Doug Shaver

If you think you can win this argument just by questioning my c.v., I'll concede right now. You win.

If you'd rather win by demonstrating that the evidence is on your side, we can continue.

LegionOnomaMoi

I'm sure you are aware of the extravagant claims made by those like Tabor concerning the so-called James Ossuary. You are determined to compare court trials with historiography, so I wonder what you think of the following (source):
"After a trial of more than five years with 138 witnesses, more than 400 exhibits and a trial transcript of 12,000 pages, Judge Aharon Farkash of the Jerusalem District Court has cleared the defendants of all forgery charges."

Does this mean that it we have archaeological evidence for "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus?" because a court determined it wasn't a forgery? No:
"The judge’s decision doesn’t mean that the inscriptions are authentic. It only means that the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are forgeries."

They court wasn't trying to establish what actually happened (whether or not the inscription was forged). It was only concerned with whether or not the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the inscription was forged.

Should we interpret this legal decision, which made use of legal standards you wish to apply to the study of history, somehow shows that the inscription is not a forgery? Or does it simply show that courts and historians are after different things and use different methods, and equating the two is fallacious?

aa5874

Your claim is most laughable. The court was indeed attempting to find out what actually happened with respect to the inscription by using the EVIDENCE that was accepted during the trial.

Based on the evidence, if what you say is true, the court ruled in favor of the defendant.

But, in any event, Apologetic sources have ALREADY denied or gave the negative implication that NT Jesus had a human brother called the Apostle James.

1. No apostle listed in the Gospels and Acts is the brother of Jesus,

2. Apologetic sources claimed Jesus had NO human father.

3. In Apologetic sources the father of the Apostle James was Alphaeus and his mother was NOT the mother of the so-called Jesus.

LegionOnomaMoi

Finding out what happened is about looking at all the available evidence and determining the most plausible explanation. Courts do not do this. They look at some of the evidence, and will exclude everything from admissions of guilt to DNA evidence if X procedure wasn't followed, regardless of whether the evidence would prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. Nor does a court determine which explanation is most plausible. A jury/judge cannot (legally) claim "well, we're about 95% sure the defendent is guilty, and that's good enough for us." 5% doubt means a "not guilty" verdict.


Who said his brother had to be an apostle? James is "listed" as Jesus' brother in Paul, Mark, and Josephus.

Sort of like Augustus Caesar?

So the apostle James wasn't Jesus' brother. James, the brother of Jesus, was Jesus' brother. Paul and Mark distinguish between the two, and Josephus doesn't mention the apostle James.

aa5874

In many instances it is virtually impossible to look at ALL the available evidence. Whether in or out of the courts a matter is generally resolved by gathering ENOUGH evidence.


James in Galatians 1.19 is called an apostle.

Galatians 1:19 NIV
Please read the Life of Augustus by Suetonius--It is recorded that the father of Augustus was Gaius OCTAVIUS.

It is recorded that Jesus was the Son of somekind of Ghost in the NT.

Well, you are putting forward a most hilarious proposition. You have presented gMark and the Pauline writings as evidence. I WILL examine them and Expose what they wrote.

In gMark 6.48-49 and 9.2 Jesus was NOT human he walked on water and transfigured--human beings cannot walk on water and INSTANTLY transfigure.

In Galatians 1--the Pauline writer claimed he was NOT the apostle of a HUMAN being but of Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.

Jesus was NOT HUMAN in gMark and the Pauline writings.

And further in Galatians 1.19, James was one of the Apostles so if Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 did NOT Identify James as an apostle then he was probably the brother of Jesus the Son of Damneus.

LegionOnomaMoi

You missed the point. Or rather the points. I'll simplify again.

1) A court will not allow evidence, even if it is conclusive proof. For example, if the guilty party writes down a full confession, and signs the last page, but the officer forgets to have him sign over every page, the court may very well throw out the confession. If the crime is recorded on a security camera, but the footage is leaked illegally to the media during trial, not only will the judge not allow it, but will sequester the jury so they can't see it.

In other words, conclusive evidence is dismissed.

2) History is about what most likely happened, or the most plausible explanation given our evidence. If one juror is 95% sure that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the rest our 100% sure, the fact that one juror has some doubt is all that matters. Every juror can agree that it is almost certain that the accused is guilty, and all but one is certain, but because one juror has some doubt, the jury will rule "guilty."

In other words, the court isn't after the most plausible explanation, but only whether or not every juror is 100% sure the accused is guilty.






