Vorkosigan

Hi y'all! I thought I'd put this baby up here for withering critique before I put it on my blog.

A while back Crosstalk2, the Historical Jesus and related metholodology discussion group, a new participant made a rather poor argument against the historicity of Jesus' crucifixion. A number of participants responded. Patrick Narkinsky noted:

• "Stipulating (but not necessarily conceding) that the gospels are not basically historical, the crucifixion is unlikely to be fabricated. The problem is this - Jesus is described as Christ from the beginning of the Christian movement. The Christ - or Messiah - was in Jewish expectation the king of Judah who would finally overcome foreign overlordship and restore the people of YHWH to their rightful place of glory.
  
  Crucifixion at the hands of the Romans would present a prima facie case that Jesus was *not* the Messiah. It seems grossly improbable to suppose that any Christian would have made it up."

Narkinsky's thumbnail analysis presents what many scholars feel is a powerful argument for the historicity of Jesus' Crucifixion. In this essay we will hold this argument up to the light and take a look at it. As we shall see, it is riddled with flaws.

John Dominic Crossan in The Historical Jesus offers a very common two-pronged approach to establishing the historicity of Jesus' crucifixion. He writes:

• "I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Security about the fact of the crucifixion derives not only from the unlikelihood that Christians would have invented it but also from the existence of two early and independent non-Christian witnesses to it, a Jewish one from 93-94 C.E., and a Roman one from the 110s or 120s C.E."(p372)

Crossan then spends the next couple of pages explaining the famous references in Josephus and Tacitus, but expends nary a single sentence on "the unlikelihood that Christians would have invented it." Ted Weeden, a ranking Mark scholar, also weighed in on the discussion with Narkinsky, explaining more clearly the problem of "not inventing it" as it applies to this case:

• "...when I say that as a historian I am convinced that the crucifixion of Jesus is a historical fact, I am making a judgment based upon the best available evidence, weighing that evidence against various probabilities, and then deciding which of the various probabilities is most cogent and persuasive. In the case of the crucifixion it is, as has been pointed out by others on this list, multiply attested by both Christian sources (Paul, the Gospels) and on-Christian sources (the Jewish historian Josephus [unless Josephus' reference to Jesus' crucifixion is a total Christian corruption of the Josephus text] and the Roman historian Tacitus) of the first century. There is no evidence that any source of the first century states or infers that Jesus died a natural death or by some other tragedy, or that Jesus was mythologically viewed as having been apotheosized or translated to heaven, as some traditions hold to be the case for Elijah, Moses, etc. Using the criterion of embarrassment, employed by some Jesus scholars, such as Meyer, would suggest that Jesus' death by crucifixion could only have been an embarrassing, even scandalous, fact about him (see Paul) in the view of non-Jewish or Gentile persons, since his crucifixion would have been recognized as a clear indication that Jesus was guilty of some capital crime against the Roman Empire. If Jesus did not die from crucifixion, it is difficult to explain why Christians, interested in winning converts among Gentiles of the time, would have invented such a tradition, since such a tradition would in effect serve to undermine their evangelistic cause rather than support it."

Discussant Joe Weaks noted similarly:

• "All the responses to your premise agree that virtually everything we know about 1 c. Palestine suggests that inventing a story of crucifixion would NOT have been seen as a beneficial thing to do for lots of reasons. (The fact that it appears beneficial to you, 2k years later is immaterial.) a. We have many examples of stories praising an individual where their deaths are embellished... and crucifixion is not how they made the guy look good. b. What we know about shame sociologically negates it as a desire of the community. c. Early Christian kerygma is an apology and rhetorical repositioning regarding crucifixion, doing their best to cast a positive light on an embarassing aspect of their messiah. That's why they said, "Well, yeah, but he rose from the dead, so na na na na." or "He's coming back!" or "He died not cause he had to but cause he wanted to, in your place."d. etc.There are very few things regarding HJ studies that virtually all serious HJ scholars agree on, but the fact of Jesus' crucifixion is at the top of the list."

