Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Refutation 5 appears to be a reiteration of the point that J.P.Holding was criticising. The Res Gestae is an epigraphic text, not a literary one, so to compare it -- for purposes of accuracy of transmission -- with literary texts is to compare chalk with cheese. I am rather surprised that Dr. Avalos doesn't see this, surely not very profound, difference.

I get the impression that most people who read what he says here will understand that all texts transmitted to us from ancient times by copying are very unreliable. If so, I fear that he has encouraged obscurantism, since, after all, if we hold this view we may as well throw away Virgil and Cicero.

Originally Posted by Dr. Hector Avalos

Hello, Mr. Pearse,

In regard to your comments ("The Res Gestae is an epigraphic text, not a literary one...",) I think it is a false dichotomy to contrast “literary” with “epigraphic” texts.

“Epigraphic” relates to the medium (texts that are inscribed on hard surfaces) and “literary” relates to the genre. “Literary” texts are inscribed on hard surfaces all over the ancient Near East. There is nothing to prevent us from writing any literary genre on a hard surface.

For example, the statue of Idrimi, a king of the 15th century BCE from Alalakh (in what is now southern Turkey), contains a biographical narrative text that is no less “literary” than any of the ones we find in the Bible. See: http://www.geocities.com/farfa...
/alalakh/idrimi_inscription.htm

I also am not sure why you don’t see the Res Gestae as “literary” either. What makes something “literary” for you?

Notice that inerrantists claim an EQUAL level of inerrancy for biblical texts regardless of the genre. Thus, legal texts and literary biblical texts are given equal weight in biblical inerrancy and in their reliability relative to the original author.

Yet, legal texts could be written on stone (e.g. the Code of Hammurabi was written on basalt rock; an the Ten Commandments were written on stone).

So, again, the issue is the extent to which we can determine how close a text is to an original author REGARDLESS of the medium.

The medium does not make much of a difference in a determination of how closely a text represents an original author.

Accordingly, the Res Gestae has a much better claim to representing the original words of Augustus than the NT has in representing the words of Jesus. Bronze or papyrus does not
change that.

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Dear Dr. Avalos,

Thank you for taking the time to expand on what you have in mind. I'm not sure that I managed to convey my point very well, so will try to rephrase.

I'm sure that some kind of definition of a literary text could be found somewhere. The point about such a text is that it is *published*; it is disseminated by copying. The epigraphic (or indeed documentary) text is an original, or very close copy made at the time. Naturally these two types of production have a very different lifestyle.

If we say that the hazards of transmission do not apply to epigraphic texts, this is true, by their very nature. But it is of small use, surely, to tell us whether a particular literary text is well-preserved or not? Whether Cicero is better preserved than Virgil, Homer than Thucidydes, or whatever? For this we must compare like with like. As it stands, I think most people will suppose you to say that only documents such as the Res Gestae can be used to write history. This would be an unusual position for an educated man to take, but I think that you will be heard saying this.

So would you mind if I press you on this, since it is the point of most interest to me, and ask: Do you believe that, for all practical purposes, the surviving books of (e.g.) the Annals of Tacitus, or the Roman History of Livy have reached us, or not?

If the answer is 'yes', we need spend no time on wondering whether NT texts have reached us (whether what they contain is true or not is another question; the same is true for the Res Gestae, of course). If you do not, then it seems odd to confine this conclusion to biblical studies; classics and ancient history are, then, engaged in studing a mirage.

In other words, if the point made proves something, it proves rather more than I think any of us would be comfortable. Arguments that prove that (e.g.) all human records of our existence are fiction would seem rather blunt tools to dispose of one inconvenient bit of history, surely?

But perhaps I have not grasped your point very well?

Originally Posted by Dr. Hector Avalos

Hello, Mr. Pearce,
I have commented on the issue of Roman sources in The End of Biblical Studies, especially pp. 115 121, 206-07.

Basically, the issue is that our manuscripts
of Tacitus date from the MIDDLE AGES,
and so we cannot always be sure what
has been added or changed by Christians
who controlled the transmissions of his copies.

So the issue does not revolve around on the
medium on which Tacitus manuscripts
were written, but on (among other issues):

1. How close to their original date of supposed publication those manuscripts are;

2. How much we can corroborate from OTHER
sources from the time the actual events
related in Tacitus (or other Roman authors) are said to have occurred.

