LegionOnomaMoi

There is no language language in which word order is like this. There are only languages in which word order is more "fixed" relative to others. Languages which are highly inflected (which refers to how any given word is written changes based on how it is used, such as I/me or we/us) tend to rely much less on word order than languages which are not.

English is not a highly inflected language anymore. To give a simple example:

1) The boy liked the girl
2) The girl liked the boy
3) The guys liked the movie

In English, I know who likes whom (or what) because of word order: the subject comes first. Also, the verb "liked" doesn't change when the subject is singular or plural. In other languages, I can switch "boy" and "girl" around (placing either on first), or put the verb first, or put it last, and so on, because the form of the word tells me its function in the sentence (e.g., subject vs. object).

However, even here word order is flexible. I can say "The girl was liked by the boy".


Have you ever heard anyone say anything like this in English? "Mary, mother of Tanya"? In English, you'd say "Here is Mary's mother". Or we'd use your mother's last name. We don't use family relations the way that people did in the ancient world.

Solo

I am not sure about the intent, but the immediate effect of the post for me is gaining a new appreciation for God's slaying of Onan.

Best,
Jiri

Iskander

You seem to know more about me than I know myself.

The claim that all what you have done is in response to something Spin has said, that I can understand for I too find him stimulating.

Earl Doherty provides an excellent explanation in:

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp10.htm



Josephus has been done to bits; it is time to move on.

LegionOnomaMoi

????? Spin made an argument based on the misuse of linguistics (something he does). Your comment made some ridiculous claim about hegemony and linguistics. My point was that Spin was the one who introduced linguistics into the argument, so if you want to continue to misuse the term hegemony and apply it to the use of linguistics, then you should be addressing Spin. What I did is explain what the term he used means. What he did is misuse the term and refuse to explain his basis for its use or what it means.

The point was that if you want to throw around hegemony when people use technical terms you aren't familiar with, at least know who to accuse of "using hegemony" (whatever that means). In this case, I was explaining a linguistic term that Spin introduced and used, so according to you, Spin is the one "using hegemony".

I addressed the problems with Doherty's points in my last thread (there are plenty of links to it in this one). There are so many problems with his argument its hard to know where to begin. Some are just amusing (the claim that the phrase tou legomenou Christou is christian) and some are complicated arguments that will easily mislead those who don't have a background in Greek, Josephus, and early christian studies.

Yes, and Josephan scholars have. Doherty and a few others continue to insist using convoluted arguments, including the laughable, that the line is an interpolation, but if you want to have some idea about the level of detailed analysis that has gone into Josephus' works over the past century, including this line, you can start with the excellent survey by Feldman, [amazon=3110081385Josephus and Modern Scholarship[/amazon]. Out of curiosity, is your claim that "Josephus has been done to bits" based entirely on reading Doherty and similar sources, or have you also read the numerous extensive analyses in monographs or journals on Josephus?

aa5874

We cannot allow the diversion of "Linguistics and word order" to hide the fundmenntal problems with the HJ argument.

The authenticity of Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 does NOT have anything to do with the HJers' claim that Their Jesus was an OBSCURE preacherman of Nazareth that was baptized by John and crucified under Pilate.

HJ of Nazareth was SCARCELY known according to Ehrman--See "Did Jesus Exist"

Jesus called Christ in Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 was NOT an OBSCURE character and we know NOTHING of his PARENTS and where he LIVED or if he was dead.

It is assumed that many persons were CALLED Jesus and many persons claimed to be the Christ then WE MUST, MUST, MUST get more details of Jesus called Christ in Antiquities but there are NO such details.

The very gMark show that it is ABSURD to PRESUME only one person was called Christ in antiquity.

1. There was some other person called Christ DURING the time of Pilate. See Mark 9.

2. In gMark it is claimed MANY shall be DECEIVED by False Christs--See Mark 13.

3. Soruces that used Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 claimed Jesus called Christ was the Son of a Ghost. See "Against Celsus".

The authenticity of Antiquities cannot help the HJ argument at all when they assert Their Jesus was an OBSCURE preacherman of Nazareth.

