Chris Weimer

If we're thinking of the same thing, the micrographic letters were figment of imagination - they didn't exist. The same author, if we're thinking of the same author, found all sorts of things in "micrographic letters" that were never verified by anyone else. To my knowledge, it's bunk - same category as Deardoff's UFO Talmud.

andrewcriddle

At the very least we have very early 2nd century claims about events supposedly occurring in Judea c 30 CE and supposedly serving as the origin of a movement about which we have evidence at the very latest from the very early 2nd century.

This is evidence which by normal standards of evaluating evidence requires
dealing with in one way or another.
Are you suggesting that it is plausible to date all the NT to the 2nd century ?

Just out of interest do my three choices in your opinion exhaust the major possibilities or are there options that I have left out ?

Andrew Criddle

spin

Vardaman is not an archaeologist, unless you think Wyatt is an archaeologist as well.

Eeek, the old micrographic drivel!!!!!!!!!

When you see this rubbish talked about in peer reviewed journals rather than christian sheister rag productions then you might take it seriously. Until then, treat it like voodoo.

lee_merrill, why do you regurgitate such utter rubbish?

If you haven't thought about this lunacy before, to be a proconsul, you must have been a consul before that. There was no other Quirinius who was consul other than the one famous one who did the census at the end of Archelaus's reign. He was named consul in 12 BCE, so he could not have been a proconsul in 11 BCE because he was still consul. Please, please think about this. You should not spread such deception and you shouldn't fall prey to such crap.

He did hold at least two governorships, one in Cyrene and the other in Syria.

I have little interest in the town of Nazareth. You cannot derive the new testament nazarhnos ("Nazarene") from Nazareth. Nazareth was a much later layer in the gospel tradition. "Nazarene" comes from the notion of one dedicated (NZR) to god and is used with religious connotations. Eusebius says that Jesus was a Nazarene not by act but by his nature:

Eusebius writes (Dem. Ev. 7.2.41ff), "But the ancient priests, who were anointed with prepared oil, which Moses called Nazer, were called for that reason Nazarenes, while our Lord... needed no human unguent... because He naturally had the qualities it symbolized, and also because He was called Nazarene from Nazara."

Eusebius knows two reasons why Jesus was called a Nazarene and the town was only the second!


spin

spin

When we make summary statements, sometimes their import is overlooked in the summary. Which early second c. claims do you refer to?

Well, perhaps you have some secure way of dating nt earlier? You see the problem is not what I'm suggesting. It's starting with verifiable evidence rather than assuming an unsupported status quo.

I have hypothesized a development through religious speculation on the necessity of a saviour already having been in the world (as per Mithras) and who would return at the eschaton (again as per Mithras). This combined with some deviant approach to the Jewish messiah could yield the ingredients of a contemplated real saviour having been in this world. The idea that I put forward was that once the speculation is reified in the tradition it becomes accepted as having "really" happened, just as Tertullian accepted that Ebion had really participated in the world.

It isn't necessary though that I have some other hypothesis. It is necessary that one get beyond a hypothesis, such as the mainstream christian hypothesis and so far no-one seems to be able. We are really only speculating still. Your IMOs are just such speculation.


spin

Roger Pearse

I believe those strange-sounding claims about micrographic letters were dubious, tho.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but, before anyone writes a single sentence, a single letter, still less start ranting about what "we know" about the appointments of proconsuls to Syria, there are certain pieces of data that I want to see. Namely:

* A list of proconsuls for Syria, with an indication for each of how we know: on what evidence, precisely, is the assertion based?

That would be useful and educational.

Until we have this, surely we are simply wasting valuable drinking time trading modern 'authorities' whose opinion matters nothing to us.

When we have this, in view of the enthusiasm for obscurantism expressed at least twice this week in this forum, I would very much like to hear from those who expressed those opinions just why they don't think the same arguments apply to this data also.

But IN THAT ORDER, please, hey? -- Data first. Do we really want to hear someone make up excuses for things which he knows nothing about?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

The amount of evidence one has to explain away in order to date all the canonical Gospels later than the death of Trajan is too great to make it a plausible option IMO.

IF we are to discuss this specific point further it would help if I knew your views about the following.

Markan priority
The preparation by Marcion c 140 CE of an edited version of our Luke
The use by Justin Martyr c 150-155 of a harmony of Matthew and Luke
The dependence or independence of Thomas on the canonical Gospels.
The use of (some of) the canonical Gospels by Basilides and Valentinus
The use of at least one of the canonical Gospels by the Apocalypse of Peter

(I've given this list becauseI don't know your position on these issues. There are other relevant points where I know your views from other threads)
The problem here is that you seem to be using a standard of verifiability that would exclude a very large amount of what we believe about ancient history.

As far as dating ancient works go I would put the claim that most of the new testament was written before 125 CE as among our more solid conclusions.
One problem here is that the evidence for your ideas about Mithraism as it affected the world of the Roman Empire is rather more flimsy than our evidence about early Christianity.

I'm not saying your ideas about Mithraism are necessarily wrong just IMO weakly supported. Could you give me your evidence that Mithraism in the Roman Empire was particularly eschatological ? (Obviously there is a very important eschatological tendency in Zoroastrianism but that is somewhat different.)
In order for the idea that there was no historical Jesus to gain any wide following, it is probably necessary for a solid alternative to be presented.

