Solitary Man

Seems. Glad to know you got the rest.

I have Chicago to go to first, and then Florida. But Alaska's on my list sometime.

badger3k

I'm sure somebody answered this, but I wanted to respond anyway. Ehrman has his own pet theory that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet (check his book out!). To me, he jumped the shark in an Infidel Guy show/podcast where he attempted to weasel his way out of addressing arguments against his position, one of which had him saying there is as much evidence for Jesus as there is for Caeser! I guess Jesus built statues and stuff, had his face on coins, was recorded by numerous people who were alive when he was....yadda yadda yadda. Ehrman is a textural scholar who seems to have a blind spot towards archaeology and history, especially when defending his own theory. His inconsistent stance about Dr Price was bizarre as well (during the 'cast). At that point, I lost a lot of respect for him as a scholar (and a person, to be honest). His latest book isn't bad, and his work is definitely good, but I do agree with others that he hasn't looked to closely at the evidence.
As, I believe, Dr Schweitzer said (to paraphrase) people who look for the historical Jesus are inclined to see what they sought to find. There is a glut of information, and much (or all, as I am tending towards) could have been built up as time went on. Sorry to go on, but I heard that interview fairly recently and it still bugs me.

Amaleq13

Online translator, of course. I'm lucky to translate Spanish accurately on my own.

Chicago gets colder than Anchorage in the winter and the summer humidity can be oppressive. Fall or spring would be my suggestion.

Come up here during the summer (unless you want to snowboard or ski) and bring a sleep mask. 20 hours of sunlight is not always a good thing.

badger3k

If Josephus was writing after the Temple was destroyed, there was no sacrificial system left. I am unfamiliar with much of Josephus, but does anyone know what he personally believed? Did he leave any record of what he thought on the subject (perhaps an "I..." type sentence?)?

Ben C Smith

I do not think Josephus elsewhere openly condemns baptism to protect the sacrificial system (I am reminded of Life 2, where Josephus claims to have followed Banus for a time, who washed himself frequently with cold water, not apparently to secure forgiveness, but rather to preserve chastity). But that is not the point. The question is, if Crossan is correct that Josephus is protecting John the baptist against a certain kind of interpretation, why? Why protect John? That the temple was gone makes no difference in evaluating Crossan on this matter.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Found it. Ben was correct that it is in The Historical Jesus (p.232) where Crossan explains that the passage in Josephus accords "John emphatic protection against two forms of misunderstanding" but I don't see where he explains why he would want to do so.

It seems, however, that Crossan considers Josephus' depiction of John's baptism to have more to do with Josephus' own practices than what John was actually doing:

"First of all, there is the ritual aspect. Josephus insists that, in John's view, baptism was not a magic rite effecting the forgiveness of sins but the physical symbol of a spiritual reality already established before, without, and apart from it. Like, in other words, those "ablutions of cold water, by day and night, for purity's sake" that Josephus himself, according to his Life 11, had practice with Bannus in the desert."

Crossan goes on to doubt this since he finds it difficult to understand why, if this were true, John would become known as "the Baptist".

It is apparently Morton Smith's view, which Crossan quotes, that Ben and I have recalled:

"By John's time the only place in the country where Jews could legally offer sacrifices was Jerusalem, and its services were expensive. To introduce into this situation a new, inexpensive, generally available, divinely authorized rite, effective for the remission of all sins, was John's great invention. His warning of the coming judgment was nothing new; prophets had been predicting that for the past eight centuries. The new thing was the assurance that there was something the average man could easily do to prepare himself for the catastrophic coming of the kingdom" (Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark, p.208)

Ben C Smith

Thanks for looking that up.

I can easily buy the bit about sacrifices versus baptism, but, apparently like you, I am still puzzled as to why Josephus would have wanted to protect John from misunderstanding.

Ben.

Roger Pearse

"It seems" (active meaning of passive form)

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Maximara

Also in the cases of Socrates and Plato cases we can either have their own works (ie supposedly written by them) Strangely in his _Forgeries in Christianity_ Joseph Wheless says:

And yet this Gospel supposedly written by Jesus Christ himself does not appear in our Bible. One has to ask why?

badger3k

Ben and Amaleq - thanks for the info.