DCHindley

Hasn't this topic been hashed out here in BC&H numerous times in the past?

After the last round I think we learned that if someone advocates a Mythical Jesus position, they will find a way to treat the whole passage as an interpolation.

If one is inclined toword a Historical Jesus, but really reeaallly wants to be able to point to a bona-fide historical reference to Jacob the brother of Jesus, they will find a way to save the whole phrase "brother of Jesus, the being-said Christ."

But ... if you are inclined to think outside of the box, you can find several other ways to explain how that phrase got into Jos. Antiquities, book 20, section 200. Personally, I still think the solution will have to involve integration of the evidence from Ant 20 & 18, Origen's several comments about, and what Eusebius says Hegesippus said about James the Just. It will also have to take into consideration that what Hegesippus and Origen said Josephus said about this James (20.200) and this Jesus called Christ (18.63) is very close to what Josephus says about Ananus son of Ananus in War 4.315-320.

I wonder if there is a convenient way to differentiate every permutation of the possible relationships between the sources. One of you database boys create tables for each source, and map the relationships in MS Access and deposit a copy of the mbd or accdb file somewhere so we can all see it for ourselves.

Gawd, I haven't used Access since taking a class on it in 1997. I remember that the class used the Office 97 version of Access and I had the Office 95 version on an underpowered Toshiba laptop. An unfortunate lack of funds to upgrade (I was laid off and working as an "independent contractor") resulted in my frequent use of the computer lab. Maybe it's time to dust off some sort of user guide (why can't MS go back to printed manuals)?

DCH

GakuseiDon

On the Jerusalem church headed by James: Paul writes in Gal 5 & 6:

Gal 5:11 And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased.

Gal 6:12 As many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these [would] compel you to be circumcised, only that they may not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.

This suggests that Jewish Christians were not persecuted "for the cross of Christ" as long as they insisted on circumcision, implying acceptance by Jewish authorities of early (Jewish) Christians. I'm wondering how this ties in with Paul's comment that a crucified Messiah was a stumbling block for Jews. Does "stumbling block" mean something minor? In that case, circumcision (or lack of) seems to have been a bigger issue than a crucified Messiah. What do people think?

GakuseiDon

I'd recommend LibreOffice. It's free and has everything that MS Office has, including MS Access equivalent LO Database.

TedM

I can answer them although they are not relevant to using logic to place early Christians in Jerusalem:

That is so lacking in detail as to be meaningless. How persistent was the persecution, when, where, etc.. Show me persistent Roman persecution of Christians in Jerusalem during that 30 year period and then maybe we have something to work with.

So what? You were claiming that it makes no sense for James to head the Church in Jerusalem. This story about Pella only supports the idea.

I don't see the issue here either. I assume there were all degrees along the spectrum of "Jewishness" of the early Christians in terms of adherence to the law, the role of faith, the importance of the resurrection, Jesus' divinity or role as Messiah, etc.. It is reasonable that some positions were sufficiently mild enough to be accepted or tolerated in the overall Jewish society and others were too extreme. And, it would make sense for a 'church' or multiple 'churches' to be founded for those who found their beliefs sufficiently important enough to meet separately. You seem to be taking an 'either/or' position on these issues that is unnecessary.






If you don't see the sense in the location of Jerusalem or the brother as the leader, why don't you explain the lack of sense instead of telling me that it sounds 'contrived'. I've given you reasons that a first grader can understand but your response indicates that you don't understand those reasons. What then are the problems you are finding in them?


I see no reason for them to give up if Christianity was still spreading to the rest of the world just 30 years later when many of them were still living. If it took on a life of its own then all that does is help confirm the tenants and the beliefs--which included Jerusalem as the new Zion upon God's return for judgement to usher in the new kingdom.

Because that's the claim. That's what the Antiquities says. You are the one saying it doesnt make any sense but I've yet to hear one good piece of support for your opinion.



In any case, you refer to a sleepy 'embellisher', yet seem to sidestep the idea that this person was intentionally deceiving. You haven't addressed my point about removing the Damneaus relationship. That's not 'embellishment'. That's deception. And, you introduced a second guy to 'clean things up', without explaining. Anything is possible. The question is, how probable.







You appear to be giving no weight at all to a few things:

1. Huge crowds of people
2. The fear of mob reaction. The gospels literally say that the leaders were afraid because the people were more or less mesmerized by Jesus. Even if he only had 100 followers, if they all were surrounding Jesus the leaders may have thought he had thousands of followers.
3. The incident could have been happened quickly--within 10 seconds.

I would like to know how you come to be so confident that he would have been immediately arrested given these factors.

