Ben C Smith

One can get a pretty good idea of just how clear his use of Barnabas is on my epistle of Barnabas page. The short answer is, pretty darn clear. Clement refers to this epistle numerous times, usually quoting it (sometimes at some length), and he attributes it to Barnabas by name.

Origen, too, knows this epistle in century III, and it also appears in codex Sinaiticus (scans available online), century IV, still well before Jerome.

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

Can you supply us with specific ancient texts in which such epithets are used of Ascelpius? Or is this claim on the order of your previous one that Ascelpius was known and depicted in ancient texts as an ascetic?

And even if there are such texts, what does this have to do with your authority's misspelling of Iasios' name and his claim that the epithet "healer" was attached to it?


Where specifically in this passage is the word "priest" used and what specifically indicates within in it that the "unseen inmate" referred to here is a priest of Asclepius?

Jeffrey

patcleaver

The discussion between Toto and MM was ambiguous so I understand why you say this.

If you read my post you should have understood that I was only concerned with the difference in the English name.

:redface:I apologize for sending you on a wild goose chase. Read all of this post before you waste you time looking for any more examples of the early use of "Jesus".

The Clementine Vulgate never contained any "Jesus" (just "Iesus"). The editor of the version of the Clementine Vulgate at vulsearch.sourceforge.net has changed the original "Iosus" to "Jesus" everywhere. He may just think its an editorial correction.

Jerome always used Iesu or Iesus for Jesus in the NT and Iosous for Joshua in the OT probably because he wanted to reduce confusion. That is why I said they were similar names. I think the two places that he used Iesus for Joshua in the NT were just errors. In the Clementine Vulgate NT, they consistently use "Iesus" for Jesus and "Iesous" for Joshua (the same as Jerome and Clementine used for Joshua in the OT).

The modern Roman Catholic Vulgate does not contain any "Jesus" (just "Iesus") - it follows the Clementine Vulgate.

The French adopted J from the Germans in the 15th century, and the English adopted it from the French. By 1530 the letter "J" was occasionally used in English as a decorative initial "I" in proper names. It became popular by the mid 17th century for names that previously began with an "I" or "GI" that made the "gi" or "d-zh" sound, but it was not uniformly used, as its currently used, until the early 18th century.

Use of initial J was rare in English even in 1611.

The "Geneva" bible did not contain "Jesus" (just "Iesus") and the original 1611 KJB did not contain "Jesus" (just "Iesus"). The Authorized Version of the KJB of 1662 is the first version of KJB to use "Jesus".

It did not make sense for them to adopt the initial J in Jesus or Joshua for grammatical reasons since Yehoshua does not begin with a "gi" or "d-zh" sound. They probably did it to further distinguish between the names Iesus and Iesous to reduce confusion between these two characters (Jesus and Joshua).

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J
http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/sc...s/historyj.htm
http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/sc...s/historyj.htm

patcleaver

Thanks Ben, you have a great site. Clement and Origen identify the Epistle of Barnabas which says that Jesus died on a "tau" pole (a cross).

For the moment lets ignore that the Church did not include the Epistle of Barnabas in the cannon because they thought it was not reliable (it was a forgery).

Now as long as these identification of Barnabas are not interpolations in Clement and Origen, and as long as Clement and Origin are not wholesale forgeries, and as long as the dates of Clement and Origen really are before the 3rd century, then Barnabas is probably before the 3rd century. Now, if we could just show that the word "tau" in Barnabas was not an interpolation, and that Barnabas was not a wholesale forgery, then we would know that someone before the 3rd century actually thought that Jesus was crucified on a cross. Then we would really have something except for the fact that someone's belief is not evidence that their belief is true, and one person's beliefe does not indicate that anyone else thought it was true, and the fact that we have lots of evidence that the gospels are just fiction.

Seneca the Younger says there were different forms of staking someone. “I see poles there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet” (Dial. 6 [Cons. Marc.] 20.3)

Therefore, if the NT doesn't tell us which way Jesus was staked/poled then we have no idea which method they used.

Josephus tells us they were "nailed", but nailing someone to a tree or pole as part of the death torture process was well known. That is what they did to Attis see Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough. The fact that he was nailed does not indicate whether he died on a pole or a cross.

Now or course, we know there was a simple way in Greek to differentiate between a pole and a cross, just by saying "tau" or gibbet. The fact that they did not say "tau" or gibbet in the NT is absolute proof that they did not mean "tau" or gibbet.

Why do Christians care whether Jesus was killed on a cross or a pole or a tree. The reason is obvious from the movie The Passion Of Christ. The more horrible and humiliating his death the more the Christians love it. I am not talking about the homoerotic sadomasochism of The Passion Of Christ that appeals to sexually repressed people. The real reason the cross is so important is because, the horrible humiliating death on the cross is what makes the gospel story so appealing and its what makes Christ such a big hero.

The most important thing about the Jesus story is that its about an underdog who is totally defeated and arises from that defeat to total victory. The story is heroic. The deeper his defeat, the more horrible and humiliating his death, then the greater his victory, when he rises from the dead and ascends in glory to sit on the right hand of God the Father to judge his enemies. It is the heroic story that the Christians are defending.

The only possible reason that the Christians had for not advertising the cross before 400 CE is that they had not made up that part of the story yet.

Unfortunately, its also non-biblical. There is absolutely no evidence in the NT that Jesus was killed on a cross and not just a tree or upright pole. They had the entire NT to mention "tau" or gibbet, but they didn't. In fact its very unlikely because death on a cross took days, but death by impaling or with your hands nailed above you only takes a few hours, and Jesus died in just a few hours.

patcleaver

I think it was the authors of the KJB, probably The Authorized Version of the KJB of 1662, that first translated Iesus as Jesus. What evidence do you have that I am wrong?

Jeffrey Gibson

Could we please have the Latin words which in this translation stand behind the English words "poles" and "gibet"?


Exact citation, please. What volume and what page in the GB? Better yet, the exact words of Frazer, please -- with his references.

Can you supply these?

Jeffrey

God Fearing Atheist

Hmm...

On page 131 on vol. II, Frazer says that the two current accounts of Attis' death were that he was "killed by a boar" or "mutilated himself under a pine tree."

So yeah, I too would be interested to see a page number.

Jeffrey Gibson

Looks like Pat's claim is right up there with Pete's that "The Life of Sophocles ... tells us that Sophocles served as a priest to Asclepius" and his plagiarized assertion about what appears in Michael Grant's The Rise of the Greeks.

Jeffrey

Toto

Fraser talks later on of the image of Attis being hung in a tree. If you are into comparative mythology, that's probably enough of a connection.

The source of the idea that Attis was nailed to a tree appears to be The Christ Conspiracy, p 108, with a footnote to Doane, 190-1.

Doane is presumably Thomas William Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (or via: amazon.co.uk), 1882, out of copyright and on Google Books, but I can't find a reference to Attis in that book, although he does talk about Adonis.

mountainman

That the pagans wrote the non canonical NT "christian literature" in seditious and polemical reaction to the Constantinian canon only really occurred to me a few months ago, once I began to examine some of the apocryphal acts. I have updated a summary diagram of the chronological position which I am attempting to defend. It is taken from the page Statement of the Eusebian Fiction Postulate



Thanks for noticing.
Best wishes,


Pete Brown