Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Minimalist · 06-05-2013, 08:07 PM

Reed is a fairly reputable xtian scholar....at least he never tries to inflate his family farm that he found at "Nazareth" into a city.

However, Sepphoris is another matter.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0811072503.htm

Quote:

Aug. 11, 2008 — Ruins of a Roman temple from the second century CE have recently been unearthed in the Zippori National Park. Above the temple are foundations of a church from the Byzantine period.

The excavations, which were undertaken by the Noam Shudofsky Zippori Expedition led by of Prof. Zeev Weiss of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shed light on the multi-cultural society of ancient Zippori (also known as Sepphoris).

The discovery indicated that Zippori, the Jewish capital of the Galilee during the Roman period, had a significant pagan population which built a temple in the heart of the city center. The central location of the temple which is positioned within a walled courtyard and its architectural relation to the surrounding buildings enhance our knowledge regarding the planning of Zippori in the Roman era.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...sepphoris.html

Quote:

One of the more exciting discoveries that we made at Sepphoris was a magnificent Roman villa with a gorgeous, gorgeous mosaic on its floor in a banquet hall. And this villa, which we call the Villa of Dionysus because so many of the scenes are concerned with the legend and mythology of the god Dionysus, has at two of its ends in this banquet hall, one very attractive woman and one not so attractive woman.

Quote:

The synagogue at Zippori (Sepphoris) provided the most recent of the zodiac mosaic discoveries, although unfortunately it is not very well preserved. In the center of the zodiac wheel, Helios once again drives his four-horse chariot, but rather than the figure of a man, the god is depicted as the sun itself.

Of course, the synagogue in Sepphoris dates from the late 5th to early 6th century which may be a bit late for our purposes.... but they certainly seemed to have absorbed Hellenism by then!

Tristan Scott · 06-05-2013, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Jesus social status and his literacy or lack of will not be settled anytime soon.

But is the purpose of all this research into the literacy of 1st c. Palestine to determine the likelihood or unlikelihood of Jesus' literacy, or the literacy of his followers?

steve_bnk · 06-05-2013, 08:18 PM

Do you think a group of fisherman he picked up an the shore were probably literate?

From a past thread, perhaps JC was a Jew from Rome.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar', to god what is god's.

I read at one point Judaism became a fad religion of sorts. The Romans liked the strong patriarchal Jewish family and work ethic.

The JC as as a Roman Jewish outsider can explain literacy, knowledge of Judaism, and the fact he appears as an adult on the scene.

Consider Bin Laden as an example of sorts. Educated, literate, and ended up hanging with semiliterate disaffected Muslims.

outhouse · 06-05-2013, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tristan Scott

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Jesus social status and his literacy or lack of will not be settled anytime soon.

But is the purpose of all this research into the literacy of 1st c. Palestine to determine the likelihood or unlikelihood of Jesus' literacy, or the literacy of his followers?

Not enough is known one way or the other.

The best there is argue it, and it comes down to interpretation of evidence.

The most recent archeology has shown Capernaum to be poor in the first century, and this is recent material that is forcing certain scholars to rethink their work.

Reeds work shows a great socioeconomic division between a rich Sepphoris and the agrarian culture like Nazareth that was becoming poorer. Nazareth was sort of a work camp to feed Sepphoris in my personal view, and a few scholars almost state this verbatim. These poor people more then likely were forced of farm land taken by greedy land owners placed in power by Antipas.

No matter what the recent work points to, there is still a gap in our knowledge to the exact cultural lifestyle of Nazareth. hell we cant even determine anything due to the complete lack of evidence from pre 70 CE Nazareth. You get people I find nutty that even argue Nazareth didn't exist at that time.

outhouse · 06-05-2013, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve_bnk

Do you think a group of fisherman he picked up an the shore were probably literate?

Nope both Fishermen and Tektons from Galilee and Nazareth lived some pretty crappy lives, said to be below that of a peasant.

My personal view is they were illiterate. Its a guess though.

outhouse · 06-05-2013, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minimalist

.... but they certainly seemed to have absorbed Hellenism by then!

The only problem I have with Reed is his view on Hellenism.

Im positive Hellenism was alive and flourishing In Antipas "Jewel of Galilee"

We already know there was a cultural socioeconomic divide
We know Antipas placed his people in the government
We know they took a pro Roman stance

Heres a bit from Reed on this.

http://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/BBR...ologyJesus.pdf

Reed is especially
critical of Eric Meyers and James F. Strange4 (whose regional orientation
is nonetheless axiomatic for him) for their suggestion toward
the high end of this estimate (p. 65). He is concerned with these and
other estimates, but he goes out of his way to distance himself from
the facile assumption by which "high numbers are equated with urbanization,
and urbanization in turn correlates with Hellenization"

outhouse · 06-05-2013, 08:46 PM

Why was there such a extreme socioeconomic difference between Capernaum and Sepphoris?

