Malachi151

I'm not ignoring this. Yes, it is a possibility, I never ruled that out, hecne I said "good reason to believe". However, its not a case of one thing here and there, its a case of many things, and I personally am not aware of as condensed a set of ideas that resemble Christians ideas as what we find with Philo.

I'm not the only one who holds this opinion, in fact I thought it was commonly accepted, which is why I simply stated it. I didn't think of it as controversial, and it wasn't the objective of my post. The objective of my post was to talk about the possibility that Philo's account of Pilate, specifcially, influenced Mark.

There has been one legitimate criticism of this position, which is that Philo portrays Pilate as a "bad person", and Mark portrays him as a sort of good person who is pushed beyond recourse by the Jews.

This would indicate that Philo's view of Pilate is the opposite of Mark's view or use.

The explanations are:

1) Mark's account of Pilate had nothing to do with Philo.
2) Mark had read Philo's account of Pilate, but since Mark held adifferent view of the Jewish community, i.e. that "they are wrong and Rome is right", he reversed the portrayals.

That's what I started the thread to discuss, not other aspects, which I didn't really have an interest in, and which I took as an existing and uncontroversial starting point.

Chris Weimer

Without demonstrating that Mark reversed the portrayal of Pilate, I don't see any leg to stand on here.

The second option would take considerable effort to demonstrate it. It cannot be assumed.

jgibson000

How do you know since you are unable to evaluate either not knowing Greek?

Some? So which ones are from your reading and which are not? And what is the source of those that you adduced that are not of your own noticing?

Why have you avoided answering this question?

Did I say anthing about lost books, let alone potentially lost [:huh:] ones?

Really? Then, assuming that "works that we have available to us" means the OT Apocrypha and the OT Pseudepigraphal works that are readily accessable in both print and online editions, you are claiming that have worked through these books. So you should be quite able to tell us whether or not the topoi you claim are to be found in Philo and paralleled in the NT are indeed peculiar to Philo. Are they or arent they?

You can roll your eyes all you want, but (leaving aside the matter of whether the things you claim are in Philo are really there) the issue at hand isn't whether this is a possibility.

It's whether, in the light of your claim that you've "worked from the works that we have available to us", and, therefore, that you've worked through the extant corpus of intertestamental Jewish literature known as the OT apocrapha and the OT Pseudepigrapha, you can still assert with confidence -- as could anyone who, like yourself, has read the intertestamental works available to us -- that the topoi you have "found" in Philo are indeed peculiar to Philo and do not appear anywhere else in the extant corpus of Intertestamental Jewish literature?

In other words, do you or do you not know whether the topoi you say are in Philo do not also appear in extant Jewish Intertestamental writings, let alone extant Jewish writings that were composed at the same time that Philo worked?

And as I said previously: What collections?

Yes you did. But even so, to claim that the fact that one Alexandrian writer quotes Philo in the late second century is a good reason to believe that Christian writers who lived outside of Alexandria, who presumably were not trained in Philosophy, let alone in Alexandria in an Alexandrian form of Philosophy, and who wrote a century or so before this Alexandrian writer did, is "good reason" to believe that the Gospel writers read Philo, seems to me not only to be stretching the idea of "good reason" way beyond its proper limits, but to cast a pall on the idea that you have a grasp on what distingusihes a "good" reason from a bad one.


Yes. But we now have good reason to think that your sense/feeling of what a good reason is should not be trusted.

In other words, despite your claims that have read Philo, you don't really know where the topoi you adduce as (peculiarly) Philonic actually occur. Thanks for clairfying.

JG

jgibson000

You've said this before. But so far when asked about the truth of your claim that there are indeed others beside yourself who hold "this opinion" and, more importantly, that this "opinion" is "commonly accepted", you have failed to provide even the smallest scrap of evidence in support of what you say.

So I ask again:

Who else holds this opinion? Who else has asserted that the NT writers knew and used Philo?

More importantly, is it really the case, as you claim it is when you say that the idea of NT writers' knowldege and use of Philo is "commonly accepted", that this "opinion" is something that is held by the very people who, if your assertion is correct, we would expect to hold it -- specialists in Philo and in NT writings?

Could it be that your refusal to answer these questions is due to the fact that you are trying to avoid showing that you don't really know?

JG

Malachi151

jgibson000

I could smell you a mile away, which is why I gave you a curt anwser in the first place. I don't have any interest in getting into this, I made it clear what this post was about, and I don't care about your nit picking. I don't care if you think that people need to read everything in its origional language.

I have a whole folder full of bookmarks on Philo and his writings. I have quotes from Philo on my website, which I could have easily given you had I wanted to. The fact is, I don't care.

These are subjects I've been reading about for years, over which my views on the subjects have formed. I'm not going to waste time digging up refernces to every thing I've read to satisfy your obviously arrogant attitude. I couldn't care less what you think, and I intentionally attempted to avoid the issue precisely because I didn't want to derail and sidetrack this issue, which seems to have failed.

If you don't think that its conceivable that gospel writers read Philo, then fine state as much, make you points, and move on.

jgibson000

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to tell us all what your keen nostrils detected.

Since when is examining the validity of the basic premise of an argument "nitpicking"?

Then it should have been easy for you to back up your claims.

Hmm. If I had to guess, I'd say that you are a graduate of the Kuchinsky school of argumentation. Shift the burden of proof, blame your interlocuter for not providing what you should be providing, and resort to bluster and high dudgeon when you cannot support your case.

Thanks.

JG

Chris Weimer

That's no good at all. How can you ever expect to be taken seriously if you a) didn't even know that the Passion sequence mirrored Psalm 22, and b) not even willing to expose your sources. In any academic circle, biblical or otherwise, you'd be laughed out before you could even put forth your first argument. Until you decide to play by the rules here, consider yourself ignored.

*goes back to being extremely busy*

mountainman

IMO it is conceivable that the authors of the gospels read Philo,
primarily because the author Philo would have been one of the
more prolific sources of the old testament texts - in a number
of languages but including the greek (in which it is assumed the
new testament gospels were written).

Philo must have been at least one source. There may have been
others (of course), but those who are refusing to engage in civil
debate with you, appear reluctant to list other possible sources,
besides that of Philo.

FOr instance, I'd be asking Master Gibson who he thinks the
gospel writers used as a source for their old testament links
in the new testament, in the greek, if it wasn't Philo via Origen.
Perhaps there are many cited Old Testament books around the
Roman empire in the first century translated to the greek,
other than Philo's.



Pete

jgibson000

Excuse me, but what??? Why wouldn't the OT itself have been the source for the OT texts that the NT writers used? And are you saying that Philo presents OT texts in more than one langauge?

Must have been? On what do you base this claim?

JG

mountainman

0) AFAIK OT itself was translated from Hebrew to Greek LXX in the era BCE.
1) Philo's account of the LXX's miraculous and inspired origin was in greek.
2) Greek was "the" language of the THEN Roman empire.
3) Christ and his Apostles in the NT quote from the Old Greek.(here)
4) AFAIK the NT (gospel) writers used the greek.

Whether or not the gospel writers used Philo, IMO they
most certainly must have used the Greek LXX and not
the original Hebrew OT itself



Pete Brown