Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Doug Shaver · 05-28-2007, 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Origen says book 1 chapter 28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Origen

And since, in imitation of a rhetorician training a pupil, he [Celsus] introduces a Jew, who enters into a personal discussion with Jesus, and speaks in a very childish manner, altogether unworthy of the grey hairs of a philosopher

I see nothing there about where Celsus got his information about Christian beliefs.

andrewcriddle · 05-28-2007, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

I see nothing there about where Celsus got his information about Christian beliefs.

Hi Doug

I'm not sure which of the following statements you are disagreeing with

a/ Celsus puts various hostile statements about Jesus in the mouth of a Jew.

b/ These statements are probably based on an earlier Jewish source of some kind

c/ These statements, although hostile, and from a non-Christian source, assume the historicity of Jesus.

That is all I meant to claim, could you clarify which parts of it you question ?

Thanks

Andrew Criddle

gnosis92 · 05-28-2007, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

A similar question can be asked, what convinced the christian Marcion and his followers, around 144 CE ,that Jesus never existed as a real person? And this belief of Marcion was held for hundreds of years.

I am not sure Celsus is convinced that Jesus existed, Celsus may be just reported the opinions of some. .

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Itha...ntithesis.html

The Christ who in the days of Tiberius was, by a previously unknown God, revealed for the salvation of all nations, is a different being from him who was ordained by the Creator God for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is yet to come.

http://www.bluffton.edu/~humanities/1/celsus.htm

...[Celsus] accuses [Jesus] of having "invented his birth from a virgin," and upbraids Him with being "born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God."...

gnosis92 · 05-28-2007, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

So, about the year 170, Celsus was familiar with Jewish ‘spinning’ of the Gospel story to discredit and ridicule it. What does this prove? We know from rabbinic writings set down beginning in the following century that these kinds of calumnies were circulating among the Jews in response to the Gospels, and 170 is certainly the very period when such things would have arisen, within a decade or two of our first witness to any widespread knowledge of the Gospels even among Christians. On the pagan side, Lucian around the same time was ridiculing Christians in his Peregrinus.

Now, there is a telling thing to be noticed in connection with this. Prior to the time Lucian and Celsus were writing, we seem to have no surviving ‘spin’ of this sort by the Jews against any historical Jesus traditions. Why would such things only arise at this late date? Shouldn’t calumnies against such traditions have arisen much earlier? The epistle of Barnabas finds fault with the Jews misreading of their scriptures, but he hasn’t anything to say about Jewish adulterating of the Gospel story. Most telling is Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho. Now, to some extent, I’m going out on a limb here, because I made only a quick skim of the text (it’s been several years since I read it carefully from start to finish), and I also tried my search function on key terms and came up with nothing. But this is a long and detailed (if fictional) dialogue with a Jew who objects to all sorts of things in Christian thought which Justin feels need countering. Yet there seems to be nothing put into Trypho’s mouth of the sort which Celsus raises (through the same device: creating a symbolic Jewish opponent). If anyone can point out something of this nature in Trypho which I have overlooked, I would appreciate it. This is a strong indicator that the Jewish ‘spin’ which Celsus offers is of very recent vintage and therefore does not speak to “supplemented information not found in the Gospels.” Rather, it was Jewish defamatory invention in response to the Gospels. Celsus is using this newly circulating response to aid in his own defamation of Christianity, which he has derived in great part from having encountered the Gospels himself. (And let it be stated yet again that there is no reason to expect that either Celsus or the Jews of the latter 2nd century would have been in a position to know and declare that the Gospels were not basically history.)

The same situation is found in Minucius Felix (written North Africa?) in the 150s. All sorts of calumnies are placed in the pagan’s mouth, but nothing of the sort which are to be found in Celsus. Felix rejects the very thought of his faith being based on the life and death of a crucified criminal. If Don were right, and Felix is really defending such a doctrine (no matter how obscure and misleading his technique in doing so), and if Jewish calumnies against the integrity of the Christian portrayal were circulating, surely he would address these as well.

(This, by the way, is my response to Ben, who asked: “Earl, who (if anyone) is on your list of mythicists (whether of the Pauline, the logos, or whatever type) who had encountered the emerging historicist juggernaut (your term) and rejected it?” Not only Felix, but those unnamed deniers of an historical Jesus born of Mary, crucified by Pilate, etc. in Ignatius, and probably in 1 John 4. We could even include Tatian, who dismisses the Gospels as “we too tell stories” which he says are in line with the Greek myths. And no, Don, I’m not going to be sucked again into that one either.)

