mountainman

That's a fair point. Here's the relevant definition of "WHOLE CLOTH":

Certainly there was a gathering of traditions, popular writings, add material and edit, but the adding of material constitutes the novel step. For example, we might postulate that the Jesus story was based on the legend of the crucified Persian sage Mani, whose apostles established monasteries in the Roman Empire during the 3rd century. The novel step of the Jewish sage "Jesus" and his Apostles were completely fabricated by data mining the Greek LXX.

Best wishes


Pete

ApostateAbe

Thank you, Toto, I appreciate the acclaim.

GakuseiDon

Continuing on from my last post here:

While the lack of details about Jesus are not unexpected given the pattern found in the wider literature throughout the first few centuries, the focus of tying Jesus back to the LXX means we can't know for sure what elements go back to the historical Jesus, and what are mythical developments. A historical Jesus, in that sense, may as well not have existed. Still, if Clement, like so many of his time, believed that Jesus could be 'found' in the Hebrew Scriptures then it does give us an insight into what Clement believed.

Richard Carrier writes (my emphasis):

The first Christian text that did not become canonized but was respected as authentic is the first epistle of Clement of Rome, reasonably dated to 95 A.D. (M 40), and contained in many ancient Bibles and frequently read and regarded as scripture in many churches (M 187-8). This is relevant because even at this late date two things are observed: Clement never refers to any Gospel, but frequently refers to various epistles of Paul. Yet he calls them wise counsel, not scripture--he reserves this authority for the OT ("Old Testament"), which he cites over a hundred times (M 41-3). On a few occasions he quotes Jesus, without referring to any written source. But his quotations do not correspond to anything in any known written text, although they resemble sayings in the Gospels close enough to have derived from the same oral tradition.

Carrier goes on to say that he suspects that the Gospels were not known to Clement otherwise he would have quoted them, though if Carrier is correct that they were not considered authoritative at the time that would have been been a reason. Papias was still gathering information from those who knew the apostles, despite the apparent availability of written Gospels (though perhaps not the ones we have today) in his time.

All quotes from 1 Clement come from here:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...t-roberts.html

The first thing to note is that Clement doesn't mention the cross and crucifixion. Jesus died (according to Clement) but Clement doesn't say how.

Clement suggests that the Hebrew Scriptures predict Jesus would appear ("the coming of Christ"):

Ye understand, beloved, you understand well the Sacred Scriptures, and you have looked very earnestly into the oracles of God. (Ch 53)

Let us be imitators also of those who in goat-skins and sheep-skins went about proclaiming the coming of Christ; I mean Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel among the prophets, with those others to whom a like testimony is borne [in Scripture]. (Ch 17)

Jesus himself is from the line of Jacob:

For from him [Jacob] have sprung the priests and all the Levites who minister at the altar of God. From him also [was descended] our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. From him [arose] kings, princes, and rulers of the race of Judah. Nor are his other tribes in small glory, inasmuch as God had promised, "Your seed shall be as the stars of heaven." (Ch 32)

Clement knows of Paul and Peter, and indicates them as being of "our own generation". Not surprisingly, Clement provides few details of their deaths:

Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours, and when he had finally suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience. (Ch 5)

Clement knows the letters of Paul. If Paul is of Clement's generation, then it suggests that the Gospel message "first began" to be preached recently:

Take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you. (Ch 47)

The apostles, "fully assured by the resurrection" (suggesting they weren't fully assured before then), "went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand". It's an interesting expression, since they weren't proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, but proclaiming the implications of the resurrection, as heralding that the kingdom of God was around the quarter:

The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. (Ch 42)

On Jesus' life, Clement provides few details:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sceptre of the majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although He might have done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding Him. (Ch 16)

... being especially mindful of the words of the Lord Jesus which He spoke, teaching us meekness and long-suffering. For thus He spoke: "Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy; forgive, that it may be forgiven to you; as you do, so shall it be done to you; as you judge, so shall you be judged; as you are kind, so shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure you measure, with the same it shall be measured to you." (Ch 13)

Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how He said, "Woe to that man [by whom offences come]! It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my elect. (Ch 46)

And again He says, "I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All who see Me have derided Me; they have spoken with their lips; they have wagged their head, [saying] He hoped in God, let Him deliver Him, let Him save Him, since He delights in Him." You see, beloved, what is the example which has been given us; for if the Lord thus humbled Himself, what shall we do who have through Him come under the yoke of His grace? (Ch 16)

