gurugeorge

No problem - I think Paul always comes up even if you're talking about later periods because one's interpretation of what's going on in later periods will depend, to some extent, on one's interpretation of what's going on in earlier periods. But I agree the 2nd century thing is interesting enough in itself. Let the battle continue!

Ted Hoffman

spin,
I would like to know the titles. Published yet? Available on Amazon?
Can I get a pre-publication copy?

GakuseiDon,
You started the thread thusly:
First of all, you have picked a website article. Then you have taken what you regard as his "key comments". Then you have addressed them out of context, then you now proclaim that the analysis is woefully incomplete.

Do you know how ridiculous this looks?

Do you expect a website article to contain a complete analysis?
Do you expect "key comments" to constitute a complete analysis? Did you even notice that Doherty states that the articles only present the "basic case"?

You cannot say this without listing the relevant documents.

You have shown that you have no appreciation of what constitutes a church father, a 2nd century christian and a 2nd century christian apologist.
And your arguments are a criticism against the title of Doherty's article, not its contents.
Your counterarguments conflate church fathers, second century christians and second century apologists.
Your arguments cover beyond the year 180 yet Doherty specifies he is referring to the apologists up to 180.

And you dont seem to appreciate the difference between a second century christian document and a second century document written by an apologist yet its critical to your argument.
You cant list the relevant documents if you can't date them to the relevant period (which I mention below).
You have no starting point to make this argument if you think dating is not central to your argument.

To refute Doherty's argument, Dear Don, you must provide evidence showing that the five or six major apologists up to the year 180, with the exception of Justin, introduce an historical Jesus into their defences of Christianity to the pagans.

You have not done this.

But it does not matter since you have shifted your argument and now want to argue about the comprehensiveness of the argument Doherty makes. Which you also can't argue since you cant date. And you can't date because you are ill-equipped to date confidently and in addition, you state that accurate dating is not essential to your argument...and we all know it is...

Doherty treats Ignatius as an early church father (alongside the authors of 1 Clement, Polycarp and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas) not a second century apologist.
You cant be an apologist if there is nothing to make apologetics about. Ignatius et al set up, even if in an infinitesimal way, the foundation that the second century apologists attempted to defend.

Doherty treats Ignatius' failure to mention any gospel as his source of info as important. It is notable that Justin Martyr mentions 'memoirs of the apostles' thus the 'gospel tradition'.

These are critical to his theory and its important to note why he doesn't lump Justin and Ignatius together. You seem to be refuting the title of the article, not its contents.

So, your argument is what - (1) that he is overstating is case? (2) that he is making a false argument or that (3) his analysis is incomplete?

You have shifted goalposts so much now. Lets get this straight first. Which one is it. You can't argue (1) based on "key points" and a website article: you have to read the book damnit. You can't argue (2) because you wouldn't dare and if you could, you would have presented the evidence that supports your case. And you can't argue three because you have demonstrated that you are not competent to argue (3) - you can't date and you don't seem to have read Doherty's book (otherwise you wouldn't be tinkering with a website article).

So, whats your argument?
A premise-arguments-conclusion format would be very helpful.

Take your time.

Ted Hoffman

You gotta understand this.

The importance of mentioning a HJ in an defense of christianity to the Pagans is this :

If you find people walking long distances on plains or on the backs of animals, and they struggle to do this, it means there are no vehicles or better means of transportation in that locality.
Or that if there is, these people don't know about them.

Mentioning a HJ (his life, his deeds, and his sayings) in a defense of Xstianity to the Pagans, would have been the easiest way to dispel Pagan questions and challenges.

But these apologists did not. Meaning that they had no idea that any such thing as a HJ existed.

the_cave

Yeah, but there are different ways to claim this:

1) It was all a misunderstanding (Doherty's claim, basically)
2) It was the result of bad history (Ellegard?)
3) It was a deliberate attempt to invent a figure.

but there is another way:

4) It was embellishments of remembered oral history.

the_cave

Spin--this seems a little extreme, even for a skeptic. Are you dating the authentic Ignatius to a date after Justin? And anyway, presumably Justin converted to a Christianity that understood Jesus was a historical figure.

[Edit: I realize you date Ignatius' death late. What I'm asking is, when do you think he wrote his epistles? While I'm at it, I think your evidence for a late date based solely on the plural "kings" in Polycarp's letter is rather dubious--there were other rulers in the region, who indeed may have been as relevant as the Emperor.

(For that matter, if we can doubt the authenticity of Paul (or even all of Paul!), assume that his letters are full of interpolations (and Tacitus, Josephus, et al, likewise), why do you think we can trust Polycarp's letters to be authentic and unedited?)

I think that we have to think about the background that these 2nd c. writers must have been living in. Take Marcion, for example--since he was castagated for his heresy, it must have been read in a context where the historicity of the Christ was taken for granted (otherwise, what was the big deal?). Not only that, but Marcion was a Christian for some time before that, so he must have known of a "Historical Jesus" himself. Futhermore, since Marcion's gospel is apparently some sort of draft of Luke, then Mark must have preceded it, unless you're going to abandon Mark as a source for Luke.
Well, inasmuch as they believed Zeus was historical, yes (i.e. they believed he was, among other things, a historical swan.)

spin

Sorry about the confusion. I've been living without access to a library and the books I use for study, principally dictionaries and historical background materials. I'll soon be leaving where I am, leaving internet for a while as well, and returning to my books and an apartment far far away which is within walk of a university. The only thing I'll miss when I go is a cat called Marilyn Monroe (which is on my lap at the moment, so I can't leave the computer), and the view of an occasional ship coming into the local port. Goodbye cold weather, hello sunshine.


spin

spin

Ignatius could be later, but Ignatius is not a witness to the gospels. The silence I mention relates specifically to the emergence of the gospels, our knowledge of a written story about Jesus. Justin clearly knows some of that story, though perhaps not from a gospel we know. He may have had access to earlier works, such as a form of Q.