The same can be said for some items
written stone because they could have
been preceded by a papyrus copy that
was the draft for what was written on stone.

So, yes, I don't always trust what is in Tacitus (or other Roman sources) either unless there is corroboration that is reliable.

We do have MUCH more material about Augustus Caesar from his own time than we possess for Jesus. And that is the difference between judging the historcity of Jesus and Augustus Caesar.

In any case, EOBS has much more on
these sorts of historical problems.

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Dear Dr. Avalos,

Many thanks for your response.

As I'm sure we both know, I as an amateur interested in the transmission of texts, and you as a professional text critic, most Greek or Latin texts are lucky if they exist in a manuscript of the 9th century (indeed I find that most Syriac texts are lucky if they exist in a text of the 19th century!). But are we to infer, as you seem to suggest, that we cannot rely on the texts that have reached us, in order to write history?

Certainly the texts are damaged in minor ways in transmission. But do historians really worry about this, when (e.g.) writing the history of Caesar's campaigns? Surely they spend their time rather on working out what the great man didn't choose to mention, and how he spins the story? It has to be very serious textual damage before it worries the historians.

I am somewhat troubled by what you wrote. You see, it sounds much more like an archaeologist, than a text critic. Can you say why you spent time as a text critic, if you feel (as seems to be the case) that the labour is essentially valueless in the end, giving no certain text, and that archaeology is the only sure guide? I don't mean to be discourteous in this; it is simply puzzling. Isn't archaeology in fact anyway seldom self-explanatory?

Originally Posted by Dr. Hector Avalos

Hello, Mr. Pearse,

RE: “But are we to infer, as you seem to suggest, that we cannot rely on the texts that have reached us, in order to write history?”

This, of course, depends on what you mean by “in order to write history.” We certainly cannot rely on Middle Age manuscripts ALONE to VERIFY historical occurrences that happened in Roman times.

I go through one example in detail regarding what we know of the story of the killing of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE (see EOBS pp. 113-121). It turns out we know very little or nothing about this from contemporary sources.

A lot of “history” of the Roman period simply has reproduced what LATER sources say, but most modern historians cannot tell you how they can verify if those sources are correct. It DEPENDS on how much corroboration we have from other sources FROM the actual time of the event. It depends on which SPECIFIC event you are discussing.

“Damage” to manuscripts is not really so much the only issue. The bigger issue is: How do we know what has been changed between, for example, ca. 14 CE to 1000 CE. Sometimes we can corroborate certain occurrences, and sometimes we can’t.

I wish that were not so, but whether we like something or not, does not change reality.

I have been greatly disppointed myself to find out that some things I thought were certain about Roman history, are not so at all.

I hope my book provides a lot more detail about the possibilities and limits of using textual or material remains in verifying and reconstructing the history of ANY culture in the ancient world.

Originally Posted by 2-J

These conclusions are not obscurantism

Originally Posted by mountainman

This material looks to be connected to the Debunking Christianity blog where Dr. Hector Avalos Responds to JP Holding/Robert Turkel, By John W. Loftus at 1/14/2008.

The material substance of Avalos's arguments against the invalid complaints of Harding are as follows:


Holding is off the planet.



Christians seem to like these two Roman BCE poets.
The following by Robin Lane-Fox "Pagans and Christians"



Constantine's Orations to the Saints
about the prophecies of the coming of Jesus
in the BCE Roman Poets Virgil and Cicero



In this instance we may as well throw away Constantine's use of Virgil and Cicero.
These poets did not write about the coming of Jesus.
Some christians obviously believed Constantine's statements.

Originally Posted by arnoldo

Hi Mountainman,
There is a high probability that some former pagans believed Constantine's account of Virgil prophesying Christ. Before Constantine, a great many gentiles perhaps were equally convinced that Platonic concepts such as the Logos were in fact foreshadowing Christ. Regarding Virgil's Fourth Eclogue his writings does suggest a messianic figure but in this case he may've been writing about Augustus rather than Christ. Virgil writes,


Even if Virgil was not allegorically writing about Augustus his writings paint a picture of the universal longing to an end of a "wretched age." Perhaps Christianity offered potential converts an escape from this wretched age by the promise of healing. In Hector Avalos's book entitled Health Care and the Rise of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk) he writes;