J-D

It doesn't matter how many times you tell me, I'm not going to accept that it's so just because you tell me that it's so.

J-D

I wanted to know what you meant by what you posted before. The material you linked to did not shed light on that question.What you posted earlier suggested that it was possible 'that an earlier messianic story was linked to a figure born during the rule of Alexander Jannaeus' and that this explained the temporal setting of the Toledot Yeshu accounts. If you are now saying that it was Epiphanius of Salamis who did the linking, what are the two previously separate things which you say he was linking, what do you suggest would have been his reason for linking them, and how do you suppose that this explains the temporal setting of the Toledot Yeshu accounts?

And how do you suppose any of that is relevant to the subject matter of this thread?I already said that I do not have a scenario to explain the temporal setting of the Toledot Yeshu accounts. You seem to be suggesting that you do have, but I'm only seeing a 'C' and an 'A', which is not enough to make a 'SCENARIO'.

maryhelena

Facts:

1) The Toledot Yeshu accounts relate a Jesus like figure born during the rule of Alexander Jannaeus.
2) Epiphanius has an account of a Christ figure born during the rule of Alexander Jannaeus.

I linked to the book by Mead: Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.

The subject matter of this thread relates to the question: "Is HJ not the more likely overall explanation".

If you don't think considering a story set earlier than the gospel timeline relevant to that discussion - that's fine by me. Then, by all means, forget I even mentioned the Toledot Yeshu.....
So, you don't have your own scenario - and you don't find my mention of the Toledot Yeshu, Epiphanius and Mead's book to be sufficient enough to link or consider this earlier Jewish Jesus type story with the christian type Jesus story - OK.

There really is nothing more to say....

J-D

I don't know what you mean by 'this earlier Jewish Jesus type story'. I don't even know what you mean by 'earlier'. 'Earlier' than what?

I don't see how anybody could doubt that there is some link between the stories of the Toledot Yeshu and the stories of the Gospels. The question is what that link might be. If you are suggesting that the link is that the stories of the Toledot Yeshu are the source for the stories of the Gospels, you have not made clear to me why you think that to be the case. (Also, if that is what you are suggesting, it is not clear to me why you have not said so in as many words.)

Sheshbazzar

הושע whose name 'Hoshea' ('help' or 'rescue' ('Saviour') was changed by 'Moses' into יהושע by the addition of the theophonic element יה 'YAH' (Num 13:16, conveying the meaning 'YAH's Deliverer' because this was the one who would 'deliver' the people into The Promised Land.
(see also the usage of יה in connection with the form ישׁוּעָה 'yeshuah'- "salvation" in Ex 15:2 )

'Joshua' was a Hebrew folk hero and legendary figure for ages, one whose actual 'name' took on a supernatural aspect (see for example Zech 3:8 & 6:11-12)
Thus would have been the anticipated name of any messiah 'anointed' 'deliverer' or 'Saviour'. It is quite reasonable that there existed volumes of 'midrashim' regarding such a prominent 'Name' and heroic character in the Hebrew texts and religion.

DCHindley

I think this all is getting a bit confused. An OCRd scan of Mead's book is available here. To flesh out the Talmud and midrash evidence, I'd recommend the equally OCRd scan of R. Travers Herford's Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (about 1903, same year I believe as Meade's referenced book), where the evidence is laid out and analyzed.

The Babylonian Talmud twice (b. Sanh. 107b and again b. Sotah. 47a) relates a story about R. Joshua ben Perachiah, who traveled into exile in Alexandria with a certain Jeschu, due to Alexander Janneus' persecution of Pharisees (sometime between 104-78 BCE). Jeschu made a comment that Joshua (mis)construed as lewd, and repulsed him.

Try as he might, Jeschu could not get Joshua to take him back as a disciple. Hurt and frustrated, Jeschu erects a "brickbat" (the paddle by which bricks are moved in and out of a kiln), and made sacrifices to it like an idol, signifying that if he could not be Joshua's disciple, he might as well be a pagan.

Joshua, realizing that he had driven Jeschu to renouncing his faith in God, lamented that he should have been repulsing him with one hand while simultaneously drawing him back with the other, rather than pushing him away with both hands.

