andrewcriddle

Although Carabbas and Carabas are both found in English translation and I haven't access to a critical text I think the original is with only one b.
philo/flaccus
Andrew Criddle

aa5874

We have the stories about Jesus just like we have hundreds upon hundreds of stories about characters of antiquity REAL or IMAGINED and NONE of these stories CAN be ALTERED unless some other actual version is found.

Perhaps the story about Pilate and Jesus is FICTION.

Perhaps it is COMPLETE FICTION that Jesus the Child of a Ghost was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

Perhaps we have Ghost stories.

It was the POWER of a GHOST that STARTED the Jesus Cult in Acts of the Apostles.

On the day of Pentecost, Jesus, the Child of Ghost, SENT the most POWERFUL GHOST, the Holy Ghost, to the disciples and then they BEGAN to LOOK and SOUND like ALIENS.

See Acts 2.

If it was NOT for the POWERFUL HOLY GHOST then there would be NO Jesus cult of Christians today.

Acts mentioned the POWERFUL Ghost about 40 times.

But, "Paul" had that POWER GHOST too.

Ro 9:1 - When "Paul" used a GHOST as a WITNESS then "Paul" CROSSED the line.

The NT CANON is just a COMPILATION of Ghost Stories about Jesus the Child of a Ghost and a POWERFUL Holy Ghost just like Marcion's Phantom.

The Jesus cult most likely STARTED AFTER the Fall of the Temple when a STORY was FABRICATED that the Jews KILLED the "WRONG MAN" ("WRONG GHOST").

In the NT, The JEWS killed a Ghost for THREE DAYS and God got angry 37 years LATER or was Angry from since 33 CE.

There is SIMPLY no credible sources that can CORROBORATE a single event in the NT with respect to a character called Jesus the Christ whom the Pauline writings made the MOST SIGNIFICANT character in the Roman Empire.

According to "Paul" Jesus Christ was the End of the Law,God's OWN Son, and that even the EMPERORS of Rome and every Roman should BOW before the Name of a dead Jewish man but it APPEARS to ALL FAIRY TALES.

It was in the 2nd century that EXTERNAL sources CELSUS and LUCIAN mentioned the Jesus stories which suggests that the Jesus stories were INITIATED sometime in the very same century.

DCHindley

I Googled it and found an 7th century CE Greek settlement on Cyprus by that name. Among some of the facts was a note about the origins of the name.

Karavas (Greek: Καραβάς) is the sister village of Lapithos in the Kyrenia District of Cyprus. The village resides in the Turkish Occupied Part of Cyprus It is built on the ruins of Lampousa one of the ten ancient Greek city-kingdoms of Cyprus. The name Karavas is Greek from the word karavi (καράβι) which means ship.

Karavi seems to be the modern name of several towns and islands in the Agean Sea. Karavas or Karabas was also found as a modern Greek family name.

I sincerely doubt that Greek families and towns are basing their names on an account in Philo, so the name Karabas in Philo probably indicates he was some sort of sailor or shipwright.

DCH

davidstarlingm

Because the question of literary dependence is such a subjective one (unless, of course, someone can propose a controlled statistical analysis), there is nothing wrong with saying, "I find it hard to see". He is simply expressing his opinion on the matter....and, barring statistical evidence, his opinion is as good as anyone else's.

I don't have any doubt that the event recorded by Philo actually happened. However, if the similarities seem so convincing to you, keep in mind that the setting of Mark's account is decades before Philo wrote his account. There is no textual dependence, only topical similarities; there is as much reason to think that Philo's account is a corruption of the actual event recorded by Mark (with the setting and actors changed by word-of-mouth over the years).

This is the part that makes absolutely no sense. The author of Mark is clearly trying to represent his account as an actual record of real events. Though it is possible that he might borrow a story (though the similarities really aren't enough to make that case), what possible reason could he have to borrow a name? If I was plagiarizing an account, the first thing I would do would be to change the names of the people involved.

Besides, as I've pointed out before, "Barabbas" means "son of the Father". If Mark was fabricating the account and wanted to use the same name (for some wholly inconceivable reason), he could have easily applied it to JC.

Oh, so that's the answer for why JC matches all the Hebrew prophecies....Mark plagiarized the OT?

Anyhow....

Seeing the actual Greek word helps. In Philo's account, we have "Καραβάς", which is elsewhere translated Karavas and comes from karavi, meaning ship.

In Mark's account, we have "Βαραββᾶς", translated "Barabbas", which appears to be a direct transliteration of the Hebrew "בר אבא".

It's really looking more and more like a coincidence, especially when we consider that Mark would have had no reason to borrow a name from Philo even if he had borrowed an account. The similarity between the names, in fact, makes it more likely that the account is not borrowed; if it had been, Mark would have doubtless changed them name.

DCHindley

There is in fact a sort of messianic coloring to this Alexandrian mob mockery of Karabas in 38 CE.

You see, Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great, had just been raised to royal rank and invested with his uncle Philip’s former territories by the Emperor Caligula in Rome.

As he returned home, the newly minted King passed through Alexandria, where the historic animosity of the Greek inhabitants of the town towards the Jewish ones expressed itself as disdain towards Agrippa I, in the form of this mockery. Note they call Karabas "Marin", which is Aramaic for "Lord". On this level there certainly is a parallel. As Karabas was mocked as a stand-in for the Jewish king Agrippa I, so was Jesus mocked as the symbol of what happens to royal claimants to Jewish self-rule.

The key difference is Agrippa I was a formally appointed client king, while Jesus was an unauthorized claimant (well, at least that is what he was executed for).

DCH

Steven Carr

That's one way of reading Paul. I imagine though that Paul thought people executed by the Romans were wrong-doers, and that the Son of God was not a wrongdoer.

jgoodguy

Another aspect is that any Christian groups and/or writings that were not favorable to the Roman Empire would have been eliminated early on without much if any evidence left behind.

mountainman

Good points Yalla,

I'd like to add a question about the "Saturnalia". It was my understanding that on the "Saturnalia" the roles of the masters and the servants were temporarily exchanged, and that the masters served the servants. The "widespread cultural attitudes about ritualized mockery" may simply relate to this custom, of switching roles between lord and slave, master and servant, on the festival of the "Saturnalia".

Best wishes


Pete

Toto

Archived thread on the use of Philo by the gospel writers

Archived thread from 2003 on points of correspondence between Philo's Against Flaccus and the Passion.

Harold Leidner found 24 parallels between Flaccus and the Passion, indicating some sort of literary borrowing.

davidstarlingm

The important question here, as we consider the possibility of "literary borrowing", is whether it is unlikely that both events actually happened.

As several people have pointed out, the "similarities" are all highly generic. There is no reason to suppose that both events could not have taken place roughly as recorded in Philo and in Mark.

If anything, Philo's account lends support to the idea that this sort of mockery was a common practice.