Toto

Richard Carrier on the intricacies of procurators and prefects

GakuseiDon

I think "a class hated for their abominations" and "hatred against mankind" more likely fits the charge of "atheism", or more accurately, the idea that, not only were the pagan gods not gods at all, and not only was it a bad thing to worship them, but they were coming to an end.

Definitely.

la70119

Or better yat, a letter saying, "Stop saying he was crucified! He was NEVER CRUCIFIED!!! I told before and I tell you again, he fell off a cliff. It was an accident!"

aa5874

And the very people who use the NT as history can see with their OWN eyes in the Gospels that the body of their Jesus VANISHED without a trace in less than 72 hours based on gMark.

Mark 16:6 KJV The very book of gMark that HJers BELIEVE claim the body of Jesus was NOT found in the tomb.

The theory that Jesus was Mythological cannot be shown to be false or in other words, the Myth Jesus theory cannot be Falsified.

But, quite the opposite can be done for an historical Jesus that was DERIVED from Galatians 1.19 and the Gospels.

HJers claim their Jesus was Jesus of Nazareth, baptized by John, crucified under Pilate found in the NT.

No such character could have existed by Empiricism.

Every gospel that mentioned the nature or described the acts of Jesus of Nazareth claimed he was Non-human, or that he acted like one who was NOT a human being.

An HJ theory derived from the NT can easily be shown to be FALSE but NOT the MJ.

The MJ theory cannot be shown to be False [cannot be Falsified] and it is for that PRECISE reason why we have a 250 year old search for an historical Jesus.

Empirically, it has NOT been OBSERVED that human beings can walk on water, that human beings can have NO human father, and that a human being was God the Creator.

la70119

Not only that but if you look up the Greek, you'll find the words that translate as "the brother of Jesus called Christ" is τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, of which λεγομένου is genitive of λεγόμενος, which the Middle Liddell lists as "so-called." The LSJ lists it, too, but not as obviously.

outhouse

good article

I liked it.

Duvduv

It's interesting but a bit hard for me to follow. In any event, I wonder were good old Aretas fits in to the scheme of things, since according to 2 Corinthians 11:32 he had some kind of political connection to Damascus through his underling the "governor."

Of course it's also interestingt that in that source Paul was escaping *arrest* by the governor whereas in Act 9:23-25 there was no governor seeking his arrest, but only "Jews" seeking to *kill* Paul. Big difference.

outhouse

just some cultural anthropology of roman SOP so you can understand the context and meaning of a simple phrase, that without the education, you would not understand where said persons statement's came from.

mountainman

Excellent question Diogenes.

In this case Popper's falsifiability must relate to the field and discipline of ancient history, specifically to the history of the appearance of, on the one hand a) the chronology of the canon-following heresiologists, and on the other hand b) the chronology of the non canonical following heretical gnostics, etc.

The question can only be answered with falsifiable chronology of EVIDENCE.




You (and most others) assume the interpolators were Christian.

What if they were not Christian? The pagans would certainly have seen the christians as a disease.


Also attention smeat75 !!

The main problem with Tacitus is that the evidence itself suddenly appeared in the form of a 15th century manuscript discovery of additional material of Tacitus, which was met in the 15th century, with claims of forgery. Its lovely positive evidence for some claims but perhaps its just too good to be true? Think about this for a minute, Examine the history of its appearance in the 15th century,

I repeat, chronology is the key to Popperian falsifiability of any claim made in the field of ancient history. Doing history, claims are made against EVIDENCE, and other claims about this same EVIDENCE are made with respect to chronology.

The HJ and the MJ are subject to the same conditions of Popperian falsifiabilty against claims related to the WHEN - to chronology - of specific and identifiable items of EVIDENCE. This is a two edged sword.

Chronology of EVIDENCE has the potential to falsify Mythicism and Historicism. Technological advances in estimating the chronology of evidence are therefore to be highly regarded. The only C14 result on Christian related literature is for the gJudas, and the final report for this result, of an experiment conducted in 2005 by the UA, has NOT YET BEEN PUBLISHED.

It is 2012 now.

National Geographic managed the entire project, and has sworn parties to the standard publisher-author secrecy/confidentiality agreements. The result as released by Nat Geo is 220-340 CE ........
280 CE plus or minus 60 years.

The head C14 scientist Jull - who's FINAL Report we have awaited for 7 years !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - publically stated that these results preclude the gJudas being dated to after the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, a statement which is surely LOGICALLY ERRONEOUS.

smeat75

I believe this is incorrect.

"No original copies of the Annals exist and the surviving copies of Tacitus' works derive from two principal manuscripts, known as the Medicean manuscripts, written in Latin, which are held in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy.[12] It is the second Medicean manuscript, 11th century and from the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, which is the oldest surviving copy of the passage describing Christians.[13] Scholars generally agree that these copies were written at Monte Cassino and the end of the document refers to Abbas Raynaldus cu... who was most probably one of the two abbots of that name at the abbey during that period.[13]."

The references in the footnotes are:

^ Cornelii Taciti Annalium, Libri V, VI, XI, XII: With Introduction and Notes by Henry Furneaux, H. Pitman 2010 ISBN 1-108-01239-6 page iv
^ a b Newton, Francis, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105, ISBN 0-521-58395-0 Cambridge University Press, 1999. "The Date of the Medicean Tacitus (Flor. Laur. 68.2)", p. 96-97.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