Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

The Origins: Why this thread?

In a recent thread I addressed what I see as a few important problems in Earl Doherty's thesis. However, it didn't take long for one particular issue to become the only area of focus: the reference in our manuscripts of Josephus' Antiquities to James, the brother of Jesus. The main issue I wish to address here is a particular claim Spin made but failed (or refused) to expand on: markedness.



Before I get to what little analysis Spin did finally do, I need to explain what markedness/marked means within linguistics. This especially important because there is no really clear use of the term without a reference to a particular theory, which Spin never gave (instead, he linked to a google scholar search in which the term was used in multiple different ways).

What is Markedness?

The terms "marked" and "markedness" have meant many things at different times:

"The concept of markedness, as developed in both Jakobsonian and Chomskyan schools of linguistic thought, has its origins in the analysis of binary oppositions between abstract classificatory features and has been extended in each framework to the questions of language acquisition and decay and to linguistic universals. Yet it has developed in very different ways in each of these traditions. Moreover, the meaning of markedness has not remained constant even within a single intellectual framework"

The above quote is taken from the first chapter of Battistella's The Logic of Markedness (Oxford University Press, 1996). However, he does not end his description of the problems with the term there (despite the fact that his work is a defense of the applicability of the concept). He continues shortly after the quote above with:

"The term markedness then presents a special sort of problem-one in which a concept is reflected in a multiplicity of technical notions within a field and within different traditions in a field. The problem has not gone unnoticed, of course, and many have commented pessimistically on the diversity of definitions and approaches to markedness."

Of particular concern, according to Battistella, has been a "chicken and egg" problem: "Put another way, the problem is this: does markedness explain other linguistic properties, or do other linguistic properties explain markedness? If the latter is the case, one must ask whether there is any need for the term markedness at all."

Perhaps most of the work on markedness has absolutely no relation with "word order" or anything related to Spin's analysis of Josephus, but is a method of determining such things as classification of parts of speech in a given language. For example, although "explosion" is a noun, it is prototypically a verb because in order to become a noun, it needs to be "marked" relative to the base word ("explode") by a suffix. The same holds true when it becomes an adjective (or participle), i.e., "exploding". Once again, it is "marked" relative to "explode", and we can therefore determine that "explode" is a verb because to make it something else it needs to be "marked".

Spin, Word Order, and Markedness

This use of markedness, although central to perhaps most work on the subject, has nothing to do (at least directly) with Spin's argument:



It is clear from this that Spin is taking "marked" to refer to word order, but unfortunately his use of the term isn't consistent with linguistic research. It reflects, rather, a simplistic version of a much more complex theory. This is not the first time Spin has demonstrated a decificiency when it comes to linguistics, nor even to word order:



I quote the above because just as Spin uses a simplistic application of (outdated) transformational linguistics there, so too is his application of markedness not only simplistic, but also hard to fit into any current linguistic theories.


Markedness in actual linguistics: The Early Years

So how do actual linguists use the term with respect to something approaching what Spin was talking about?

Transformation Generative Grammar was concerned mainly with uncovering "rules" to generate grammatically correct sentences, and was heavily influenced by formalism/symbolic logic. It was, therefore, almost mathematical: a combinatorial approach to language in which words were units and syntax was the possible permutations.

Unfortunately, linguists quickly realized that moving words according to rules barely captured almost any features of a given language of language (such that they could then "generate" grammatical sentences) without making up such an enormous list of rules that the whole exercise was a waste. So other mechanisms were proposed, most of which were more "general" rules framed in a different way than traditional syntactical rules.

Several approaches involved the application of simplicity or "optimality" (or similar titles) as a general way of both accounting for observed phenomena in (spoken and/or written) languages and as components of grammatical models of language. It is important to note that a major assumption in most generative or formal approaches to language assume that there are certain "universal" rules which apply to all languages (usually called "Universal Grammar"). This is important, as much work on markedness came from a desire to develop universal "rules" for language.