Sepphoris was a Hellenistic Judaism, pro Roman city with its Hellensitic government appointed by Antipas himself. Nazareth was more or less a agricultural work camp to keep Sepphoris well fed.

Capernaum was a strictly peasant class poor Jewish city, the fishing trade was controlled by the Hellenistic overlords in Antipas government who rented boats to the peasants who were also heavily taxed on the money they made.

http://www.jaygary.com/archaeology.shtml

archaeologists have been lately focusing on the influence of Sepphoris on the regional economy of Galilee. Though Herod Antipas was cautious to avoid a direct confrontation with Jewish culture, he did fund his kingdom’s construction through wealth generated through agriculture. Large tracts of land outside the walled city were confiscated as royal lands and turned into estates that urban landowners could manage. In the surrounding villages that were not seized (i.e. perhaps Nazareth), he introduced more productive agricultural methods, permitted fewer fallow years and promoted monocropping over subsistence polycropping. This left village peasants vulnerable to drought and crop failure. Herodian taxes forced peasant families to go into debt, and even sell the land they owned and to become sharecroppers. Reed states, "Architectural grandeur increased at one end of the Galilean society by making poverty increase at the other.

Again, Sepphoris illustrates the clash between a Herodian "commercial kingdom" and an ancient "covenantal kingdom"

Rather than be wiped out by class warfare, or swept up into colonial revolt, the Jewish citizens of Sepphoris took a pro-Roman stance throughout the war,

Cheerful Charlie · 06-05-2013, 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Only in Mark 6:3, perhaps a late insertion, is Jesus called an artisan. Mt. 13:55 gets it better as "son of the....", and Luke 4:23 calls him Joseph's son--the two contrasting texts indicate that Mark 6:3 is the poorer text. You are presupposing HJ minimalism against the evidence of all four gospels. The very verse you used (as always with you, without citation) is immediately preceded by

Quote:

With the coming of the Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue, and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, "Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him?"

If you're standing on Mark 6:3 as determinative, do you also accept Mark 6:2 (and backed by Mt. 13:54) that Jesus worked miracles?

As always, you pick and choose what you want to remember, and your memory proves to be pretty bad. Cheerful Charlie has a much better record here than you do.

I did not claim that acts et al were necessarily true, nor authoritative. Just that that Peter and John fit the mold of illiterate peasants (fishermen) and Jesus as at least somewhat literate. Nothing more. Papias indicates that Matthew left a written document, written in Aramaic. Since lost.

Cheerful Charlie

Jeffrey Gibson · 06-06-2013, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cheerful Charlie

I did not claim that acts et al were necessarily true, nor authoritative. Just that that Peter and John fit the mold of illiterate peasants (fishermen)

Leaving aside the question of whether ἀγράμματοι means illiterate rather that "not formally educated", let alone, as Moulton and Milligan (The Vocabulary of the Greek NT Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources 1914-30) note, "lacking in expertise concerning the law" or as R. Pervo translates it "“uneducated amateur" [more below from Barrett], "Peasants" is a term associated with land workers, isn't it? Did not James and John own and operate fishing businesses? Does that not indicate that they would have to be able to read -- at least to tally stock and sales? Was not Zebedee, John's father, sufficiently wealthy to have hired men? Does that -- and the fact that they were not land workers -- indicate that they fit the mold of illiterate peasants?

Jeffrey

Quote:

