Sauron

I have been traveling in New England for the last few days.

Layman - I am satisfied that there was a military battle of Herod against the Nabateans in 9 BCE. And in reality, that point was not critical to my deconstruction of your argument anyhow. So let's remove it from the table, and thus also remove your ability to hide behind it, while ignoring the larger issue.

Again: it is still your argument that Herod:
[1] conducted a pre-Quirinius census, as
[2] a punishment from Rome, for a military action against Arabs;
[3] that such a census occurred without any Roman records of such a command or recognition from Rome;
[4] that such a census occurred without any local records in Judea, even though we know that Herod kept records, even of his own household; and
[5] without any precedent for a census in any other non-provincial area in the Roman Empire

You are stacking five ad-hoc assumptions on top of each other, without a shred of proof for even one of them.

That is really is the issue here, and not the question of "battle" vs. "war."

Moreover, out of all the possible options that Rome had at its command, you have no reason to specifically postulate that Rome would have required a census as a punitive measure. Postulating for the 'hell' of it is unscholarly. I could just as easily say:

• It's also possible that the Arab event caused Rome to station an extra garrison in Jerusalem to watch Herod.
• It's also possible that the Arab event caused Rome to send spies to observe Herod and report back on him.
• It's also possible that the Arab event caused Rome to start plotting the removal of Herod.
• Etc. etc. etc.

But no one postulates any of these above actions. Why? Because there is:

* no supporting evidence for any of them, and
* no historical problem that requires us to engage in such hypothetical exercises.

And finally, given how quickly Herod fell back into favor after the Arab event, your time window for such an event is extremely narrow. Nor does that window correspond with the birth timeframe associated with Jesus.

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]</p>

Sauron

Unfortunately, you are incorrect - and twisting my position.

It's important to remember what my statement is here: I am not arguing what Herod's degree of Jewishness was. I am arguing that his racial impurity and lifestyle are more repugnant to Jewish sensibilities, than a non-Jew would have been. Why am I arguing this? Because you, Layman, have claimed that Herod would have been more acceptable than a Roman governor, in the context of conducting any census.

However, given his lifestyle and his bloodline, a stronger argument is that Herod would have been *less* acceptable, since he was an racially impure Edomite and mixed blood with Arab, through his mother.

As for Herod's Jewishness - you understate the case deliberately. In discussing Herod's appointment:

<a href="http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great01.html" target="_blank">http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great01.html</a>


This appointment caused a lot of resentment among the Jews. After all, Herod was not a Jew. He was the son of a man from Idumea; and although Antipater had been a pious man who had worshipped the Jewish God sincerely, the Jews had always looked down upon the Idumeans as racially impure. Worse, Herod had an Arabian mother, and it was commonly held that one could only be a Jew when one was born from a Jewish mother.

Note the bold: Herod was not a Jew. Herod was impure. Herod could not be Jewish, except through his mother.


And again:

<a href="http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great02.html" target="_blank">http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great02.html</a>

However, many of his projects won him the bitter hatred of the orthodox Jews, who disliked Herod's Greek taste - a taste he showed not only in his building projects, but also in several transgressions of the Mosaic Law.

The orthodox were not to only ones who came to hate the new king. The Sadducees hated him because he had terminated the rule of the old royal house to which many of them were related; their own influence in the Sanhedrin was curtailed. The Pharisees despised any ruler who despised the Law. And probably all his subjects resented his excessive taxation.

Again: being marginally Jewish was not a bonus, when his lifestyle would have only compounded his guilt - if he were trying to pass himself off as Jewish, then he has even less excuse for his behavior and crimes of morality. While such behavior might be expected from the heathen nations, it was much less excusable here.

And the specific acts he committed:

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/~alyza/Jewish/Herod.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/~alyza/Jewish/Herod.html</a>

Herod, in addition to building palaces and cities, also built pagan buildings. Herod built, in violation of Jewish law, theaters, amphitheaters, hippodromes and he had quinquennial games in honor of Caesar.37 He built Temples outside the Jewish areas of Israel in his honor. This caused the people to feel that Herod was impoverishing his Jewish subjects to place himself in good standing with foreigners.38

[...]

