spin

Let's go the whole hog there, Vinnie. As you discount these boys, let's get serious: name ten real historians who have published in favour of Jesus in the past twenty years (and I don't mean the suits that come out of seminaries, RS courses or got degrees in other such corn flakes packets). You know, real historians.

You'll find they, like real archaeologists, avoid the religious stuff like the plague, and those who regularly work in the field are seen as semi-literates who barely can discern historical data from the beliefs they regularly fall over. The historical jesus guys are not much different from side-show houdinis who can miraculously make history escape from seemingly impossible situations, such as the gospels.

So, Vinnie, real historians? Ten real ones?


spin

Gooch's dad

Have Freke, Gandy, or Doherty published any of their findings in peer-reviewed scholarly journals? I think that is Vinnie's point.

The fact that Behe has published a pop press book on Intelligent Design doesn't mean that ID is sound science, no matter how many footnotes he might have.

Same goes with pop press books on history, right?

In case it isn't obvious from the rest of my post, I come down firmly on the side of a historical Jesus, a radical Jewish preacher with a small following, who was either stoned to death or crucified in the early first century.

Doherty tries setting up a mystery religion that had long preceded Paul, but provides no actual evidence of any Christianity preceding Paul.

The early Christian church, *and* Josephus's Antiquities 20.9.1 both refer to Jesus having family. That's plenty to hang a historical Jesus on.

spin

You'll note that we've had a bit to say about the xian additions to Josephus. The longer one contains a number of hapax legomena for Josephus found quite frequently in Eusebius. It has the farcical statement that Jesus "was the Christ", words coming from our devout Jew, Josephus. This same text breaks the discourse flow indicated in 18.3.4 which is linked closely to 18.3.2. What comes between (the Jesus interpolation) is not closely related to these two sections. The other passage 20.9.1 features a contorted syntax not found eleswhere in the Flavian corpus, despite Bernard's intense efforts to find another example.

You can scratch Josephus as a witness. And remember that most classical texts that were preserved were preserved by xians and there were a lot of spurious writings from the centuries. In such a context you cannot take any pro-xian passage in a pagan writer for granted. You have to make each case.

What that leaves you with are undated gospel texts whose historical merit has never been ascertained and long after the fact church fathers. Oh, and a few personages who may or may not be mainly the effort of Eusebius -- 90% of our knowledge about one Papias comes from the pages of Eusebius.

We have paid too much attention of xians attempting to tear down mythicist analyses of Jesus and not enough attention looking for tangible historical data for Jesus. What I find is that there is none and I would prefer that someone show me that there is some. It's easy to snipe out theories in gestation, theories that haven't had a few thousand years of apologetics behind them. If I look at what's behind the xian apologetics I can't find history. That gets laughed off with the question, how else could we have this early xian complex without a real Jesus? That is what the mythicist is working out. Give him a thousand years of conflicts with external enemies and see the results.

Religionists don't do history of Jesus, they just do various shades of apologetics.


spin

Gooch's dad

spin, I don't consider "contorted syntax" to be much of a refutation of Antiquities 20.9.1. And why did you even bother mentioning the Testimonium? Whenever I bring this issue up, I mention specifically Antiquities 20.9.1. And the vast majority of responses from JM'ers address the TF. Why? I didn't MENTION the Testimonium.

Whether you like it or not, Antiquities 20.9.1 appears to be accepted by a large majority of scholars. And even if you toss in the supposed missing James reference that Origen discusses at length, you *still* have Josephus mentioning James as a brother of Jesus. That is a secular historian supporting James as a brother of Jesus.

To discard the references in the gospels and Acts to James, simply because they are Christian documents, is a classic fallacy of poisoning the well.

Can any HJ'ers provide any other case in history where a mythical character still has family hanging around many decades later, as attested by Hegesippus?

Cheers,

Kelly

spin

It is not just contorted syntax, but it seems that I have to go through a full synopsis of what you haven't read.

1) the syntax is contorted in such a way as not to have any antecedent for the familial relationship (here "brother", which is strange in itself) -- normally familial relationships are preceded by the person's name, or by a description of the person's role in the narrative; (so not just contorted syntax, but unacceptible syntax)

2) the use of xristos in the text is unexplained, at the same time strange for our devout Jospehus to use, as the messiah had a very specific and cultic significance to a Jew, and unintelligble to a Roman Greek audience as the term didn't mean anything outside xian circles until xianity was widely diffused. Jesus the "ointment"!?

