J-D

As I've pointed out before (more or less), if you make it part of the definition of Christianity that it has imperial sanction, then it is trivially true that (in this eccentric sense) there was no Christianity before Constantine. It is also fatuous and uninteresting.And again, there was obviously no religion with the authority of Constantine behind it before Constantine put his authority behind it. That isn't the question. The question is whether the religion which Constantine put his authority behind existed without Constantine's authority before Constantine put his authority behind it.According to what I read, the earliest known reference to the New Testament canon dates to 367. Are you aware of an earlier reference?What changed your mind?'Significant breakthrough' in what sense?

J-D

I don't think it is spin's position that the canonical New Testament must necessarily have existed before Constantine. It's not my position. I don't know that it's anybody's position. Of course, it's much easier to win arguments if you get to decide what the other side's position is as well as your own. But it's specious.

spamandham

I agree with all that, however, this subdiscussion is about what the text fragment actually states, not what may inferred from it. It does not state Jesus was crucified*.

of [Zebed]ee and Salome and the wives of [those who] had followed him from [Galile]e to see the crucified.

There are two possibilities in regard to the word "him" here:
1. It refers to Jesus. If that's the case, then does it make sense for them to be following Jesus to Galilee to see the crucified, if Jesus is among the crucified? :huh:

2. It refers to someone else. If that's the case, then the reason the women went to Galille is substantially different than the canonicals, so how do we know the rest of the story is the same?

In the canonicals, they did not follow Jesus to "see the crucified", they followed him to care for his needs. That's a nontrivial difference.

Although the characters and general setting are the same, it is not identical to the canonicals. It is possible that the story had a different ending than the canonical gospels.

*...all this is prefaced on the assumption that this translation is accurate and unambiguous. If a trustworthy Koine Greek expert comes along and tells me that "followed" can only mean "followed him a few days later" rather than "travelled with him as he led the way" and that "the" in "the crucified" necessarily refers to "him", and that "him" necessarily refers to the later mention of Jesus in regard to Joseph of A. being his disciple, then I reserve the right to say "oops".

spamandham

Then why not stick to what we actually know, rather than claiming more? The text fragment does not state that Jesus was crucified. There's nothing religious or obtuse on my part in that observation. It's a verifiable fact anyone capable of reading can observe directly.

jeffevnz

I'm well aware of the concept, and this is a reasonable, though ultimately unconvincing point. Infinity is a big number. There were not an infinite number of texts written in ancient times. And not nearly enough to make the coincidences between the Dura piece and the Gospels likely to occur by accident.

How many writings in total, were produced in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Aramaic, between 0 and 325 CE, by members of the Jewish, Christian, or related communities? Trying to cast a wide, but relevant net. Clearly this document derives from those communities because it mentions the Sabbath, preparation day, and at least two names of Hebrew origin. Anyway, let's say 10 billion. I think that's generous to you, because there were probably less than 100 million people who met all the criteria, and for each of them on average to have produced 100 documents of one kind or another during their lives seems a little high. Especially with so many illiterate people. But I'll work with it. Although 10 billion sounds like a big number, it turns out not to be big for our purposes.

Generic example of why: The odds of certain words occuring together by accident fall off very steeply as the number of words that you want to see together increases. Let's say the word X occurs in 1/100 documents, the word Y occurs in 1/20 documents, and the word Z occurs in 1/500. The odds of finding all 3 in the same document are then (1/100)*(1/20)*(1/500) = (1/1,000,000). So already the odds of finding three unusual words anywhere in the same text have gotten remote. And this is without making the further requirement that they all appear within the same 100-word passage, which would make the odds much, much smaller. To say nothing about order...

Back to Dura and the Gospels... What are the odds of Salome, "women followed him from....to see...," "evening/late....preparation day," "preparation day....day before Sabbath", and "Arimathea....council/councilman....disciple...fear of the," all occuring in the same document? Note the number of elements that have to occur in the same sentence for some of these.

odds of that = (frequency of Salome)*(frequency of "women followed him from....to see...")*... etc.

...where I'm defining frequency specifically as the fraction of unique documents of any kind that contain the word or phrase. So what are the frequencies of these words/phrases?