Herod related to the Jews of Israel under his rule far differently than he related to Jews in the Galut. Herod strengthened the Gentile communities in Eretz Yisrael in order to have a "counter-weight against his Jewish subjects" whom he knew hated him. This non-Jewish population later sided with the Romans during the War of Destruction.48 Herod reduced the power of the Great Sanhedrin to the point where they were virtually powerless. It is even possible that he may have "abolished the Great Sanhedrin altogether".49 Another source says the Great Sanhedrin was stripped of all political power. Herod set up a sanhedrin of his own to discuss matters of state. He made sure that the men he appointed as High Priests had no connection to the Hasmonean past. The appointees owed Herod "a debt of gratitude" for their post.50


And oh yes, I read your quote from Meier. However, you left out part of it:

Herod's Jewishness was somewhat compromised by the fact that his mother was Cypros, a woman from a famous Arabian family (J.W. 1.8.9 section 181). This was not fatal to Herod's claim to be a Jew, since tracing one's Jewishness through one's mother was not a firmly established principle in pre-A.D. 70 Judaism (see Shaye J.D. Cohen, "Was Timothy Jewish (Acts 16:1-3)? Patristic Exegesis, Rabbinic Law, and Matrinieal Descent," JBL 105 (1986) 251-68). Significantly, Josephus traces Herod's Jewishness through his grandfather and father see Ant. 14.1.3 #8-10; 14.7.3. #121(although the text is confused here); 14.15.2 #403 (where Antogonus tells the Romans that Herod was 'an Idumaean, that is a half-Jew,' and so unfit to be king of the Jews).

The bold text is what you left out. I don't blame you - it seriously undercuts your position.

And again: your argument here is that Herod conducted such a pre-Quirinian census, but for some strange reason it didn't cause any uprisings. Thus, we have no record of it. But you rationalize the lack of uprising and revolt (and any record of such) by saying that Herod would have been more acceptable as a census-enforcer than Rome would have been, thus the people would not have revolted. But nothing so far substantiates that. You are hanging your entire argument on the very thin strand that Herod was a little bit Jewish, so the Jews in Palestine would have looked the other way, rolled over and played dead for Herod's hypothetical census. But:

* the specific sacriligious acts that Herod did during this time;
* the already high taxation rate;
* Herod's personal moral failures; and
* his questionable Jewish status and racial impurity

all indicate the exact opposite of your desired conclusion.


Incidentlly, even Meier admits that no such census took place.

Luke's solution is a world-wide census decreed by Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria (2:1) -- unfortunately, such a census (which would have to occur ca. 5 BC) cannot be documented in any other ancient source. According to ancient records, Quirinius, who became governor of Syria in AD 6, conducted a census of Judea, but not of Galilee, in AD 6-7. Attempts to reconcile Luke 2:1 with the facts of ancient history are hopelessly contrived. Moreover, Mary would not have had to accompany Joseph to register, and her advanced pregnancy would have positively argued against accompanying him when there was no obligation to do so. Meier, p 213.

So not even your own source here is willing to back you up. Moreover, your earlier claim thatt:

Most historians place Jesus' birth -- and therefore the disputed census -- in 7 or 6 BCE.

is also not supported by Meier here, either.

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]</p>

Layman

In other words.

1. I was not lying.
2. My source Ben Witherington was right and was not lying.
3. You were wrong. Very wrong. Dead wrong. Completly wrong.
4. You misrepresented and distorted your sources as well as my own.
5. You accused me of failing to read my own sources when you quite clearly abused and distorted your own.
6. You made a huge deal about this issue, but you now claim it is irrelevant.

Which leads quite clearly to...

7. One of your missions on this board seems quite clearly to be to waste my time by misrepresentation, abusive personal attacks, and tangtial attacks which you do not really think are important.

So, however important your admission that I was right all along on this is to the main issue, it certainly reveals the near-impossibility of having a real discussion with you. Even when every source (yours and mine) confirmed what I was saying, you dragged it out over several days, several posts, cast several personal insults, and wasted everyone's time and bandwidth.

You forced me to respond at length and in detail to a point which you now claim was all but irrellevant to your argument. And despite the fact that you were quite clearly the one initating this unfounded, ill-informed, personal, and incompetent attack against me, you now characterize my response to your initiative as "hiding behind" an issue.

You are a waste of everyone's time.

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Layman ]</p>

Sauron

Huh?

Since no one accused you of lying, or your sources of lying, your objections are unfounded. Creating strawmen claims and then asking me to own them isn't going to work.

I moved beyond this issue, because it isn't key to my case. And since you preferred to hide behind it, as opposed to addressing the items that have ALWAYS been the core of this debate, it seemed better to bring the arugment back to its core.


I do not admit that there was any such "war", Layman. I admitted a military event, a battle. So my admission is not as complete as you make it out to be.



It was *you* who made the big deal about it, Layman. I merely mentioned it in passing. You responded with an enormous diatribe that began with "Do you just make this stuff up?" Then you followed up over and over.

