lpetrich

Grasping at straws.

Do we believe that Pythagoras, Plato, Alexander the Great, and Augustus Caesar had gods as their biological fathers? That is what biographers like Iamblichus, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, and Suetonius had claimed about them, or at least had mentioned such claims about them.

(Alexander the Great...)

There are both multiple sources and archeological evidence that one can check against; in some cases, one can even date archeological remains. So we can be confident that Alexander the Great was not only real, but that he did what he was described as doing, even though he is the sort of person who tends to attract myths to himself. And myths he did attract, like his biological father being Zeus and the temple of Artemis in Ephesus burning down when he was born because he would become a great disaster for Asia.

Alexander the Great was described as having made it into India, and what Greek historians like Arrian describe of it agrees fairly well with what we know directly of India.

King Sandracottus -- Chandragupta
The priestly caste of Brachmanes -- Brahmans
Several other castes, each with different occupational specialties
Gymnosophists ("naked philosophers") -- ascetic mystics

Yes, the Gospels describe him as being a big celebrity who was followed around by large crowds and who allegedly worked LOTS of miracles.

So if there was a historical Jesus Christ, that part of the Gospels' description of him is likely unhistorical.

spin

Wrong approach. It's not the historian, it's the primary source that you should be looking at. The historian will point you at the primary sources. If I point to the primary sources, that's fuctionally the same thing.

Once you remove the christ reference, which is an admission of text tampering (though you'd need to justify your limiting of the tampering) you then you have to deal with the strange word order which is rather odd in Josephus.

You need to interact with the text. I see no sign of you having done so.

We haven't clashed on the material you have presented no case and I have hardly presented a full case.

We are not dealing with "probabilities". We seen lying with statistics so often.

We are dealing with textual analysis in a number of different aspects.

They simply aren't doing history. A historian who cannot say when a text was written, by whom, for what audience and for what reason, yet uses the text is not doing history.

Is there some reason you omitted the fact that a number of cities cropped up through the world at the time attributed to the person that match conquests he was involved in? The later accounts of Alexander gain their validity from the archaeological evidence for the events in them. The coins, found in early Seleucid tradition are simply more evidence for the person and they bear an image related to that for the statuary as well as the fine early sarcophagi. We then need to consider the appearances of a Ptolemaic Egypt, a Seleucid Syria, even a unified Greece at the time that the cities were inaugurated. Please be reasonable with the available evidence.

I don't need to buy into this hollywoodian scenario. We have a physical manifestation that co-incides with the literary histories of Alexander. That is what is important. I don't really care a fig about Alexander, though there was someone responsible for the tactics attributed to him for a series of battles which took place on known battlefields and those tactics function in the physical context of the battlefields, ie an Alexander responsible for them is the most economical yet realistic explanation for them.

I think you are being willful in your efforts to undermine Alexander for your own religio-tendentious purposes.

For the sudden explosion in Greece and the aftermath in Asia, which brought down the Achemaenid dynasty and reached India, a series of generals doesn't explain the evidence.

Despite the fact that some of us are rather pernickety and will challenge whatever assumptions that seem unsupported, we are always happy to accept any thinking person willing to take up the arms of discourse and debate and use them well. I hope you enjoy your stay.


spin

spin

This is a well worn path. At this point I usually tell people to RTFA, which is an acronym based on a better known acronym RTFM, "Read The F**king Manual", where in this case it is "A" for archives. The subject of procurator and prefect in the context of Tacitus has been discussed before.

You've shown a good reason why one should be careful when using Wiki in that one needs to know something about the subject to be able to criticise the material before citing it.

a procuratorship was a more formal way of denoting a prefect’s authority to govern

A procurator was an imperial appointment. A prefect was a military appointment. Procurators were answerable to the emperor. Pilate was answerable to the Syrian legate. Procurators had financial control over their province while Judea's finances were handled by Syria. Your selected citation from Wiki is actually misinformation.