The Council, observing (present participle) their boldness took note (καταλαβόμενοι, aorist participle) of the fact that they were ἀγράμματοι and ἰδιῶται. In ordinary Greek use, ἀγράμματος means illiterate. Xenophon, Memorabilia 4:2:20, cited by LS 14, provides a good example: οὐκοῦν ὁ μὲν ἑκὼν μὴ ὀρθῶς γράφων γραμματικὸς ἂν εἴῃ ἂκων ἀγράμματος; Cf. Plutarch, Apophth. Reg. 186A, the man who voted for the ostracism of Aristides was ἄνθρωπος ἀγράμματος καὶ ἄγροικος. The opposite of ἀγράμματος is (in classical usage) γραμματικός. ἰδιώτης is in the first instance the private man who as such stands over against the state (the res publica); hence the plebeian; hence the unskilled person who stands over against the expert in any art, the layman (over against, e.g., the doctor). Cf. e.g. Thucydides 2:48:2; Plato, Laws 830a, where it is clear that the ἰδιώτης is not in a general sense an ignorant person but one who in a particular field is not a professional. It needs further development to reach the ignoramus. None of the meanings cited is entirely suitable to the present context. Bengel’s ‘’Αγράμματος est rudis, ἰδιώτης rudior’ is neat but not satisfactory. For ἀγράμματος, the opposite word would be not the γραμματικός but (in NT usage) the γραμματεύς: hence, a man without scribal training in the law. The ἰδιώτης would not be greatly different: one who did not practise in the court—to lawyers, a layman. The pair of words suggest composition in Greek. The word ἰδιώτης was borrowed into Hebrew as הדיוט. It means an unskilled workman; see e.g. Sanhedrin 10:2; Moed Katan 1:8 (He that is not skilled (the הדיוט) may sew after his usual fashion, but the craftsman may make only irregular stitches). Dodd (The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 1953, p. 82) renders the whole phrase in Hebrew as בור והדיוט, but בור (‘uncultivated, an uncultured person, mannerless, ruffian’, Jastrow 148b) is not really an equivalent of ἀγράμματος. See e.g. Aboth 2:6. Peter and John were laymen, conducting their own defence. Plümacher (22) notes a contrast between this verse and 4:19; 5:29, which recall Socrates; but Socrates in his defence hardly represented himself as a professional lawyer. Peter and John were laymen, yet they spoke with παρρησία (as, we may note, Socrates had done). And the lawyers were surprised, ἐθαύμαζον.

Bengel Bengel, J. A. Gnomon Novi Testamenti, Editio Tertia, London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford, 1862. Acts, pp. 388–489.

Jastrow M. Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, New York, Berlin, London, 1926.

Barrett, C. K. (2004). A critical and exegetical commentary on the Acts of the Apostles; The Acts of the Apostles (233). 2 v.: T&T Clark

steve_bnk · 06-06-2013, 07:37 AM

For the average person in the region how expensive would writing materials be?

Synagogues as I understand it would have one copy of scripture.

I doubt a lot of Jewish homes would have had personal copies of the OT.

Scriptures would be read and perhaps memorized at the synagogues.

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06-05-2013, 08:18 PM	#23
steve_bnk Contributor Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Seattle Posts: 27,602	Do you think a group of fisherman he picked up an the shore were probably literate? From a past thread, perhaps JC was a Jew from Rome. Give to Caesar what is Caesar', to god what is god's. I read at one point Judaism became a fad religion of sorts. The Romans liked the strong patriarchal Jewish family and work ethic. The JC as as a Roman Jewish outsider can explain literacy, knowledge of Judaism, and the fact he appears as an adult on the scene. Consider Bin Laden as an example of sorts. Educated, literate, and ended up hanging with semiliterate disaffected Muslims.

06-05-2013, 08:46 PM	#27
outhouse Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Auburn ca Posts: 4,269	Why was there such a extreme socioeconomic difference between Capernaum and Sepphoris? Sepphoris was a Hellenistic Judaism, pro Roman city with its Hellensitic government appointed by Antipas himself. Nazareth was more or less a agricultural work camp to keep Sepphoris well fed. Capernaum was a strictly peasant class poor Jewish city, the fishing trade was controlled by the Hellenistic overlords in Antipas government who rented boats to the peasants who were also heavily taxed on the money they made. http://www.jaygary.com/archaeology.shtml archaeologists have been lately focusing on the influence of Sepphoris on the regional economy of Galilee. Though Herod Antipas was cautious to avoid a direct confrontation with Jewish culture, he did fund his kingdom’s construction through wealth generated through agriculture. Large tracts of land outside the walled city were confiscated as royal lands and turned into estates that urban landowners could manage. In the surrounding villages that were not seized (i.e. perhaps Nazareth), he introduced more productive agricultural methods, permitted fewer fallow years and promoted monocropping over subsistence polycropping. This left village peasants vulnerable to drought and crop failure. Herodian taxes forced peasant families to go into debt, and even sell the land they owned and to become sharecroppers. Reed states, "Architectural grandeur increased at one end of the Galilean society by making poverty increase at the other. Again, Sepphoris illustrates the clash between a Herodian "commercial kingdom" and an ancient "covenantal kingdom" Rather than be wiped out by class warfare, or swept up into colonial revolt, the Jewish citizens of Sepphoris took a pro-Roman stance throughout the war,

06-06-2013, 07:37 AM	#30
steve_bnk Contributor Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Seattle Posts: 27,602	For the average person in the region how expensive would writing materials be? Synagogues as I understand it would have one copy of scripture. I doubt a lot of Jewish homes would have had personal copies of the OT. Scriptures would be read and perhaps memorized at the synagogues.

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