It is not the purpose of this essay to discuss the historicity of the Crucifixion. Rather, I will explore the validity of a particular argument for the claim of historicity, that of "they wouldn't have made it up." This argument has two basic forks, one identified by Narkinsky above, the other by Weaks and Weeden. In the former, the Christians would not have made it up since Jesus was executed and the Messiah would not have been. In the latter, the argument is that Crucifixion was simply too shameful to invent.

To begin with, the "they wouldn't have invented it" (hereafter TWHII for ease of reference) actually assumes it conclusions in its premises. Joe Weaks formulates a common perception with his remark that "virtually everything we know about 1 c. Palestine suggests that inventing a story of crucifixion would NOT have been seen as a beneficial thing to do." Weaks' construction is based on the premise that the Jesus story originated in first century Palestine and therefore could not have been invented in such a matrix.

Let us first note that many mythicist formulations see the stories of Jesus as back-projections into Palestine from a Diaspora Jewish matrix of some sort, perhaps the Essenes, the Theraputae, or the God-Fearers. In other words, the underlying claim that the Jesus stories originated in Palestine is *precisely what is at issue* and cannot be cited as an argument against the mythicist claim. Weaks' argument is actually tautological.

Tying Jesus to Judaism has been a powerful trend of postwar NT scholarship, for two reasons. One is an understandable response to the development of the "Aryan Jesus" theories among anti-semitic scholars of the 19th century that culminated, of course, in Hitler and his attempts to de-link Jesus from Judaism.

The other reason Jesus is tied to Judaism so tightly is twofold, and both relate to a kind of "historical apologetics" that has arisen in response to the devastating critiques of scholars who are highly pessimistic about recovering any historical data about Jesus from the early Christian writings, and to the comparative religions school that flourished prior to WWII and connected Jesus to the larger context of Hellenistic and Near Eastern religious impulse. On one hand making Jesus strongly Jewish disconnects him from the Hellenistic matrix where comparative religion scholars sought to locate him. On the other hand, a Jewish Jesus provides a cultural background that legitimates methodological approaches that rely on the Sayings Tradition, providing plenty of fodder for an endless stream of papers founded on comparative sociological approaches. The latter has become important as the concrete narrative of Jesus' life has become increasingly discredited among mainstream scholars and in response, they have attempted to locate the historical Jesus within the sayings preserved in the early Christian writings. My study of the Gospel of Mark has convinced me that this approach, which involves disarticulating the sayings from not only their Gospel matrix but also from each other, and treating them as isolated outcroppings of the Jesus tradition, is fundamentally wrong.

On the face of it there is simply no good reason to imagine that a Jewish Jesus implies a Palestinian Jesus. The earliest Jesus documents, the authentic letters of Paul, show no knowledge of any Palestinian Jesus nor of any followers from Palestine. The early Christian writings were written in Greek, largely outside of Palestine (I would argue that all of them were), and are shot through with Hellenistic literary and philosophical ideas. They speak to a movement that is found throughout the Mediterranean basin. The later letters are written to places outside of Palestine and speak to issues of congregations outside that area. Jesus' sayings have affinities with either common Jewish sayings (accessible anywhere), Old Testament ideas (accessible anywhere), and Cynic and Stoic philosophical concepts (accessible anywhere). Nowhere is there necessarily anything of Palestine in them. Jerusalem is the cult's center, but Paul gives no hint that it was founded there. Jesus' existence as a human being in Palestine is not found in Paul but instead is a product of the Gospel narrative, whose events are fiction. The proper response to "Jesus is a first century Palestinian Jew!" is to ask why anyone would imagine that, based on the trajectories through the earliest evidence.

