TedM

Since you place great emphasis on the offer of clemency, something I haven't looked at in depth (but thanks to Joe for his recent posts about it), we aren't on the same page. My comments were based on an agnostic viewpoint toward the offer of clemency, and yours are not.


Not sure I follow. I was saying that the existence of the politically motivated trial (which Pilate perceived) would be an indication to Pilate that Jesus was a political trouble-maker, but since you are denying the existance of the trial in the first place, why discuss it?

Yup, we are off-track.


In the case of Ananus the fear would have been that the governor would have objected because his authority was being usurped. In the case of the Sanhedrin you propose that they should have feared the governor because they were bringing to him a man falsely charged. Given that the man was Jewish, it seems likely that the Sanhedrin would not figured that Pilate didn't much care if he was innocent or not, which was the case, so there really wasn't much to reason for them to fear(their behavior didn't conflict any or much with Pilate's values).

ted

Amaleq13

Last things first: I'm not denying the existence of a trial. I'm denying that the trial depicted by Mark can be considered history.

First things last: I suppose you could say the trial in Mark was politically motivated for the Jewish leaders but the story makes it clear that Jesus posed no serious political threat to Pilate. Some scholars have suggested this was a deliberate attempt by the author to deny the political implications to Rome of Christianity continuing.

IMO the OP was off-track to begin with because I don't think we can assume folks in the first century thought of either "fiction" or "history" the way we do.

In the case of the Sanhedrin, the authority of the governor is also usurped though somewhat less directly. Instead of ordering the execution, themselves, they first tried to trick Pilate into ordering the execution and then tried to coerce him into it.

This only works if Ananus' victims were not Jewish so it doesn't work.

Any way you cut it, the depicted behavior of the Sanhedrin is in no way supported by Josephus' story about Ananus.

ynquirer

Excuse me, I’m a little confused. In a previous post you wrote the ending word of the phrase to be azavtani; now, you say that the word comes from Aramaic shebaq. Do you mean that shebaq flexes to yield azavtani?

For if it were otherwise, I don’t know how you split the hair so as to say that sabachthani comes from Aramaic shebaq, definitively not from Hebraic ’ZBThNY.

I’m glad to hear that. For a moment I feared that the project to deconstruct Mark had been carried as far as to deny that we can be sure that Jesus quotes Psalm 22.

Try these links: this, this, and this.

BTW I haven’t found just one instance in which “ayin� is not said to be silent at the end of a word.

Why? He did his best.

I would appreciate if you could tell how I can get the Hebraic font to which IIDB is friendly. My default transliteration seems to be confusing you. I am sorry. There is not yod at the beginning, but ayin, which I tried to represent – following some convention – by means of ’y. In my first comment in this same post I have substituted a simple apostrophe (’) for ’y, thus yielding ’ZBThNY for the last word.

This word – ’ZBThNY – I take from Psalm 22:1, Biblia Hebraica Stturgartsensia (BHS), and my procedure is comparing it with the last word of the Hebraic/Aramaic in Mark 15:34.

Now, your Hebrew seems odd to me. In particular, there are too many tavs in it, as there is a bet in the original Psalm 22:1 that I cannot find in your word.

I do agree. But that didn’t make Mark’s work too easy.

But you find it quite natural to associate it with Aramaic shebaq, don’t you? Again, I don’t see how you are able to split so thin a hair.

It is still at odds with Ockham’s razor.

I can quote Shakespeare’s famous monologue in Hamlet by saying: “Ser o no ser: ésa es la cuestión,� as meaning “To be or not to be: that is the question,� precisely because there are translations of the drama into Spanish.

By the same token, for Mark have Jesus quote Psalm 22:1 in Aramaic instead of Hebrew, you need to suppose that the Tanakh had been translated into Aramaic – something like an OT Peshita – prior to Mark.

Enrique

JoeWallack

JW:
Try to think only about "Mark" and forget about all the other Gospels "Mark's" audience didn't know. What is tricky about the desertion of the disciples? Where does "Mark" give positive commentary on the disciples. Where does "Mark" have disciple recognition of Jesus = prophecy fulfillment? Why did subsequent Christianity need to Forge disciple recognition? "Mark's" best disciples fall asleep in the Garden, is that a good thing?