Attempts to re-focus you toward the key areas of my argument failed. Since you would only respond to this narrow question of Arab vs. Nabatean/battle vs. war, I responded in kind.

At any given point you could have focused on the key areas, which I have posted several times. You chose not to do so. The responsibility for any frustration or disappointment falls on your own head, not mine.


.... it leads to more whining and accusations from you, evidently.

I forced nothing. You *chose* to respond to it, as opposed to focusing on the key areas. Here they are again:

It is still your argument that Herod:

[1] conducted a pre-Quirinius census, as
[2] a punishment from Rome, for a military action against Arabs;
[3] that such a census occurred without any Roman records of such a command or recognition from Rome;
[4] that such a census occurred without any local records in Judea, even though we know that Herod kept records, even of his own household; and
[5] without any precedent for a census in any other non-provincial area in the Roman Empire

I never said it was a key point. In fact, I listed the five key points to my argument *several* times. If you choose to ignore those, and focus on a single comment,then fine. I'll go along for the ride. But don't pretend that I positioned that as a key point of my argument.

And don't try to make it sound as though you had no choice in the matter. "Forced you to respond" - hogwash.

Had you not been so eager to duck out of addressing those five points, then this would not have happened. We could have instead discussed them - but you preferred to try and re-focus on this other tangential issue instead.

Oh, and one more thing: considering how literally impossible it is to get you to admit even the smallest point (per the ossuary discussion) -- even when said point really doesn't hurt your own argument -- your complaints that your time was wasted are both ill-founded and falling on deaf ears.


(More whining deleted)



Evidently not.

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]</p>

Layman

Actually, you quite specifically claimed to be "calling my bluff" and that of my "evangelistic source."

You explicitly questioned my crediblity and/or honest by claiming that my statement was nothing more than a "bluff." So yes, I took the point seriously and responded.

And I disagree that the issue is irrelevant. You were erroneously claiming by misrepresenting (or failing to read) your sources that the event that I claimed caused Herod'd disfavor had happened many years earlier. That was untrue. Clearly untrue. But you would not relent and continued to grasp at straws and distort sources to cling to your point.

Semantics. Every source I produced and every source you produced on this point called the "military event" a "war."

You used this "mention in passing" to question my credibility and/or honesty. And the only reason I kept following up "over and over" is because you kept grasping desperately at straws to waste my time. I'm not the hone who completely distorted and misrepresented Hammond on this issue. I'm not the one who continued to post on the issue after respected historians were clearly contrary to me. You were. And I kept responding because it exposes how you use distortion and personal attacks to bully your way around in debates. You have no interest in the truth or in fairness. How could you claim Grant's comments were baseless because they were contradicted by an internet article you did not even read? Sad.

You could have refocused us towards the "key area" by just admitting you were wrong. But you could not bring yourself to do that, despite the mounting and overwhelming authority to the contrary. You could have simply said, "Yes, okay, I got that one wrong." Then we could have moved on.

At any given point you could have just admitted you were wrong. But you did not. And the claim that the event I was claiming caused Herod's fall from grace happened many years before I said it did was an important point. One that I have completely refuted. And which you could have admitted "at any point."

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Layman ]</p>

Layman

You certainly thought it was important enough to pursue over several posts and several days. You claimed that the event I was relying on to show that Herod had fallen from favor with Augustus occurred many, many years before it, in fact, did. That would have been important--if true. Which is really the point here. If you had been correct, I would not have blamed you for pursuing the point as strongly as you did. But you were flatly wrong. As every source produced by you and by me showed. You misreprsented Hammond. Dismissed well-respected scholars like Witherington and Grant for no good reason at all. In short, the only way you could stretch the discussion out so long was by obsfuscation, distortion, and misrepresentation. You had no desire to actually check and see what actually happened.

We've going back and forth on the "five points" time and time again. I haven't ignored them. You simply keep repeating them.

Such as? What I recall is one point I asked you about, but then admitted very quickly that I was wrong--the modern capital of Israel. What I did not do -- and what you did with gusto -- was stretch out the point for several days, several posts, insult you for not admitting you were mistaken (when you were right), and distort/misrepresent my sources on the matter. I checked the fact out and admitted I was wrong.

Sauron

Which is not an accusation of lying. I asked for evidence that Herod was being punished for an event that happened 21 years prior to Herod falling out of favor in 10 BCE - since it appeared that such was your claim. Given your prediliction for speculating without basis, and that of your source as well, I wanted you to produce evidence for the *specific* claim that Herod was being punished for an event that happened 21 years prior to Herod falling out of favor in 10 BCE.

