.
it's pointless just blowing hot air, it makes you look foolish.

Roger Pearse

Indeed.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

pavlos

rotflmao.

Cege

As a relative newbie here, I have to ask for clarification about the above quotation.

The 4 gospels of the NT aren't listed as pre-100CE at the url you provided but the dates generally given for those gospels places the earliest, Mark, about 70 CE, and the latest, Luke, around 140CE. Given that 140 is only 10 years shy of mid-century, why do you insist that Mark, Matthew, and John were written 150CE or later, in spite of rather vast contrary opionion?

pavlos

I never stated or insisted that the gospels were written 150ce can you show me were I stated this
I wrote
"The Gospels
are dated by scholars to 65-120 or so - and none of them were written by the person whose name they bear - they were originally ANONYMOUS and only named in the 1800s."
however the gospel according to mark had been altered and edited up to 150ce and thats about as far back as we can go with the modern version. http://www.lastdaysreporter.com/who-is-jesus.html
also all three were only accepted around 150ce. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~atheist/Christianity.htm

Toto

Do you mean the 180's ? I think that all of the gospels were named by 1800.

Cege

Am I mistaken? I took the above quote to mean that you were stating Jesus' miracles were not mentioned in Christian writings--in which I would include the NT gospels--until mid-2nd century, which would be 150CE or later.

The link you provided to support your statement is what I looked at and took to mean that you agreed with dating the first mention of Jesus' miracles at 140CE or later. Apparently I misread the table at the link as well as your meaning.