Sven

Edited: Beaten to it.

spin

Is experience patronizing to you?

That's one person's analysis of the evidence. I have gone on record here with a very different one, that neither passage can be justified in a literary critical analysis of the texts. (Just do a search for "spin josephus christ" using the search function provided.)

Doh! Bye bye, notion of evidence. There is NO evidence for this hemi-demi-semi-god of yours, Jesus. That IS the point. You have to go running after the literary record which is long afterwards and take recourse in aberrant scholars who push dates back to the max in an effort to supply some sort of legitimation due to lack of other means.


Which is why you have shown no appreciation of how traditions work in ancient times. The example of Ebion I gave in an earlier post should be sufficient to show how it works. Ebion simply didn't exist, but, as an eponymous founder of the Ebionite "heresy" was assumed, he was imagined into existence. Ebion gained a birthplace, a story and even literature. Not a matter of fraud, just evidence how a tradition can work.

The documentary evidence is literary and must be susceptible to literary criticism. One asks when was it written, who wrote it, where did they write, what was the literary context, who was their audience, why were they writing. None of these questions is transparent for the literature of this tradition, whereas all of them can be answered for classical writers of the ilk of Tacitus and Polybius. These latter were not writers of tradition. Their merits get weighed up from the physical, epigraphical and literary evidence. Even Josephus, when it comes to writing of his own period, comes in for the same critical analysis and his material can be evaluated for its content and relevance to the period. Much of his information about Masada has been shown as relevant by archaeological research around that site. The perimeters of Silva's camps are still to be seen, the Roman ramp to the top has been uncovered and its content analysed, fitting Roman siege warfare, etc.

You have documents, but how does one corroborate their stories? Did Jesus sometimes quote the Greek Septuagint as some of the gospel material suggest and at other times prefer Hebrew or even Aramaic versions? Did his peasant audiences understand the three languages? Did these hypothetical listeners understand two conflicting genealogies of the man's father, despite the fact that Joseph was irrelevant to the notion that Mary had a "virgin birth"? Did Jesus go attracting huge crowds around Palestine for a full year before someone decided to end his demagoguery? Did Jesus work a string of miracles which went unreported to the powers that were? And have you seen how many miracles are reported in the times of Josephus? So a raising from the dead or a mirculous feeding or even a boring old healing of the blind, once it got noted would have been b-i-g news, but zilch, zippo, nada makes the records. We just have two interpolations in Josephus, one with excruciating grammar and the other making out Josephus was a xian for the 30 seconds of writing it.

Coins are evidence which is hard to ignore. So are statures and inscriptions. Julius Caesar is so obviously a more historical figure than Jesus. For Caesar's sake, you even know what Julie looked like at differenttimes in his life. Literature requires a lot more work and is much less conclusive in itself. It needs strong attachment to the nitty gritty of the events they purport to describe to give them credentials as evidence for the events.


spin

Epictetus

I will add one tidbit more to what spin, Vork, and others have noted regarding xtianity. Even if it could be proven that this guy Jesus lived where and when the gospels claim, it still does nothing to verify that he was divine, that he broke the laws of physics and performed miracle after miracle, or that he was anything more than a muddle-headed rabbi who got caught up as a pawn in the politics of Roman-occupied Palestine.

Thunk! (sound of stone rolling into place in front of tomb door).

CX

I find it interesting that these MSS are not included as sources in the NA27. NA27 goes out of its way to include every early MS of the books of the NT as a primary source. Nor does anything I've read on the DSS (save Thiede) even suggest that anything in the DSS is related to the NT. Most biblical scholars recognize the Ryland's fragment (P52) as the earliest MS attesting to any text in the NT and its just a tiny scrap of John dating to the mid 2nd century. In fact I think if you'll investigate the MS evidence you'll find that there are no MSS dating to the first century and only 3 or so dating to the second accounting for a total of perhaps 22 verses of the NT. Secondly paleographers do not give such a narrow range when dating texts based on paleography. In the best case paleography purports to have a margin of error +- 25 years. Even that is disputed.

The NA27 lists 98 papyri and I know that some additional MSS have come to light since it was published. I think we're up around 104 or so, but I don't know what the exact total is at this moment. That being said, do you know of what these papyri consist? Most are scraps attesting to only a handful of verses. Prior to the 4th century codices we have 34 MSS attesting to roughly 50% of the entire text of the NT. There are no fewer than 7 books of the NT which have no MSS evidence prior to Codex Sinaiticus. There is a complete discussion here. Further, although the papyrus scroll was superceded by the Codex around the 2nd or 3rd century, papyrus continued to be used in codices as parchment was much more expensive. Not only that but the papyrus scroll continued to be used well into the 8th century. Additionally of all the greek MS evidence we have the vast majority (something like 80 to 90% or more if memory serves) dates to the 13th century or later.