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

I'm afraid I do not understand how this relates to my comment, or what notion you have in mind; sorry.

We seem to be back to speculating on what 'must' be Tacitus sources. I refer you to what I wrote above.

Tacitus calls him Christ, as all the Roman sources do. Unless he wanted to mystify his his audience, he would hardly call him anything else.

See above, again.

I look forward to some form of evidence for this statement.

You haven't indicated why, tho; only that speculation about sources can be used to cast doubt on data. Indeed. See my comments above.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Minimalist

You really do need to study up on the geography of the area. The city of Jerusalem exists for one reason: The Gihon Spring. It was the only reliable water source for the ancient city. Then, as now, the idea of location-location-location was the prime component in real estate attractiveness. Thus the fact that they have been able to excavate extensively over a long period of time in the Gihon Spring area (which is, more or less, adjacent to the Temple Mount area) means that they are digging in the most logical place to find evidence of human habitation. What the city has grown into now, or even under Herod when Roman-style aqueducts were brought in is irrelevant.
Humans need water and in the time in question, Gihon was the only game in town. They have found, as the article said, the remains of Hezekiah's expansion, the Middle and Early Bronze Age cities....they have even found neolithic remains. What is conspicuously missing is any substantial indication of a major settlement in the period between the Middle Bronze Age and Hezekiah's late-8th century expansion. The notion that "conquests" (or erosion....I've been handed that line of malarkey, too!) would selectively eliminate ONLY the artifacts from the so-called Davidic period while leaving behind an archaeological record of every other culture/civilization in the area is typical of the special pleading that theists employ.

Coupled with Israel Finkelstein's archaeological surveys which show that the entire province of Judah was a sparsely populated, mainly pastoral, region prior to Hezekiah a picture emerges which is not supporting any sort of 10th century Empire.

At this point, the archaeological community has made up its mind based on the evidence at hand. Eilat Mazar is trying to overturn that with her current dig. So far, in spite of outlandish claims by her employers she herself has been remarkably low key about her findings. If she definitively finds some grand palace or temple which can be linked to David or Solomon it will be front page news everywhere. So far, she has found an anonymous building or maybe just a wall with no inscriptions to indicate who built it or when.


<sigh> Last year, I was having a dispute on another board about this and the Fundie proponent was using an article written by a guy named McCray.
After the battle got heated, he e-mailed McCray about Vandaman and McCray answered....basically admitting that he'd been hoodwinked by Vandaman. He's a con artist.

Roger Pearse

Can we be so certain as to what non-extant texts 'must' contain?

Does any ancient or medieval source discuss the missing books of Tacitus? If not, isn't Drew merely speculating, in a somewhat uneducated way?

I know that many people are not aware of the size of the losses of material from antiquity, or the sparsity of survivals. If works by St. Augustine are lost -- whose works were found in every western medieval abbey as a matter of course -- including the 'Hortensius' which every reader of the Confessions must know, are we surprised that other material is lost?

If there is a conspiracy, I think we might reasonably ask who were the conspirators, and when did they do their deed? And how? And what evidence for it can be produced? Anyone can allege a conspiracy by anyone.

I wonder how we know these things.

Isn't a lot of Dio lost, and only extant in epitomes by John Xiphilinus and people like that? If so, were all the lost books excluded on the same grounds? And by who, and when?

As far as I recall, all of it was missing until recently. In what way is that mysterious?

Would it? Why?

I would be most interested to see evidence for this. All that is stated so far is that it is not extant. This is not evidence for the thesis proferred, surely?

The standard text of John Chrysostom, Against the Jews, comprises notes from 8 sermons. One of these is only a third the length of the others. This suggests that the remainder is missing.

No doubt a conspiracy theorist would allege that this proves that the Jews destroyed the -- no doubt damning -- details of Jewish crimes that this contained. Indeed such accusations (although not about this text as far as I know) form a staple of anti-semitic literature.

As it happens, a scholar recently found a manuscript which *did* contain the complete text of sermon 2, although I have found no way to get hold of this or get an English version made as yet (too many other projects).

I don't think any normal person argues from absence of evidence and losses in transmission into some huge conspiracy by the {insert hate-object here}'s. On the contrary, do we ever ever see such attempts other than for polemic?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

There's another of those IMOs.

This is the easiest explanation of the relationship between the gospels and thus has a certain edge of other theories. Occam and all that.

Unfounded assumption through facile reading of later writers. It merely says that Marcion's gospel was around before the time of those writers, that the version of Luke that they had was related to it and that they believed Marcion must have bowdlerized Luke, though they have no way of knowing.

Guesswork.

It seems likely that substantial use of narrative was a later development in Jesus traditions. (It's easier to collect sayings that to construct narratives.)

I gather this is from a comparison of gospels with the texts related to these figures. Can you supply how you ascertained the direction of borrowing?

And you can date the Apocalypse of Peter, assuming the canonical gospels were the source?

I try not to believe things about ancient history.

That's another IMO.

Rubbish, Andrew. The traits that I mentioned are pre-Roman.

You can get information about Mithras from Zoroastrian texts and even the Rigveda. They support the notion that Mithras was a mediator for Ahura Mazda.

I'm not particularly impressed with the methadone approach.


spin