But not in Mark (or Matthew). So Mark describes James as Jesus' brother, but not an apostle during Jesus' life. Paul, writing after Jesus' life, says he is, but he is not on par with Peter and the other James. The same is true in Acts. Mark is aware of James, Jesus' brother (as is Josephus), yet doesn't call him an apostle. Could it be that during his ministry, as stated indirectly or quite explicitly ("for even his own brothers did not believe in him"), James wasn't an apostle, but joined later? That would explain why Mark (and Matthew, likely dependent here on Mark) both state that James is Jesus' brother, but do not call him an apostle, and why Acts (almost universally believed to be the second part of Luke) introduces another James who is not an apostle.


I have read it (I have it in latin), but how can I use it as evidence when it's genre is Bioi Lives, like the gospels or Philostratus' work on the magician Apollonius, and as the classicist and professor of history Ronald Mellor notes in his book Roman Historians, "It is important that we judge the Lives on Suetonius' own terms" because they are Lives, and thus Sueontius' "purposes, methods, and results were all quite different from the literary and moral aims an historian." While roman historians used a "chronological, usually annalistic, structure," Suetonius "uses a non-chronological organization to make it clear he is not writing history." (emphasis added).
And it is recorded that Alexander was the son of Zeus (Plutarch reports the story of his mother's divine conception) and that Augustus was the son of god.

Actually what you will do is continue to make the same logical fallacies you have previously: one cannot make inferences about evidence, one must categorize it as history or not, and if not nothing in it can be historical.

Applying that standard to all ancient histories, what's left? Which historians never use or report myths?

aa5874

Again and again, a matter is resolved whether in or out of a court on the EVIDENCE that is ALLOWED.

Evidence that was OBTAINED in violation of court rules is NOT conclusive evidence and would NOT be presented to jurors for deliberation.

Your claim is rather absurd. The rules of the court were set up PRECISELY in attempt to assure that the verdict is reasonable.

You very well know that NOT all matters in courts need 100% agreement and very well know that not all jurisdiction abide by the very same rules.

Again and again, the resolution of any matter is based on the evidence that was allowed. In other words UNKNOWN evidence or assumed evidence has ZERO value for any resolution.

Again your post is just mumbo jumbo-- just filled with absurdities and confusion.

Josephus mentioned MANY characters called Jesus so we cannot assume that Jesus in Antiquities 20.9.1 is Jesus in gMark or gMATTHEW when Josephus did NOT make any reference to the NT Canon.

1. Josephus did NOT state that Jesus the brother of James was dead.

2. Josephus did NOT state that Jesus the brother of James had a mother named Mary.

3. Josephus did NOT name the Parents of James.

4. Josephus did NOT state that James or Jesus lived in Nazareth.

How in the world can you ASSUME that Jesus the ANOINTED in Josephus was Jesus in gMark and gMatthew and NOT Jesus the Son of Damneus???

There is ABSOLUTELY Nothing in Antiquities of the Jews that can show that Jesus the Anointed was NOT Jesus the Son of Damneus and can ONLY be Jesus of the NT.

HJers claim that their Jesus was NOT CHRIST so Antiquities could NOT be their Jesus.

HJers claim THEIR Jesus was NOT CHRIST but an OBSCURE Apocalyptic preacher.


We have the documented name of the FATHER of Augustus--Gaius Octavius and we have the name of the Father of Jesus--it was a Holy Ghost.

We have the Documented Father of Alexander the Great--Philip II of Macedon, and Augustus--Gaius Octavius and Jesus---the HOLY Ghost.

No way!!! It is you who put forward a most hilarious notion that the historicity of other figures of antiquity will determine the historicity of YOUR Jesus.

It is most absurd to entertain the proposal that if people of antiquity did exist then Jesus did exist even though there is NO evidence for an historical Jesus or far worse to put forward the idea that if Jesus did NOT exist no-one else did.

You very well know that the existence or non-existence of any character of antiquity needs a Separate and independent inquiry and that the evidence and results of the inquiry cannot be transferred to other unknown characters.

LegionOnomaMoi

That's true, and good historians or journalists will examine all evidence critically and come to a conclusion on what most likely happened, and the courts will throw out evidence so that the jury cannot even see it nor is aware it exists.



The question is why. The head of a company kills someone in her building, and it is recorded on her security cameras. An employee hands this over to law enforcement, who confirm that it is indeed authentic. But the tape is the property of the murderer, and the employee (unknowlingly) was handing over evidence he had no right to.

So the jury never sees the tape of the murder nor is informed it exists.

As this actually does happen, how then can you compare a jury to historians?



