maryhelena

A red flag - or a wake-up call?

Not a good idea to knock the opinion of a respected scholar without being able to provide something more substantial than a simple brushoff. What one needs to do to counter the argument of Rachel Elior is to find some ancient writing in Hebrew or Aramaic that has some reference to the Essenes - that is apart from being able to demonstrate that 4000 Essenes lived celibate lives in Palestine contrary to Jewish custom regarding marriage - and that this would not have been remarked upon.

As for Josephus - he does not get a free pass on what he writes. After all, by his own admission he has dreams that he interprets, he makes prophetic declarations, regarding Vespasian, and he sometimes just gets things wrong. As to his motivation re his tall story re the Essenes - well, who knows for sure - speculation might be interesting but will not suffice if its historical accuracy we seek.

And, just for interest - here is a abstract re an article that is taking Josephus to task re another statement of his....

ApostateAbe

That point I made about the narrow applicability of the argument from silence is something that I think counts as more substantial than a simple brushoff. You can go ahead and read it again.

The motivations of Josephus, speculation or not, are extremely relevant to the argument. A standard criterion that textual scholars use to evaluating the honesty of a passage is how it lines up with the author's interests (Bart Ehrman calls it the "Criterion of Dissimilarity"). If it is a lie, then we would expect to know why he lied about, given how much background information we have about Josephus. If it wasn't a lie, then what was it? Was it an honest mistake? That is what seems to be theorized in the abstract you showed me, and I certainly wouldn't put that beyond Josephus.

Camio

James McGrath: "The criteria in question are not "rules" which, when applied to texts, guarantee that material is historical with absolute certainty. They are guides indicating usual tendencies and trajectories in developing traditions. They are statements about what is normally the case, all other things being equal."

Great, nicely put. Then, how is it possible that a renowned Swiss NT scholar(*) could write in a serious French newspaper(**): "Que s’est-il passé dans les jours qui ont suivi la mort violente de Jésus de Nazareth le 7 avril 30 ? Historiquement, les faits sont difficiles à reconstituer." (What happened in the days following the violent death of Jesus of Nazareth on April, 7th 30? Historically speaking, facts are difficult to gather). The date is provided with absolute certainty, no conditional form. Jesus died on 04/07/30, that is a fact, what is unsure is only what happened next.

Sometimes, it is argued that a scholar writing in a mainstream newspaper will behave with less caution and precision than in an academic paper. If so, I find it all the more dangerous, because in this case we are talking about disinformation toward the general public.


(*) Daniel Marguerat, (English CV). I often saw him referred to as a "historical Jesus" specialist, though I only read syntheses on the subject from his part. Does anybody know him here?

(**) Le Monde des Religions, November 2007.

maryhelena

Quite, I'm not happy with just thinking Josephus was telling lies. No more than I am happy thinking the gospel writers were telling lies re the resurrection. Its all relative to what the writers were attempting to do - and that is really where a lot of this rests - on the intent of the writers. Unfortunately, we are so far away from when these things were written that we are left to do a lot of detective work - which does mean that we are as liable to be wrong as we are right....What seems 'right' for one person might well be downright 'wrong' for the next person. No, its not all about facts - that we can cherry-pick whatever are the facts of the case - its about evaluating the facts, the evidence, and making decisions based upon our evaluation.

The point of the abstract was simply to show that taking Josephus on face value is not a wise thing to be doing. This is not to say that Josephus tells lies - it is to suggest that perhaps there are alternative ways in which to evaluate what he does write.

I think, with Josephus, one needs to be on the outlook for occasions when he is stepping outside of his historians platform and engaging in speculation - engaging in his own ideas or interpretations of things - engaging in embellishment.

As I've said many a time - to restrict Josephus to just being a historian is to shortchange the man.

So, back to the John the Baptist reference in Josephus. There is no reason to take this reference as historical fact. The gospel of Mark was most probably up and running by the time Antiquities was written - and no, I don't think dating Mark way past the writing of Antiquities makes much sense. The gospel of Mark storyline re John the Baptist would have been the first record of such a figure. (unless of course its the gospel of John that is the earliest gospel - prior to 70 ce ) Thus, Josephus could have done with that story the same as he did with Philo's Essenes - by utilizing the story in his history he gave that story not historicity but a veneer of historicity. Why - well, that's another question altogether...

Regarding dating the gospel of Mark earlier than Antiquities: Both the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Matthew make reference to Herodias having been married to Philip. Now, we can say these two gospels are in error - but the only way we can do that is to quote Josephus - who says that it was the daughter of Herodias, Salome, that was married to Philip.
However, Antiquities was published around 93/94 ce - thus indicating an earlier date, prior to Antiquities, for Mark and Matthew to make their historical statements. The dating aside, the question still remains - was Herodias at one time married to Philp - who is right the gospel writers or Josephus. Well, it looks to be the gospel writers...


Implicating Herodias and Her Daughter
in the Death of John the Baptizer:

A (Christian) Theological Strategy?

ross s. kraemer


Brown University, Providence, RI 02912

JBL 125, no. 2 (2006): 321–349

from a footnote:

So, bottom line - Rachel Elior is not the only scholar that is questioning Josephus on things that he has written...

maryhelena

Update re the debate - one great new post from Neil Godfrey


http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/02/...james-mcgrath/

aa5874

But, I hope you see the problems you have introduced by trying to establish that Josephus is not credible.

The fundamental problem with the Gospels are that they were really anonymous writings which have been attributed to characters who may not have even lived. The dating for the Gospels is based on guesswork and the time of writing and chronology given by the Church appears to be erroneous.

The information found in one Gospel about Jesus and events surrounding Jesus may have been simply copied from another Gospel or simply fabricated.

The genealolgy of Jesus in gMatthew does not even agree with the genealogy of Jesus in gLuke, it would appear that the Gospel writers have serious problems with regards to veracity.

Virtually every single chapter in gMatthew and gMark are loaded with implausible and fictitious events where Jesus was said to be the offspring of the Holy Ghost who walked on water, instantly healed incurable diseases, transfigured, and resurrected.

There cannot be found any external source to corroborate anything about the Jesus found in gMatthew and gMark.

It is no wonder that gMatthew and gMark does not agree with Josephus. They do not agree with any other historian of antiquity from beginning to end, from conception to resurrection.

Doug Shaver

Quite so. In general, when I'm debating with Christians, I stipulate Jesus' existence. Christianity is not a whit more credible if he did exist than if he didn't.

I don't get into historicity unless they themselves make an issue of it -- which, for some reason, a few of them feel compelled to do. For an issue that's supposed to be such a no-brainer, they seem to spend a lot of their brainpower on it.

Doug Shaver

It's a misdirected effort trying to figure out whether all of them are one or the other. Each writing has to be judged on its own merits. If a particular author claims that something happened at a certain place at a certain time, one of the first questions to ask is: What made that author think so?

aa5874

But, what is the nature of the existence that you stipulate? Do you stipulate that Jesus existed as a God or do you stipulate that Jesus existed as a man?

It must be that the credibility of Christianity is directly upon the veracity of their Canon. It must be that the existence or non-existence of Jesus and the nature of the existence be known or verified before anyone should be asked to believe.

Jesus believers must be made to understand as soon as possible that their Jesus existed most likely as fiction or mythology so that they will be alerted very quickly that they may have been mis-led.

Rick Sumner

If you think there are "scientific underpinnings" to history derived from literary criticism then you're on no firmer ground than the "apologetic HJ'ers." I'm not sure if it's that your understanding of history is naive, or your understanding of the mythicist position is just arrogant, but it really doesn't matter which. The statement is wrong either way.