Antipope Innocent II

Ummm, no. I think it’s quite clear that what Grant is saying here is that we can apply the same kinds of criteria to the gospels as we can to any other ancient text. That’s quite different to saying the gospels are the same as any other ancient text. In fact, if you read Grant’s book, he makes it very clear that he knows they are unique.

That’s what those “criteria” Grant mentions are supposed to be able to help determine, though without any guarantees of certainty (this being ancient history and not particle physics)

If you think that anything that can’t be corroborated by another source is therefore “unhistorical” then you’ve established a very narrow set of criteria for determining what may be historical. Not surprisingly, therefore, you’ve drawn a conclusion that comes up with a very small number of verifiably historical elements.

Few historians of the ancient world would define “historical” as narrowly as you do.

An assumption that historians of the ancient world make on a regular basis, though never without justification. My personal area of interest is the history of the early Germanic peoples. If I tried to apply your idea of what is “historical” and what can be dismissed as “assumption” I’d be left with very little that is “historical” due to the paucity of the sources and the corresponding lack of inter-source corroboration. So the historian of the ancient Germanics has to use other criteria to determine if information found in only one source and not corroborated can be thought to be reliable or not.

Can you think of any Greek or Roman mythology that depicts its events as having occurred just a generation or so before and within the living memory of people who were still alive? That’s a rather substantial difference between the stories in Greek and Roman mythology and the stories we find in the gospels, don’t you think? And one that is directly relevant to the question of the historicity of elements in the latter.

Er, no – it’s actually nothing like that. See above.

Most historians are actually quite happy to accept that there was a historical person as the point of origin of the much later Arthur legends. They do so on the basis of precisely the kind of “assumptions” that get Mythicists so worked up. Yet no-one gets worked up over this assumption about Arthur and there are no “Arthur Mythicists”.

As most historians of the subject happily accept.

The fact that those stories were written down centuries after any historical Fifth Century Arthur might have a bit to do with this. In the case of the gospels we’re talking decades, not centuries. Spot the significant difference.

According to your very narrow criteria, sure. If you apply the criteria that ancient historians actually use, however, things broaden out rather and you are able to admit more potentially historical information for scrutiny. Those are the criteria Grant is talking about, not your narrow criteria based purely on corroboration.

Jeffrey Gibson

I found the serach feature in my version of Adobe. As far as I can see, Chapman lists only one such mime, the one mentioned by Martial and Suetonious, etc..

Nor do I see anything that indicates she supports the idea that there were any other, let alone many, mimes that included crucifixion scenes, or that crucifixion scenes were a regular feature of them, as Jay seems to be suggesting. My understanding is that the adutery and love affairs was their usual foucus.

Have I missed something?

Jeffrey

No Robots

Erp, yup, searches fine in Adobe. Stupid knockoff I was using.

Jeffrey Gibson

[snide comment about my technological abilities removed]

Well, for one, I have done reading in the extant texts of mimes and none of the ones I've read included crucifixion scenes.

For another, it seemed to me, gathering as I did from what Jay has posted about mimes on the JM list that his research into the actual texts of mimes and even into scholarlu discussion on them was limited and primarily internet based, and that he seemed to be confusing the standard themes of mimes with a few that appear in the Greco Roman novel.

There's also the factor, as "Antipope" has well demonstrated, that Jay misrepresents what ancient texts say. So given this, as well as the other things I noted above, the question seems wholly warranted, epscially since the issue under review is the legitimacy of his claim that the Mark and John are based on a mime and show signs of having been so. If he doesn't know what he's talking about on the subject of mimes, how good can his tradition critical and genre critical claims be.

And please note that I already stated in my message to Jay why I was asking about his claim about the subject matter of mimes -- to be enlightened and to have corrected what my impression about their subject matter was. I'm sorry if you are read into my message more than was there and painted action in writing as something other than it was. But I say with some sadness that it is not wholly unexpected that you would do so.

Jeffrey

Toto

I meant to be humorous. I am sorry it didn't come over that way. The superiority of young people at computer skills is a stock joke.

None? But I, a rank amateur, found one with a google search.

This doesn't excuse your tone.

I don't seem to be the only one who read that into your message.

From the link:

This is the only specific crucifixion mentioned, but the phrase "mythos/fabula and real death co-mingle" implies that this is an example of a common theme.

And would it be not unexpected for common themes in Greco-Roman novels to also be common themes in the theater?

Jeffrey Gibson

And it is used when one wants to suggest the inferiority of an older person's highlight someone else's lack of skills.

In a text of an extant Greco Roman mime (which is what I said I was looking at)?

What tone?