The Jerusalem Talmud has a similar story involving Jehudah b. Tabbai and an unnamed disciple (j. Hag. vi. 2). Since the Jerusalem Talmud is generally considered to preserve earlier tradition, it is supposed by many experts that the Jerusalem Talmud has modified the story to make it relevant to Jesus of the Christians. That is, just as this teacher made the mistake of driving his disciple to idolatry on account of a stubborn disposition, then repenting too late, Jews of the Talmudic age should try to bring back into the fold those who hold objectionable views that deserve to be condemned.

Epiphanius is aware of Jewish traditions applied to Jesus that are also found in Talmud and Midrash (roughly contemporary), and later the Toledoth Jeschu (probably 6th century or later in its preserved forms). These are the Ben Pandera and mamzer (bastard) rumors, and the idea that the Jewish crown passed from Alexander Janneus directly to Jesus, which Meade takes to mean that Jesus must have been around during the period of his reign, and thus might be based on the presence of a Jeschu in the ben Perachiah story in the Babylonian Talmud.

DCH

mountainman

The victors rewrote the history of the conflict. They had command of the technology and the power and the wealth and the influence and the army. Bart Ehrman puts it like this


The first thing that needs to be known is WHEN this conflict happened. Academic consensus states that the conflict was spread out between the 2nd and the 4th centuries. I have my reservations ...


The refutations were preserved by the faithful heresiologists for the purpose of posterity. What we were not meant to read thousands of years later were the actual texts of the heretics, since the faithful heresiologists did their best to burn and destroy all copies and preserved writings of the heretics.

As revealed by reading about the recent three manuscript finds Dead Sea Scrolls (non Christian), Nag Hammadi Codices and the Gospel of Judas (Codex Tchacos), the credibility problem for these ancient heresiologists is two-fold:

(1) these texts are continually appearing for "investigative historical analysis"
(2) the Roman Catholic Church is no longer controlling manuscript and archaeological finds

The gJudas find was apparently managed by National Geographic and not, as in all earlier epochs of history before the DSS, by the Vatican "specialists".


The most dangerous "erroneous" views were not left unchallenged by the sword and the fire and the anathemas of heresiologists. Two relevant case studies are Arius of Alexandria and Emperor Julian.


Some have postulated there the Roman Empire c.325 CE consisted of less than 10% christians and more than 90% pagans. Suddenly and unexpectedly when the Christian's became victorious, the 90% pagans either became a small and invisible minority, or their resistance to the idea of Constantine's Bible and the Jesus character who dwelled within it, was omitted from the Victor's history of the conflict.

I think it is far more reasonable to suspect the victors of this war, after physically destroying the (Greek) writings of the so-called heretics, simply twisted the truth of their miraculous rise to monopoly in the Roman Empire monotheistic religious cult market.

Doug Shaver

Not necessarily, though of course I don't speak for Pete. Even without any conspiracies, we have no grounds for assuming that everything any heresiologist ever wrote would have survived for us to know about it. Nor can we assume, while acknowledging that most ancient documents did not survive even in copies, that the surviving works should provide us a representative sample of the opinions that were being expressed. Preservation and copying of manuscripts did not follow anybody's conscious plan, but neither was it entirely random. Nothing got copied unless somebody thought it was worth copying, and for roughly a thousand years in Europe, the only people deciding what was worth copying were church officials.

I think you're assuming a few things not in evidence, such as that there was a considerable period during which mythicist Christianity was a serious contender with historicist Christianity. I don't think we can just assume that that was ever the case. Historicist Christianity is not clearly attested before the second century (absent question-begging interpretations of the Pauline writings) and seems to have barely existed, if at all, before the canonical gospels became widely circulated. The historical paper trail contains only vestiges of mythicist Christianity, and those vestiges are mostly from the middle to late first century. It may well be that mythicism was practically moribund by the time historicism became ascendant.

Any argument from silence, to work at all even as part of a cumulative case, needs to establish a high probability that evidence for the phenomenon at issue would have survived long enough to come to our awareness if the phenomenon had been real.

mountainman

Thanks for all this Shesh. I certainly agree that these are all thought provoking issues, and that a theory of christian origins also needs to explain the authorship and universal preservation of the "Christian nomina sacra", not only in the greek NT but also in the Greek LXX.

mountainman

What are these "mythicist vestiges" from the first century? What about the docetists, and the Gnostic heretics, and the paper trail of later centuries?