Toto

Redating the Radiocarbon Dating of The Dead Sea Scrolls
pp. 143-157(15)
Authors: Joseph Atwill; Steve Braunheim; Robert Eisenman

The full text article is available for purchase

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/dsd

Jedi Mind Trick

Just bought your book, Joe... I am going to be reading it while I read Eisenmans' "James the brother of Jesus."

I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of my copy of Josephus when I sold all my Christian books.

John Deere

Blackwater:

Happy reading and let my know your thoughts and criticisms. I suspect Caesar's Messiah is going to be good for sales of the works of Josephus.

Joe

steven andresen

To Joe,

I am wondering about alternatives to your challenging view, not only by writers who suggest the Gospels were in the service of non-flavian figures, like julius Caesar, but also other writers who push for the Flavians as master-minds.

So, what do you make of Cliff Carrington, who in 1998 wrote "The Gospels After Josephus," found at,

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atri...20propagandist.

Carrington seems to make many of the same claims as you. For example, he says,

"...Josephus wrote his account of the war for the Flavians, as a piece of propaganda to divide the Jews and to encourage them to accept Rome’s rule. The gospels also promote the acceptance of Roman rule. According to Josephus the fanatical Jews in Judea brought on their own punishment by defying the Romans. In the gospels the fanatical Jews, by defying Jesus and calling for his crucifixion, brought on their own punishment by the Romans."

I expect this will be one of the accounts you expressed an interest in addressing. Why has this line of thinking, whether by you, Carrington, or others, not seemed to make an impression on Christian writers so far.

So, for example, I just briefly examined two new books, new to me, wherein one might expect a discussion of your hypothesis. One is "Lost Christianities, The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew," by Bart D. Ehrman. This was published in 2003. The other is "The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran, The Essene Mysteries of John the Baptist," by Robert Feather, copyrighted in 2005. Neither book references in their indexes, at least, you, Carrington, or the Flavian hypothesis.

I suspect the reason has to do with the kind of evidence these people count as appropriate source material for their work. They think archeology and the Gospel writings themselves count. They think other kinds of writing wherein the referencing of one work in another, as you claim the life of Jesus is constructed from other literature, like the life of Moses, or the events of the Jewish war, doesn't.

Do you have an argument to show the consideration of your texts is as appropriate as, for example, archeological evidence?

By the way, how do you think your account of the Flavian influence on the Gospels stacks up against Carrington's?

spin

Can we cross the two of these threads and have carottids and the atwillans compete to explain why their particular strain of this basically shared hypothesis is less handicapped than the other?


spin

Clivedurdle

I'm hoping for a synthesis, and some comments why Marcion didn't do it!

John Deere

Spin:

Since you haven't read Caesar's Messiah, how would you be able understand the critques?

Steve:

First, let me say that Cliff Carrington's work has led to the same conclusion as mine, though he came to it from a different direction. He came to understand that the Flavians produced the Gospels through his reading of the historical literature - which, by the way, he has read more of than any other scholar I know. The information and analysis on his Web site speaks for itself.

On the other hand I came to believe that the Flavians created Christianity through a direct analysis of the Gospels. The victors write history, and since the core of Jesus's prophecies were military victorys of the Flavian family, I attempted to understand the Gospels as they would have been understood by that imperial family. As I show in Caesar's Messiah, simply viewing the Gospels through this perspective makes their satirical level visible. As you have read the book I am curious, do you think that the relationship I show between Jesus's ministry and Titus's campaign could have circumstancial?

As far as Carrota's work goes, it is simply not related to mine in any way and I do not understand how he draws the conclusions that he does.

Joe

John Deere

Spin:

Could you please explain what you believe my thesis and Carrota's "share".

This should be good.

Joe

rlogan

Hi Joe.

Do you mean that the entire confidence interval is within the first century, or that a portion of said confidence interval overlaps into the first century?


Not in general. This is a special case where these sources of variation are completely independent of one another. There are some covariation terms in there otherwise.


If I am taking the gist of this correctly then I have to object to it as a means of getting dating into the first century. Because what it actually does is not change the most likely date (the point estimate in the center of the confidence interval). It instead casts a much larger possible confidence interval that would include third century with just as much likelihood as the first. (given for discussion purposes that the center of the distribution is in the second century)

In other words, you can't use a wider standard deviation to argue for a greater possibility on one side of the distribution. It means a greater possibility on both sides.

An antagonist using the same argument would put forward a date into the third century. But it would be an equally invalid assertion.


There are two fundamental problems in statistics. Bias. Sampling variation (efficiency).

Attacking C14 as a biased estimator (consistently dates "too late" or "too early") is what gets you traction for arguing with confidence for a later or earlier date, in accord with the bias.

Attacking C14 for sampling variation is a far weaker line of attack. It does not change one whit the most likely estimated date. It gives you less confidence in that date, yes. But it absolutely does not give you license to argue arbitrarily for an earlier date. You must seek that substantiation elsewhere.

spin

The Roman origins of christianity