mountainman

Yet, to claim (as you appear to be doing) that the ancients
had no skills of discernment whatsoever, is simply beating
your modern chest.

Aristotle in the west, and the buddhist logicians in the east?

You'll find there were prototypes of this.
Occam was not born into a vacuum.


Have you ever read the "creation hymn" of the Rig Veda?

The Indian mathematians recognised it in ancient times.
Like most other things, the knowledge moved west.

Get real spin. How could you have either
without the Pythagorean theorem?

I am not denying knowledge has increased. I am denying what
appears to be your position, that none of the ancients could have
been perceptible enough to:
* recognise an author by the handwriting.
* duplicate that author's hand.
* detect forgery of that hand by another.

Take someone who worked all their life in a library for instance,
familiar with all the works therein. Like either Eusebius or his
earlier namesake Pamphilus.

What would you do if you had to assess the veracity of a letter,
that it was in fact written by one of the authors, whose works
you had available to you, perhaps even familiar to you, in your
local library --- assuming you are doing this in antiquity, with
everything as handwritten material.

You have yet to perceive that the Constantinian Daphne
is a unique series, from the new mint, in the new city
of Constantine. Engravers never used the adjective
CONSTANTINIANA except on this issue.

The speculations are not mine, but published under
the name of: McGregor, John ...

"Constantiniana Dafne: A Different Point of View".
Journal for the Society of Ancient Numismatics Vol. XV,
No. 3 (Fall 1984): 44-46.

McGregor convincingly shows how this coin is a rejection of paganism and translates the reverse legend, loosely, as INFORMATION ABOUT, OF OR FROM DAPHNE PERTAINING TO CONSTANTINE. This coin is a personal statement from Constantine explaining why he gave up the laurel headress and replaced it with the diadem.

mountainman

We would be looking for citations from the 2nd or earlier centuries
for the existence of an earlier document. Citations from unknown
authors related to the "redaction party" are not well regarded.

However independent citation from known authors would be highly
regarded, and weigh more, for an historian IMO.

Then we would expect to find evidence of it in the prenicene.
If there were indeed hundreds of thousands of christians in
total living on the planet between say 70CE and 312 CE, we
might expect to find at least one prenicene "christian sarcophagus".

Ammianus Marcellinus and most other 4th century historians,
and christian historiographers have there mark already made.
Besides this, there are the long and impressive list of the
"christian basilicas" which went up under Constantine, all
around the empire, and of course, in "the holy land".

Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, Israel
Basilica of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople
Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome
Basilica of St. Peter, Vatican Valley, Rome
Basilica of St. Lorenzo, Rome
Basilica of St. Sebastiano
Basilica of St. Marcellino
Basilica of St. Pietro
Basilica of St. John, Laterano (over barracks of Maxentius' soldiers)
Basilica of St. Maxentius
Basilica of Santa Sophia
Basilica of St. Constantine, Rome

It always helps to reserve judgement
and to be willing to be refuted if the
logic of the situation demands it.

The history of antiquity for the period from 4 BCE to 325 CE has
since 325 CE been presumed to have contained "things christian".
As a result, you will find many good historians literally forced to
become "apologists for historical truth" that may not necessarily
be in alignment to "christianity". The introduction by George Long
to his translation of Marus Aurelius' "Meditations" is a classic example.

The historian in Long must apologise to his readers for the events
(of christian martydom, etc -- IMO totally fictitious) that had
apparently occurred in the rule of this emperor. This is a sorry
state of affairs for historians.

There is IMO a history of antiquity yet to be explored, into which
the christian initiative only commences with effect from the fourth
century, and a new story has yet to be determined based on the
neo-pythagorean and neo-platonist philosophers, and other authors,
none of whom were christian, for the period -4BCE to 325 CE.

Zeichman

Sorry it took so long. This isn't a point which I particularly want to discuss, but I'll do it since you asked me to.

This seems to me to be reductionistic, modernistic thinking. His wholesale dismissal of exorcisms, for example, is inappropriate. In 1:22ff, he equates the ancient metaphysical claim (the thing in him is a demon) with the modern physical (so-and-so exhibits unusual behavior). He not doing us a service by accepting Mark's supernatural reading of the story as the only possible one. The interpretation of a psycho-somatic exorcism is quite possible here.