Weeden then goes on to support the second point of Weaks' argument: "If Jesus did not die from crucifixion, it is difficult to explain why Christians, interested in winning converts among Gentiles of the time, would have invented such a tradition, since such a tradition would in effect serve to undermine their evangelistic cause rather than support it." Weeden is responding to the poster who naively argued that Christians "invented" the tradition of Jesus' Crucifixion as a marketing tool. This argument contains two false premises: that Christianity was "invented," and that it was a corporate invention.

The second point, of corporate invention, is routinely found in applications of the embarrassment criterion. For example John Meier's famous argument from embarrassment for the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist:

• "Quite plainly, the early Church was "stuck with" an event in Jesus' life that it found increasingly embarrassing, that it tried to explain away by various means, and that John the Evangelist finally erased from his Gospel. It is high unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment."(A Marginal Jew, p169)

It's obvious that this is badly flawed logic. Jesus' baptism comes originally from the writer of Mark, and he shows no embarrassment over it. What the later Church thought of the baptism, or the discomfort of later writers, is absolutely irrelevant to what the writer of Mark thought. Further, there was no "Church" in the formal sense that Meier seems to be alluding to, but rather a loose collection of communities scattered all over the Mediterranean basin, each viewing themselves as part of a wider movement, but, as the letters of Paul show, with large differences in what they took for Gospel and who they followed.

Similarly, there is no way that any argument referring to "Christians" or "the community" can make any sense. To see why, a digression through some particular historical events is necessary.

One April day in 1856 two young Xhosa girls in what is now modern South Africa reported that they had seen a mysterious vision while drinking at a river. "They told the girls to take a message back to their kraal that a great resurrection was about to take place, and that all the people should kill all their cattle as these would no longer be needed. Once the great day came there would be no shortages of any kind, so they must tell their people that there must be no sowing or cultivation of crops and all stored grain must be thrown away. Once this had been carried out, the strangers told the girls, no further work must be done. And when all the Xhosa cattle had been killed the new people would come, sweeping all the whites into the sea." (here)

The Xhosas were a cattle-herding people for whom cattle played the central role in their lives and culture. One can imagine how this news was treated back at the kraal. The girls were of course laughed at, but saw the vision again. They brought an uncle, Mhalakaza, down to the river to see the visions, and he took them over, creating a movement that eventually was successful in getting the vast majority of the Xhosa to kill almost all their cattle, destroy their crops, and throw out their food. Tens of thousands of Xhosa starved.

This episode raises two key issues for our discussion of TWHII. First, the central story came about as a result of visions, not invention malicious or otherwise, and by particular people. Such visions are essentially idiosyncratic and individual (it is not the place of this essay to examine them for authenticity). They thus confound any claims of 'corporate' invention by a nascent cult.

Note also how the content of the girls' claims runs strongly counter to the prevailing esteem that the Xhosa held for their cattle. Individuals are not culturebots, and history makes a mockery of arguments based on the claim that they are. Had the Xhosa Cattle Killing movement engendered a formal institutional Church committed to protecting the founding story, no doubt its apologists would be arguing that the visitors to the girls at the river were real, on the grounds that no Xhosa would ever make up a command to slay the entire nation's cattle.

Second, the spreader of the religion, Mhalakaza, was not its founder. A parallel with Paul's activities is suggested there. Mhalakaza's "demonstration" of the reality of the visions to the Xhosa king Sarili....

• "Sarili, to prove to the unbelievers that Mhalakaza was telling the truth, now went with the prophet to the Gxara riverbank where the strangers had first appeared to Nongqawuse. There he was apparently shown one of his sons who had recently died, and a long-dead favourite horse, as well as acorn and beer that miraculously appeared as presents from the new people. Sarili was impressed and when Mhalakaza told him that all his cattle and goats must immediately die, he readily agreed." (source above).

....reminds us of Paul's comment in Galations that Jesus had been exhibited among them. This may refer to a performance, but it may also refer to activities designed to give the impression that Paul really had a special channel directly to the Risen Jesus.

