maryhelena

Using one detail from gLuke, in a post, does not mean that I have cherry-picked from gLuke - i.e. discarded everything else.....:huh: When you come across something that I have discarded - then, by all means, do the cherry-picking routine - until then..............:wave:

jakejonesiv

Mary,

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.

Jake

maryhelena

No offence taken, Jake.

As for the 15 th year of Tiberius - which you have highlighted in the quotes above - I only brought it up because of your earlier post suggesting that the JC story has been retrojected to pre 70 c.e. in order for the origins of Christianity to be "safely shrouded". Hence my question - why the 15th year of Tiberius. From a mythicist perspective - meaningless or significant?

andrewcriddle

Hi Jake

Don't the letters between Pliny and Trajan about the Christian problem conflict with your analysis ?

They date from c 111 CE but they refer to a Christian movement going back some decades before that time.

Andrew Criddle

Horatio Parker

A good question. Something about the number "15" or maybe a significant occurrence that year. Or long enough before the war that only a prophet could've predicted it?

It's tough to get into the heads of ancient writers; cause and effect was like the wild west. Was it Irenaeus who argued that Christ must've lived to old age on the grounds that God as man would've had to experience all phases of life? How does one attempt to speculate along such lines?

But whatever the reason, the historical framework ie specific dates for Jesus, in the gospel stories is their most potent appeal to empiricism.

Maybe the point was only that the Messiah came after the Roman conquest; wouldn't want anyone wondering if Jesus was to save Israel from the Hasmoneans.

jakejonesiv

Hi Andrew,

I am not altogether certain that the Letter of Pliny to Trajan is authentic.I am a bit suspicious about alleged letters to and from Christians and Roman emperors in the second century!
H.Detering has suggested that the correspondence was invented by Tertullian. See Adieu, JPliny .

But let's assume that the letters are authentic. Here is the text in Latin and English.

Pliny and the Christians
The letter from Pliny to Trajan was written apparently around 112 CE and we find a Roman official faced with a situation with which he was not familiar, and wanted assurance from the Emperor that he was doing the right thing. There are no gospel details and not even a mention of the name Jesus.


The timing and the location are correct for these to be pre-Marcionite Christians. Marcion of Pontus would appear in Rome bearing the Apostilicon some 30 odd years later. Some of the suspects were rounded up strictly on the words of informers. Evidently this included persons who were called "Christians" or a word quite similar up to 25 years before. . But the letter itself shows that the definition of what was a "Christian" had undergone a radical redefinition in the recent past. According to the letter, "the contagion of this superstition" had spread very rapidly. The new craze was so pervasive that pagan temples "had been almost deserted". This was a recent occurance, else the situation would have come to offical notice long before, and the situation would not have seemed so novel to Pliny. To paraphrase a modern saying, Pliny was not dealing "with your father's Christians."

This suggests two possibilities. Either the earlier Christians (or Chrestians?) of 25 years earlier were unassociated with the new wave except by accident of name. Or, if there was a continuim, something new had fundamentally been added to the old Christianity that had sparked the new craze; "the towns and even the country villages which are being infected with this cult-contagion. " It was effectively a new religion that had gone viral, although luckily, from Pliny's viewpoint, the peak had past.

So what do we know about the new religion? The most telling comment is "they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god." Notice there seems to be some ambiguity implied as to whether Christ was considered a man or divine, “Christo quasi deo.” A Marcionite (or pre-Marcionite) docetic conception of Christ would explain the ambiguity very well.

Do we have any early Christian hymns that would qualify for the the "hymn to Christ as to a god." We do have a very good candiate in the Pre-Pauline hymn reorded in Phillipians 2:6-11, which desciribes Christ as divine figure who took on the form, likeness and apperance of a man, but did not actually become a man.

As we know from Tertullian, the Marcionites were well known to base their docetic doctrine on this passage. If the Letters of Pliny are authentic, then the Christians that Pliny wrote about were these pre-Marcionite Pauline communities in Pontus-Bithynia's environs of the early second century. Perhaps Marcion himself was a witness to these events as a young boy or man. It was about 30 years later that Marcion emerged to the West from precisley these environs.