You mnetioned Josephus without qualifications. You have now qualified your statement.

I don't give a tinker's cuss who accepts what. We are doing history not popularity. I wish you and all the others who say such things would drop that as simply wasting everyone's time.

If you read Origen carefully, he doesn't support the reference to Jesus in 20.9.1. He is giving his own commentary to the text. In fact he doesn't quote any phrases from the passage. He specifically says that Josephus doesn't believe in Jesus as the Christ, yet 20.9.1 says that he was Jesus called Christ (a phrase straight out of Mt 1:16). This is just as fake as the TF.

When you do history you introduce your testimonies. Try it with those sources. How do you justify using texts which have no dates, no authors, no provinence, no known reason for writing, texts which you know nothing about?

Tertullian tells us a bit about the eponymous founder of the Ebionites, one Ebion, for whom we find more information in later church fathers. Ebion is a totally fictitious character. The name Ebionite comes from a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew `BYWN, meaning "poor". These guys weren't historians; they had no idea of historiography. If Ebion can be invented, so can other characters.

Other writers, such as Tertullian (De Praescr., xxxiii; De Carne Chr., xiv, 18), Hippolytus (cfr. Pseudo-Tert., Adv. Haer., III, as reflecting Hippolytus's lost "Syntagma"), and Epiphanius (Haeres., xxx) derive the name of the sect from a certain Ebion, its supposed founder. Epiphanius even mentions the place of his birth, a hamlet called Cochabe in the district of Bashan, and relates that he travelled through Asia and even came to Rome. From here.


spin

Gooch's dad

spin,

Scroll up to my post. Josephus Antiquities 20.9.1. How is that nonspecific?

As for mythical characters, you didn't provide what I asked for. Did Ebion have any family members that are mentioned by secular historians? Were those family members still being discussed nearly 200 years later by anybody at all? The challenge still stands.

Spin, you claim you are "doing history". How so? What standard are you referring to that mentions "tortured syntax" as a disqualifier for a reference by a historian?

spin

I don't understand your statements. It's better to include what you are responding to.

You are not serious. It should be sufficient that a character can be invented and developed upon as in the case of Ebion. Complete fiction. You just want his address and income tax number. That's cheating.

These are two separate issues. The discussion about philology is to show you that you cannot assume anything about the text. A historian has to justify the sources used.


spin

Gooch's dad

Oy. There's your statement. Now please go back and read my first post.

As for the rest...well, we have the text of Josephus Ant. 20.9.1, which few scholars doubt is interpolated. We have your opinion on why it might be interpolated. <shrug>

And we have Doherty claiming that Paul is somehow the first to write about this mystery cult that has been around for quite a long time...and we have no writings about Christianity from any time earlier than Paul.

Sorry, it seems pretty clear to me that Doherty doesn't have a case, and the Jewish preacher Jesus likely existed.

And now the fellow from the OP knows a bit about the typical MJ/HJ tussles here.

Cheers,

Kelly

spin

OK. I didn't read it closely enough.

As I indicated, history is not a popularity contest, neither is philology. Why not admit that you don't know and can't pass judgment? The evidence I and others have put foward needs to be confronted not with smug eyes closed as the xian does.

I'm not knowledgeable about Doherty. He is just one person working at it. What I was talking about is that study of mythical Jesus is really in the early stages, so you can't say too much about it. I myself am agnostic, though in the sense that there isn't enough data for anyone to do history on the subject so they are all w*nking. After 1800 years of lacklustre results, we may as well give someone else a bit of room to try.


spin

Gooch's dad

Oh, I'm all in favor of them trying! No problem there. But why don't they publish their results in journals of biblical criticism? That was one of the points of my original post.

I have followed many, if not most of the HJ/MJ threads in here. I see nothing that has convinced me that Josephus didn't write about James and Jesus as brothers. This corroborates with Paul. As Peter Kirby says in his page on the TF, this is sufficient to secure Jesus a place in history.