TedM

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't see where Richard stated differently, so I just made an assumption, which may be wrong. If Luke did write it, and there are some good arguments for that, then I find it unlikely that his theology would evolve from mythicist to historist (given his life-range), and not leave clues that he had done that when writing about Paul.

ted

S.C.Carlson

Actually, the argument that Nazara was in Q depends on how unusual the spelling Nazara is--not how usual the Nazareth spelling is. If I understand your position correctly, you feel that the town did not exist at all in the first century. Although I don't agree with your premise, the non-existence of the town actually makes the case stronger, because agreement in fiction is great evidence for a literary interrelationship.

Indeed, the agreement in fiction goes beyond their reference to Jesus's bogus home town made in the same Q context between the temptations and the sermon,* but extends to an agreement in spelling for that town--a spelling that varied considerably in early Christian literature. I suppose that it is always "possible" that the writers of Matthew and Luke independently conceived of the same back-formation from "Nazarene," but, as a general matter, I prefer not to rely too much on multiple coincidences for my conclusions. In fact, it is particularly difficult to do so here since the spelling of this back-formation either did not occur to or did not impress the writers of Matt 21:11; Luke 1:26, 2:4, 39, 51; John 1:45, 46; and Acts 10:38. (For a table summarizing the evidence, please see an old post on my blog.)

This is just the kind of literary evidence that points to some kind of a documentary interrelationship between Matthew and Luke here that cannot be explained by their common use of Mark. Under the Mark-Q (Two-Source) theory, such an agreement would have to be in Q.

Under the Farrer theory, which dispenses with the need for Q, it would belong to Matthew. Granted, the Farrer theory may eventually win over the academy, but it is not there yet.

Stephen

* Let me address your counter-argument here:

Yes, there is a lot between the temptations and the sermon in Luke, but, on the Mark-Q theory, Luke's interpolations of Markan and other non-Q material between them does not change what Nazara's context would be in Q. The scholars of International Q Project base their arguments on Nazara's being in the same Q context--in conjunction with with the same, unusual spelling of the town that differs from the other gospel sources.

spin

As they are complementary, the comment I think is irrelevant. You judge Nazara by Nazareth or vice versa.

I've made no comment on the matter, except that it is irrelevant. There may have been a town called NCRT. At least that would explain the change from Nazara to Nazareth and justify the keeping of the zeta and not using a sigma as should be found in a transliteration of the TSADE.

Nobody is talking about an "independently conceived" back-formation at all. What we have is the entry into the communal store of information at the time regarding the significance of the term nazarhnos.

If you look at the context, you'll find that a scribe knew Mk here and the Mt text has been tainted by that knowledge, though he didn't get it precisely in the same place. Scratch that one.

Strange you should try these. Most people believe that the birth narrative was added after Lk had originally been written.

We are dealing with the synoptics.

But it is, as you must realise, irrelevant. This is just an attempt to bolster the realistionship, which I don't negate. I just think that it is highly imaginative to claim that Nazara is an indication of Q.

Stop with this baseless "unusual spelling" claim. As I pointed out in another post, in the synoptics if we put aside the birth narrative in Lk there is a 2 all distribution of Nazara/Nazareth in the synoptics, one of these being in Mk 1:9, which is not supported by the other synoptics and the other an apparent scribal reinsertion based on tainted knowledge of Mk. There is even early textual support for Nazara in Mt 2:23.


spin

Richard Carrier

This is one of the things that led me to where I am now. In researching my massive rebuttal to Holding [for now on my website but it will be moved] I did extensive reading of the scholarship on Acts and learned a huge number of things that I had no idea of before. I have no time to list the hundred or so bizarre things that I learned, but in response to your one question it should suffice to say that the evidence that a companion of Paul wrote Luke-Acts is almost certainly false (IMO, efforts to argue the point are strained and not well-supported).

I do call the author Luke for convenience--but this implies nothing whatever about which Luke this is, companion of Paul or otherwise. I think it is more likely (if likely at all) that the author of Luke-Acts used a source who was a companion of Paul's, but only for certain sections of the narrative, which were of such a nature as not to mention Jesus enough to raise eyebrows in a historicist, even though this source would be a mythicist. For example, scholars who have examined the evidence observe that the vocabulary and content of the first-person sections suggest this person was part of a ship's crew, not a doctor--although this opens the possibility that Luke the Doctor was a ship's doctor, and if this is the guy who also preserved the official letter of Claudius Lysias, we could even have someone who had been at one time in the service of the Roman navy as a military maritime doctor. But even so (and this heaps up speculations too high I think), this would still be a source used by the author Luke, and not the actual author of Luke-Acts. And since I am otherwise fairly convinced that Luke used some genuine sources for Acts, who mostly could only have been previous Christians, I have no personal difficulty accounting for Luke being a historicist but (some or all of) his sources not being so.