Jake Jones IV

maryhelena

Yes, one can come up with many reasons - and I think one should try, especially from a mythicist perspective. One can't just discard the dating as of no significance. Otherwise one might just as well shut up shop and go home - nothing there worth anything anyway.

My thinking - which has been around this forum for a while now - is that gLuke 3.1 spells it out and we don't have to do too much imagining.....

Lysanias of Abilene ruled in 40 b.c. - around 70 years prior to the 15th year of Tiberius. Thus gLuke is using a prophetic, or symbolic number, as a time frame for his JC storyline. (Herod the Great made King in Rome and Antigonus made King and High Priest in Jerusalem).

If that is gLuke's game plan re the 15th year of Tiberius - then one can follow through with his other dates.

6 c.e. and the birth narrative. No historical JC so other avenues open up for the use of this date. Again - back 70 years and it's around 63 b.c. when Antigonus was taken captive to Rome after the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey.

JC about 30 years around the 15th year of Tiberius - that runs back to 1 b.c. - and 70 years back from that date and it's around 70 b.c. Right in the middle of the rule of Salome Alexandra, 76 - 67 b.c. - wife of Alexander Jannaeus - and the time period in which is set the story of the Toledot Yeshu.
gJohn and his not yet 50 years for his JC! Pilate has been dated to 19 c.e. or 26 c.e. to 36 c.e. - so 50 years back from these dates and one can have a birth narrative during the early days of the rule of Herod the Great - or later years. Slavonic Josephus has a birth narrative in the 15th year of Herod the Great - around 25 b.c.

Thus:

gJohn with the possibility of a very early dating for a birth narrative and crucifixion story (that 7th year of Tiberius crucifixion in 21 b.c....)

gMatthew moves the JC story along with a birth narrative in the later days of Herod the Great, ie JC is a young child when Archelaus is ruling. (4 b.c. - 6 c.e.)

gLuke moves things further along with his JC birth narrative in 6 c.e.

In other words, the gospel JC storyline is a moving drama....and not the genealogy of a historical man. Births are new beginnings - and it's new beginnings that are relevant for the gospel writers. 'Births' as place-markers - marking the historical landscape for relevance.

Yep, methinks the Hasmoneans had invested interests in the ins and outs of the social/political goings on pre 70 c.e. The more fascinating question is whether their interests turned to spiritual/religious developments......

Horatio Parker

So every 70 years a momentous event? Herod -> Jesus -> Destruction of the temple?

Doh! Why didn't I think of that?

So the idea would be that the informed reader would understand.
All this makes me wonder how accurate were the sources that these authors used? Were they trying to harmonize or were they correcting? How close is close enough for these guys?

It seems that ancient writers often have education in mind rather than historical precision as we understand it. Quibbling over a few years here or there might strike them as fussy?

Another possibility is that the Gentiles didn't want any Hasmoneans mucking up their story.

maryhelena

And if if didn't - nothing to stop some creative writing. JC 'walked' the sands of Palestine around the 15th year of Tiberius......History one end and creative writing the other end of those 70 symbolic time slots.....
Indeed - broad strokes is what it's about - give a little here - take a little there....
Sure - and Marcion did a good job of deleting all those Jewish genealogies from gLuke....his JC and that Jewish god were not cut from the same cloth!

aa5874

Again, your implications are NOT logical.

You ALREADY know in advance that Pliny the younger NOWHERE mentions Jesus and that it cannot be PRESUMED that there was ONLY one single Christian movement in the 2nd century.

As I have pointed out to you more than once even in gMark and gLuke there was some other character who was called Christ and Jesus did NOT start any new religion under the name of Christ.

You ALREADY know in advance that the name Christ was NOT unique to Jesus and that even in the Synoptics that it was claimed Many shall come in the name Christ.

See Mark 13.21 and Matthew 24.23. It was PREDICTED in the very NT that Many persons will be called CHRIST.

The Name CHRIST is NOT derived from Jesus.

Justin Martyr claimed there were MANY different cults called Christians who did NOT BELIEVE the Jesus story.