The upgrading of the province of Judea took place under the reign of Claudius. Tacitus in forms us in H.5.9

The kings were either dead, or reduced to insignificance, when Claudius entrusted the province of Judaea to the Roman Knights or to his own freedmen, one of whom, Antonius Felix, indulging in every kind of barbarity and lust, exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave.

Tacitus wrote the Histories before the Annals, so we can see that he had a clear understanding of the political administration of Judea at the time he wrote about Nero. Entrusting Judea into the hands of equestrians and royal freed men puts Judea's finances directly into the hands of the province's administration, ie into the hands of procurators and no longer in the hands of the Syrian legate.

Plainly, this doesn't reflect either Tacitus or the reality of the appointments.


spin

xaxxat

Thanks, spin. I absolutely love watching you slice through others arguments like a hot knife through butter!

:notworthy:

ynquirer

Your confusion here is notorious - and certainly bold, as you dare to discredit Wikipedia.

To begin with, there was no such a thing as an imperial appointment as opposed to a military one. Military appointments were either imperial or senatorial, though it is true that procuratorship was always an imperial appointment. But the theory that Pilate was answerable to the Syrian legate is an invention of yours. Philo, in his Embassy to Gaius, calls Pilate “one of the emperor’s lieutenants” (31:299), and he complains of Pilate’s behavior to Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, a former consul but for the time being without an official post, while the sons of the King of Judea complain to Tiberius, with full success, rather than to the Syrian legate. All this quite strongly suggests that Pilate was answerable to the emperor and that his post was an imperial appointment.

You clearly misread this paragraph. The kings that were “either dead, or reduced to insignificance,” were Agrippa and his brothers. Agrippa, in particular, had been enthroned by Caligula. This bizarre kingdom was abolished once for all by Claudius, who resumed the prior tradition to appoint Roman Knights, that is, members to the equestrian order, or even - and this was a novelty - to “his own freedmen.” There was no “upgrading” of the province, only a restoration of a previous status discontinued by Caligula. The province was still procuratorial, neither proconsular nor propraetorial - either of these two would have brought such upgrading with it.

spin

Please do not waste your breath. This position of yours is not credible. Use Wiki as a primer for your personal understanding, then check it out. It is not citable material. It is better to cite the source material.

You go on to show that this is not the case in your next sentence...

Not quite accurate but closer than your previous sentence. A procurator by his position is related to the emperor in a private manner. He administered the emperor's private property. The prefect is a generic military functionary.

Philo is welcome to his opinion, but the facts are clear. The legate of Syria was both in the position to admonish and to remove Pilate.

Agrippa took over the province previously administered by a series of prefects. Please don't be rhetorical until you have command of the matter.

Judea was no longer under the control of Syria. It was financially independent of Syria. The mention of "freedmen" is quite consistent with procurators, but it certainly is not for prefects. The distinction, which is one of class, would not be one that Tacitus could cloud.

The province came under the control of a procurator. It was not under such control before that. A procurator has the capacity to deal with financial issues, not a subject available for prefect, not a subject for Syrian controlled Judean finances.

Do you know of evidence in classical sources for procurators who were in charge of provinces before the time of Claudius? I would be interested in that.


spin

Laura D.

I appreciate your point. But I lack (1) your background in the sources; (2) an in-depth understanding of the culture and background of these two men so that I might distinguish analystically between your position and that of, e.g., ynquirer. Frankly, I’m more a check out Wiki, hit-the-Internet girl.

Now, I find Ynquirer persuasive. But you’ve solidly stated your own case that there is no basis for belief in an historical Jesus. As Xaxxat has said, “You slice through our arguments like a hot knife through butter.”

So you’ve peaked my interest. I’m intrigued by your position. I read what the Internet tells me about these sources (I seem to have found the same translations). I’ve hit Wiki. I’ve linked to the sites they cite.

But I’m ready to move beyond the Internet. So that was why I asked if you could direct me to a scholar who has conducted the same independent research as yourself, backed by the education of an ancient historian with the ability that gives to review the sources in their original language and context, someone who has published peer-reviewed work (I don’t dispute your position on “popular” historians; I don’t want someone trying to hit the top ranks on Amazon like a Strobel—though I enjoy his books, I don’t put him in the peer-reviewed, academic scholar category).

