rlogan

Obviously, Joe, your arguments are more fleshed out there and I think it sounds interesting.

I admit again that I find the "nefarious" Roman creation of Christianity oh so ironic and charming. *chuckle*

I am curious to what extent you were influenced by the other "Romans did it" theories.

The other matter that bears touching upon is the whole development of the epistles of Paul. Doherty has of course addressed this as the evolution from the "spiritual" Christ to (eventually) a historical Jesus.

I have been long suspicious of "Paul". For one thing, it's just a bit too cute to go from the name of the first King of all Israel's tribes to the name that means "small". His biography is altogether too strange with being a tentmaker and Pharisee and roman citizen and "persecutor" (Working under the auspices of the Sadducee High Priest, presumably). He never meets Jesus, but eclipses everyone who has - after practicing the extirpation of Christianity.

"Paul" smells pretty fishy to me.

John Deere

Riogan,

The scholar whose work influenced me was Robert Eisenman. Bob has become a friend and colaborator. We wrote an article together - "Redating the Radiocarbon
Dating of The Dead Sea Scrolls." Dead Sea Discoveries 11/2 (2004) 143-157" - showing that the widely held understanding of the meaning of the C-14 dating of the Scrolls was incorrect.

Eisenman's book James the Brother of Jesus is a masterpiece that has never been given the acclaim it deserves. This is partly Bob's own fault it that, of the dozens of brillant insights he presents within the work, he choose to title and focus the book on the one that has perhaps the least amount of supporting evidence. Incidently, the best reveiw of James I have read is Michael Turton's - http://www.hermann-detering.de/RezEisenman.htm.

If you have not read the book and are interested in learning more about 'Paul' I strongly suggest you get it.

Joe

DramaQ

That's quite all right. I've been on the road for the week and unable to keep up. You restated the points just fine. Thanks for the reinforcement.


Glad to know at least SOMEONE managed to escape.

I see Joe covered the points later on, plus I have the PDF to read, so I'll be up to my eyeballs in it for a while.

Great thread, though. I'm with the rest who would actually love the irony of it all being a Roman ruse....

dq

spin

Problem is Eisenman doesn't know anything about C14. He's just burnt because it ruins his silly theories about James the Just and the Teacher of Righteousness. Obviously if pHab is from the 1st c. BCE then he's USCWAP.

It's a repetitive bore. The best use I've found for it is to keep the door open.

It's mainly butterfly logic. X sounds like Y which looks a bit like Z, therefore P is really Q... or something like that.

How can he possibly use sources so much later than the period and expect to be taken serously??

The reason why he's popular is that he sneaks in the backdoor of the conspiracy theory crowd. If he's right, then christianity didn't happen the way the churches claim. (Yawn. We know that already.)


spin

John Deere

Spin,

There is a draft of the C14 article Eisenman and I published posted at :

http://www.csulb.edu/centers/sjco/carbon14.html

Please read it and then let us know if you still buy a first century BCE origin for pHab.

Joe

spin

In this discussion, I will assume that the reference to the 1998 recalibration is that of 1997 and cited by G.L. Doudna in "The DSS After 50 Years", Flint & VanderKam, Brill, 1998. If this is not correct, then some of my comments are not accurate. However, I have not heard of any later recalibration in the last eight years. What is your source for the data?

This is a misrepresentation of reality. Absolute C-14 datings were made. The significance of these datings were elicited from the current calibration curve of the time. Since that time the curve of the relevant period has been recalibrated and the upshot is that a number of absolute datings have been reinterpreted due to the change in the curve. To call the curve originally used "inaccurate" makes little sense for the time of the comparison. But as with much in science, things are improved upon and a more accurate curve has been constructed.

Basic balderdash. People are using the results from the new calibration -- unless they are still using old books, and that's their problem.

As you clarify this later I'll look into it then.

Roth and Driver were writing at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s and are totally irrelevant -- and this is true regarding Allegro as well. All these writers were dead before the C14 tests mentioned here were performed. This is probably true for Teicher as well. Citing Golb here means a basic misunderstanding of what Golb was writing about. Thiering is clueless, despite crapping on about old hides. That leaves your mate Eisenman, who also knows nothing about C14 -- well, until recently, that is.