In addition, there is also the possibility that you (and/or your source) left out some tidbit of inconvenient information. After all, you did *exactly* that same thing above, when you quoted from Meier on the topic of Herod. Here is what you quoted:

Herod's Jewishness was somewhat compromised by the fact that his mother was Cypros, a woman from a famous Arabian family (J.W. 1.8.9 section 181). This was not fatal to Herod's claim to be a Jew, since tracing one's Jewishness through one's mother was not a firmly established principle in pre-A.D. 70 Judaism (see Shaye J.D. Cohen, "Was Timothy Jewish (Acts 16:1-3)? Patristic Exegesis, Rabbinic Law, and Matrinieal Descent," JBL 105 (1986) 251-68). Significantly, Josephus traces Herod's Jewishness through his grandfather and father...

But then you failed to continue that same quotation to the end. Here is the part you clipped out:

. . . see Ant. 14.1.3 #8-10; 14.7.3. #121(although the text is confused here); 14.15.2 #403 (where Antogonus tells the Romans that Herod was 'an Idumaean, that is a half-Jew,' and so unfit to be king of the Jews).

Meier himself raises reliability questions about the text, and the quote from Antigonus makes the same point I was making in my argument. We see that you failed to practice full discovery here, because to do so would have undercut your position.

So you're upset because I said I was calling your bluff. Oh, well. Calling your bluff (i.e, asking to see the proof of your claim) is not equivalent to being called a liar. And given your personal history and past behavior, I was more than justified in asking for this.

By the way: I am still waiting for any evidence, from you or your source, that Herod conducted such a census - given the:

* lack of any records;
* the extremely short time window, and
* the fact that the time window disagrees with Meier on the most probable time when it had to occur, given the Lucan account.


And with good reason. You *do* speculate without any factual foundation to support yourself, Layman. In fact, I listed five such areas where you are continuing to do so, right now.

And true to form, EVEN NOW, you prefer to focus on your perceived slights instead of addressing those five issues. Of course, I realize that this is just a delaying tactic on your part, but as I said: I'll go along for the ride.


Another strawman. I didn't say it was irrelevant. I said it wasn't one of the key points - five key points which you continue to evade, by the way.


It is not necessary for anyone to admit anything, in order for you to focus on the key points of this argument. You should have been doing that in the first place.

What happened here is simple:

1. you could not produce any affirmative evidence for the five ad hoc assumptions you are leaning on.

2. Then you found a different statement of mine that you felt safe in attacking.

3. You were so relieved that you were 'excused' from justifying your five ad hoc premises, that you threw your full energy into it.

4. Now you've discovered that this other statement wasn't really a key point of my argument.

5. Naturally, you are frustrated since your exit strategy cost you lots of energy, and didn't cause me to forget your five ad hoc assumptions either.

You have no one to blame but yourself. You could have focused on the five areas in the first place, Layman, and prevented any of this from happening. You failed to do so.

I repeat: had you not been so eager to duck out of addressing those five points, then this would not have happened. We could have instead discussed them - but you preferred to try and re-focus on this other tangential issue instead.



I am not your master, nor do I choose what you select to respond to, or choose to skip. Trying to shift your personal failure onto me isn't going to work.

If you choose to spend your time trying to score points on a tangential issue, that is your problem. But don't pretend that it was a main part of my argument. I listed the main parts of my argument, clearly, in at least four posts - five key points, carefully enumerated, for everyone to see. Yet you ducked them.

As I said: considering how literally impossible it is to get you to admit even the smallest point (per the ossuary discussion) -- even when said point really doesn't hurt your own argument -- your complaints that your time was wasted are
both ill-founded and falling on deaf ears.

[ November 09, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]</p>

Sauron

Yet in all that back and forth, I'm still waiting for you to produce even one shred of affirmative evidence for any of these points. Either that, or it's high time that you admit that you have none - - and are simply engaged in baseless speculation.

Speaking of speculation - out of all the possible options that Rome had at its command, you have no reason to specifically postulate that Rome would have required a census as a punitive measure. I could just as easily say:

• It's also possible that the Arab event caused Rome to station an extra garrison in Jerusalem to watch Herod.
• It's also possible that the Arab event caused Rome to send spies to observe Herod and report back on him.
• It's also possible that the Arab event caused Rome to start plotting the removal of Herod.
• Etc. etc. etc.

But there is no supporting evidence for any of them. Moreover, there is no historical problem to solve - no puzzle to overcome - which would require us to engage in flights of hypothetical fancy and create such a census event.

