LegionOnomaMoi

You expected me to understand you misused the term? After all, if you used it correctly, and could back it up, then why would you "expect" me to understand, given that I asked you again, and again, and again to define how you were using it.

So, you expected me to understand, but accused me of "fleeing" from it, and you linked to a google scholar search with lots and lots of hits...but where is one supporting your usage? The first article states (p. 256) that their analysis is on Dutch, but that "Nevertheless, we will present it as a proposal that is applicable to English as well." So, not about Greek, let alone how one author's use can be "marked" based on an analysis of that author. Maybe the next paper?

Nope, that's on 2 to 3 year old kids and whether they recognize "marked" gestures. We'll keep going. The next THREE are on phonology, so no luck there. The one after that is still language specific (and concerns letters and bigrams). And then back to phonology.

How far into your search do I have to go before I get to anything remotely relevant? Or did you just "expect" I would know that this was a bogus attempt to save face?


But after this, surely you wouldn't still "expect" me to understand your use? Nope:
But no, I'm sure you "expected" me to understand.

Toto

What are you talking about? Some Christians did use the phrase. It's in the gospels.

All very interesting, but this is not a random event. Yes, you have Christians removing the "called" from material written by other Christians but do you have any examples of non-Christians using the phrase?

No, Paul does not call James the brother of Jesus.

The James who was the brother of Jesus in Mark is hard to connect to a significant figure around 60 CE. I have never seen anyone connect the dots here. How did James go from the son of a carpenter who thought his brother Jesus was crazy, to a major figure in the church?

It's a very unpersuasive case.

tanya

1. I dispute this assertion. I claim, contrarily, that we know next to nothing about the ORIGINAL text of the gospels/Paul/Josephus.

I think you must be referring to changes added to, or deleted from, texts POST-Constantine.

2. Here is a simple illustration of my point of view: Mark 6:3

Here, LOM is referring to Mark 6:3. But, how does this text compare with that of Josephus? For that matter, how do the various versions of the same verse, compare with one another? With respect to the point about Christian interpolation, was it customary, in the first century CE, for Jews or Greeks to refer to a demigod, like Hercules, as the "son of [his mother]"? Nope.

Offspring were described patrilineally, not matrilineally. Hercules' mother, is an afterthought. Why do Christians make such a big song and dance about Jesus' mother? Why isn't his "father" mentioned?

Mark 6:3

Codex Sinaiticus:
ουχ ουτοϲ εϲτιν ο τεκτων ο υϲ τηϲ μαριαϲ και ο αδελφοϲ ϊακωβου και ϊωϲηφ και ϊουδα και ϲιμωνοϲ

Byzantine majority:
ουχ ουτος εστιν ο τεκτων ο υιος μαριας αδελφος δε ιακωβου και ιωση και ιουδα και σιμωνος

Alexandrian:
οὐκ οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ τέκτων, ὁ υἱὸς τῆς Μαρίας καὶ ἀδελφὸς Ἰακώβου καὶ Ἰωσῆτος καὶ Ἰούδα καὶ Σίμωνος;

It strikes me as wholly inappropriate, in a thread devoted to some utterly arcane linguistic argument, ("Markedness", whatever that may be) to claim that we know quite a bit about Christian interpolation.

Which of these three versions, if any, represents the "original" Mark 6:3?

tanya

It is, for me, completely irrelevant whether or not spin is "arrogant". I find that he is dismissive of my arguments, not because of some character flaw on his part, but because of some evident demonstration of ineptitude on my part.

One thing I have noticed, is that both LegionOnomaMoi, and spin, in harmony with most other folks on this excellent forum, tend to address questions with seriousness, passion, and links to web sites where challenges can be examined in detail.

The importance of analyzing this passage in Josephus correctly, should not be trivialized, in my opinion, and I find that both spin, and LOM have contributed important ideas to that process. I also found David's summary, very helpful.

Women were simply not important in those days. I have no idea why that should have been the case, but, even Josephus fails to identify his mother. So, why describe Jesus, in terms of Mary, unless, perhaps, the father was a ghost? Why doesn't Josephus explain this conundrum? Perhaps he was unaware of the circumstances of Jesus' lineage? For that matter, perhaps he was unaware of Jesus, altogether.....

LegionOnomaMoi

Again, by that logic if Josephus had said "the brother of Jesus, the one who cast out devils in the name of the ruler of demons" we could determine exactly the same thing. It's in the gospels, so "christians used it." That's true of a slew of accusations against Jesus to, as well as neutral terms. If you argue that "if it's in the gospels, christians used it" then you have zero useful criteria, because explicitly negative references suddenly become phrases "some christians" used.