All this goes to say that on MSS evidence alone we can only reasonably reconstruct the text of the NT as it existed in the 4th century AFTER the proto-orthodox church gained hegemony. In other words, MS evidence is an extremely flimsy foundation on which to construct an argument for the historicity of the gospel. That being said we should also be cautious in making any claims positive or negative with respect to the truth value of the claims of the NT based on MSS evidence.

Stevewe

You've heard this all before (indeed, you give the impression of having heard everything before) but my point with Caesar was, of course, that the documentary evidence is weaker for him than Jesus, based on independent sources; implicit in the argument is that your skepticism is applied to Jesus not because of any inherent weakness in the historicity of claims about him, but because your naturalist theories can't abide the stories.
Now coins have faces of gods on them, is this archeological proof of their existence. They have faces of Caesars on them, asserting they are gods--more history. Even Augustus was claimed to be a god in his own lifetime and presumably you believe he is a god because of the coins and statues etc attesting to this.
As for Caesar, why believe his own version of his conquests; why couldnt they be exaggerations or fabrications? Where is the skepticism? All the documents we have were written 1,000 years after the events, copies of histories written hundreds of years after, by historians working under a Caesaric regime bent on propagandizing the myth of their founder.



Oops, sorry, that's what you're saying about Christianity. Of course I have no evidence, that Caesar's life was fabricated. But in reality you don't care one way or the other. You are only interested in debunking Christ, but are doing so which no objective historians apply to any other figure. Grandiose, hyperbolic? Well there's a lot of that going round. But prove me wrong. Find me some historians who doubt the existence of Christ.
Where, indeed, is the skepticism when stories about Jesus being a fairy tale appear on this site? I still can't believe you are serious. C'mon Vort, it's a affectation, really. 'Fess up.

Vort says the NT must be subjected to literary criticism. Im not sure I understand why they must, since they are not literature. I counter they must be subject to normal historical criticism. And as such they stand up.

Vort says Thiede has been disproved and cites his page. I say he hasn't and cite my page. www.geocities.com/Heartland/7547/ntmss.html.
You dont believe my page and I dont believe yours. It's all pretty symmetrical.

Aside from Thiede some guy named O'Callaghan finds NT passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Toto

It is valid to question the historical accuracy of documents that relate supernatural events. We have a lot of cumulative evidence that supernatural events do not happen.

No, but we believe that the people who made the coins liked the pictures of gods and probably worshipped those particular gods at the time the coins were struck.

Every historical document must be examined with this possibility. But of course, there was no Caesaric regime that based its rule on the belief of the particular events of history. There were no ideological factions that debated the precise nature of Caesar or threatened each other with hellfire if they didn't believe in Caesar.

Objective historians doubt the existence of Confucius, William Tell, etc. There are no double standards.

His handle is Vorkosigan, not Vort.

Start with Earl Doherty, www.jesuspuzzle.com . Move on to GA Wells.

The DSS have been carbon dated to the first century BC.

Vorkosigan

You are apparently unfamiliar with the skepticism regarding Caesar's version of events that is normal for scholars. Historians generally regard Caesar's discussions of his own motives and those of his opponents with a jaundiced eye. But many of his accounts of the conduct of the battles have been substantiated by archaeology. So we know that at least some aspects of Caesar's writings are in fact supported by outside vectors.

Not all of the Roman historians shared identical agendas or regarded their subjects with equal dispassion. I think the topic of historical bias is more complex than this.

First, find some historians who have exhaustively written on the matter in a professional way.

Steve, you do not know what my position on the historical Jesus is. So why are you writing this?

Steve, what is "normal historical criticism?" What are its methods and characteristics?

As for gospels as literature, that is exactly what they are, though of what kind is quite controversial. Outside of a few conservative apologists no one regards them as straight history. Johannes Wiess argued that the gospels were memorabilia of the apostles back in the 19th century, but that view now has few supporters among scholars. Votaw, in 1915, first tried to establish that they were Greco-Roman biographies. That has been an enduring view, but many other proposals have been made: the gospels were lectionaries (Goulder and Carrington), parables (Kelber), Socratic Dialogues (Barr), tragicomedy (Via), Chreia (Fischel), Greek novels (of which they have numerous elements), kerygma, and A Y Collins "apocalyptic historical monograph." Wills sees it as a cult narrative most closely akin to the modern historical novel (which is how I see it as well, if that means anything). However, these genre features all overlap, and there is no hard and fast distinction between them in the minds of either scholars, readers, and probably, their creators and editors as well. as Wills notes, what we see is kinship of genres rather than one-to-one mapping. See the first chapter of The Quest of the Historical Gospel for a good discussion of the problem of genre.

Literary approaches to the gospels may be found in almost every scholar who has studied them. I recommend starting with a good introductory text like: Rhoads, D, Dewey, J. and Michie, D. 1999. Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel. 2nd Ed. Augsburg: Fortress Press. Literary features abound in them. The Gospel of Mark includes numerous literary features, from paralleling of Old Testament texts (the way, for example, Mark 3:1-6 parallels 1 Kings 13:4-6), to literary hypertextuality (in Mark, Temple-focused), to structural features like doublets (the two parallel groups of five miracle stories), to literary themes and motifs (messianic secret, incompetence of the disciples), to linguistic borrowing (from the Septaugint) and so on. The list is endless. It is foolish to regard Mark as history, though there is plenty of history down there. The text itself, however, is a thoroughly literary construction.