So can you explain *why* you would hypothesize a census, if not to rescue the Lucan account from the dust heap of history?

After which, can you explain:

1. why your source, Meier, disagrees with you on the historicity of any such census?

2. why Meier lists a different year for the birth of Jesus than you claim?

Oh, please. A simple factual item like the capital of Israel isn't what I'm talking about, and you know it.

[ITEM 1]

How about when you wasted everyone's time on the topic of "cautious skepticism". I suggested that Eisenmann was advocating that course of action, when dealing with the ossuary. My evidence for that conclusion was:

But Robert Eisenman, author of "James the Brother of Jesus" worries the inscription is too good to be true. "It's too pat," he says. "Why add 'Jesus' to the inscription? It's like someone wanted us to be sure."

Then you wasted time and bandwidth by insisting that I produce precisely that phrase - "cautious skepticism" - when it is blatantly apparent that Eisenmann is suggesting that viewpoint, even if he doesn't use those exact words to describe it.

Here are your words:

Please show me where Eisenman suggest "cautious skepticism" and I'll respond to your questions.

After all, you could have agreed that this was indeed Eisenmann's stance with regard to the authenticity of the ossuary, even while you could continue to personally disagree with his stance. Accurately reporting what Eisenmann's viewpoint is does not require you to agree with that viewpoint. Instead, you preferred to quibble over exactly what Eisenmann was advocating here, in spite of the fact that his position was painfully obvious.

[ITEM 2]

Or, how about when you refused to acknowledge that, in a field of biblical antiquities research, caution is not only valuable, but a standard practice when evaluating the authenticity of the artifacts. Especially when the origin of those artifacts cannot be verified.

The source quote in question:

The biggest red flag is that it comes from an anonymous collector in Jerusalem who is mum on its history. Observers worry it could be a fake from the sometimes shady antiquities market. There is a long history of archeological forgery. The largely discredited "Shroud of Turin" – supposedly placed on Jesus after the crucifixion –is one example.

I said:

The points that I am making are not controversial. Nor do they particular hurt the case for authenticity. All they do is establish a healthy skepticism of the overly convenient and things that appear to be too neat and clean.

To which you responded (again, directed at Eisenmann):

What sort of methodology is "too good to be true" exactly? Has he published a peer-reviewed article on how this methodology should be applied to evaluating ancient archeological discoveries?

You were, in essence, asking for a peer-reviewed article on the need to be cautious in the near east antiquities field. An article demonstrating that a lack of such skepticism correlates with accepting a larger number of frauds and forgeries. In other words, you were unable to admit the obvious, and preferred to waste my time and bandwidth.

My response was:

That is a de rigeur caution for all such archaeologists, for obvious reasons. The fact that you (once again) have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to see this plain fact underscores again your desire to win an argument at all costs, even when the point in dispute is universally recognized and rather harmless to admit.


So yes, Layman. It *IS* impossible to get you to admit anything, even when the admission doesn't hurt your argument. So I have no sympathy for you, nor do I care one whit about your theatrical protestations about your credentials, credibility or character.

No, but you did all the above to me, when you constantly misrepresented my position (i.e., that I thought the ossuary was a forgery - which I never said). You stretched that out for several posts. And in several different threads.

You also clearly misunderstood McCarter's claims about the ossuary, and then accused me of having an "incomplete understanding" of his position. On top of that, you mispresented my usage of McCarter's quotation. You said:

You were claiming that nothing was certain. That it could be a hoax. That is could be a fraud. And that scholars --specifically this scholar-- were saying we would never know.

When in reality, what I did was quote this scholar, McCarter, on the sole question of the origin of the box, and whether the Arab dealer might have lied about its origin.

So not only were *YOU* the one with the 'incomplete understanding' -- and not me -- but your incomplete understanding led you to twist my position, and that of my source. No retraction from you on either of those two points, either. I won't hold my breath.

And how about when I pointed to the fact that Amen-Moses -- possessing a degree in geology and far more acquainted with that topic than either you or I -- when I pointed out that he knows far more about geology than you could possibly derive from a one-line description in a BAR summary? You proceeded to malign him and his personal credentials, even though you had no basis for doing so, and no personal background to make such an evaluation. Amen-Moses has since then provided ample demonstrations that he thoroughly understands this topic. But no retraction from you.

So guess what, oh Pompous One? You're guilty of all the things you accuse me of, Layman. So as I said: your complaints that your time was wasted are both ill-founded and falling on deaf ears.

[ November 09, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]</p>