More balderdash. Roth and Driver and the zealot stuff is old hat. Allegro missed the boat. Thiering missed the wall. The mainstream is idiotic. Probably no-one is right about scroll interpretation, but the point is totally irrellvant to the analysis of C14 testing here.

Rubbish. Carbondating these days is related to both tree-ring dating and ice-core dating indications, both of which yield yearly type data. The major problem is relating the C14, whose initial quantites fluctuate depending on solar activity and other more local conditions, to the more absolute indications of the other chronology systems.

(The Cross palaeography is of no interest to me: it's simply witchcraft and has no scientific basis. Th C14 dating is not directly related to the palaeography in any way. The one instance that the contrary may be true was when 4Q258 came in totally after the Jewish War, so they retested it, but that was more regarding general expectations than palaeography. To repeat, the tests themselves were carried out without reference to palaeography. They are simply cleaned and measured, then the results are compared with the calibration curve. This means that to me much of the later discussion is irrelevant. The mainstream has massaged their understandings by comparing C14 with palaeography and concluding how wonderfully accurate the palaeographic results are. It is a red herring.)

Using 2-sigma results is quite wise. They are more trustworthy. Therefore I don't use 1-sigma datings at all.

It is endemic of bad judgment that one takes the one statistically abnormal date amongst the results as being most indicative of reality. Statistics should tell you that there is a problem with 4Q171, while Pesher Habakkuk is in the statistical norm in the 1st c. BCE.

Allegro was the editor of 4Q171 and wrote that he used castor oil to clean his texts. This made his texts become much more readable while contaminating the sample with modern carbon, skewing any datings taken from it to appearing more recent. One need not look any further than such an explanation for why 4Q171 was dated wholly in the 1st c. CE, while the main locus of the tested texts is in the 1st c. BCE. (Other known contaminants were also used on various texts as indicated in the records of various editors.)

Ummm... 4Q266...

My data regarding pHab disagrees with yours. It's latest dating is 2 CE. The same goes for 4Q267, 3 BCE.

Actually about half the samples come in basically wholly before the beginning of the era, including pHab, and six of the eight others stretch back at least 40 years into the 1st c. BCE. This places the statistical norm before the 1st c. CE.

(The recalibration is not raw data. The raw data was what was provided by the C14 testing.)

The recalibration does nothing to extract pHab from the 1st c. BCE which is the crux of Eisenman's problem (and why he found himself recanting his claim that James was the TR for a while).

This is basically correct, but Eisenman cannot hope that this difficulty works in his favour until more tests are made. As things stand, if he accepts any of the C14 data, then he has to arbitrarily fiddle with pHab, otherwise his hobby horse is falsified.

The notion that C14 evidence is incoclusive with regard to the various hypotheses in circulation I think is ingenuous.

Let me first clarify one item of C14 data. 1QS, one of those texts which happily stretched through both the 1st c. BCE and CE, was copied by the same scribe who copied 4SamC. The significance of this is that 4QSamC cannot have been copied significantly earlier than 1QS nor can 1QS have been copied significantly later than 4QSamC. This means that this foundational text must be wholly dated before the 1st c. CE as 4QSamC's latest date is 48 BCE.

We have three important texts for the community, one which mentions the TR (pHab), one which is a community covenant (4Q267 - CD, a tradition which specifically mentions the TR, though not this fragment of it) and another which is the rule of the community itself (1QS), which date before the 1st c. CE. Now the dates of copies are not necessarily in any way indicative of the dates for when the texts were written, except for the fact that they must have been written at least as early as the exemplar. While CD could have been written any time before 4Q266 was copied, the Pesher Habakkuk couldn't have been written later than its manifestation as 1QpHab.

This is somewhat lurid prose, which, without stating any substantial improvement on the selection method for the exemplars, allows you to say nasty things in rhetorically safe manner, though in true sophist style.

If I were to suggest certain scrolls to be tested, it would be to check hypotheses, eg how the other pesher texts date so that one can formulate theories about the genre; how other copies of S date so as to check the developmental theories regarding the family of texts; etc. There is nothing necessarily unsound or unscientific about having special interests in testing certain scrolls. I think your comment here is mean and bad spirited.