We already know "LINGUISTICS and Word order" cannot help the HJ argument.

Iskander

You are right, they can’t do that, but they try and try...

It is obvious that the book has been tampered with, even on reading the English translation.

Word order is also very flexible in classic Latin. All this is very well known and it has been taken into consideration by those who have studied these problems.

Every one of the books of the Greek Testament has also been modified as per politics by cynic empire- building, money- grabbing , terrorists of the spirit and burners of the living flesh.

LegionOnomaMoi

How could that possibly be obvious from a translation?

Modern textual criticism originated in biblical studies. "Those who have studied these problems" have historically been biblical scholars. And textual critical methods used in NT and biblical studies do not differ in principle from those in classical studies. The only difference is that for any given classical author, we have at best a handful of manuscripts, often dating to the late middle ages. For the NT, we have an enormous amount of manuscript evidence. That's the difference. Have you looked at critical apparati for classical authors compared with those for the NT?


Our first full NT manuscript dates from around the first half of the 4th century. Vaticanus is earlier, but is missing a few sections. That's without getting into the papyri. And as for "burners of the fles", as professor of history Ronald Hutton writes (who, lest we get another hegemony claim thrown out here, has never been affiliated with any seminary, is not a biblical studies scholar but the leading specialist in ancient, medieval, and modern European paganism, and is not only not Christian, but was raised as a (neo)pagan):

"The pagan Roman Empire, as mentioned earlier, executed hundreds of Christians for refusing to endorse the validity of its system of religion. There is no doubt from the sources that it did so in appalling ways, including burning alive, drowning and throwing them to hungry beasts; young girls sent to brothels. By contrast, once in power the Christians tended to attack deities but spare humans: they destroyed images and wrecked holy places while leaving worshippers alone. There is no recorded case of an execution of person for following the older religions in the first two centuries of the Christian Roman Empire. Nor is there a certain one of the death of any at the hands of a Christian mob. The philosopher Hypatia, torn apart by a crowd at Alexandria in 415, is the best apparent example, but it is not clear that she suffered for her religion or that her murderers were all Christian. Nor were heretics put to death, for the victorious sections of the early Church were only concerned to deprive them of places of worship, not of life. The exception was Priscillian, beheaded in late fourth-century Spain, and he died at the hands of an insecure and short-lived regime whose actions were condemnded by its successors. After him there were no more executions for unorthodox Christian doctrines in western Europe until the eleventh century, when the great medieval burnings began.

From The Pagan Relgions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, p. 156 (emphases added).

So, despite the "burnings of the flesh" which occured across Europe over several centuries during the middle ages, and even the persistent efforts much earlier to stamp out paganism, our first complete or almost complete NT manuscripts date from the time before this period. And as Metzger and Ehrman note (The Text of the New Testament 4th ed.), "so extensive are these citations [from the Church fathers] that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament." (p. 126).

You speak of "those who have studied" the problems with latin texts, but I wonder what your basis for comparison is.

Toto

tou legomenou Christou is found in the gospels. Is that not Christian enough for you?

The full title of that book is Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 1937-1980. It is a bit beyond my price range, but it is searchable on Amazon, and I looked in vain for any discussion of the issue of James the brother of Jesus called Christ.

It is clear that most modern scholars accept that clause as authentic, but it is not clear why. Are they just giving the text the benefit of the doubt, and they can't think of a good reason to reject it?

LegionOnomaMoi

Using the same logic, it is typically christian to say that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy. After all, that charge is found throughout the gospels, far more frequently than "called christ". We also find him accused of being insane, and of casting out demons with the power of Satan. All in Christian texts.

On the other hand, Jesus frequently uses the phrase "son of man" in the gospels, yet it is almost completely absent everywhere else (even in Paul) among early Christian texts. Even within the gospels, it is not something Jesus is called, even by his disciples.

