PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

Good point. This may be considered another point in favor of the viewpoint that John was an historical personage and Jesus a fictional character painted over the earlier glorified portrait of John. The fact that the Romans defeated the Christian followers of John in two bloody wars would explain why they went for the reboot.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

darstec

Or do a Google search for Rosario Dawson nude. Multiple attestations to her pulchritude.


I think we tend to forget anything and everything by Eusebius is subject to scrutiny. The oldest copy of his writing in Greek is from the 10th century which may not be in great condition. From what I have read scholars depend upon translations from some Syriac translations of his works. And even those dates are only based upon the flimiest postulations of paleographers. Also there has been way, way too much time for Orthodoxy to make him say what they want to.

I think the easiest explanation about Eusebius' mistakes is that he simply forgot what he previously wrote. A more modern example can be found on the Tolkien newsgroups. Even with all the modern advantages and editors, his works went through several revisions with each new printing. I think The Hobbit alone went through four different transformations.

It is not that far fetched to believe Eusebius had similar problems. If I am not mistaken he oversaw a group of scribes. He could well have told one scribe to change this in Josephus and another scribe that in Origin, and years later said something different to other scribes especially those working on Eusebius' own works.

Maybe we will get lucky one day and find something approximating Eusebius' originals including things he wrote after he abandoned Orthodoxy under some lava buried town. [Hope springs eternal.]

ApostateAbe

I am resurrecting this thread, because a discussion in another thread drifted into the subject of this thread.Toto, I have been familiar with the phrase for ten years, and I incorporate the concept into discussion and debate almost every day. If you find my usage of the phrase disagreeable, then it may be because you have a different way of thinking about it than I do. When I disagree with you, I presume that we have a difference in definitions or in general outlook. When you disagree with me, then you presume that I am a moron. I am almost out of patience with that kind of nonsense, which is appropriate since I am almost out of time.

You linked to a Wikipedia page that defines the phrase on the most general level, to include such things as "ad hoc committees," when you could have instead used the more specific and more relevant definition of "ad hoc hypothesis," which would cover science and history, defined as "the addition of extraneous hypotheses to a theory to save it from being falsified." Better still, you could have taken a definition not from Wikipedia but from historiographical scholarship. In the Argument to the Best Explanation, "less ad hoc" is defined as "fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs" (Justifying historical descriptions, CB McCullagh, 1984).

Now, if you still think that I am misapplying the phrase to the arguments of Robert Price, where he brings up, "cultic etiology to provide a paradigm for baptism" or "a credential, an authorization, even without an explicit endorsement of Jesus by John, in much the same way President Clinton cherished the videotape showing a youthful version of himself shaking hands with President Kennedy" and "There may well have been a period (or geographical areas) in which no Christians perceived the followers of John the Baptist as rivals," instead of explaining the gospel account of the baptism of Jesus as a historical baptism of Jesus, then I think you will have to explain how those things are not "new suppositions." I don't think you can seriously do that, so I think the best thing for you to do is to accept that they really are ad hoc claims and they still count as effective refutations of the established historicist explanation. Sometimes, ad hoc claims are OK, because they are better than all competing explanations.

Toto

That is a really, really bad way to approach this debate. We are both supposedly approaching this from a scientific, rational point of view.

When I disagree with you, I try to point out why - some facts or argument that may be inconsistent with your position. I wish you would do the same instead of engaging in insults and attempts to read others' minds.

You specifically described Robert Price's observation that the Baptism of Jesus was not embarrassing as ad hoc, and that is what I objected to. The whole basis of the historicists' belief in the reliability of the baptism is based on this idea of "embarrassment." To counter this, Price need only show that it is not embarrassing and that there are alternative explanations that are at least as probable. It's all about probability, right?

Other statements of Robert Price might fit the definition of ad hoc, as could much of mainstream Biblical scholarship. But not this argument on the historicity of the baptism of Jesus.

ApostateAbe

OK, this is a debate that will benefit both of us. We are both ideally approaching the historical debates from a scientific, rational point of view. Does it really follow that it is a really, really bad way to approach the debate to presume that we have mere differences in outlook or in definitions if we disagree with each other? If we had the same way of thinking about this stuff, if we had the same fundamental methodologies and philosophies, like the critical scholars in New Testament studies, then I would say that the answer is yes. But, between you and me, there seems to be some very relevant differences in ways of thought, and those differences are apparent almost any time we cross each other. For example, you think that a sufficient level of uncertainty about the explanations for the evidence justifies a refusal to form conclusions. To you, that seems common and completely justified. But, I don't. I believe that there is no field of intellectual inquiry, be it history or any other field, where such a paradigm is accepted. It is easy to see how such a difference can lead us to have differences in opinion about what counts as "ad hoc" and what doesn't. To you, maybe the explanations that I would view as "ad hoc" are to you evidence of the uncertainty of any conclusion about the history of early Christianity.

It turns out, though, in this topic of discussion, that it really seems to be about a miscommunication, and I'll explain.
I did not specifically describe Robert Price's observation that the baptism of Jesus was not embarrassing as ad hoc, at least that is not what I intended. To me, an ad hoc claim is not a denial of a competing explanation, but it is in part a positive explanation intended to replace a competing explanation. Robert Price gave three such explanations for why the gospels claim that Jesus was baptized, and those explanations are what I had in mind when I said that Robert Price apparently thinks that "any set of ad hoc explanations pulled out of anyone's ass counts as 'easily refuted.'"

Instead of thinking that I had no idea what "ad hoc" means, you could have just considered that either I haven't made myself entirely clear (my fault), you just have not understood me properly (your fault), or a balance of the two. Isn't such an explanation better than thinking I am an idiot? Have I really left the impression with you that I am some kind of dolt? If I have, then I have little idea of what led you to that impression, but I would understand how it make you think that my lack of intelligence is a better explanation than anything else.

Toto

First of all, that is not what paradigm means.

And that is the normal practice in every scientific field of endeavor - if you don't have any evidence, you can't reach a conclusion. If you have some, ambiguous evidence, you might reach a tentative conclusion, but there is no call to ridicule those who point out the lack of sufficient evidence, as you do continually.

This is a copy and paste from your post:

I can't see any other way of reading this. You were mocking Price's point that the baptism was not embarrassing to Mark. Apologists argue that Mark could not have just made this up because it was embarrassing to have Jesus baptised by John, making him subordinate, or that it was embarrassing because Jesus was sinless. Price responds that it was not embarrassing, and give a plausible reason for Mark to have invented the scene.

The historicist case is based on the lack of any other plausible reading of the text. So any plausible reason defeats the claim that the text must be historical.

I can't make any sense of this. You seem to assume that the historicist case is so well established that every criticism has to overcome some burden of proof. But Price is not making a case for mythicism in this book. He is pointing out that the historicist case is built on bad logic.

But somehow you skipped over the basic point about whether it was embarrassing to start off with.

You were the one who proposed starting a thread on the meaning of ad hoc. I merely pointed out that there is no great controversy over what it means.

I don't think you are a dolt. But it is clear that you have formed an abnormal attachment to a badly argued case for the historical Jesus, so much that you seem to be unable to see its problems.

Part of your problem is that you started off thinking that the case for a mythical Jesus was somehow the same as Creationism. I don't know if you have gotten beyond that error.