I don't know. I haven't fathomed yet if he wrote any, if some, which and when he may have written them. If you look, you'll see that he has had attributed to him a flood of letters, long and short versions, even to the Virgin Mary with a response from her, and one that details the trinity. Happy little pseudonymous writers were all really busy fabricating them.

We have a long period for when Polycarp lived and we know that Ignatius was still alive at the time of Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, so if that letter was written during the reign of the two kings then Ignatius was alive then.

What's interesting about the Pauline corpus is that it didn't attract the same sort of interest as other figures, possibly because of Marcion's support of them and there seems to be a discernable person behind some of these, with the individual's vanity and jealousy and other human characteristics that can be seen over the letters, which don't get seen in letters attributed to other early figures. He is not just a mouthpiece for others' ideas, but I'm looking at the Corinthians letters and Romans and Galatians, and yes, they've got interpolations as well.

Polycarp and his letter are reasonably attested in the second century. This is not wonderful historical data because there isn't really that much behind him, but quite a lot more than anything about Ignatius. Throw away Polycarp and his letter and you have no Ignatius in the second century at all.

The big deal is that he clearly had two gods, one good, Jesus, and one bad, the creator god. The jealous god who destroyed things was the bad guy from whom Jesus was to save us. That's the big deal.

That does not compute, Will Robinson.

This is more useful. Yes, there seems have been some form of Mark before Luke. That form may have been different from that available to Matthew. Matthew does often seem closer to our Mark than Luke does. I haven't looked too closely at the Marcion reconstructions from the indications in the fathers.

I don't think that's terribly useful. We now have historical Krishna, who appeared to the Prince Arjuna during an important military operation. We have a historical Io who in the form of a cow was stung by Hera and hunted from Greece, and her brother and father each went in search of her, leaving followers behind to found cities in Asia Minor and the Levant. This stuff is not history, nor is the belief that the Jesus of the xian tradition came into the world for a while is historical. I bet you'll believe in William Tell, Sir Lancelot and Paul Bunyan, given their records of partaking in this world.

The historical Jesus is a myth of this century. Jesus may have existed, but the vain pursuit of him from purely literary traditions is a waste of time. He will not be extracted from amongst the paper.


spin

rlogan

It was really refreshing in a sense to read Justin's first apology. The references to "Jesus said" XYZ, the HB prohpesies his life allegedly fulfilled, the Eucharist stolen from the mithras cult and more. The basics of the virgin birth through Pontius Pilate and the Sunday rising are explicit.

We don't have to do mental gymnastics by reading into the text. He clearly knows the gospel "memoirs" of the apostles.

I find it interesting though that he didn't name any of the apostles.

Also, he alegedly was converted at about 130 CE, and it was supposedly persuant to his study of the scriptures and Christian teachings. That means one of two things - either the gospel narratives were alive in some fashion at the time he came upon Christianity, or Justin watched them develop and "went with the apologetic flow". That is, he saw the value in them and chose to go along with the marketing campaign.

If someone has another example of something so clear as this (early piece, that is) I would like to know what it is - sincerely. This one is such a slam dunk.

spin

Yep, that's right. It's like someone turned on the light with Justin. Of course it had a prehistory, but twiddling with (real or pseudo) Ignatius and squirming with Eusebius's opinions of what a Papias might have known is historically useless.


spin

GakuseiDon

My argument is based on his website. If his book contains information that counteracts my argument, then fair enough.

Premise / Argument:

A number of apologists don't introduce a historical Jesus in their apologies to pagans. Doherty believes that this is possible only if the religion the apologists subscribed to was lacking the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

My argument is that there is no reason to believe that those authors were not HJers.

Evidence:

- Tertullian (a HJer) also doesn't introduce a historical Jesus in his apology to the pagans called "Ad nationes". In the same year, he writes his "Apology", containing many such references.

- Most of the writings Doherty uses as MJers concentrate on similar topics: the antiquity and primacy of the OT writers over the ancient Greek writers, criticisms of various Greek myths, and defense of Christianity as a philosophical/ethical school. We see the same things in the HJer apologies - compare Tatian's "Address to the Greeks" with Justin Martyr's writings, or Minucius Felix's "Octavius" with Tertullian's "Apology".

- Doherty dates most of his "MJ" authors in the period 160-180 CE, with one that he leans towards being earlier. He dates HJers Justin in the 150s and Aristides around 140 CE.

- Outside of the writings to the pagans, we have lots of references to a HJ by writers in the 2nd C (see OP).

- In the list of heresies compiled by Irenaeus and Tertullian, writing in and just after that period, no-one lists as heresy a non-belief in a HJ.

Conclusion:

There are similarities between the "HJ" apologies and the "MJ" apologies, both in their subject matter and not including details of a historical Jesus. Most of the "MJ" apologists are writing to the same pagan audience around the same time period. They are mounting a philosophical attack on pagan theology, or presenting an ethical defense against the slurs against the Christians of the times. We also see the same in other writings of the period by HJ authors.

Most of the MJ authors that Doherty uses date later in the 2nd C CE. Both Irenaeus and Tertullian wrote volumes on heresies during and after the period of the MJ authors, yet there is no record of any "MJ heresy".

JA, if a HJer like Tertullian can write "Ad nationes" without any HJ details, how can we conclude that other writings that are similar aren't also the work of HJers?