The basic idea behind the adoption of markedness (or whatever it was called at various times) was that the type of rules which failed to work for early Transformationalists could be more or less "saved" by re-casting these rules in terms of "principles" (the univeral "core" rules language in general) and "parameters" (rules particular to particular languages) and how these "parameters" allowed for various "constraints" to be propose. The constraints, in general, limited the way the rules could be violated. Markedness was (in general, at least within many theories) a "universal" of all languages in that in any given language, certain syntactic structures would be preferred ("unmarked") while others would be more often avoided ("marked"). Thus the "universal grammar" hypothesized to exist could be maintained, while differences between languages could (it was hoped) be explained. That is, it didn't matter if in one language and adjective typically came before a noun, while in a nother it followed, because these were the "parameters" specific to languages, and the universal rule still held (the rules differed, but the preference for a specific one, e.g., adjective-noun or noun-adjective, was universal).


Markedness All Grow'd Up. Or Dead: Why Spin's analysis use is so problematic

However, just as TGG and the combinatorial approach to language failed, so to did the next evolution (or evolutions) of generative theory fail to enable linguists to generate grammatically correct structures given their models. "Optimality theory" and other approaches to language which use markedness persist, but have become far more nuanced, much less restrictive, and far more "general".


For example, in Typology and Universals (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Croft spends some time reviewing how markedness is used within various theories, almost none of it applicable here. However, one section does address word order and markedness:
"none of the typological patterns associated with typological markedness are found in word order." (p. 117).

This does not mean, of course, that languages show no preference for certain structures. However, even within a language like English, which relies heavily on word order, deviations from "unmarked" structures are so great that most linguistis have adopted models of grammar which abandon the divide between the lexicon (words) and syntax. Instead of the simplistic treatment of words in both of Spin's analyses, modern theories of syntax are based on rules which work not only (or, sometimes, at all) on the language as a whole, but are also (or solely) specific to individual words or groups of words. Sometimes these rules are very specific (e.g., in phrasal idioms like "birds of a feather flock together", in which not even tense can change such that we'd have "birds of a feather flocked together), and other times they are very general (e.g., when two clauses both have a comparative adjective: the higher you climb, the harder you fall; the more you practive, the better you'll be; etc).

But common to all of these approaches to syntax, even those which retain some form of markedness, are the following:
1) Word order is not determined by the words and syntax alone (without even considering pragmatics, discourse, speech vs. writing, etc.) but by the constructions in which they occur
2) Deviations from "unmarked" structures are quite common, and it is difficult with some languages (like Greek) to determine whether a structure is "marked" or "unmarked".

For example, J. A. Hawkins published a recent monograph on this subject (how things like preferred structures influence language use): Effeciency and Complexity in Grammars (Oxford University Press; 2004).

This work (along with those like it) is relevant here for several reasons. As Hawkins shows:

1) Markedness applies to languages, and is a generally preferred morphosyntactic, phonetic, or simlilar structure within a language (or language families, or language period). It is NOT something determined by looking at a particular author.
2) Markedness is a general approach mostly to words or smaller parts of language (allomorphs, clitics, etc.). Rarely do grammarians relate markedness to clause structure at all, and when they do it is about generalities which we can used to predict clausal structures within a language, not an author.
3) Greek is among those languages in which word order analyses are particularly difficult, because of it's flexibility. Hawkins, for example, doesn't refer to it at all when he discusses structures larger than a word other than a simple note that it works opposite to Persian when it comes to "fillers" and relative pronouns/relative clauses. Comrie, in Language Universals and Linguistic Typology, notes that the word order for the older Indo-European languages like Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hittite, etc., are so flexible that linguists have argued completely opposite underlying word orders as "typical" (or "unmarked"). For more on the flexibility of Greek in general, see my post here.

And back to Josephus

I noted, in the other thread, numerous reasons why there is no good reason to suspect the word order in AJ 20.200, but rather than repeat them all I'll simply quote some of my last summary:



To these and other points against Spin's analysis I can now add his improper and inaccurate use of markedness. It's not simply that word order in Greek is flexible, or that we find similar structures (both semantically and syntactically) in Josephus to the one in AJ 20.200, or that (as I went into some detail in that thread) Josephus is particularly irregular when it comes to referring to people. Rather, the argument that markedness in anyway applies here betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of linguistic theory:
This is simply not true. Markedness, whether in typology, optimality theory, principles and parameters, or any other linguistic thoery/model/framework, is NOT about dealing with a particular author. Certainly, there are literary theories, textual theories, and so forth which deal with what terms, phrases, etc., an author uses. However, this has NOTHING to do with "marked" or "unmarked" word order.

