Ben C Smith

I would like to clear this up a bit, lest I be misunderstood.

It is not the oldest chronologically that would deserve the title; it is the oldest traditionally. It is, IOW, the one that initiated the tradition that eventually gets turned into legend, biography, or hagiography.

The traditions about Moses and Elijah, for example, went on for centuries without getting tied to first century Galilee, or to a man crucified in Jerusalem; just because both Moses and Elijah are chronologically older than Jesus does not mean that they deserve the HJ title more than he. Rather, if the tradition started with a Jesus, and layers based on Elijah and Moses were added to this core, then Jesus precedes both Moses and Elijah in the transmission of the tradition.

Just to clarify.

At the right time, give or take 40 years or so. And, as Solitary Man mentioned, Josephus distinguishes between the two, and does not confuse them. I would add that Tacitus has nothing in his thumbnail sketch that lines up with ben Ananias; nor does Paul. It seems clear that (traditions about) Jesus Christ are separate from and precede anything to do with Jesus ben Ananias; if the latter has anything at all to do with features of the former, it is strictly in a secondary sense.

This, to me, is key.

Ben.

gstafleu

In the scenario of: First Paul with little historical detail, then the Gospels which got some of the historical detail from JbA, one would of course expect no JbA in Paul.

As for Tacitus, first it is a thumbnail, as you say, and thumbnails do not have much room for detail. Plus, I still think that the hypothesis that Tacitus was simply reporting what her heard from believers, rather than thinking he had some (unmentioned) more direct evidence for an HJ.

That leaves Josephus, another thumbnail. He only distinguishes between the two if we take his mention to be authentic. Just to clarify, you are not pointing to the (discredited) TF, but rather to that other bit, right? We do of course have the question as to why Josephus would devote so much text to the rather insignificant JbA while hardly mentioning the presumably more significant (or at least equally significant) Jesus. Suffice it to observe that, afaik, the Josephus bit is not uncontested.

And re the "give or take 40 years or so," I don't see how that would have mattered much to the inclusion of JbAria into the gospels, given that the gospels were developed starting some 60 years (depending on your dating, of course, later than the 40 years anyway) after the alleged events. A conflation of, perhaps dimly remembered (if not simply missing because they did not happen at all), earlier events with a memory of similar but still more vividly remembered events does not seem all that strange to me.

Anyway, re your clarification, thanks for that. I would agree that if one were looking for the HJ, one would be looking for something like you describe. To use an analogy, what you are doing is similar to looking for the source of a river. There is an official way of doing that, which is to trace back the longest path along tributaries. The point one thus finds is the source.

This may be mathematically possible, provided one can make sufficiently acurate topographical maps. But it is not always useful. For example, in our local paper, the London Free Press, there was a series about finding the source of our local river, the Thames (please not that this is London, Ontario!). They found a source, some drain behind a farmer's barn somewhere. But if you look at a topographical map, you see this large tree of ever smaller tributaries, and the alleged source does not really distinguish itself from any other tributaries.

Given the whole list of possible sources for (parts of) the Jesus story you gave, I would think the development of this story might be similar to the mass of tributaries we find for our Thames river. You, I think, hold out the hope that there will be one tributary that really stands out from the rest. Maybe so, we'll see once we find it.

Meanwhile, we have not yet found the source of the Jesus story. Currently I think it is accurate to say that the discussions mainly focus on how reasonable it is to suppose there is such a source, as opposed to what that source is. Given that, I still think that labeling JbA as an historical HJ is not all that unreasonable. And I also think that it is about time top delete Cartage from the landscape. Oh, wait.

Gerard

Ben C Smith

I think Tacitus is evidence for an HJ even if he is merely reporting how Christians of his day thought of their origins.

(However, I think it is quite possible that Tacitus actually got his information from an original TF in Josephus. Long story that....)

Yes, the James bit.

Reasons for this are hardly difficult to adduce.