But concerning His Son the Lord spoke thus: "You are my Son, today have I begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the heathen for Your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Your possession." And again He says to Him, "Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool." (Ch 36)

Clement provides some details on Jesus' death:

In love has the Lord taken us to Himself. On account of the Love he bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls. (Ch 49)

Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually proves to us that there shall be a future resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead. (Ch 24)

Finally, Clement possibly references complaints about those who say Jesus hadn't returned:

So let us not be double-minded; neither let our soul be lifted up on account of His exceedingly great and glorious gifts. Far from us be that which is written, "Wretched are they who are of a double mind, and of a doubting heart; who say, These things we have heard even in the times of our fathers; but, behold, we have grown old, and none of them has happened to us.." You foolish ones! compare yourselves to a tree: take [for instance] the vine. First of all, it sheds its leaves, then it buds, next it puts forth leaves, and then it flowers; after that comes the sour grape, and then follows the ripened fruit. You perceive how in a little time the fruit of a tree comes to maturity. Of a truth, soon and suddenly shall His will be accomplished, as the Scripture also bears witness, saying, "Speedily will He come, and will not tarry;" and, "The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Holy One, for whom you look." (Ch 23)

Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually proves to us that there shall be a future resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead. (Ch 24)

Compare with 2 Peter 3:

[2] That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
[3] Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
[4] And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

In short: Clement believed that Jesus was predicted by Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus was a descendant of Jacob. Jesus came in a lowly form, and was despised by those around him, who said that Jesus "hoped in God" so "let God deliver him". At some point and for some reason, God declared that Jesus was a Son. Jesus was killed and resurrected, and set down on God's right side. Jesus sent out the apostles, who "fully assured by the resurrection", preached the coming kingdom of God. Jesus is the first-fruits of a general resurrection to come.

Vivisector

I agree completely.

Pete, you are my role model for forebearance in the face virtually 360-degree opposition to one's views, but we are not going to agree on this one. Not yet, in any event.

Cheers,

V.

Toto

Indeed.

How are you dating 1 Clement? ECW gives a range of 80-140, but the evidence seems to point to the end of the first century at the earliest. Ellegård picks up on a few phrases to try to date this letter to 60 CE, but he would also like to date Jesus to 100 BCE.

Why is this not surprising? It would depend on your dating of this letter. If Paul really was of Clement's generation, one might expect a few more details. As it is, Clement appears to speak of Paul as a quasi-legendary figure, as if his only source of information were Paul's letters.

The chronology of this is all very confusing. Is a generation 50 years? or were parts of Clement's letter written earlier? or did Paul live towards the end of the first century?

Clement could have believed all this because he read the Hebrew Scriptures and the spirit directed him to this interpretation.

Doug Shaver

Yes, what we would expect, because we have good reason to suppose that Christians living not quite 2,000 years ago were in no significant respect different from us with regard to their human natures. On the assumption of historicity, we have to think that during the first hundred years or so of Christianity's existence, its followers were bizarrely indifferent to the biography of their religion's founder.

Juststeve

Doug:

We have the four surviving Gospels of the Canon from the first century. We have Luke's word for the fact that there were other orderly accounts of Jesus at the time he wrote. Is that what you mean by "bizarrely indifferent to the biography of their religion's founder".

Steve

Doug Shaver

I think the other posters have covered everything pretty well, but I see an occasion to repeat a point I've made elsewhere.

Note the progression from "possible" to "reasonably argued" to "probably" without any admixture of evidence or argumentation along the way. This is highly reminiscent of the evangelical apologetic tactic of inferring "must have happened" from "could have happened."

As for the particular documents in question, some observations:

1. We have no reason to think that the writer of the Didache was trying to convey biographical information about Jesus.

2. Your claim that "The whole Gospel of Thomas is a narrative of the life of Jesus" is laughable.

3. Arguments for an early dating of Oxyrhynchus 1224 clearly presuppose historicity.

4. Any treatment of the Apocalypse of John as a biographical source is the height of absurdity.

5. If you want to discredit Doherty's take on Clement of Rome, you'll need a better counterargument than "I think he's wrong."

Ahistoricists are not ignoring any evidence. We are explaining it. You just don't like our explanations, and so you keep on arguing as if we were ignoring it. Obviously, it's a lot easier to do that than to confront our explanations and show, by reasoned argument, why they don't work.