Luckily, though, Spin's contributions to the thread were not completely without value. For those who wish to amuse themselves, feel free to read the various "hits" Spin's google scholar search that he linked to (quoted above) revealed, and compare them with his use of the term.

Originally Posted by Toto

It is clear that most modern scholars accept that clause as authentic, but it is not clear why. Are they just giving the text the benefit of the doubt, and they can't think of a good reason to reject it?

Originally Posted by Iskander

Earlier on Jesus the brother of James was also murdered by the same Jews.
The Gospels are a malignant forgery that has truly and really killed many Jews and for centuries has enslaved the survivors as well as countless heretics, witches, dissenters...,


That Jews are the killers of Jesus the brother of James and of James the brother of Jesus are only malignant lies and why we tolerate your missionary work here is a mystery to me.

Originally Posted by thief of fire

So rather than deal rationally with the content, just accuse LegionOnomaMoi of being an anti-semite?

Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

Using the same logic, it is typically christian to say that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy. After all, that charge is found throughout the gospels, far more frequently than "called christ". We also find him accused of being insane, and of casting out demons with the power of Satan. All in Christian texts.

On the other hand, Jesus frequently uses the phrase "son of man" in the gospels, yet it is almost completely absent everywhere else (even in Paul) among early Christian texts. Even within the gospels, it is not something Jesus is called, even by his disciples.

So how does one determine "christian useage"? Clearly, the presence of words used to describe Jesus is not enough, because the gospels include charges against him (and, as even Doherty acknowledges, one of the few uses of this "called-Christ" construction in the NT is from the lips of Pilate). Likewise, Jesus is frequently called "teacher" or something similar, yet we find this all over the place in Greek. So if we want to know how Christians referred to Jesus, such that we can distinguish Christian usage from non-Christian, we should look at the ways that christians referred to him, both in and outside of the NT. What we find is that Christ quickly becomes a sort of "surname" within Christianity, although other means of address (e.g., Lord, Savior, etc.) are frequent. By contrast, Jesus is referred to as "called Christ" (if memory serves) a total of 5 times in Christian literature. In Justin (I believe it was he), it is an apologetic use meant to be read by non-christians, i.e. this is what we call him. In John, it's used to translate Hebrew. In Matthew, it's used by Pilate to describe what Jesus is known as, and in the beginning of Matthew in a similar fashion. Hundreds and hundreds of references to Jesus, and we find more instances of Jesus being referred to as a blasphemer than we do as "called Christ" within Christian literature.

So no, it's not enough, particularly because of the nature of the gospels. Whatever one thinks of them in terms of historical accuracy, genre, etc., they are clearly filled with non-Christian ways of talking about Jesus. In order to determine what is or isn't "christian" usage, we need to look at how Christians referred to Jesus, not how they described Jesus to others or how they depicted others referring to Jesus. A tiny handful of "called Christ", with only one example which could possibly be described as actually a Christian reference to Jesus (in Matthew's intro), is not sufficient to support the claim that this "could thus have exerted an influence on a Christian copyist inserting a phrase into Josephus." Furthermore, even the Matthean use which isn't placed on Pilate's lips is problematic because it appears to be an introduction: Matt. begins with the "geneaology of Jesus Christ", lists a bunch of names, and ends with "Jesus, the one known as Christ".

Again, using the same logic, had Josephus said "brother of Jesus, the one who blasphemes" we could say it was "christian" and with better attestation. Likewise, if Josephus had said "brother of Jesus, the one who cast out devils by the ruler of demons (archonti ton daimonion)" we could again use Doherty's logic and say it is Christian.

Even if Doherty is correct about the neutrality of "called Christ" (and there is some question about this, but it is definitely possible), that doesn't make it Christian, and all our evidence (from the context of the few uses in all of early Christian literature to the numerous and frequent actual Christian ways for referring to Jesus which are littered throughout our sources) demonstrates quite clearly that this isn't a christian way of referring to Jesus.

Originally Posted by Toto It is clear that most modern scholars accept that clause as authentic, but it is not clear why. Are they just giving the text the benefit of the doubt, and they can't think of a good reason to reject it?