Your tributary analogy may be apt; however, for any riverine system, I think, there are going to be some tributaries that immediately jump out as possible sources and others that are not even really in the running. I think Jesus ben Ananias is not even really in the running as the fountainhead for the Jesus tradition; it is all too easy to trace the tradition to before his purported time (given Paul, Josephus, and Tacitus).

But, as I said before, I am interested in what happened, in how the tradition developed. All the talk of the HJ or an HJ seems semantic to me.

Ben.

gstafleu

And I agree, he is but one tributary (at best). However, in a situation, as with our Thames river, where no tributary really stands out, calling him "an HJ" is, given that he was actually called Jesus, not excessive. Is this semantics? Not if we do have a system where there is no outstanding candidate for the fountainhead, while, at the same time, research misguidedly focuses only on scenarios where there is one. Hence my suggestion that it may be more profitable to start mapping out tributaries first, and only once that is done see if there is an outstanding one among them.

The other approach, assuming there must be an outstanding one and focusing on finding it, may result in unwarranted neglect for the other tributaries. Not only that, it only works well if the assumption that there must be a fountainhead turns out to be true. My suggested approach, though, will work in both cases. Isn't it, then, a safer bet, more likely to yield grant-giving results?

Gerard

Ben C Smith

My position is that we do have an outstanding candidate for the fountainhead.

However, let us imagine that we do not, for the sake of argument. We still have whatever Paul was talking about. Even if what Paul was talking about is an amalgamation, in perfectly equal parts, of several real or unreal individuals, that amalgamation cleanly precedes Jesus bar Ananias in the tradition. Jesus bar Ananias is thus a noncandidate, even for the first layer of amalgamated plural sources.

Assuming such might indeed do this; fortunately, as I mentioned before, we do not have to assume that some core or fountainhead exists. We have texts that give us this core on a platter; we have only to critically evaluate those texts in the usual manner, making no more assumptions about them than you made when you concluded that Jesus ben Ananias existed from your reading of Josephus alone.

Ben.

gstafleu

Here, I think, we disagree. I would say that what you have at best in Paul is something that indicates there might be such a fountainhead. You only have it once you have found someone like JbA. To take a gospel analogy, the Trial of Jesus, in particular e.g. his non-responsiveness, might lead you to think that there must be a historical template for it. You only have this particular tributary once you have found JbA (or some other candidate, of course). To return to the river system, your current knowledge, although it doesn't reach all the way upstream, might give you good indication that there must be one outstanding tributary that qualifies as fountainhead. But you don't have that fountainhead until you have located it.
Again, I agree that JbA is not a candidate for the fountainhead. But given a system where there is no such fountainhead--and that still might be the case--calling him an HJ in the sense (a different sense than you advocate) of a tributary with some striking features, is not unreasonable.

No they don't. They can't, that would be circular reasoning, I think. What they can at best do is give you good reason to think there is a fountainhead. It is only once we have found a historical character, known to history independent from Paul, that we can say we have actually found the fountainhead. Until that time, the best we can do is saying that Paul gives us good reason to think there must be one, even if currently we cannot point at who exactly it is.

It could, I suppose, be possible in principle that Paul itself contains enough information to identify a fountainhead. That would be if Paul pretty explicitly identifies one, and we would then also find at least some rudimentary pointers to this person in (generally accepted) history. But given Paul's lack of historical detail I'd say that is a non starter: the best you can do is throw in a lot of study and derive something. But given what we already know about Paul I'd say it is pretty clear that you would need extra-Pauline evidence to support this. (And, given Christianity's generally acknowledged dependence on Paul, make that extra+Christianity evidence, in order to satisfy the demands of independence.)

Gerard

Ben C Smith

Can it be that you have missed part of my post? I gave you more than Paul.

Ben.

gstafleu

You mean Josephus, Tacitus et al? Yes, that would work--if they were more convincing. Whatever you extract from Paul would have to be very convincing before J&T would be sufficient external evidence, I'd say.

Gerard

Ben C Smith

Yes, et alii. None of these has to be convincing on his own. It is always in the combination of various sources that the strongest evidence is to be found.

Ben.