Ummm...no. I gave you two cites, one from Paul Tobin, and the other from a list for scholars of classical Greek. You can, if you like, maintain as a matter of faith that Thiede is correct. But no scholars of Greek will support you. The documents Thiede thought were from Mark have already been demonstrated to be from another book. This is not a struggle of site against site. Rather, I have offered people who have expert grasp of specific methodology against Thiede's claims. And none of them accept those claims.

"Some guy." Who is this person?

Vorkosigan

Roland

I suspect that when historians - even Christian ones - come across text that implies that Alexander or Caesar had divine fathers, those historians dismiss that aspect of these rulers' lives as legendary. Only with the Bible, for some reason, are we supposed to accept supernatural events as possibly true.

When Josephus claims that a goat gave birth to a lamb - or however that went - in the temple, are we supposed to give that the same level of credence we give to his many other, more mundane observations of historical fact? I would think not, and, frankly, I suspect you would most likely dismiss such a statement as nonsense yourself. But if it's in the Bible.....

spin

This is simply wrong. You choose to ignore important facts about the documents you want to be admitted as evidence: who wrote them? when? where? to whom? why? in what context? These are all questions that you cannot answer based on evidence. You are totally ignorant about your sources -- you are not alone. Nobody can fruitfully answer any of those questions although there have been a lot of guesses. You know who wrote the Annals and the Histories and you know when Tacitus wrote them. You can know where he wrote them and to whom. This helps give Tacitus a context which is coherent and helps one understand what his text is about and despite the fact that it is not a particularly well surviving tradition, it has the good fortune of being corroborated over and over again on its principal facts. It's not sufficient that a text is shown to be old if it's not shown to be old enough. No gospel is contemporary with the period it purports to represent and no-one knows even when they were written so one cannot know what the relationship is that document has with the time it purports to deal with. Worse, none of the principal facts in the texts get any external corroboration.

What is the value of such texts? Zilch as history.

I gather that you have totally missed the point of the coin data. You will note that I related coins to specific times and events. Your facetious question about gods on coins is a waste of typing effort, as it isn't dealing with the topic, but aimed at a cheap put down of coin evidence in general, when you show no knowledge of what information can be gained from coins, nor do you show any inclination to know.

When they are dead, so yes, more history.

Actually he never personally made such a claim. But it may make you feel better thinking that he did.

One shouldn't take any literary text on face value. The important thing is that after the time of Caesar Gaul was Roman and they were administering it. Before then it wasn't the case.

You forget yet again that there is more evidence than literary records with which to confirm or reject events in historical space. This is not the case with the literature you are purveying.

It's quite alright. When one has no evidence and can only express unfounded skepticism, a little levity can make you feel a little releaved.

It's worse than that. You have hard evidence that his life wasn't fabricated. Go to Rome and see the statues. Look up the coins on the internet. Read the acknowledgements of the people who followed him in time, people who knew him reporting his existence as well. You know, Brutus, Cassius, Marcus Antonius, and Octavian -- all historical figures who acknowledge direct contact with him.

How would you know? Obviously, you don't. But if it makes you feel good to think that way, I won't object to yor errors.

Again, you wouldn't know what people's interests are here, so you are in no position to guess the range of interests that people have here.

What qualifies as a historian for you? Someone with a history degree? someone who has a PhD in history? Which credential will make you content, so you don't have to deal with grubby facts?

If you had read a little more carefully, you'd have noticed that it wasn't "Vort". But you don't care.

I know I said that. All literature is susceptible to literary criticism.

Unfortunately, yes they are. Being documents makes them literary efforts. They are not simply lists of facts or numbers, but tell stories (be they real or not). How they are told is the meat of literary criticism, what one can learn about the author and hid context can be adduced by literary criticism.

All you need to do is to show how the texts historically relate to the period they purport to deal with. It's a bit like introducing witnesses in a trial. A witness has no value unless that witness can be shown to be directly relevant to the case.

I personally don't give a fig about internet pages, given the standard of most of the data available on the net. If you care to spend money for a work written by two of the best known scholars inthe DSS field, you could read "The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls", by Peter Flint and James VanderKam, Harper San Francisco, 2002, especially chapters 14 - 17 which deal with "The Scrolls and the New Testament". Chapter 14 supplies you with pictures of the text O'Callaghan claimed was from Mark and allows you to see where O'Callaghan is inaccurate. However, it require you to process the information, not have someone do it for you. I recommend the book because it gives you a lot of information about the subject, so that you can judge for yourself.


spin

Crucifiction

http://www.mwillett.org/atheism/whybelievejesus.htm#doc
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizra...efutation.html