There is nothing necessarily "supernatural" about:
1) the presence of a man whom ancients would understand as being possesed
2) the psychosomatic exorcism of such an individual

In fact, I see nothing necessarily "supernatural" about this pericope at all. One might reasonably take verse 26 to be so, but all it actually states is that the man no longer exhibited these qualities that were percieved as abnormal. There is no highly-mythologized demon flying around the room, or divine messenger sent to speak or anything.

This criterion also is problematic when mythologization occurs. Stories, like exorcisms, may not have originally contained such supernatural features, but they beg to be redacted into featuring the miraculous.

Additionally, his patronizing dismissal of all objections in the second sentence of this criterion is ironic (and unscholarly), given how people have treated his conclusions.

Since Turton believes that essentially all non-Pauline Christian documents were directly or indirectly dependent on Mark, this criterion needs better definition. There is often no point of comparison for what non-Markan forms of these stories are. For this reason, we can never know, beyond conjecture, what is Markan redaction and what is pre-existing tradition. I hope I articulated this well enough. At the very least, he needs to define these, and explain how they are different.

This one is just silly. The "Jesus had to be unique" mentality only buys into apologetic desires, and is not useful as a negative criterion. Why should Jesus have to be unique? I don't see any justification for this often-rejected criterion. Again, I'm not I understand how these are substantively different.

I could address more, but it's Valentine's Day, and this is a depressing enough endeavor.

Seriously though, this isn't something I feel confident discussing, as I feel much more at home in Q-related studies, or discussing the work of someone whom I've spent more than a couple hours reading. To provide a link back to my last post: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...09#post4167509

Amaleq13

I think you are misunderstanding him on this point.

There is no "Jesus had to be unique" implied in the notion that the apparent utilization of common themes or motifs in a story about Jesus seriously undermines any effort to establish the story's historicity.

Is the author relating something that actually happened to Jesus and it just happened to fit the motif or is the author trying to relate something about Jesus (or his beliefs about Jesus) by retelling an old story with Jesus in it or has the author taken something that actually happened but changed details so that it fit the motif?

Unless you know of a way to differentiate between these possibilities, I think this point stands as entirely reasonable rather than "silly".

spin

You are not making sense.

Aristotle gave us a syllogism. That sure ain't fuzzy. He gave the first rules of logic, but where did all the rest come from?

Yup. But he is evidence that knowledge increases with time. You could benefit from Occam, if you applied him to your stuff. The ancients didn't have that possibility.

Yup. No allegory (developed in late middle ages). No imagism (an early 20c poetic movement). [imagery =/= imagism ]

That means you accept the notion that Europe and the middle east simply didn't have a zero, but then that the Indians didn't have a notion of zero as a concept.

Talking about getting real, why not deal with the question: How could you have general relativity without Newtonian physics? You see as I said knowledge increases. Just as logic has come a long way since the rudimentary syllogism, so have ideas based on geometry.

That's not what you should be talking about. You should be talking about the ability to classify scripts in various languages (including Greek, Latin and Coptic) by form into eras, to know regional variations in fonts, to be able to discern precisely when the hand was used.

What range of texts did Pamphilus have in his "library"?

Let's see you take the challenge, assuming you are someone who isn't in the habit of forgery (ie without necessary training in handwriting), try and forge letters by say your mother, her father, the local doctor and a few others of disparate contexts, and come back with the evidence.

I did read your earlier post.

It doesn't explain any such thing. It claims that the other Constantine coins issued with laurel should not be considered. Then it interprets the imagery to give a particular meaning, not supported by the imagery.