Let me give you an example of why for me (not a scholar) the original source approach alone doesn’t work:

Ynquirer points out that Pilate could have been both procurator and prefect.
You hot-knife back that Pilate answered to the Syrian Legate.
Ynquirer ripostes that Pilate was buddies with the emperor (paraphrasing).

Now me, I know just enough to be dangerous. Pilate served longer than usual for a prefect. Tiberius didn’t put a legate in Syria for the first six years of Pilate’s term. But this simply makes my head spin when I try to analyze your respective positions. I suddenly feel like the “What Should I Do Retard” on Yahoo Answers.

What does it mean? Do I go back to Crosson? He’s readable. But then I just regurgitate support for my own position (disputes prophecy-remembered Jesus, argues some form of historical Jesus). But that’s not growth. So I’d rather dive into some weighty academic tome that debunks the historical Jesus (though I enjoy your and Ynquirer’s debates, I don’t’ feel comfortable relying on either of you as my “reliable source.”

Fair enough, I’ll be like Earl Doherty in the future and keep my eye on the residue:

"Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered this fate. What keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like Paul Bunyan, is that there is some residue."

God bless,


Laura

spin

I'm sorry that I just can't really point you to a particular scholar who has published on the areas that are necessary for the current issue.

(How one could really say, I don't know. There is so little information about Pilate.)

The indications we have is that Tiberius's officials tended to hold their offices for longer terms than under other emperors. The previous prefect of Judea was Valerius Gratus who was on the job 15-26 CE.

And you shouldn't rely on us. Some issues may be unresolvable -- I don't think this one is --, but the methodology will not change. It's what can be demonstrated from the available sources which takes priority.

I don't hold Doherty's philosophical position. Jesus may have existed, though I can't see how we can get past that mere possibility. In all studies the scholar is ultimately agnostic. S/he can enthuse over some point that seems totally appealing at one juncture though must be prepared to abandon it if new data or better analysis comes along to put that point in doubt.

One of the most important issues I believe that should come out of participation in this forum is that good methodology is the fundamental issue for much of the discussion. We may not follow it at times, but it is our aim. We try to say what we can show (and by show we mean from the primary sources as best as we can access them).


spin

spamandham

For the same reason those telling him about it didn't know it was myth (assuming it was). Are we to believe Josephus has some kind of special powers that allowed him to discriminate myth from reality? If It seems to me Josephus could easily have fallen into the same trap I suspect modern historians have fallen into - simply assuming that aspects of a legendary figure that sound reasonable are thus true.

But in many (most? all?) cases of known legendary figures, the conclusions you would draw from such an analysis are patently false. For example, if we analyze Santa using such a standard, we would conclude that he was a real man who really wore a red suit and distributed gifts via a reighndeer drawn sleigh. He lived in the arctic circle, and he had a team of individuals he paid to manufacture toys all year long. He must have been quite wealthy to afford all this.

We would reject the part about the sleigh flying, and we would reject the magical aspects about going up and down chimneys, but the other details would stay because they are reasonable.

But if we are to accept the history of St. Nick as presented by the Catholic church, not one shred of our conclusions are correct. The moral is that once you transition from mostly historical to mostly legend and myth, there is no longer anything conclusive you can claim, not even the existence of the individual in question.

GakuseiDon

Sure, I understand that. But the time-line is quite narrow. Josephus was a contemporary of Paul. If Paul believed in a mythical Christ, then that doesn't allow a lot of time for the "historicization" process to occur. It doesn't make it impossible, just very unlikely IMHO.

Not 100%, sure. We can still ask what is the most likely, however. In this case, if Josephus had heard from the Christians of his time about someone called Jesus who had started their faith, then the most likely explanation is that it was because that is what they thought was the case. And given that Josephus was a contemporary of Paul and a near-contemporary of Jesus, that's pretty strong evidence for a historical Jesus.