Hence, to return to our point, it is meaningless to speak of corporate embarrassment as an argument against individual invention. The religious leaders of the movement are stuck with the stories that their founders tell, true or not. Whether later communities invent apologetic kerygmas is simply not a relevant support for the THWII. This Weaks' point (c) above," Early Christian kerygma is an apology and rhetorical repositioning regarding crucifixion" also fails. By the time we see this kerygma in Paul, the time of founding is long past and lost; Paul does not appear to know anything about it. Hence Weaks' point "b. What we know about shame sociologically negates it as a desire of the community" is essentially meaningless, as the community did not invent the story; some individual thought up the idea and then convinced others. It was only much later that a "community" formed that had to grapple with the story as doctrine.

Weeden goes on to say: Using the criterion of embarrassment, employed by some Jesus scholars, such as Meyer, would suggest that Jesus' death by crucifixion could only have been an embarrassing, even scandalous, fact about him (see Paul) in the view of non-Jewish or Gentile persons, since his crucifixion would have been recognized as a clear indication that Jesus was guilty of some capital crime against the Roman Empire.

Paul does indeed write that Jesus' crucifixion was a scandal to the Greeks, but he himself doesn't appear very bothered by the whole idea, which he makes the centerpiece of his theology. Weeden's logic falters in the second half here, as Jesus' crucifixion would not have been evidence of guilt, just of a Roman accusation of crime. I doubt seriously that anyone in the Roman Empire would imagine that everyone crucified was guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, anymore than anyone today would imagine that everyone who recieves capital punishment in the US was guilty. No doubt this error occurred because the normally razor-sharp Weeden was writing an offhand response to an internet post.

Weeden's appeal to the Embarrassment criterion raises issues worth exploring. Is this criterion any good? The Embarrassment Criterion as Meier and others define it above suffers from several flaws. First, it usually focuses on things which would have embarrassed the early Church. As we have seen, Christianity, was not started by the early Church, however, but by specific individuals whose identity and attitudes are often unclear. Whatever the early Church thought about Crucifixion later, it cannot apply to the founder(s). Secondly, even assuming that a story is embarrassing tells us nothing about whether it is true. For example, an embarrassing story might be invented to cover up or mitigate an even more embarrassing story, or for reasons now lost. A third problem with this criterion generally is that it assumes that history underlies the story. Instead of finding out whether anything in the story is history, it assumes the existence of underlying history and then proceeds to sort out fiction from fact. Thus, it simply discovers its own premises. If the stories are inventions of early Christians, then this criteria cannot apply. Finally, even assuming that it is correct to deploy this criterion in the face of everything above, judging whether a particular story is "embarrassing" contains a strong element of subjectivity.

The last point is interesting, because it is debateable just how "shameful" the Crucifixion really was. In Greek popular literature heroes are routinely pictured undergoing and surviving Crucifixion. For example, in the Ephesian Tale of Xenophon, the male hero Habrocomes ends up being condemned to death. He is hung on a cross, but survives due to a great gust of wind that knocks the cross down. Similarly Chareas in Chareas and Callirhoe is saved by a last-minute reprieve just as he is about to be crucified. The same thing happens to the hero's friend Sorachus in Babylonian Story. If crucixifion is so shameful, why did so many writers use it as a motif in their stories and assign it to their heroes? Surely it could not have been so shameful. As Price suggests in his review of this topic in Deconstructing Jesus, the crucifixion may also be understood as the death of the suffering just one, whose horrible experienced, endured nobly, is a living rebuke to his tormentors and an example to his followers. This was a common theme in Stoic and Cynic philosophy. Writing on the Gospel of Mark, Eric Thurman notes:

• "For Seneca, the athlete's and the gladiator's victorious suffering mirrors the philosopher's moral triumph, a"reward [that] is not a garland or palm or a trumpeter...but rather virtue, steadfastness of soul, and a peace that is won for all time..." (Ep. 78:17; cf. De Prov. 4:4- 16).
  