That's completely irrelevant. Most populations/sets aren't, but thankfully neither statistical models nor probability theory depend on this (for one thing, we have the central limit theorem, and for another, we have numerous methods for classification/analysis of categorical data regardless of distribution type). Sample size? Yes. But thankfully, we have more than a large enough sample size.

Let me explain the basics behind some simple types of statistical tests and how they can work regardless of randomness or the population in question. The central limit theorem is population dependent. So there may be little variance, or a lot of variance, but if you obtain enough random sample means from the populations, then whatever the original distribution of the variable, the result from your sampling will be a normal distribution.

"Random" in this case simply refers to your selection of sample means. So, for example, regardless of the actual distribution of type, skew, variance, etc., for scribal alterations to references of Jesus, if I take enough random samples, I will end up with a normal distribution, because I'm taking means from that population.

So, for a simplistic analysis, I could take samples of scribal variations at random and calculate frequencies until I have a histogram which reflects the actual distribution. However, construction of such a histogram would lack a great deal of robustness because there would be a certain amount of subjectivity, which is where categorical analysis comes in handy (along with having a knowledge of R and your own edition of matlab). Logit models are quire flexible, and more than adequate for a diverse number of multinomial models (and there are plenty of others).

The point is that for any set of nominal data, with a large enough population from which to draw samples, you can do everything from membership prediction (e.g., how likely it is that alterations not considered will fall under a particular category) to latent variable analyses (structural equation models and similar techniques allow you to plug large amounts of data of any type into your program or software and tell you what "hidden" factors cause what, or can reduce dimensionality).

Normally, this kind of analysis is difficult, because you're working with mixed data, limited samples, sometimes hundreds of dimensions, etc. However, in this case we have relatively few types of changes made within our entire (and large) set of known scribal alterations referring to Jesus: the addition of christ, the addition of Jesus, the addition of son of god, synactical/declension changes, the addition of an article, etc. The range of observed changes isn't large, but the number is (in Matt 1:16 alone, there are over a dozen major variations just lacking "called", let alone other changes).

So it doesn't matter that the changes aren't "random" because the population of scribal changes has its own distribution (as with any set), and random sampling allows you to test hypotheses from everything to the extent to which your sampling models the entire population to the causal trends underlying changes (both over time and in general).

I've started to plug data into matlab just for hell of it (I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to math and especially statistics), but the fact that there are no "known" examples of additions of "legomenous", the fact that there deletions, and the size and limited range of the population of scribal alterations means that as far as this example is concerned, the probability that a scribe altered this text and added either "called" or "called christ" is virtually nil. Not impossible, just statistically below a fraction of a percent.


Apart from Josephus (and quotations of Josephus) as well as the the way Christians have non-christians use the term? That depends on how far back you are willing to go (e.g., the Jewish interpretation in the dialogue I already mentioned).

Thankfully, however, we don't need any. If we had a lot of non-christian references to Jesus, then we would need to look at these. But that isn't necessary for assessing either whether the term is "christian" or the probability that we can attribute AJ 20.200 to a scribal alteration. Even if we assumed that it wasn't a typicall non-christian usage, we'd still end up with such extremely low probabilities for christian alteration that it wouldn't matter.



That's true. Irrelevant, but true.


If you've never seen anybody connect the dots, you need to read more on the subject. Have you read any monographs on James specifically? If not, that might be a place to start.



Certainly, if one is already persuaded.

LegionOnomaMoi

You might want to take that up with Spin. He brought up markedness, and he used it in his argument. I didn't start this thread so much to discuss interpolation as to address his argument specifically about markedness, and how it doesn't apply here at all, nor is it at all useful for determining interpolation here. Again, that was Spin's argument.

As for the rest of your post, well... the comment about Herakles' mother and Greek references pretty much says it all.

Toto

If we had a text that explicitly used some of the phrases in the gospels, even if negative, would that not be some evidence that the phrase was copied from the gospels?

But this is not even a negative reference.

These are all scribal alterations by Christians of earlier Christian writings, which can be tracked because of the number of Christian manuscripts.

This is alleged to be a Christian alteration of an originally Jewish manuscript. I don't think your sample is all comparable.

If you didn't "know" that Ant. 18 was an interpolation because it is so obviously Christian, you could probably use this method to "prove" that the probability of its being an interpolation is very small.

And then we wouldn't be so much in doubt as to whether Jesus was historical. :constern01:


I guess relevance is in the eye of the beholder.


Perhaps I should have said I've never seen anyone connect the dots convincingly. There's the usually story of James was a doubter, and then Jesus appeared to him, Hallelujah! and he was converted and went on to be a great leader of the church. . . What would you recommend as a more believable story?