spin

Ted Hoffman

Hi,
Sorry I havent responded to your earlier post. I am swamped by work.
Thanks for taking a shot at Turton's methodology. I can straightaway note the following:
All things are possible. What you need to do is to tell us why what you are claiming is more probable and the evidence that supports your argument.
This is not the only miracle in Mark. What is your naturalistic explanation of thousands of pigs voluntarily running down the banks of a river to drown? Mass Suicide? Among pigs?
Straightaway, we can see that your naturalistic angle fails.
You need proof for this conjecture. We cant just evaluate guesswork.
You need to prove that mythologization occured in this specific case. Otherwise, you are just presenting your imagnation as a counterargument.
You need to provide a source of the survey you are referring to.
This is a poetic perspective on the state of affairs.
Markan redaction is identified by the use of Markan themes like portrayal of the disciples as ignorant clods, crowds following Jesus, Messianic secret and so on.
I agree that there is a lot he needs to do as you can see from my review, but overall, he is on track.
There is the argument that Jesus is not a copycat saviour figure.
Literary borrowing. A character can be created by inserting words from earlier literature in his mouth and creating events from earlier events in literature.
Have you read about the temple ruckus and Nehemiah? You should start with that - complete with linguistic parallels.
Forget Turton for a while. Start with Troughton's ECHOES IN THE TEMPLE? JESUS, NEHEMIAH, AND THEIR ACTIONS IN THE TEMPLE then read a thread here on Thomas Brodie's The Crucial Bridge: the Elijah-Elisha Narrative.

mountainman

Let's suppose I use your terminology then. I find it a reasonable
proposition that there would have been (a small number of)
knowledgeable and experienced scholars around in antiquity,
who had the ability to classify scripts in various languages
(including Greek, Latin and Coptic) by form into eras, to know
regional variations in fonts, to be able to discern precisely
when the hand was used.

The forgery of, and the detection of forgery of these scripts,
would not have been, IMO, beyond the bounds of the ability
of some of these people. Certainly nothing as sophisticated
as today, but citations of forged literature are not unknown
in the period, which tells us forgery was practiced and detected.

spin

What exactly do you mean by "forged literature" in the ancient context? A text presented as written by someone it wasn't written by?

Texts were frequently copied, so the modern notion of forgery would be rather meaningless in that context.

So what are you referring to? What is the source material? Or are you just saying that what you are trying to say sounds reasonable?


spin

Zeichman

I laid out a phenomenon that happens with some frequency in modern times, and probably much greater in antiquity. Turton, from I would see, would end up denying the historicity of all of these. Almost all historical Jesus scholars believe Jesus to have been an exorcist (Mack and Arnal are two who I think wouldn't say that), and that he dismisses their conclusions out of hand (again, this is my reading of Turton, and there's a good chance I'm wrong) means he needs to justify himself, not vice versa. Also, I want to point out that my goal here is simply to null specific methods of Turton, not to prove any contrary or contradictory ones. For this reason, I'll be using a lot of non-committal "weasel words" and that I may not always agree with what I'm saying here.

I'm not claiming this of all miracles, but simply using a single case to show some weaknesses in Turton's case. Looking for more primitive units in existing pericopes is a common method, so why does he not attempt this in his look at miracle stories? If one cannot find a sufficiently reasonable and primitive pre-existing unit behind a particular pericope, then one can reasonably deny its authenticity.

Also, Turton's method seems to be one of historical positivism. It seems to me that he has not attempted to distinguish from specific acts of Jesus (i.e. Gerasene demoniac) versus deeds typical of Jesus (exorcism). I doubt that we have many authentic miracles recalled in the gospel accounts, but one can certainly make a case that exorcisms were something typical of Jesus.

Why do you give Turton the benefit of the doubt? He doesn't even offer conjecture. I'm just assuming that this is one of the things he thinks is supernatural.

Any scholarly work on the last chapter of Mark or the resurrection addresses the mythologization of the empty tomb narrative. I needn't repeat the numerous conclusions and methods employed there.

Does he provide a list of such things and how he arrived at the conclusion they represent Markan redaction? I'm not contesting these examples, but I seem to recall that he claimed more controversial things were redaction, too.

Here, Turton is unable (or at least unwilling) to distinguish between acts and deeds of Jesus recast in the light of better known stories (one might cite the temple incident) and inauthentic deeds using archetypes (transfiguration).

Additionally, I think he needs to be more reserved with his conclusions. His justifications seem to go unstated with moderate frequency, and this is not particularly helpful to his readers. Crossan was heavily criticizes for using his plus-minus-plus/minus appendix, and Turton drops the last of those from his work, leading, inevitably, to reductionism.

I think I've read this, but I'm actually glad you posted this again, since I'm doing my theology senior seminar paper on Jesus, the temple's destruction, and eschatology. I'll re-read it soon. I think I may have looked over your review once, but certainly not in depth. I'll take a look at it this weekend. Thanks.

Not to sound too antsy, but can we get back to the original topic, that is, Q and whatnot?

Ted Hoffman

By all means. As soon as I get some time.