Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spamandham · 06-26-2008, 10:43 PM

I hate to be a pest about this, but does anyone know someone on this board who is of reasonable expertise in ancient Latin to answer the question about whether or not patcleaver's interpretation is at least plausibly valid?

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...&postcount=209

I would like to enlist their opinion on it...if we have some local expertise.

FathomFFI · 06-26-2008, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

The Migne version of Saint Augustine, Homilies on John 7.1, has Simon Magnus. Either Augustine is responsible for this or Migne is; and neither of these gentlemen was a rookie.

Fathom has already admitted it to be a typo, and it should be obvious to you Ben, that was the case even if he had not admitted it.

Within this very thread, Fathom has demonstrated not only this goof, but a much greater blunder he swept under the rug, which was his lack of knowledge of the range the Gospels are dated over vs the range Tacitus is dated over even by standard majority dating, even going as far as to claim the two ranges did not overlap while simultaneously stating that Tacitus wrote in the first century!

Greater blunder? Where are you getting this from? You have not produced even ONE single scholar who agrees that any of the 4 Gospels were written during the time of Tacitus.

And I completely challenge you to provide even ONE recognized scholar who says they were.

spamandham · 06-26-2008, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FathomFFI

You have not produced even ONE single scholar who agrees that any of the 4 Gospels were written during the time of Tacitus.

If you want a truly rewarding pissing contest, please define what you consider to be "the time of Tacitus".

Solitary Man · 06-26-2008, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

I hate to be a pest about this, but does anyone know someone on this board who is of reasonable expertise in ancient Latin to answer the question about whether or not patcleaver's interpretation is at least plausibly valid?

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...&postcount=209

I would like to enlist their opinion on it...if we have some local expertise.

I had patcleaver on ignore, but no, it's not plausibly valid. Possible, but not plausible.

aa5874 · 06-26-2008, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

Quote:

Originally Posted by FathomFFI

Yes, but even though Tacitus could understand that the Christians thought of Christus as a god, doesn't mean he himself felt that way about Christus. In fact, he wouldn't, being a polytheist Roman and all with his own Greek gods all over the place.

Pliny's letters indicate that Pliny himself thought that the Christians worshiped Christ as if he was a god.

Yes, a slight conflation. Later pagans, like Celsus, knew that the Christians worshiped Christ as a god, but denied his divinity anyway.

So, if Christus was not the son of the God of the Jews, why was he being worshipped and called the son of God?

Christus, if not the son of God, really could do no miracles. He could not talk to plants and make them perish. It would have been false to claim Christus talked to dead people and that they just came back to life, or that Christus used spit and mud to make blind people see.

Why would a Jew worship Christus as the Saviour of mankind if all he did was to commit blasphemy against the God of the Jews?

Christus, if he was not a God, he could not transfigure, he could not RISE from the dead, he could not ascend to heaven.

What did Christus do to be called our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, son of the God of Moses by the Jews?

And why would the same Jews call Simon bar Kochba the Christ, 100 years later? What did Simon bar Kochba do to be called Christ by the Jews? And why did NOT the Jews put Simon bar Kochba on trial for blasphemy?

The answers to these questions are obvious, if Christus was not a God, he was not Jesus of the NT. Jesus of the NT was a God.

Christus was probably a militant figure that was deemed a threat to the Romans similar to Simon bar Kochba. Jesus of the NT was NOT a threat to the Romans.

Pilate never arrested, beat, incarcerated, interrogated or punished Jesus in any way, before he was brought forward by the Jews to be executed for blasphemy. Pilate seemed as though he never even heard of Jesus being called the King of the Jews.

The Romans had no interest in Jesus of the NT.

And in any event, there were no followers of Jesus during the days of Pilate. Based on the dating of the NT, the Jesus stories were manufactured sometime around or well after 70 CE.

spamandham · 06-26-2008, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

I had patcleaver on ignore, but no, it's not plausibly valid. Possible, but not plausible.

If he's smarter than I, he's got you on his list as well.

Regardless though, am I to take this as a claim on your part to fulfill the desired requirements I requested? If so, then please enlighten us with more than one liners.

FathomFFI · 06-26-2008, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by FathomFFI

You have not produced even ONE single scholar who agrees that any of the 4 Gospels were written during the time of Tacitus.

If you want a truly rewarding pissing contest, please define what you consider to be "the time of Tacitus".

When Annals was written around AD 112.

spamandham · 06-27-2008, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FathomFFI

When Annals was written around AD 112.

Is that when all of it was penned, or simply when it was completed?

FathomFFI · 06-27-2008, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by FathomFFI

When Annals was written around AD 112.

Is that when all of it was penned, or simply when it was completed?

Uh-huh. I thought so.

Time to move along now.

Solitary Man · 06-27-2008, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

I hate to be a pest about this, but does anyone know someone on this board who is of reasonable expertise in ancient Latin to answer the question about whether or not patcleaver's interpretation is at least plausibly valid?

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...&postcount=209

I would like to enlist their opinion on it...if we have some local expertise.

I had patcleaver on ignore, but no, it's not plausibly valid. Possible, but not plausible.

And just to back up my reference:

Quote:

Our words 'religion' and 'superstition' may be misleading here. So too might be hte way in which Christian writers drew the distinction between the two words: 'religio is worship of the true god, superstitio of a false', as the Christian Lactantius remarked in the early fourth century A.D. - so asserting that lien practices and gods were not merely inferior to his own, but actually bogus. The traditional Roman distinction seems to have made no such assumtpion about truth and falsehood; when Romans in the early empire debated the nature of religio and superstitio they were discussing instead different forms of human relations with the gods. This is captured in Seneca's formulation that 'religio honours the gods, superstitio wrongs them.'

Beard, North, and Price, pp. 215ff.

Tacitus is probably referring to their beliefs as superstitio, not as false or lies, which wasn't the concern, but as "queer" or "un-Roman".

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06-26-2008, 10:43 PM	#331
spamandham Contributor Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Dallas, TX Posts: 11,525	I hate to be a pest about this, but does anyone know someone on this board who is of reasonable expertise in ancient Latin to answer the question about whether or not patcleaver's interpretation is at least plausibly valid? http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...&postcount=209 I would like to enlist their opinion on it...if we have some local expertise.

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