So how does one determine "christian useage"? Clearly, the presence of words used to describe Jesus is not enough, because the gospels include charges against him (and, as even Doherty acknowledges, one of the few uses of this "called-Christ" construction in the NT is from the lips of Pilate). Likewise, Jesus is frequently called "teacher" or something similar, yet we find this all over the place in Greek. So if we want to know how Christians referred to Jesus, such that we can distinguish Christian usage from non-Christian, we should look at the ways that christians referred to him, both in and outside of the NT. What we find is that Christ quickly becomes a sort of "surname" within Christianity, although other means of address (e.g., Lord, Savior, etc.) are frequent. By contrast, Jesus is referred to as "called Christ" (if memory serves) a total of 5 times in Christian literature. In Justin (I believe it was he), it is an apologetic use meant to be read by non-christians, i.e. this is what we call him. In John, it's used to translate Hebrew. In Matthew, it's used by Pilate to describe what Jesus is known as, and in the beginning of Matthew in a similar fashion. Hundreds and hundreds of references to Jesus, and we find more instances of Jesus being referred to as a blasphemer than we do as "called Christ" within Christian literature.

So no, it's not enough, particularly because of the nature of the gospels. Whatever one thinks of them in terms of historical accuracy, genre, etc., they are clearly filled with non-Christian ways of talking about Jesus. In order to determine what is or isn't "christian" usage, we need to look at how Christians referred to Jesus, not how they described Jesus to others or how they depicted others referring to Jesus. A tiny handful of "called Christ", with only one example which could possibly be described as actually a Christian reference to Jesus (in Matthew's intro), is not sufficient to support the claim that this "could thus have exerted an influence on a Christian copyist inserting a phrase into Josephus." Furthermore, even the Matthean use which isn't placed on Pilate's lips is problematic because it appears to be an introduction: Matt. begins with the "geneaology of Jesus Christ", lists a bunch of names, and ends with "Jesus, the one known as Christ".

Again, using the same logic, had Josephus said "brother of Jesus, the one who blasphemes" we could say it was "christian" and with better attestation. Likewise, if Josephus had said "brother of Jesus, the one who cast out devils by the ruler of demons (archonti ton daimonion)" we could again use Doherty's logic and say it is Christian.

Even if Doherty is correct about the neutrality of "called Christ" (and there is some question about this, but it is definitely possible), that doesn't make it Christian, and all our evidence (from the context of the few uses in all of early Christian literature to the numerous and frequent actual Christian ways for referring to Jesus which are littered throughout our sources) demonstrates quite clearly that this isn't a christian way of referring to Jesus.

pp. 704-7.
For the most part, yes. Given any line or passage in any text, it is possible to find ways to doubt its authenticity. If memory serves, I had this discussion with you (if not, my apologies) concerning Price and a certain section of Paul. Price, in his paper, cites a particular textual critic whose methods he supports before going into his argument for interpolation of the passage, but the person he cites finds that section so cohesive and and logical he uses it to argue a different piece of the letter is an interpolation.

The problem with the position "every line must be demonstrated to be genuine, rather than accepted unless there is reason not to" is that it is impossible to do this. For example, we can look at Doherty's argument about "cutting" the "brother of jesus" part entirely. It is not exactly true that this would then make the passage unproblematic (when Josephus uses the "by name X" way of talking about someone, he generally has some sort of preposed reference modifier like "servant of X" or "from Y" or "a certain one of the Jews" or something like that). However, for the sake of argument, let's say we could cut it out, and the passage would be unproblematic. That's also true of every single part of Josephus, and every other author. As long as you cut the lines you want in a certain way, you can make just about any text flow without the deleted section.

As for reasons concerning the texts authenticity, sum main points are summarized by J. P. Meier:

aa5874

Please, your claim is most absurd. Why are you now arguing linguistics when you know it cannot help to determine authenticity and the historical accuracy of Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1???

The phrase "called Christ" is used in Christian sources.

[u]John 4 25 Again, there is virtually NO details about Jesus called Christ in Antiquities of the Jews to match an OBSCURE preacherman of Nazareth baptized by John.

Who were the PARENTS of OBSCURE HJ of Nazareth???

Who were the PARENTS of Jesus called Christ in Antiquities???


Linguistics and Word order is NOT used to resolve geneaology.