Johann_Kaspar

:rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling:

Wow, Atwill has a fan club, or is it a fun club?!

Johann_Kaspar

No, he can't. Vespasianus was never annointed, messiah, christ... Josephus wanted to save his skin and found a trick invoking and distorting a prophecy to escape the common fate of rebels - crucifixion, using the superstition of the Roman. Lucky him and us, for we can read something about the 1st century.

A Messiah is a Jew, descendant of David, restoring the independance of Eretz Israell. Now Mr. Atwill will find for us that the Falvians have David as an ancestor! For the independance, the task will be a little bit more difficult, but with history fiction, everything is possible. Hurrah!

Alexp

Hi Johan: I'm here to learn. I've been reading the archives for the last month or so. And I can't remember a topic that justifies this type of dialog between peers. If there's a specific thread that you or Chris can refer me to, I'd be happy to read it.

Also, if you can disprove Atwill by citing the reference to Josephus that proves the Passover Lamb story takes place in August, please provide it -- that way we all (okay, me!) learn something.

Thanks!

jgibson000

Would you please be kind enough to show me where I have used an -- let alone any -- obscenity on this thread.

Umm .. what do you call doing what Joe, for all of his claims to be "scholarly", has not done (and curiously refuses to do, despite the fact that scholarship demands it) and actually providing for examination the Greek and Latin texts that Joe claims contain both the term "Christ" and a note of its being applied to Vespasian?

If that's not a "pertinent" contribution, I don't know what is. And it's not my fault that these texts show that Joe's claim has no merit.

Or do you define "pertinent" as "only that which supports what Joe claims"?

JG

Johann_Kaspar

I will be much more happy if you will find it by yourself. It is enough to read Josephus:

http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-5.htm
http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-6.htm

Can you do better than Atwill?

jgibson000

Yep. Sock puppet.

JG

Alexp

jgibson000: I didn't single you out.

Quite honestly, Joe's fulfilled his "scholarly" demands by publishing his thesis -- it's out there for everyone to review. But I don't agree that it's always possible for someone to distill their theories into a few lines of copy for debate on a text-based forum.

I'm not saying that Joe's right -- 'cause I don't know. But I think it's entirely possible that his overall thesis has merit even if specific details are wrong.

Johann_Kaspar

All specific details are wrong. Context is wrong. Pure fantasy. History fiction. And a bad one.

jgibson000

My name is not Johann. But leaving that aside, please point me to the obscenities you are referring to.

I'm afraid you have no idea of what "scholarly responsibility" means in this instance.

Joe brought his claims here. So he's responsible here for what he does here. And here he keeps running away from those responsibilities.

Besides that, the issue isn't the entirety of his thesis, but the specific claim that he's made here that specific texts from Dio Casius, Suetonius, Tacitus, etc. explicitly show Vespasian as being given or taking for himself the title "Christ". And since he made those claims here, and asserted their validity here more than once, then he whatever he's done elsewhere, he still has the responsibility to defend them here if called upon here to do so.

That's nice. But it's irrelevant, since it isn't what Joe did when he was making specific clams about what texts said.

What we've been asking Joe to prove are hardly minor details that are incidental to his thesis. They constitute the very foundations of his thesis. They are part of -- if not the -- primary evidence upon which it rests. So if they do not withstand scrutiny, then the thesis is worthless.

So how about you making a contribution to the question at hand -- which I remind you again is only Joe's claims (1) that the Greek word χριστος (or, where pertinent, its Latin equivalent) appears in Cassius Dio, Roman history 65.8.1, 66.1.4; Josephus, Jewish War 3.399-404 and 6.310-315; Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 4.5; Tacitus, Histories 5.13; Zonaras, Epitome (of what, BTW?) 11.16 and (2) that it is therein applied to Vespasian.

Is this claim true or not?

Or if you are pressed for time, just answer my question with respect to this Dio Cassius text:

ταῦτα μὲν οὕτωj ἔσχεν, αὐτοκράτωρ δὲ ἐπ' αὐτοῖς ὁ οὐεσπασιανὸj καὶ πρὸs τῆς βουλῆs ἀπεδείχθη, καὶ καίσαρεs ὅ τε τίτος καὶ ὁ δομιτιανὸς ἐπεκλήθησαν, τήν τε ὕπατον ἀρχὴν ὁ οὐεσπασιανὸς καὶ ὁ τίτος ἔλαβον, ὁ μὲν ἐν τη αἰγύπτ ὁ δὲ ἐν τη παλαιστίν ὤν.

I eagerly await your considered reply.

Jeffrey Gibson

spin

While I don't want to enter into the conflict and I don't know if Joe Atwill simply erred in overstatement, isn't the concept involved in some of these passages not that of the messiah? Isn't the messiah being alluded to with the ambiguous prophecy that both Josephus and Tacitus mentions? One can't expect Tacitus to understand, but Josephus seems to reject the messianic notion while referring to it. So they don't use the word "christ", but the idea is plainly there; it should be acknowledged; and, while I don't ackept Joe's use of it, it should be understood better.


spin