So far I see one such other one. Malachi. But consider the source.

In spectacles performed in "later first century Rome" in the Flavian amphitheater, yes. But not in plays (or mimes) performed in theaters.

Please note too that what Martial says he witnessed is not a mine play but a stock character of mime plays (the impious criminal) put to death in the arena in a reenactment of the myth of Prometheus (or in a fabula of the character Laureolus). See Chapman's note 214.

Unlikely, I think, given the known subject matter of Roman plays. And note too that, if memory serves, both that crucifixion is not a common theme in Greco-Roman novels and that the Greco-Roman novels in which crucifixion appears as a topos are post 1st century.

But your claim (which really seems to me to be a bit culturally anachonistic) is easily tested -- by looking at extant Greco-Roman plays. Can you name any of those by Seneca or Plautus in which crucifixion appears as one of its themes?

Jeffrey

Toto

Philosopher Jay has sent me this: Segal is also available on googlebooks. Just before that quote we learn

Roger Pearse

Since no such work as "ad valentinus" (sic) exists, we can only infer that someone is silently copying from someone here, and hasn't verified whether any of these references actually support what is claimed. As Routh famously said, we must always verify our references, or add a disclaimer.

(Tertullian did write Adversus Valentinianos, so perhaps someone abbreviated this to Ad. Valent. and someone else expanded it to ad Valentinus?)

Here is chapter 14 of Mark Riley's excellent version of Adversus Valentinianos:

XIV.

Enthymesis, then, or rather Achamoth (since from now on this
incomprehensible name will be used) has been expelled--with
Sophia's diseased suffering as a companion--into a place lack-
ing light, which is a component of the Pleroma only. In that
well known empty void of Epicurus she is wretched because of
her location. Certainly she had no shape or surface at all,
deformed and aborted creature as she was. While she is in
such a state, Christ is persuaded by the aeons and led by
Horos to shape and form Achamoth by his own power; he forms
her in essence only, not in intelligible form as well. Never-
theless, she is left with a small estate, namely "the breath
of incorruptibility," and having this she can experience the
desire for something better than she has. After he has done
this deed of mercy, Christ returns to the Pleroma, not leav-
ing behind the Holy Spirit.

Usually an abundance of entities creates an abundance of
names: she is called Enthymesis (Inclination) from what hap-
pened, Achamoth from God knows where, Sophia after her mother,
Holy Spirit from the angel called by the same name. In any
event, she conceives a desire for Christ, by whom she has been
deserted, as she immediately realizes. Thereupon she leaps
up and goes to seek his light. (I might ask, if she did not
know him at all, since he operated unseen, how could she look
for his light which was as unknown to her as he was?) Never-
theless, she tried and might have grasped it if that same
Horos who had run into her mother so fortunately had not un-
fortunately happened upon the daughter. He shouted at her,
"Iao" just like "Make way!" or "Hail to the Chief!" Because
of this we find "Iao" in the Bible. Thus she was driven
away and prevented from going further; nor was she able to
fly over Cross, otherwise known as Horos, because she had not
played the part of Laureolus in Catullus' mime. Since she
has been deserted, the suffering, to which she is bound with
many twisted ties, begins to afflict her in all ways; with
sadness because she did not accomplish her objective; with
fear that she would lose her life just as she had lost her
light; with alarm, and finally with ignorance. She did not
suffer as her mother had, for she was an aeon; instead,
Achamoth suffered worse because of her status: another tide
of emotion washed over her, a desire for conversion--to
Christ of course--by whom she had been quickened and fash-
ioned with a view toward this very conversion.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

I don't find any references to "ad valentinus" so I suspect it was a simple and understandable transcription error.

youngalexander

It may come as some surprise to you that the study of 'particle physics' implies no 'guarantee of certainty'. Like all sciences it requires observation, which implies error. A physicist has to assemble the observed evidence and to provide an hypothesis to explain it just as an historian does.

The 'question' being asked in this and a number of other threads is; what is the evidence for an historical Jesus?

Surely a reasonable request. Particularly if so easily satisfied.

I am still waiting to hear about this list of 'first rank scholars' who have demolished the mythicist case.

Arthurian aside:
There are a number of members who post here who are not in the least 'worked up' about Jesus mythicism. It is an interesting question, no more.

Having read reams of stuff here and elsewhere I am inclined to agnosticism. I find the case for an historical Jesus unconvincing, particularly since Noone (I love this guy) seems keen to present it. Thus, as far as we - the great unwashed (or is that unworthy according to JG and the late CW) - are concerned, the debate tends to go by default. The Mythicists put a case, the Hystoricists do not.