In fact, the fact that Luke appears to have used some real historical sources for Acts (for all the reasons I've said before and still more I've not mentioned), but we have equally strong reasons to believe he did not for the Gospel (neither Mark nor Q were histories, and what Luke adds to them is either dogmatic, the product of plausible reasoning, or overtly mythical in content, e.g. the Emmaus narrative and the Nativity) is itself something that adds to E which mythicism predicts but that historicism does not make as likely (e.g. it means Luke had history to use for constructing Acts, but not for the life of Jesus).

RE: seemingly mythicist 2nd century apologists compatible with their believing in historical JesusA similar case, yes (not the same one). But that case is already represented in my Bayesian analysis. In the light of the total evidence, it simply isn't a good enough case. There are many reasons for that, and only one among them is the fact that the circumstances, genre, and objectives of the two bodies of writing are significantly different. Indeed, not only that, but the chronology eliminates the analogy. If it were the case that all we had were these apologists who have no interest in a historical Jesus, then there would be no case for saying they could have been historicists--in other words, if the 2nd century source record were just like the 1st century, the case would be closed: mythicism would be decisive.

Instead, the reason I allow that the particular 2nd century apologists we are talking about could have believed in a historical Jesus is that we already have decisive evidence that such a belief existed and was so widespread that they couldn't possibly not know of it. And that entails that either they didn't care whether it was true, or all their attacks against or rejections of it were edited or selected out of the surviving record. Either is possible, BTW, thus we are at 50/50, which gives no comfort to a historicist. But this is an evidential circumstance not shared by Paul. For example, we have some small probability (not at all a certainty--especially given the Orthodox bias in the editing and selection of sources to preserve) of expecting these later guys to discuss the point, if in fact they were reacting to or rejecting a historicist alternative almost certainly known to them. But even without that expectation, this is still a situation Paul would not be in, since there would be in his day no such belief to reject or counter--or even to ignore--and therefore no basis for assuming he was familiar with such a belief, unlike the case of the 2nd century apologists.

BTW, this issue of selection bias is a serious one, IMO, and not to be taken lightly. One can point out numerous problems it has raised. But one that is often overlooked is the curious omission from Paul's correspondence: I do seriously wonder what happened to Paul's actual first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:9). Why was that not preserved? Did it, perhaps, say something orthodoxists didn't want anyone to hear and thus was deliberately suppressed? Or was it that, because they didn't believe he could say something he said in it, they assumed it was a forgery, even though in fact genuine, and therefore didn't preserve it? I seriously doubt the reason can be mere accident or trivial fancy--two lengthy and detailed letters to the same congregation are meticulously preserved and form the cornerstone of his opus, yet somehow the first letter that started it all was overlooked entirely? This is surely very improbable. But then what is the reason for its disappearance? I'm not sure where we can go with that, and it doesn't actually prove anything, but it does entail some significant suspicion against the source record. We are deliberately not being told the whole story--which entails that the story we have been told is not the true story. Conclude from that what you will.

Okay, I'm going to close out from here and leave the thread, since unfortunately I haven't time to continue further, at least not for a good while. Carry on, soldiers.

TedM

Thanks Richard. I read your entire reply with great interest, and it definitely addressed my questions. Thanks again,

ted

GakuseiDon

It's certainly possible, but I wonder how likely anti-heresy writers like Irenaeus and Tertullian would have ignored such a heresy, at a time that Irenaeus was listed variations of gnostics heresies, for example. I've done a review of Doherty's comments on 2nd C writers here (and drawing on your excellent article on the New Testament canon for background) and I think there is no reason to believe that ANY apologist believed in a nonhistorical Christ, and that there is some reason to believe that those identified by Doherty as MJ believers actually believed in a HJ.

My interest in this is to identify when Christians started to "get Paul wrong". At some stage, Paul's transmission of a mystical Christ got misinterpreted. But if a form of Middle Platonism that supported such beliefs existed at that time, what would have caused this shift? You suggested that persecutions thinned out the numbers of Christians, to allow a historical Christ belief to emerge. But that seems to presuppose a trend toward historicity in the first place. But is there any evidence of such a trend?