No, actually. From a paper ("Reasonable Doubt") published in the peer-reviewed journal Columbia Law Review: "The [Supreme] Court noted that the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt 'provides concrete substance for the presumption of innoncence'" In fact, "the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt reflects society's value determination that 'it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.'"

In other words, this standard of proof (which is not limited to the US) is not about finding out what most likely happened or even what almost certainly happened. It's designed to "let a guilty man go free" rather than "convict an innocent man."

Which is why it's ridiculous to compare the historical methods with a jury's ruling. The historian examines the evidence and determines whether or not it has value. The jury may never be informed that a video of the crime even exists, because someone else decided it wasn't allowed.

Wrong again. Evidence in court often thrown out not because it has "ZERO value" but because even though it would be of great value, the system was designed to protect the guilty rather than condemn the evidence. A journalist, for example, will absolutely make use of hearsay evidence. A court will usually not, but not because it has "Zero value" but because they aren't after what most likely happened.

You mean like logic and probability theory are as far as you are concerned?

We're not "assuming." Greeks, Romans, Jews, etc., all shared the same issue when it came to first names: there weren't a lot them. So where we use surnames, they used identifiers. The most common were kinship identifiers and titles, but places of origin, trades, etc., were also used.

Josephus is mainly interested in the high priest Ananus, and why he was eventually deposed. He wants to introduce James, because James' execution is an example of the unjust actions of Ananus.

In order to make sure that his readers no which James he is talking about, he identifies him by his much more well-known brother Jesus. Josephus then identifies Jesus by his "title" (tou legomenou Christou).

Josephus thought these were sufficient to indentify who he was talking about. If there were many people named Jesus and also "called christ" than why would he use that to identify the Jesus in question?



I'm not assuming. I know how identifiers were used. One Jesus is explicitly identified as the son of Damneus. The other is identified as "Jesus the one called Christ" (possibly "so-called Christ). The reason ancient authors like Josephus used identifiers is so that the reader would know who they were talking about.

Apart from, say, evidence and logic. For one thing, we have at least three independent sources (Mark, Paul, and Josephus), who identify a James, brother of Jesus known as the Christ. For another, Josephus uses two seperate identifiers (and in the same passage). The entire point of such identifiers is to distinguish between different people with the same name. Under your reading, Josephus is going out of his way to confuse his readers for no reason.

Finally, apart from anything else, Jesus son of Damneus became high priest. The title messiah/christ/annointed was a claim of kingship and/or revolution. Yet Josephus states that King Agrippa deposed Ananus and made Jesus son of Damneus high priest. You really think that Agrippa (or the Sanhedrin) would allow a person who is known and identified by a claim to kingship over all Israel to become high priest? Other would-be messiahs, both before and after Jesus, were executed, not promoted.

Only Josephus doesn't say Jesus was Christ here. He only says that Jesus was called christ.


Yet those same documents admit that others knew Jesus had a different father (Mk. 6:3, Mt. 13:55). In other words, there is documented evidence even in the gospels that Jesus was NOT the son of god, but the son of a carpenter.
So we have documented evidence that Alexander the Great was the son of Zeus and the son of Philip. Likewise, we have documented evidence that Jesus was the son of God and the son of a carpenter (or, if we go with the tradition known to the pagan Celsus, the illigetimate son of a roman soldier). So, we can apply your methods, and dismiss the possibility that either existed, or we can use historical methods.




Clearly (once again) my point was lost on you.

You claim that we have no historical evidence for Jesus. Your reasoning behind this claim seems to be that as the gospels clearly contain mythic elements and ascribe mythic properties to Jesus, they therefore cannot contain any historical information about Jesus, and in fact Jesus must be regarded as mythic.

The problem, however, is what happens when we use that same standard to all sources. I am not, as you say, entertaining .

What I am doing is asking that you apply your methods consistently.

If sources which contain mythic elements or rely on myths are to be counted as wholly mythic and ahistorical, than what historians or historical accounts are left?

aa5874

Again, all historians do NOT agree that Jesus was human so you are wasting my time. Again a jury can only reach a verdict on evidence that is allowed.

Well, please show me where else in Antiquities is the supposed Well Known Jesus Christ mentioned??

ONLY in the very Forgery in the TF. AJ 18.3.3

You very well know that Josephus himself FOUGHT with the Jews against the Romans expecting a Messianic ruler at c 70 CE and that Josephus declared the Vespasian was the Messianic ruler based on Hebrew Scripture.