  For later Christian writers, such as Tertullian and Cyprian, the martyr took up, with surpassing severity, the gladiator's sacramentum (Barton, 1994:56). Mark lacks the oath, but not, I suggest, its logic."

Similarly, David Seeley ("Blessings and Boundaries:Interpretations of Jesus' Death in Q". In Early Christianity, Q and Jesus, Semeia 55 (ed. John S. Kloppenborg; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991) 131-46. ) observes:

• "According to Cynic and Stoic circles of the first century CE, it is the readiness to follow a teacher in suffering or even death that qualifies one as a true philosopher. This belief is based on the following sequence of logic: 1) a true philosopher seeks what is right; 2) the worst threat one can face in this search is that of suffering and death; 3) if one can continue the search even unto death, then one's status as a true philosopher is beyond challenge. The question is: how does one arrive at a readiness to endure the worst? Such a state is not easy to achieve. The answer is: one imaginatively re-enacts the noble death of a model by hearing or reading the story of it. One thereby gains the fortitude to face death literally, if necessary. This explains the frequency with which such stories are encountered. The more often one imaginatively re-enacts the deaths of great teachers or models, the more often one proleptically enacts one's own death for the sake of philosophy, and the less daunting such a prospect becomes."

Even through the lens of the honor-shame matrix, a common one for analysts of the social aspects of early Christianity, antiquity offered many perspectives on the "shame" of Crucifixion. There is no monolithic honor-shame culture, but rather, many different takes on what shame and honor are, and how they are applied within different subcultures.

Jeff Gibson, one of the list owners for XTALK, chimed in with:

• "Funny how Suetonius and Celsus and Porphyry and Lucian and Minucius Felix and Fronto, among others, who were targets -- or at least aware -- of this alleged marketing plan, didn't pick up on that, but instead see Jesus' crucifixion as a sign that Jesus was a failure and Christianity superstitious and pernicious nonsense."

But this is simply the "shame" problem in reverse. The fact that some educated writers of later days found Christianity to be absurd and the Crucifixion a convenient whipping boy tells us nothing, really, about how shameful it was, either when it was founded or in their time. In our own time there is a powerful King James Only movement that is historically and textually absurd, and condemned by the establishment churches and by scholars alike. Yet it goes blithely on, ignorant and proud of it. In the paranoid eyes of the KJV-onlyers, attack by the Establishment is validation of their beliefs. Similarly, crucifixion was common enough, and could hardly have been perceived by one and all as mortally shameful, since it was incorporated as a motif in the popular literature where it happens to hero and devil alike even as Celsus and Porphyry and Lucian and Minucius Felix and Fronto were busy attacking and defending it in Jesus' case. No doubt for every Establishment critic of Christianity there was a slave who said to himself "Jesus got caulked for opposing Rome? Way cool!" But those stories have been lost to history.

This of course raises another issue, namely, whether it really matters what doctrines people actually dream up and what kind of opposition they get. After all, it doesn't get any more destructive and unbelievable than the Xhosa national suicide, but someone actually envisioned that as a religious movement, and attempted to actualize it, and many Xhosa sensibly opposed it, and yet it won out in the end. Consider the success of Mormonism. Mormonism is most popular in the US, where it offers lower status for women than society at large, compels participants to donate additional income over and above US taxes, restricts their social freedom in a society that emphasizes freedom of movement and speech, reduces their individual expression in a society where individualism is celebrated, has an authoritarian structure in a democratic polity, and engages in extensive thought control and information control in a society where neither has social approval. Further, information on the completely bogus career of Joseph Smith, the Mormon founder, is widely available. Clearly, the success of Mormonism cannot have anything to do with its values or its presentation of reality. The stark fact is that any religion will be successful, so long as it is missionary, manages to maintain a coherent message, develops a successful strategy of who and when to convert, and manages to maintain control over the minds and bodies of its converts. Those who doubt that need only contemplate Scientology, which makes a nice living for its leaders on steady growth in converts. The message is absolutely irrelevant.