This last sentence is certainly not correct, as specifically regards 1QpHab, 1QS and 4Q267.

Despite your pleas of impartiality and disinterest in this web article, your glowing attitude regarding Eisenman here at II belies your bias. This submerged lack of impartiality obviously guided your conclusions in the article.


spin

John Deere

Spin,

Your comment:

- "This is a misrepresentation of reality. Absolute C-14 datings were made. The significance of these datings were elicited from the current calibration curve of the time. Since that time the curve of the relevant period has been recalibrated and the upshot is that a number of absolute datings have been reinterpreted due to the change in the curve. To call the curve originally used "inaccurate" makes little sense for the time of the comparison. But as with much in science, things are improved upon and a more accurate curve has been constructed."

is simply not in the known semantical universe. When something is determined inaccurate and replaced by a "more acuate curve" (your words) it is not a "misrepresentation of reality" to refer to it as "inaccurate".

I'll leave it to readers of the thread to determine who is being 'inaccurate' here.

Your next comment:

"Basic balderdash. People are using the results from the new calibration -- unless they are still using old books, and that's their problem."

simply avoids my point. It is the case that those who touted the results - put out press releases based upon the inaccurate curve - have never issued any retractions acknowleging their error. Or can you cite a single example to the contrary?

Your next comment:

"Roth and Driver were writing at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s and are totally irrelevant -- and this is true regarding Allegro as well. All these writers were dead before the C14 tests mentioned here were performed."

seems to ignore the fact that theories can live on after the death of the inventors. The point I was making was that the C14 tests did not weigh against their theories, not against their 'persons'.

Your next comment:

"Rubbish. Carbondating these days is related to both tree-ring dating and ice-core dating indications, both of which yield yearly type data. The major problem is relating the C14, whose initial quantites fluctuate depending on solar activity and other more local conditions, to the more absolute indications of the other chronology systems."

contradicts itself. You say it is "rubbish" to claim that C14 dating is not precise enough to be relevant in a debate over time spans as narrow as the one in the Scrolls debate (100 years) and then point out the inaccuary of C14 dating. As I noted in the article the two control samples - the Bar Kocha material whose date was known - both gave C14 readings that were over 100 years in error.

Your statment:

"My data regarding pHab disagrees with yours. It's latest dating is 2 CE. The same goes for 4Q267, 3 BCE."

is contradicted by your previous one:

"Using 2-sigma results is quite wise. They are more trustworthy. Therefore I don't use 1-sigma datings at all."

If it is "wise" to use 2-sigma rather than 1-sigma ranges for representing C14 'results' then surely it is even 'wiser' to not use the number that is merely the median as the representation of 'when' the animal died whose skin was used to write the document in question upon.

Your next comment:

"Actually about half the samples come in basically wholly before the beginning of the era, including pHab, and six of the eight others stretch back at least 40 years into the 1st c. BCE. This places the statistical norm before the 1st c. CE."

seems to misunderstand the article's main argument, which is not that the Sect was not in existence in the first century BCE, but only that the C14 results in no way precluded a first century origin for the sectarian material. What seems strange to me is that as best I can determine, insults aside, you do not seem to be contesting this point.

Below are the actual results.


Scroll 1998 Calibration 1986 Calibration
11QT (Temple Scroll) 53 BCE- 21 CE 97BCE-1 CE
1QH 37 BCE-68 CE 21BCE-61 CE
1Q266 4-82 CE 5-80 CE
1QpHab 88-2 BCE 104-43 BCE
1QS 116-50 CE 159 BCE-20 CE
4Q258 36BCE-81 CE 11 BCE-78 CE
4Q171 29-81 CE 22-78 CE
4Q521 39 BCE-66 CE 35B CE-59 CE
4Q267 168 – 51 BCE 172-98 BCE

Your commet:

- "The recalibration does nothing to extract pHab from the 1st c. BCE" -

simply misunderstands the way in which probability is used to determine the period that C14 analysis indicates a sample may have died within, since this is exactly what it does. There is no way any - and I do mean 'any' Spin - professional mathematician would look at the above data set and concluded that pHab could only have been written in the first century BCE.