Christianity has unwittingly preserved the Crime if you can read between the Lyines:

"Mark" = Story = Disciples Failed

"Matthew" = History = Link from Jesus to Disciples

"Luke" = Scripture = Link from Jesus to Disciples to Church

"John" = Theology = Link from Jesus to Disciples to Church to Theology

The Church "Wrote" its History, they didn't Record it.

I sense the Conflict within you. The Evil Emperor hasn't removed all the Reason from you. I know there is still Reason there. Search your Reason, you know it's True.



Joseph

HISTORIAN, n.
A broad-gauge gossip.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Ben C Smith

[Looking over shoulder to see whom Joseph might be talking to....] I am not at all certain (A) what this line means, (B) how it is relevant to the gospel of Mark, or (C) who the evil emperor is.

Cheers.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Think Star Wars, Ben.

Julian

<handwave>
This is not the theory you are looking for.
<handwave>
You don't need to see the evidence.

Ben C Smith

Yes, of course. But when Ronald Reagan spoke of the evil empire he was referring to the Soviet Union. I am wondering whom Joseph is calling the evil emperor.

I could be wrong, of course, but it looks like Joseph is associating my lack of firm commitment in either direction on the desertion of the disciples (which I have yet to investigate in depth) with some sort of evil influence. I would like to know what influence he thinks is holding sway over me.

:notworthy

Ben.

Chris Weimer

No. I was saying that the Aramaic word $BQ is the equivalent to the Hebrew (ZB.

I don't see a reason why not to.

The final letter is a he, not an ayin. And the wikipedia article reflects modern Hebrew usage, which is definitely not the ancient usage. On that note, it probably wasn't azavtani, but `adzabthani. However, this is speculation. None of my Hebrew grammars state that the final he is silent, so why should I expect it to be?

So you assume. Furthermore, even if he did do his best, his best may not be near enough to even look at.

Sorry, perhaps we should follow the normal conventions.

)BGDHWZX+YKLMNS(PCQ$T.

No, I must have typed it in wrong. עזבת×*×™ is the correct word. I don't know how I typed in all those taus.

Why not? The letters match up far better than )ZB? Tell me, when do ayins become sigmas, zayins become betas, and beths become chis? They don't. However, shin to sigma occurs, betas to betas occur, and qoppas to chis occur. How am I splitting hairs?

I think you need to re-evaluate this position.

Why? Wouldn't Mark offer that as evidence?

ynquirer

Sorry, I don't know how I could have typed “ayin.� It is, of course, “heh,� which is the letter whose phonetics at the end of a word we have always been discussing. The links, and very clearly the last, refer to “heh.�

As regards pronunciation ancient and modern, we reach a dead end. But let me tell that, at least, I do have the evidence of modern usage. I'm afraid you have none.

Thank you, that will help.

If I understand you correct, you mean that Hebraic (ZB more resembles Aramaic shebaq than Greek sabach, and I really figure out the phonetics too close to each other as to see that it is definitively the former, not the latter.

Do you mean, then, that Mark implies Jesus to have had Hebraic Psalm 22:1 translated into Aramaic, memorized it and finally quoted it on the cross? It is still too circumvoluted an assumption, and still at odds with Ocham's razor.

Bearing in mind that the phase contains three words, one of them – Eloi/Eli – repeated; that two of the three, – Eloi/Eli/)LY and lamma/lamah/LMH, – as far as we now know might have been uttered either in Aramaic or in Hebraic; that the third one' s stem – sabach/shebaq/(ZB – still affords a margin of indeterminacy; and last but not least, that what is being quoted had an original in Hebrew but not in Aramaic, it is quite clear that the evidence, however tenuous, is favorable to Hebrew, the distortions being exceedingly explained by the lost of information that is inherent to the transmission of a message through a channel consisting of a sender, – Jesus, – a transmission medium – with noise and distortion: Mark's transcription of the phonetics into Greek alphabet – and a receiver – we ourselves. (That is Shannon's communication theory, pretty much state of the art.)