LegionOnomaMoi

Yes, but unless you are simply looking for reasons to explain away, rather than assess, all references to Christ, Jesus, Christianity, etc., which don't fit your particular mold (whether mythicist or no), then you require a logically defensible reason for approaching interpolation (or textual criticism) in the way that you (generic you) do. As Doherty and others (e.g., Ehrman) have so frequently pointed out, out texts have all been altered. Period (with the exception of autographs). But they aren't altered willy-nilly. In particular, scribes altered texts in particular ways, and Christian scribes even more so.

That Josephus uses a method of referring to Jesus which is found in the Gospels is no more a reason to doubt it a priori than that he uses Jesus' name (and if that's a reason, then you've already made up your mind about historicity, and the whole thing is a moot point). However, if he uses language which is indicative of a christian hand, then we have a reason to wonder.

When, instead, what we find out of a vast number of alterations to Jesus' name, not a single parallel example to this (and instead we actually find instances where this usage was "corrected") not only do we have no reason to think a christian scribe inserted it, but that the chances one did are extremely improbable (from a statistical perspective). Even with low estimates I was working with (as there are so many hundreds more minor alterations than I can track, and I got tired of counting) the chances are just so vastly small (even changing weights and using more than one test).

They aren't, actually. Not all of them. Apart from the other example in Josephus, we have critical apparati for Christian texts written through the middle ages, but certainly for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries.

But even if they were all alterations of the type you mention, it still wouldn't matter at all. In fact, we know from the earliest "textual critics" (e.g., Origen) that while they would quote or paraphrase otherse loosely, they really objected to alterations to the NT. More importantly, you bring up another reason why we have to regard suspiciously any claim about "christians copied these manuscripts so they are inherently untrustworthy". If christian scribes were in the habit of, or even only rather rarely made, alterations to manuscripts to make them witnesses to early Christian traditions, why so few? For one thing, we do not find anywhere any christians (or pagans) claiming that Jesus was not historical. We have Celsus saying he was the illegitimate, various gnostics saying he "appeared" human, possibly other sects saying he was fully human, and so on, but nobody arguing he never walked on earth, and no christian apologists trying to defend the fact that he did. Instead, they were quite content to rely on their texts as faithful, accurate, representations (or heretical, depending on the text and the individual).

In other words, they didn't need to go out of their way inserting references to Jesus because they were fighting claims he was a myth. Which doesn't mean they wouldn't have altered texts (they clearly did), but it does mean they wouldn't do so in non-christian ways. That is, there is no reason to think (and good reason not to think) that we have some clever forger at work here, wishing to insert a reference to Jesus which doesn't sound christian. If a christian scribe altered the text (either inserting the entire reference to Jesus, or just the "called christ" part), then we have good reason to think they would do so according to "christian" ways of altering texts, regardless of the text: changing references to reflect christologies, deleting "problematic" passages or words, etc. Again, this exactly why we know that the TF is at least a corruption.




Actually, even if I remove the example from Josephus' Ant. 18, the text falls well within the range of probable alterations given the samples. I can't prove using statistics that Ant 18 IS an interpolation (at least not using the methods I was) but I can show that it is a christian "type" of alteration. In fact, if I make the models loose enough, even Tacitus becomes a "predictable" type of alteration, simply by using the name Christ, something christians added. Josephus 20.200, however, does not.


Quite true. Of course, again, this begs the question of why there are so few, if scribes did this.

Honestly, if a non-christian reference to Jesus which is has a statistically insignificant chance of being a scribal alteration is indeed the work of christian scribes, then I doubt that you would find any story believable which said anything about a historical James or Jesus.

JoeWallack

JW:
Oh for fuck's sake, why is this Thread still open:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

Yes, spin is guilty of simplifying and LegionOnomaMoi is innocent of complicating. All evidence of spin's decificiency.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

LegionOnomaMoi

For one thing, it's still open because I have to respond to fucking, moronic statements like the above because people have zero clue what they are talking about and didn't bother to read the fucking original post. "Markedness" is not the goddamn word order in Josephus. Spin limited his analysis specifically to Josephus:
He didn't claim that this word order "marked' in greek, but in Josephus. So either you didn't read the initial post, or your own wiki link, or didn't understand either. Moreover, "markedness" refers only to relative structural preference. People used "marked" linguistic elements all the fucking time. But rather than go back an admit his bullshit about markedness being somehow applicable here, he just kept repeating it. And rather than actually pay attention to his use of the term versus your own fucking link, you complain that this thread is still going on.