Finally, your comment:

"Despite your pleas of impartiality and disinterest in this web article, your glowing attitude regarding Eisenman here at II belies your bias. This submerged lack of impartiality obviously guided your conclusions in the article."

is somewhat off base. If you read Caesar's Messiah you'll see my theories are not really in sync with Bob's. They certainly don't depend upon any dating of the Scrolls. I wanted to produce the article because Bob was being hammered unfairly.

But I do accept the charge of bias. I believe that Eisenman is an important scholar not becasue of his ideas about the identities of the Teacher and the Wicked Priest but because he linked the Romans to the Gospels, which is my position as well.

Joe

spin

Plainly you are unaware of the fact that the structure of science is in continuous update. The curve at the time of testing was what was the most updated available. When new data arrived then the curve was improved upon. Your work misrepresents the reality of this situaion, as though an inappropriate curve was used. This is simply wrong.


As you persist in this blunder about inaccurate curves, you need no further response here.

In the academic world the works of these people were taken up by nobody. Get the point? You were being anachronistic in your griping.

What do you think the curves are based on??

I'm away from the data a the moment, but I don't remember this being the case and I have looked closely at the data. I'll be back to you on this claim.

Again I don't know what you are talking about. I used 2-sigma dates. It sounds like you are trying to create contradictions.

The scrolls weren't written by a sect and so there is no sectarian material. That's just international team leftover dogma. I'm interested in what the C14 says not what learned dogma says, therefore you misunderstand me.

What I was talking about regarded the ability to rule out certain claims using the C14 data. One such claim was that christian figures are involved in the scrolls community.

I asked you for your source of this data. Could you provide it please?

Also I pointed out that there is no 1Q266. There was however a 4Q266.

Rubbish.

I'm not interested in Caesar's Messiah. I've already been through one version of this idea and found it totally wanting. I have no desire to encore the stuff.

I simply pointed out that you had a glowing opinion of Eisenman, down to the overfriendly "Bob". I didn't say that you adhered to it.

I think he's off the wall not too far from Thiering. Both of them are extremely erudite, but both are beating their own little drums and no scholar is interested for different reasons of course.


spin

John Deere

Spin,

When a mathmatical formula is discovered to be inaccurate, its inaccuracy does not begin with its discovery but has existed for all time, right? In other words, if a group believe that 1+1 = 3 and then discovers that it really equals 2, it is not inaccurate to state that their prior work based upon the 'inaccuracy' is was inaccurate. You understand this, of course, but wish to face save so you persist in this dialogue. Enough said.

As far as your contention that their was no sect, if this was the case why do they refer to a Teacher? What do you mean by the word 'sect'.

To the key point - that that any real mathematician would conclude from the data that pHab could have been written in first century, you replied only "rubbish". Was this an attempt to continue the debate, or a concession as to the nature of your prior analysis?

Cheerio,


Joe

Unbeliever

Hi Joe!

I've finished my first reading of CM, and have begun the second, and I just wanted to express my appreciation for all the work you've done to bring it to the rest of us. I felt, reading it, like the two men on the road to Emmaus, to whom Jesus explained all the scriptures concerning himself!

I just have a few quick questions for now, but I'm sure I'll have more later.

Considering that Acts appears to have been written by the author of Luke, and Luke was written by the Flavians, can Acts also be seen as having been a part of the conspiracy? And if so, then how does Saul/Paul fit into the scheme?

In John 21, the story of the fish that were caught after Jesus told the men to try the right side of the boat has the specific number of fish in the net as 153. This number seems very specific to me. I was just wondering if there is some hidden significance to the number, or is it simply meant to emphasize that there were a lot of fish, though the net didn't break?

Were only the four canonical gospels written by the Flavians, or could some of the (many!) others be a part of the story?

I looked up "Martha" in Strong's, and it said nothing about the name being an Aramaic variant of "Mary", but that it was probably of Chaldean origin, meaning "mistress". I was wondering if you could point me to a source where I could learn more about this.

Thanks Joe!

Walt