Vorkosigan

Also see L. Wills The Quest of the Historical Gospel (or via: amazon.co.uk) which compares Mark to Greek folk biography (another genre of ancient biography) by looking at the Life of Aesop. It has a good discussion of the genre question at the beginning.

Thanks for the cites, Jeff. *sigh* so much to catch up on.

squiz

Thanks for that.

Gamera

All this is significantly more than we have about Alexander or Pericles, who would disappear from history if a few very late mss had been lost.

Gamera

You certainly don't have a critical eye when it comes to Tacitus and Josephus, but you are in the minority. Most historians realize that both authors crafted self-conscious narratives to make a point (mostly political).

Tacitus' Agricola is clearly a romanticization of his father in laws life, using an historical personage to argue for Tacitus' nostalgia for traditional Roman virtues (and for the greatness of his family and himself of course). As a prisoner of the Roman Empire, nothing Joesphus writes can be taken at face value but must be seen in light of his political constraints and/or his desire to please his Roman masters.

Honestly, the lack of critical analysis of "historical" texts by mythicists explains a lot about why they think the gospels are so unique. They aren't. The gospels fit right into the "history" writing of the time: which was biased, political, personal and tendentious.

Gamera

The gospels are biography and fit into the genre of historical biography of the time. Burridge makes a good case for this in What are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (or via: amazon.co.uk). Indeed, the gospels are more like the Agricola and vice versa, than any comparable texts (it's just that the Agricola is trying hard to look "historical" and mask its romanticization, given the political complexity of the audience, while the gospels are speaking to the choir and don't need to pretend that their praise and glorification of Jesus is anything other than that).

DCHindley

Tammuz,

I ask, because it seems that most of the NT depiction of Jesus is repeated by later Christian writers. If you leave them in, we'd still have petty much the same picture that the NT has of him. It may be a tad bit fuzzy but I would guess that most of the NT is quoted at some point or another by nearly 2,000years of Christian writers. It could be reconstructed to some extent, probably not in exact sequence and we may have to guess how many books were represented by the citations, but the picture would come through.

In a way, it would be like reconstructing Celsus' _True Reason_ from Tertullian's refutation of it. Unless Celsus' work turns up intact somehow (some monastery library or found in the Egyptian sands), we only have the sketchiest idea of the sequence of the very considerable number of quotations he makes from it. They are all relatively short and out of their original context. Celsus (well, Tertullian's parody of Celsus), for instance, seems to have thought Jesus was a ruffian trickster who hung out with sailors, and wonders why anyone would associate with such a fellow. Tertullian lampoons this characterization and pokes fun at Celsus' knowledge of his sources, almost surely misrepresenting him in the process.

The motivations of later Christians differed somewhat from those who wrote the NT documents they cite, similar to Tertullian recasting Celsus' picture of Jesus in order to refute it, causing later Christian's image of Jesus to be a bit different than the ones in the original NT documents. You'll get a similar kind of distortion in the retelling.

DCH

Chili

Only Matthew is a drama, the other 3 are comedies, and none are histories.

Gamera

So you take Josephus seriously when he claims he prophesied Vespasian would become Emperor, and that he was ultimately freed because of his prophetic abilities that came from God and the Old Testament.

See Jewish War 4.10.7 622-629)

By the way the "historians" Suetonius and Tacitus came to the same conclusion and didn't mind in indulging in a little prophetic belief themselves.

http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah...aimants13.html

Gamera

From Tacitus' History Book 1 (18).


The 10th of January was a gloomy, stormy day, unusually disturbed by thunder, lightning, and all bad omens from heaven. Though this had from ancient time been made a reason for dissolving an assembly, it did not deter Galba from proceeding to the camp; either because he despised such things as being mere matters of chance, or because the decrees of fate, though they be foreshewn, are not escaped18.

Quartum idus Ianuarias, foedum imbribus diem, tonitrua et fulgura et caelestes minae ultra solitum turbaverunt. observatum id antiquitus comitiis dirimendis non terruit Galbam quo minus in castra pergeret, contemptorem talium ut fortuitorum; seu quae fato manent, quamvis significata, non vitantur.

And this is from an "historian" ("it was a dark and stormy night)-- it sound much more superstitious and consciously narrative than the gospels.

spamandham

No. Josephus was a tabloid journalist/political hack by modern standards. But that doesn't change the fact that his degree of outlandishness is nothing in comparison to the Gospels, nor does it change the fact that very little (if any) of Josephus is obviously constructed from the Jewish scriptures, as so much of the Gospels are.

I'd say that's par for the course in regard to ancient writers.