Paul supposedly taught to (or at least wrote to) Antioch and Rome, amongst others. We see Ignatius from Antioch emerge with a belief in a historical Christ, and Tacitus refer to a historical Christ, coming out of those places. If Paul lived to 60 CE, then it only gives a couple of generations (maybe even one) before the belief in historicity emerge. There may have been reasons why they 'got Paul wrong', but I just don't see it, I'm afraid.

I think comparisons between Ignatius and Paul would be interesting. Even assuming that Ignatius wrote as late as 140 CE, he uses the same language as Paul when describing Christ, referring to few historical details - in fact, in some letters, none at all. Perhaps he was copying Paul's style, but if a believer in a historical Christ could write in the same way as Paul, then it is indication of a style of literature, rather than an indication of belief.

Anyway, Richard, I've enjoyed reading your articles to date, and look forward to reading whatever you find out! Most of us here are amateurs, so it's good to have a real historian investigating this interesting topic.

spin

Correction on my last post to SC Carlson:

I was shooting from the hip over Mt 21:11, working from memory and had confused 21:11 with a reference to nazwraios in 26:71, part of the denial scene. Please forget my comments on the matter.

21:11 is purely in the material only found in Mt and is an expansion of Mk 11:11a. It is by its nature part of the later strata of gospel material.

Still, the rhetoric about the "unusual spelling" serves for no purpose.


I should introduce the fact that there are actually two spellings for Nazareth, beside the form Nazara: NazareQ and Nazaret. These are normally differentiated by manuscript source, ie the Alexandrian uses the former and the "Byzantine" uses the latter. In two places this is not the case:

1. Mk 1:9, which just has Nazaret, and

2. Mt 2:23, which mainly has Nazaret, but has early witness to Nazara as well.

The fact that the Alexandrian text has Nazaret instead of NazareQ at these points suggests late addition to, or manipulation of, the text, ie after the differentiation of the two basic text traditions.

(If anyone has full details of the textual differentiation -- eg in NA -- between the various forms, Nazara/Nazaret/Nazareth/Nazarene/Nazorean, I'd be happy for the details. When I restabilise I'll have to do something about this deficiency.)


spin

GakuseiDon

I thought the 'mystery' behind the mystery cults was to do with participation and ritual rather than an actual secret? I mean, given that people tended to join more than one mystery religion, if part of the secret was that the founding story had a higher meaning, wouldn't that tend to have lost a bit of impact after the second or third religion that person joined? "Damn! You mean Mithras wasn't historical either??? His story also has a higher meaning??? Who'd have thought it?" This doesn't appear to be good information, Richard.

This is one reason why I think trying to determine exactly when Christians started to 'get Paul wrong' is so important. Doherty says "the basic concepts and practices of the mysteries were ancient. They undergirded much of the religious expression of the era". If these beliefs were so wide-spread, then why would people start to get Paul wrong? Unless you want to postulate an existing trend towards historicity, then what is the motivation of sects to start historicizing in the first place?

It's safe to assume that Paul didn't 'get Paul wrong', so Christianity up to 60 CE was mythical (unless you want to claim that historicizing began before then). From what you wrote above, it seems that you are placing the 'got Paul wrong' line at some point after 70 CE. Are there any examples of mythicist writings from after that period, in your opinion? Or does mythicism start and end with Paul?

You'll note in another thread that it's claimed that early Christian persecution wasn't as bad as early Christians put out. If mythicism survived after 70 CE, then what was the motivation towards historicity after that time?

IMHO there seems to be an unstated assumption to Doherty's and your idea above that "remove the people in the know and those that remain will historicize their narratives". But can we assume that, in an era that continued to be dominated by mystery religions and 'mystery' ideas, this would be the case? Mystery religions existed at least to the time of Celsus, who had no problems describing Jesus as a sorceror and 'juggler', and the son of a Roman soldier.

Anyway, I hope you'll see the importance of trying to determine the latest date that people 'got Paul right' and the earliest date that they 'got Paul wrong'. I think that no matter where you place those dates, there are problems. Not that this necessarily makes it wrong, but it does make it harder to respond to. AFAICS, there is no reasonable way to respond to Doherty until a reasonable case has been established. Part of that case has to be determining when and why people started to 'get Paul wrong'.

S.C.Carlson

Those details were laid out in the post I had provided a link to.

Stephen

spin

I got to all this years ago, when I got interested, but I have never got past that, because of other things and lack of resources. I pointed out for example the differences regarding Mt 2:23. What others are there, is the sort of thing I'd like to know. Perhaps when I get back to stability, I can get a copy of NA and do it myself.


spin