Amaleq13

We've been consistently talking about the empty tomb as an allegory for the resurrection but, here, you have switched the subject and the resurrection has somehow become a metaphor for something else.

The objection of the Jews is directly addressing the implied argument presented by the story:

The tomb was empty, therefore Christ had risen.

They deny the conclusion by offering a different explanation:

The tomb was empty because the body was stolen.

You would have Matthew's author "score points" by informing them that the empty tomb was not literal but symbolic of the resurrection. You have not yet explained how that admission would work in his favor given that it certainly would not end the discussion. As far as I can tell, that admission does absolutely nothing to "score points" in the sense of allowing him to justify his conclusion despite the criticism.

The obvious question the Jews would offer in response to his admission is:

"If there was no actual empty tomb, why should anyone take your claim of resurrection seriously?"

A fabricated empty tomb requires that the actual fate of the body was unknown but that doesn't help the author establish his conclusion (ie "score points").

Ben C Smith

Only if the earliest gospel postdates Josephus.

Ben.

Amaleq13

That isn't a methodology for identifying the nature of the evidence.

Eliminating the extremes does not tell us where, on the remaining and rather substantial continuum between them, the stories belong. You have still not offered any methodology that justifies placing your conclusion closer to the "history" end of the spectrum than the "fiction" end. IOW, your "treatment" entirely begs the question of what portions of the stories are "history" and what portions are "embellishment" and how you go about making that differentiation.

As far as I can see, treating the stories as fiction with some historical embellishments makes just as much sense of them.

Didymus

The fit is not "clean" at all. The credibility of the evidence we have - the gospels - is strongly tainted by the obvious motivation of the authors (proselytization) and the fact that their "reports" are shot through with material that is clearly non-historical: fables, accounts derived from other literature, and stories of the supernatural. It's not just a case of an ancient author dropping in an occasional portent or omen; the gospels are laced with so much non-history that, absent confirmation from other sources, it is impossible to ascertain whether the rest is accurate.

Didymus

Didymus

Am I missing something here? It seems enough for the earliest gospel only to have postdated public knowledge of the story Josephus shared with his readers about the behavior, scourging etc. of Jesus son of Ananias.

Ben C Smith

You are right. When you spoke of the story as allegory or metaphor I presumed you thought Matthew regarded the resurrection as spiritual (a common interpretation of Paul, for example). If Matthew believed the body really had physically risen after death, and passed on a Marcan story demonstrating that the body really had physically risen after death, but did not believe that story himself, the story is no longer an allegory or symbol for Matthew; it is an outright lie.

If I really believed you had killed someone, though I had not witnessed you do it and had no real proof, and yet I told the investigators a story about watching you through the window as you fired your gun on your victim and cleaned up the blood afterward, I have not related an allegory or symbol. I have related a lie.

Right. The Jewish opponents are thus interpreting the claim literally (the tomb was empty that morning) and also offering a literal counterclaim (the disciples had stolen the body). No allegory here.

Right. Pointing out blatant misinterpretations scores points against the opponent who made them.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

If Jesus son of Ananias never existed (which was the hypothetical scenario in the posts), then whence public knowledge of the story?

Ben.

jakejonesiv

No, I think Didymus phrased it right. The historicity of Jesus son of Ananias is irrelevant, it is the story of Jesus son of Ananias that counts. This well could have existed before Josephus published his works. That is, unless you are arguing that Joesphus didn't use sources.

The reason we are off on this tangent is because you asked me,
It is not my issue.

BTW, I don't see any problem with the gospels using Josephus directly, since they are IMO second century works.

Jake

jjramsey

With that one sentence, you have shown that you didn't come close to understanding my argument. With a convoluted enough theory, of course, one can find a way to interpret War of the Worlds or Watership Down as embellished history. What you don't get is a parsimonious explanation, something that makes the best sense of the text.

The most obvious obstacle is that both these books were received and marketed as fiction. (Notice that with the Gospels, we have the opposite problem.) Another problem is getting an idea of the path from historical core to embellishment. In the case of Jesus, if you cut away the miracles, you still get a picture of someone who could be an actual person, as I pointed out above in my contrast of Jesus and Santa. Now in the novel War of the Worlds, quite a bit of London and other parts of England get trashed. When one starts paring away at the details, it is far less clear where one might stop and get something that could conceivably be a historical core. That in itself makes it hard to track from core to final embellished history. There is also the matter of what would be the reasons for the accretions. In the case of Watership Down, conceivably one might say that the author was inspired by the movements of actual rabbits at Watership Down (which is a real place). However, lacking the actual knowledge of what the rabbits were saying and thinking, the motivations and even the names attributed to the rabbits had to come from the author. Here, what might conceivably be the historical core is so slight that it makes more sense to call it a "inspiration" rather than a core. And all this assumes that the author observed rabbits moving roughly the way they did in the book, which is questionable.

Ben C Smith

Yes, he did, but if Jesus of Ananias was not an historical person, we would have to offer evidence that there was a story about him before Josephus. If he was historical, we would not, as stories about him may have abounded.

Ben.