Your argument makes very little sense. If Jesus in Josephus was WELL-KNOWN then he was NOT OBSCURE HJ.

If Jesus was a WELL-KNOWN Messiah then Vespasian would have probably EXECUTED Josephus for blatant deception.

Examine War of the Jews 6.5.4 The very same thing is found in Tacitus Histories and the Life of Vespasian by Suetonius.

There was no Jewish Messiah known as Jesus Christ UP to the reign of Vespasian or after the Fall of the Temple.

Jesus Christ of Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 either refers to the FORGERY in the TF [AJ 18.3.3] or is Jesus the Son of Damneus.

Your HJ cannot be both OBSCURE and well-known and was NOT Christ but is Christ in Josephus.

The HJ argument is completely illogical.

LegionOnomaMoi

Well, your response is completely irrelevant to my point, which (as usual) you seem to have missed, so it appears you're wasting my time, rather than addressing what I say.

The issue I'm trying to address with the courts has nothing to do with the historical Jesus or any specific historical issue at all. It has to do with the problems with using applying the legal standards and procedures to history, which you either implicitly or explicitly have advocated.

The larger issues, however, have to do with your conclusions about how anybody, from courts to journalists to historians, deals with evidence, and your ability (or inability) to understand the contradictions in your reasoning and a failure to address those I point out. For example: Ignoring Josephus for a moment, the gospels "document" (Mk. 6:3, Mt. 13:55) a human father of Jesus. They also "document" a divine father. We have similar documentation of both human and divine fathers for Alexander the Great.

Yet despite "documented" evidence of a human father of Jesus, write there in the text, you ignore it. You focus only on the mythic fatherhood. If you applied that method to Alexander the Great, you could likewise conclude he didn't exist. But you don't, because you don't consistently apply your standards.

Likewise, you have yet to answer which historians or historical texts you do find reliable/acceptable as historical evidence and why.

The list goes on (e.g. Iliad/Troy, NT/Jesus, etc).


It's amusing to see what you follow the section I bolded with.

In any event, the reason it makes "very little sense" to you is the assumptions you are making, not to mention addressing what I said.

The first problem is what "well-known" means. How many people, including rich, influential, powerful individuals, do we have no record of? Most of them, actually. There are plenty of people whose names at least would be familiar to people at the time, because they were well-known, yet we have no record of them.

We have surnames (lastnames) to identify one Walter from another Walter. Ancient cultures had an even bigger problem because they had far fewer "first names."

Instead of surnames, they used identifiers.

The point of using an identifier is distinguishing one person with a name like "Jesus" from another person whose name is "Jesus."

Two things logically follow from these facts.

1) An identifier is useless if it doesn't inform the intended audience whom the author is talking about.

2) Applying different identifiers to the same individual undermines the whole purpose for using them.


Ergo, if Josephus indentified Jesus by what he was called (and please note that he never says Jesus IS the messiah, only that people called him that) then it follows logically that he believed this was a sufficient identification. In fact, he identifies James via his kinship with this Jesus, and the only reason to do that (rather than through more typical ways such as James' father, or a title, or a place of origin) is because identifying him as the brother of Jesus, the one called Christ, was a surer way to do so.

I'll make this as explicit, simple, and clear as I can

1) People in Josephus' day shared the same name with lots of other people
2) People in Josephus' day dealt with this by identifying people (via kinship, title, etc.) so that they could distinguish people with the same name.
3) Josephus introduced a James, and needs to specificy which of any number of people with this name he means
4) Josephus chooses to identify James not through the most common means but through his brother, Jesus
5) Either Josephus knew nothing else about James (which can't be true given his intimate knowledge of James' execution) or he thought this the best method to identify which James he was talking about.
6) He then has to identify which Jesus he is talking about, and he does so by noting that this Jesus is "the one called Christ."
7) Shortly after this, he introduces the name Jesus again. He has just identified a Jesus, so if this is the same one there isn't a need for another identifier, yet Josephus not only provides another identifier, he produces a totally different one

Conclusion: the best explanation for Josephus' use of identifiers (for James, Jesus the one called christ, and Jesus the son of Damneus) is
1) he identified James by his brother (rather than more typical ways) because his brother would have been well-known to his intended audience
2) he identified Jesus as "the one called christ" because that was all that was needed to distinguish this Jesus from other people of the name
3) he introduces a new person named Jesus, and thus needs to distinguish this Jesus from both the previous Jesus and others of the name, and so identifies him through the most typical means: who his father is.


That's quite a claim given how you somehow seem to imply that your information about Vespasian in some way matters here.