Anyone who had ever thought about religion surely has observed this. In fact, Plato's concept of religion as the Royal Lie implicitly recognizes this. That is why too, TWHII doesn't hold even if we posit a maliciously invented crucifixion. Indeed, Scientology and Mormonism offer fruitful comparisons in this regard. Both are invented religions dreamed up by con men, that drew on the popular philosophy and cultural trends of their day. Just as Mormonism drew on the ritual and symbolism of Freemasonry and on then-popular historical views of North American history, and Scientology offers a spectacle of a cult based on belief in alien possession, a staple of modern American fiction and New Age culture, so Christianity offers a similar mish-mash of popular philosophy (Stoic and Cynic), and hoary alien religion (Judaism), combined with popular Hellenistic literary motifs, such as Crucifixion and Empty Tombs. The honor-shame matrix offers little reason to reject even malicious invention. Nor does the claim that Crucifixion was too hard a sell; it apparently was not for the early Hellenistic novelists. Why would it have been for early Christians?

Maybe some early Christian invented Jesus' crucifixion through a vision. Maybe there really was a historical Jesus who was crucified by the Romans somewhere and whose followers left a movement behind him. I do not know. But as the foregoing discussion has shown, the matrix of honor and shame is too broad to sustain a focused TWHII, while arguments that relate corporate cultural characteristics to individual behavior are also deeply flawed on both a conceptual, sociological and historical basis. Jesus' historicity should be sustained, not by bad arguments that turn complex human individuals into culturebots, but by sound historical methodology and appeals to the historical evidence.

Vorkosigan

andrewcriddle

At face value it is not obvious why the 'Jesus Cult' should be centred in Jerusalem other than some original connection of Jesus with Palestine. Certainly 1 Corinthians 15 locates the early resurrection appearances of Christ to people who (from Galatians 2) seem based in or at least strongly associated with Jerusalem. Paul in Galatians 2 regards a visit to Jerusalem as a potential encounter with the original apostles.

(It may also be worth noting the use of Aramaic/Hebrew terms in Paul's letters Abba (Romans 8 5 and Galatians 4 6) and Maranatha (1 Corinthians 16 22) particularly the former.)

Also it is not obvious to me that a crucified Messiah would be more acceptable to Hellenistic Jews than to Jews in Palestine. When Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 23 refers to Christ crucified as 'a stumbling block to Jews' I see no indication that he primarily means Jews in Palestine.
(Althogh this isn't the end of the Xhosa story I'm commenting on it here subsequent comments will only refer to alleged NT parallels)

An analysis at Xhosa Cattle Killings seeks to show how the Xhosa behaviour makes much more sense in Xhosa cultural terms than at first appears. Cattle sacrifice was a standard way of appeasing the ancestors and the spread of lungsickness into the Xhosa herds from European cattle imported into South Africa may well have made the cattle herds a powerful symbol of the pollution from the West which many felt had to be purged away to bring about national rebirth. Stories about the defeats inflicted on the British by the Russians at Crimea created a sense that the end of British power was near.

Although Sarili's claims to have seen visions confirming the original prophecies was probably sincere his previous hostility to Westernization predisposed him to sympathy to the prophecies.

On the general point individuals are not 'culturebots' however groups of people can only work together in ways that make sense within their shared beliefs, this is IMHO true by definition, and certainly seems a necessary condition for the intelligibility of human action.

(Sadly this is not an effective protection against destructive group delusions but that is another matter.)
Passages such as 2 Corinthians 10 10 'For they say "His letters are weighty and strong but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account"' make it unlikely IMO that Paul made use of such 'activities'.
1 Corinthians 15 1-8 particularly verse 6 strongly imply IMO that Paul regarded the time of founding as less than a generation ago
Leaving aside the possibility of influence from Christianity on the Greek popular novel, these are works of fiction in which the heroes and particularly the heroines are put through various shameful and humiliating experiences (sold into slavery etc) before the happy ending.