Ideally, at this point someone with access to data would step in and do formal calculations for us. But since I can't find hard data on the frequencies of even these words, I'll make very rough guesses for now. I will try to err on the side of being generous to you, Pete. Let me know if you disagree at any point.

Salome There are several Salomes attested among Jewish royalty in the century before the destruction of the temple. Also the name is just a Hellenization of 'Shalom.' This suggests it and its variants were a common female name in the relevant community. OTOH, it wouldn't have been in every single document. My guess for frequency: 1/2

"women followed him from....to see..." This is a very specific combination of several elements all in the same sentence. Women following a man from somewhere, to see something. How many texts will even have that specific idea? Let alone put it all in one sentence? My guess for frequency: 1/10

"evening/late....preparation day" A time of day, on a specific day of the week, is being referenced, all in one sentence. Not all writings even mention times on specific days. And those that do don't necessarily mention more than a few. My guess: 1/5

"preparation day....day before Sabbath" How many documents mention the Sabbath? How many also mention Preparation day? How many of those writers also feel the need to explain that Preparation day is the day before the Sabbath? Bear in mind this is any kind of writing, from histories to shopping lists. My guess: 1/5

"Arimathea....council/councilman....disciple...fear of the" Now here's the rare bit. Arimathea seems to be an unusual word. AFAICT, it is not attested per se outside the Gospels. And there are only a few mentions of apparent cognates such as the one in the Dura fragment, or "Ramathaim" mentioned in Samuel. Given the hundreds of relevant documents from the relevant communities and times that we have available, a handful of mentions suggests a frequency on the order of 1/100 for the word, Arimathia, alone. To have Arimathia specifically in the same sentence as all three of the other elements buys you at least another factor of 2. My guess: 1/200


If you'll go with these guesses, and I'd hope you would because I'm being nice as Hell, then the odds of these elements simpy occuring in the same writing are:

(1/2)*(1/10)*(1/5)*(1/5)*(1/200) = 1/100,000

That's the odds of one document having all of them together. The odds of two documents having all of them, by accident, independently of one another, are:

(1/100,000)*(1/100,000) = (1/10,000,000,000)

So already the odds of the textual coincidences between the Dura fragment and the Gospels occuring by sheer accident are barely likely enough to happen once given our estimated pool of writings (10,000,000,000; see above). All the numerical estimates are IMO, generous to you, or at least fair.

And we're not even done. I haven't:
- required that all of these words or phrases occur within 100 words of one another, as in both Dura and Gmark
- made restrictions on the order in which they appear, that fit both Dura and Gmark
- required the inclusion of other parts common to both, like 'crucifixion,' or "did not consent"

If we took these into account, the odds of the textual coincidences occuring between two documents by sheer accident would drop further. The first one alone would move the odds much lower, probably by orders of magnitude. And since the half-finished result was already barely probable, this would move us across the line and well into improbable territory.

Dura and the parallel passage in GMark just have way too much in common to have turned out that way by sheer accident. An infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, typing at random, for an infinite amount of time would certainly be expected to produce both documents sooner or later. But 100 million Jews and people of related faiths, typing in Hebrew and Greek, for a few hundred years, would not.

spamandham

I guess I don't see why it matters whether we translate it as "Jesus" or "Joshua". The original Syriac does not exist to give us the context.

spin

You can whine this as much as you like, working on the mundane fact that the text doesn't in fact put Jesus on the cross, but such a point is drowned by the existence of crucifixion with a sacred significance along with sacred names Jesus and god, all tied together with a narrative that matches point by point the gospel narrative.

The obtuseness is apparent. The motivation appears to be quasi-religious. Deal with the text not how you want it to be. I'll agree with you that it does literally say Jesus was crucified, but if you leave it at that, you are not doing your job.

Blinkers, Bill, blinkers.


spin

spamandham

Was that so hard? Next time, try to be less obnoxious when discussing points of verifiable fact.

J-D

It sounds to me like the sort of fragmentary evidence that ancient historians often have to rely on.

It's still more evidence than you've got for your theory.

spin

Your up-the-garden-path avoidance of the evidence is mildly amusing.


spin