Roger Pearse

I would let this pass, except that it follows a post endorsing the opinions of "Acharya S" and Gordon Stein when they pronounce on it. Come, sir, this will not do.

Arguments from silence are not generally worth much in antiquity, given that 99% of ancient literature is lost.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874

Are you implying that Apollo was historical and Augustus mythical?

aa5874

You push my 'faith' to the limit.

Minimalist

Let me try an anology, Roger...btw, my name is Bob, just to even things up.
I have never seen you support some of the more fanciful notions in the bible (The Flood...Adam and Eve, etc) You may have done so but I can't recall it. Therefore, your are selective when you accept a source. Acharya and Stein and Doherty for that manner, say lots of things but all refer to the total lack of reference by christian writers prior to Eusebius. As I have indicated, for me that is the line in the sand.

We have no manuscripts in Josephus' own hand. What we have are copies of copies of copies all of which were subject to interpolation over the course of centuries. The same, of course, is true of the so-called scriptures themselves but let's not go there for the moment.

I happen to have Doherty's Jesus Puzzle handy and on page 208 he gives a sample of what commentators have suggested is an "authentic reconstruction" of the TF. It concludes " and the tribe of Christians, so called after him, continues to the present day. "

If that was present when Origen, Tertullian, Justin, Clement and others were writing then they should all have been beaten with sticks for negligence. As I noted elsewhere (and finding anything on this site is a task that I have virtually given up on) Origen manages to work the "James reference" into his work but not the TF....in any form.

The argument from silence question does not work, either. These writers are not silent. We have volumes of work from them, preserved by the church itself because of their status. I get the "Absence of Evidence" line from Fundies all the time about the archaeological finds in Jerusalem. They almost uniformly assert that "just because archaeology has not found the remains of Solomon's glorious capital that does not mean it is not there." Well. Wrong.
Archaeology has found a small village on the site at the time. Archaeology has found neolithic remains in Jerusalem. Digging deeper (meaning 'earlier') is not likely to result in 10th century remains under the 4th millenia remains.
So when they cry "absense of evidence" what they mean is that it is absense of THEIR evidence. However, the artifacts that have been recovered still exist and constitute tangible proof of the meager settlement that was Jerusalem in the 10th century. In the same way I don't see how you can ignore the failure of early christian writers to include some reference to the TF.

BTW, I'm not so sure that the "James" reference wasn't tampered with, either.
There was lots of time before Origen to do so.

Chris Weimer

Do you know that Origen, Clement, or Justin Martyr actually knew the later books of Josephus' Antiquities? Are you familiar with Roger's work here?

Doug Shaver

Yes, and why did they do that? It think it was because one of them really was named Paul, and the others were pretending to be him. So, there was one (and only one) real Paul, plus one or more imposters.

Minimalist

I've heard that argument before, even though I did not know until now that Roger wrote it. To answer your question directly, Origen does mention Book XX's reference, to James. I suppose he could have skipped over Book XVIII but that really does not seem very likely, does it? Anyway, to continue.

First, this:

"And to so great a reputation among the people for righteousness did this James rise, that Flavius Josephus, who wrote the "Antiquities of the Jews" in twenty books, when wishing to exhibit the cause why the people suffered so great misfortunes that even the temple was razed to the ground, said, that these things happened to them in accordance with the wrath of God in consequence of the things which they had dared to do against James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ. And the wonderful thing is, that, though he did not accept Jesus as Christ, he yet gave testimony that the righteousness of James was so great; and he says that the people thought that they had suffered these things because of James."

Would seem to have been an ideal time for Origen to mention the TF...if it existed. Thanks to christian zealots, we don't know exactly what Celsus said. We have only Origen's apparent comment setting up his later discussion and, I guess, we should be thankful that even that much of Celsus' work was saved from the bonfires of the church. Even if it existed in Doherty's 'original' form I can't believe Origen would have have it pass, without some comment. In that respect it is like Philo writing a whole dissertation on what a prick Pilate was and not mentioning that he also killed someone who was hailed by "multitudes" as The Messiah. Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

Second: If the TF existed I would expect entire chapters to have been written about it by Origen and his cohorts. An important historian of the first century writing about their lord and master and they ignore it? Sorry. I don't buy it.

Third: This is not Roger's fault but I've actually been exposed to lunatics who swear that since the Israelites were slaves in Egypt that one can not expect to find any evidence of slaves AND THEREFORE the bible account is true BECAUSE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF IT. This is taking the argument from silence a bit too far!

I detect a certain amount of desperation among HJ types to sustain the TF because it is the only reference in the non-biblical literature to Jesus. My initial reaction to Roger's essay is "wishful thinking," or perhaps "special pleading." I will go back and read it again closely later tonight, though. Thank you for the link.

In my view Occam's Razor handles the issue succinctly. The TF was not cited by early christian writers because it did not exist until the 4th century when Eusebius (or someone else) forged it.

Chris Weimer

spin among others think that on account of Origen's mistake that he didn't actually have Josephus in front of him. What do you make of it? Furthermore, have you taken an account of other ancient writers to see when scholars purport they're written and when they were first mentioned? And if those fathers didn't know Josephus, how would they know that it was there? Especially if they've received misinformation? Finally, what do you make of the mini-synoptic?

Minimalist

I have to admit, Chris, that I'm not grasping your point, above. Perhaps you could be a little more specific?

Anyway, in the meanwhile, I have finished reading through Roger's page and I have to acknowledge that it is apparent that he put an awful lot of work into it. Still, I've read apologetics for lots of things and they always put a lot of work into it. It is, after all, a labor of love for them. The bottom line is that after all is said and done that all of Roger's assumptions could be true.
However, my assumption is not disproven. If the TF did not exist in any recognizable form prior to Eusebius then it would not have shown up in any other christian writer's either.

However, to advance the discussion along, since it seems inevitable, here is the TF as it burst forth in all it's glory in Eusebius' Chapter XI.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.vi.xi.html

I'm sure you've read that a million times but my point in posting it was so I could quote the footnote which accompanies it.


I was particularly struck that this author chooses to give Eusebius, himself, a pass on the charge of forgery. I guess I am less forgiving. In any crime, the cops know to 'follow the money.' In this case, when you ask who benefits from the apparent forgery the answer keeps coming back to the guy who made use of it.

Roger Pearse

I couldn't actually see the relevance of much of what you wrote to what I wrote -- it was as if you were just dumping out standard statements. As such I have snipped pretty aggressively unless I had some interest in the topic.

It is true of every ancient literary text. I'm not sure what you think you are saying, tho.

Do you know that any of these writers, Origen aside, had seen *any* of books 11-20? If not, how can they refer to it?

This expectation that they 'must' have seen and, if they saw it that they 'must' have used it, and if they used it that the work in which they did so 'must' have been preserved... this is not evidence. Any of us can invent demands about something in order to argue from the failure of the data to meet them. Neither of us has referred to the Iraq war, for instance, so clearly we don't know of it and our exchange is in fact a later forgery. And so on. It won't do.

You are arguing from their silence, tho!

All the best,

Roger Pearse