The mere fact that historicists even find it necessary to resort, with such desperation, to such blatantly weak and question-begging arguments strikes me as a clear indication of which way the evidence really points, all things considered.

ApostateAbe

I am willing to grant any of the dates that you decide for those sources. My arguments do not depend those dates. If you date those sources to be after Ignatius, then you have an empty list, and you will have to explain the significance of having no unambiguous biographical references to Jesus in non-canonical pre-Ignatius Christian writings if no such sources exist.
Since you are the one proposing a probabilistic difficulty and an unusual solution, then critics are not the ones required to show that the Didache quoted a human Jesus. They have the prima facie argument on their side: the Didache quoted the same Jesus as that of Matthew and Luke. What does this do to your proposed problem?
Yes. What I should have said was that the gospel of Thomas was filled with quotes of the teachings of Jesus to his disciples. That is also evidence that you denied the existence of.
Perhaps you should make clear what dates that you yourself give those writings.
It clearly wasn't meant to be a biographical source on Jesus, but it does seem to make an allusion to crucifixion and death of Jesus. Remember, you were the one who claimed, "In noncanonical Christian writings, there are no unambiguous biographical references to Jesus earlier than Ignatius' in the early second century." If you disagree with the claim of an allusion in the Apocalypse of John, then you will need to explain why, so that your proposed problem can be convincingly taken as a genuine problem, not simply a problem that you are forcing to exist to make room for your solution.
Absolutely.
That is a wonderful way to think. Can you please list the sources that you take to be non-canonical pre-Ignatius Christian writings?

GakuseiDon

That's just it -- the record doesn't bear this out. If you look at the wider literature, you get the opposite impression, as I point out below.

What good reasons do we have to suppose that Christians living not quite 2,000 years ago were in no significant respect different from us with regard to their human natures when it comes to writing faith-based documents? Do you have any good reason OTHER than what **we** would expect?

They were bizarrely (from our perspective) indifferent to the biography of their religion's founder, no doubt about it. Now, if it had been just that -- if they had given an account of the history of their religion and left out only those parts about Jesus -- then that would be one thing. But they give few historical details about anything.

Graham Stanton (The Gospels and Jesus, Second Edition, Oxford Bible Series (or via: amazon.co.uk), 2002, page 144), responding to one of GA Wells' books, writes (my bold):

"Wells stresses that in the earlier New Testament letters there is a strange silence about the life of Jesus and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. Wells notes (correctly) that the very earliest Christian credal statements and hymns quoted by Paul in his letters in the 50s do not mention either the crucifixion or Pilate, or in fact any events in the life of Jesus. But as every student of ancient history is aware, it is an elementary error to suppose that the unmentioned did not exist or was not accepted. Precise historical and chronological references are few and far between in the numerous Jewish writings discovered in the caves around the Dead Sea near Qumran. So we should hardly expect to find such references in very terse early creeds or hymns, or even in letters sent by Paul to individual Christian communities to deal with particular problems.

Maybe Stanton is a mind-blasted historicist, but if he is correct about the DSS, would that alter our expectations about what we would find in Paul? What I am proposing is that we need to look at the wider literature before determining what we would expect. Doherty himself ties the silence in the Second Century apologists to the silence of the First Century. In my review of Doherty's JNGNM, I highlighted the following statements by Doherty:

As one can see by this survey, if one leaves aside Justin Martyr there is a silence in the 2nd Century apologists on the subject of the historical Jesus which is virtually equal of that found in the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 485)

Another aspect is the fact that in almost all the [Second Century] apologists we find a total lack of a sense of history. They do not talk of their religion as an ongoing movement with a specific century of development behind it, through a beginning in time, place and circumstances, and a spread in similar specifics. Some of them pronounce it to be very "old" and they look back to roots in the Jewish prophets rather than to the life of a recent historical Jesus. In this, of course, they are much like the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 477)

For Doherty, the reason for the similarity is simple: both groups didn't have a historical Jesus at their core.

My point, Doug, is this: what if we have good reason to conclude that the Second Century apologists did in fact have some historical Jesus at the core of their Christianity? Would that affect our expectations about what we would find in the First Century writings? If so, then the dagger in the heart of Doherty's theories is Tatian's "Address to the Greeks".