<snip> This leads to a third significant point: the way the text identifies James is not likely to have come from a Christian hand or even a Christian source. Neither the NT nor early Christian writers spoke of James of Jerusalem in a matter-of-fact way as "the brother of Jesus" (ho adelphos lesou), but rather--with the reverence we would expect--"the brother of the Lord" (ho adelphos tou kyriou) or "the brother of the Savior" (ho adelphos tou soteros). Paul, who was not overly fond of James, calls him "the brother of the Lord" in Gal 1:19 and no doubt is thinking especially of him when he speaks of "the brothers of the Lord" in 1 Cor 9:5. Hegesippus, the second-century church historian who was a Jewish convert and probably hailed from Palestine, likewise speaks of "James, the brother of the Lord" (in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 2.23.4); indeed, Hegesippus also speaks of certain other well-known Palestinian Christians as "a cousin of the Lord" (4.22.4), "the brothers of the Savior" (3.32.5), and "his [the Lord's] brother according to the flesh" (3.20.1). The point of all this is that Josephus' designation of James as "the brother of Jesus" squares neither with NT nor with early patristic usage, and so does not likely come from the hand of a Christian interpolator.

Fourth, the likelihood of the text coming from Josephus and not an early Christian is increased by the fact that Josephus' account of James' martyrdom differs in time and manner from that of Hegesippus. Josephus has James stoned to death by order of the high priest Ananus around A.D. 62, a good while before the Jewish War actually breaks out. According to Hegesippus, the scribes and Pharisees cast James down from the battlement of the Jerusalem temple. They begin to stone him but are constrained by a priest: finally a laundryman clubs James to death (Ecclesiastical History (2.23.12-18).James' martyrdom, says Hegesippus, was followed immediately by Vespasian's siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70). Eusebius stresses that Hegesippus' account agrees basically with that of the Church Father Clement of Alexandria (2.23.3,19); hence it was apparently the standard Christian story. Once again, it is highly unlikely that Josephus' version is the result of Christian editing of The Jewish Antiquities.

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I think the "called Christos" part is a forgery too, but in fairness, that wasn't really Legion's point in starting this thread. I think he was basically just calling spin out for either misusing or misunderstanding a technical term, which is not necessarily a sin in and of itself, but spin does have an arrogance about him and does sometimes try to intellectually intimidate opponents with technical terminology. I think Legion has made a very cogent case that spin used a technical term incorrectly in this case, regardless of whether Josephus is interpolated or not.

Originally Posted by Toto

I must have hit a nerve to bring forth this gusher of words, none of which refute the point that Christians did use the term "called Christ" to refer to Jesus, and a Christian scribe might well have incorporated the term into this non-Christian work.

Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

Of particular interest are the rare times when Josephus combines a kin identifier with "by name X" or "whose name was X". For example, in BJ 6.387, Josephus identifies a certain Jesus son of Thebuthus. He begins "in those days" (or, less literally, "in that time"), and continues "[there] was one of the priests, boy of Thebuthus, Jesus by name" (in Greek, τις Θεβουθεῖ παῖς Ἰησοῦς ὄνομα). Here (as in AJ 20.200), the relationship to Thebuthus comes first, followed by the "by name" formula (although without the dative). Also of note is that this Thebuthus, who comes first, is not named before or again in BJ or elsewhere, yet his name comes first.

We find much the same in BJ 5.474 with a certain Chagiras, who is introduced with the preposed reference modifier Ἀδιαβηνός τις υἱὸς Ναβαταίου τοὔνομα κληθεὶς ἀπὸ τῆς τύχης Kεἀγίρας (lit. "from Adiabene a certain son of Nabateus the name, being designated from his fortune, Chagiras"). Here, both the place the identified individual is from and his kinship relation precede the name of the identified individual. And here again, this "Nabateus" is not named elsewhere.

Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

Theißen and Merz, in their review/textbook on the historical Jesus (Der historische Jesus:Ein Lehrbuch) include an enormous reference list and sum up the conclusion of 100 or so years of work by stating, “Die Authentizität der Stelle kann als gesichert gelten…” (p. 74; “the authenticity of the text can be considered certain) noting a single exception to the numerous commentators and Josephan scholars: Schürer’s work from 1901.