In real life I suspect that such experiences particularly where the heroine was concerned would have resulted in permanent loss of status and made living happily ever after as a restored aristocrat, very problematic.
Although crucifixion as an opportunity to practice Stoic philosophy would make sense within the Ancient World the Jesus of the NT is not a Stoic hero in this sense. (Agony in Gethsemane Cry of desolation on cross etc)
There is IMO a general point here.

Most people who say TWHII are IIUC claiming that it is most unilkely that there was a Historical Jesus who was not crucified but who died some other way.

(eg the claim of the late Enoch Powell that the Historical Jesus was stoned to death by his fellow Jews with no Roman involvement. Despite possible support from a baraita in Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin it would be IMO most surprising if this was the original and was later replaced throughout Christian tradition with the shameful idea of crucifixion.)

If one is considering a thoroughly mythical Jesus as in Doherty things may be somewhat different.

I have great difficulty in imagining what someone in the 1st century CE would have meant by proclaiming belief in a crucifixion in some sort of spiritual world but IF one finds this a plausible idea then it seems quite likely that it would not have the same type of shame issues as a messy flesh and blood crucifixion would have done.

In fact it is probably a more serious problem with such a 'mythical' crucifixion that it is too different from the ugly everyday world type of crucifixion to carry the weight of significance that Paul places on it.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Galatians 2 should be Galatians 1:15-2:10

Andrew Criddle

rlogan

Hi Vork.

The "embarassment criteria" for historicity has not only disproof by counter example, Eg. the whole genre of tragedy:

and of stoicism in this case in particular:

Where we have

1) Incorporation of the essential principle of sacrifice before God.

2) HB "prophesy" providing the guidance on the suffering messiah in its particulars.


In place of the "embarassment" we have perfectly logical and much more powerful motivation for the crucifiction motif.



It never ceases to amaze me that apologists can take something so obvious and argue both sides of it depending on their motive.

On the one hand we are to believe that the suffering messiah is so embarassing as to be proof it is not made up. On the other hand, the "fact" Jesus suffered in accord with HB prophesy is proudly utilized as proof of his credentials.

That's right. We're embarrassed as hell that we have the proof he's the messiah.

andrewcriddle

Hi Vorkosigan

I'm not sure whether the emphasis of your argument is that the TWHII type of argument is wrong in general or that crucifixion in particular is not a good example.

One possible parallel where we do have contemporary evidence of what actually happened is the case of Sabbatai Sevi.

Suppose contemporary accounts by outsiders were lacking and all we knew with certainty were the accounts by followers of Sabbatai Sevi in the early 18th century.

Would our knowledge that many Jews despite disapproval from the mainstream Jewish leadership believed that a rabbi of the previous century had been the Messiah despite having converted to Islam, be good evidence that Sabbatai Sevi had in fact converted to Islam on the TWHII principle ?

Or could one claim that the arguments by his followers that the conversion to Islam of the Messiah was prophesied in Scripture and Tradition and was a logical outworking of the implications of Lurianic Kabbalah, meant that the story fitted into their world view sufficiently well to be a perfectly plausible invention ?

Andrew Criddle

MortalWombat

I'm surprised that no one has commented on this remarkable claim by Crossan. He should know better than to write something like this, since it is known that both Josephus and Tacitus were born after the time of Pilate's rule in Judaea, and could not have been witnesses to the crucifixion.

Vorkosigan

He means "witnesses" in the technical historical sense, not "eyewitnesses."

Vorkosigan

LOL. I couldn't decide either, so I'm trying both. As you showed, I need to dump the Palestine vs Diaspora bit, or at least refashion it. I'll get back to the rest of your comments tomorrow; new semester started here in Taiwan today and full of exciting meetings and paperwork.

the_cave

You also need to remember the "churches in Judea" that Paul mentions in Galatians. In fact, these may be the first churches (outside of the Galatians saluted in the letter itself, of course!) mentioned in the NT.

Vorkosigan

Thanks.