Toto

:huh:

Ha ha. Show me some evidence that Christian existed in that period, or existed in Jerusalem (outside of unreliable Christian documents, of course.) Then we will have something to work with.

Er, no, it doesn't support the idea at all.


Robert Price said something in a recent podcast about this. I think I will wait for his book.


I understand your rationalizations. They sound contrived, meaning that there is no evidence to support them, and they fit the pieces of the puzzle together to your satisfaction. I don't find it very reasonable to start out with that a biological brother of Jesus would be the head of a Christian church a full generation after his death, or that these Christians would still be in Jerusalem waiting for his return after that period of time, or that this James would be both so different from Judaism that he would head up a separate church, but also so Jewish that he would be counted as a Jewish leader.


You mean tenets, I assume. Again, just no evidence of this spread. But it's possible. Barely.

That is definitely not what Antiquities says. Antiquities only says that there was a James the brother of Jesus who was killed along with a group of Jewish leaders. Christians try to connect this James to the James in Galatians who was the Judaizing head of the Jerusalem church. Yet the gospels describe James as a doubter, and Acts gives no indication that James had a leadership position. How could James be missing in action?

You are the one obsessed with the idea that "intentional deception" is some sort of argument. This scribe or scribes could have felt he was doing the right thing for the greater glory of god.


This has been done to death before, and is a digression. I don't know of any serious scholars who think that the temple incident happened a described - at most, they think it refers to something that happened at the temple. But the specifics there are too improbable, bordering on impossible.

GakuseiDon

I'd also like to understand this point, Toto. Would anyone at that time have had the authority to execute someone on the spot **in the Temple grounds**?

DCHindley

G. Don,

Oh, I have MS Office 2010 with Access 2010 now. I was playing with Clarion Developer just before the class, and I won a free copy of Paradox, all of which had these relational file mapping modules. Access & Paradox I think required a run time module, while Clarion allowed you to generate EXE files.

If anyone wants the sources, I have them in English & Greek:

1. Josephus, War, book 4:162-193
2. Josephus, War, book 4:238-270
3. Josephus, War, book 4:286-288
4. Josephus, War, Book 4.315-320
5. Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1 (200-203)
6. Hegesippus, Five Books [on the History of the Church] through Eusebius, History of the Church 2.23.3-19
7. Hegesippus, Five Books, through Eusebius, History of the Church 4.22.4
8. Clement of Alexandria. Hypotyposeis (lost). Through Eusebius, History of the Church 2.1.3-6
9. Origen, Against Celsus 1.47b-d
10. Origen, Against Celsus 2.13
11. Origen, On Matthew 10.17
12. Origen, On Matthew 13.55
13. Jerome, On Famous Men 2
14. Photius, Bibliotheca 238
15. Apostolic Constitutions 8.35.1-2; 8.36.1a

DCH

aa5874

You have ZERO evidence that The Four Canonised Gospels were composed in the 1st century.

You have NO evidence that the Four Canonised Gospels are historical accounts of the character called Jesus Christ.

You do NOT even accept the Gospels as credible sources.

In the Four Canonised Gospels Jesus was actually claimed to have been Fathered by a Holy Ghost.

HJers claim their Jesus was NOT Christ but an obscure Apolcalyptic preacher.

If Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 is about Jesus called Christ then he is NOT Jesus the obscure preacherman.

Please, you are wasting time.

Your argument is wholly contradictory and absurd.

sotto voce

There were two incidents, and neither gave legal reason to prosecute. The only law that related to the Temple precinct was that found in the Bible, and nobody could find any command to sell therein. The sellers and changers should not have been there, and they knew it. Everyone knew it. Jesus merely drove out livestock and overturned tables, which was neither theft nor violence, against the person, anyway. No doubt this 'cleansing' contributed to a desire to be rid of Jesus, but not admitted to, not presented in a formal way.

That's palpable nonsense. Nobody gets arrested for mere talk of that kind. Who the hell would even believe it?

In any case, as they later revealed, the Sanhedrin members knew that Jesus referred to himself, not the Temple (just as he referred to himself as 'this Rock' in Matthew's gospel).

Jesus was arrested because he claimed to be God in the flesh, as the high priest said he had. That claim was not what the Sanhedrin could live with, because, as the claimed representatives of God, they stood firmly opposed to everything that Jesus stood for, as well as opposed to all of the best of Israel since Moses, and thoroughly opposed to the values of the patriarchs. It was as fundamental and unbridgeable a divide as can exist, with utterly inevitable consequences, given Jesus' willingness to endure them.

aa5874

Your statement is completely erroneous. The four Canonised Gospels in total do not even mention "Christ" 70 times.

In the Long gMark, the word "Christ" is found less than 12 times.