As for Celsus’ knowledge of figures like Marcion, this would hardly be anomalous. Marcion began as part of the Roman church which toward the middle of the century had entered the historicist camp, based on the Gospels, and his subsequent career was in Rome. If Celsus moved in Roman historicist circles he would have come in contact with Marcionites. During the 170 period, there could well have been no surviving mythicist groups in such circles. Athenagoras and Theophilus, on the other hand, come from areas outside Italy. (And anyway, they are not mythicists, strictly speaking, as I regularly point out. No worries about sublunar realms here.)

In my picture of the rise and fall of the mythic phase in early Christianity, as I said earlier, I regard the Pauline type of mythicism as eventually morphing into historicity, dependent chiefly on a misinterpretation of the Gospels as history. I have also pointed out elsewhere how scholars have come to acknowledge that Paul had very little influence on 2nd century Christianity, until much later in the century when Paul was brought back into the “orthodox” fold by the Roman church, by reclaiming his epistles from the Gnostics and by inventing the Acts of the Apostles. (I pointed out, for example, in my Mysteries series how the key Pauline doctrine of “baptism into Christ’s death” cannot be found anywhere in Christian writing of the 2nd century.) Nor is anything strictly Pauline, or even mythicist in the sense of the Son undergoing an atoning death, to be found in those major apologists outside Justin. Our actual 2nd century witness gives us the historical Jesus circle, the Logos-religion circle, and Gnosticism, but virtually nothing relating to classic Pauline mythicism.

Detractors here are also ignoring the clear evidence we have of that evolution, that transformation of the Pauline Christ into the Gospel Christ, the atrophying of classic mythicism per se—before the time of Celsus. It is most evident in the epistle of Barnabas, which is probably to be dated sometime in the first 2 or 3 decades of the 2nd century. In the interests of making that clear, I will quote an extended passage from my Article No. 12, On the Threshold of History: Jesus in the Apostolic Fathers at the Turn of the Second Century.

And before anyone objects on the basis of a supposed Gospel quote in Barnabas or his reference to the apostles, or the bare statement that he taught and performed miracles, I would suggest they actually read the whole section on Barnabas in that article, before placing too much reliance on them.

The same crossing of the threshold can be perceived in Ignatius, as described in the succeeding part of that same article. He too has a foot in both camps, the traditional mythicist and the new historicist, as I show in the sections “The Nature of Jesus in Ignatius” and “In the Deep Silence of God” in the latter part of the article.

I might also briefly quote The Jesus Puzzle (p. 279) on the Epistle to Diognetus which, written around the same time as Barnabas, shows a situation very much like the latter:

I would suggest that the actual picture created by the first century of Christian writings is sufficient to suggest not only the diversity of the “Christian” movement (which should not even be given a single all-encompassing name, since this is misleading) but how it evolved from diversity into singularity, passing through different, incompatible and uncoordinated phases and circles with no central directing force. This picture is sufficient to answer all the objections being raised by those who have done their best to resist it. I would place this concrete, positive picture of the evidence against all the plaintive negative appeals emanating from the other side: But we can’t find this, and we can’t understand that.

Earl Doherty

Earlier you claimed that the second century CE is not like today, where they have the internet to instantaneously transmit information.

You also claim that the idea of a fleshy sublunar realm was widespread in this time period and culture.

Then, when Mark wrote his historicist gospel, it almost overnight wiped out all Christ-mythicist Christians, converting them instantly to historicist Christians, and there is no unambigous reference to the original spiritual Christians anywhere in the record in an era where there was no internet to instanteously transmit information.

While anything is possible, history is about what is recontructing from our sources what probably happened, and this scenario strikes me as highly unlikely.

Ben C Smith · 05-28-2007, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

When I wrote that, I wondered if anyone would fall into the Matthean trap. But I never thought it would be you, Ben. Tut-tut.

Why did you write as if this Matthean passage did not exist, Earl? I politely suggest you set aside the rhetoric for just a moment and converse with me.

The question I asked had nothing properly to do with whether Matthew is to be trusted at this point; I covered that when I said that it is one thing to provide reasons to ignore the passage. No, my question went to putting all the data on the table before making sweeping claims.

Surely you cannot have ignored this passage simply because we find this Jewish tradition only in a Christian author, Matthew. That is true also of the Jewish traditions in Celsus, which we find only in the Christian author Origen.

So, again, why did you make such a claim without even nodding your head to the Matthean passage?

Ben.

Ben C Smith · 05-28-2007, 12:01 PM

I want to keep my original inquiry separate from the actual merits of the case with Matthew 28.15, since my question had to do with the data only; this post will deal with my interpretation of those data.

Earl writes of the Matthean story of the guard at the tomb (emphasis mine):

I realize that at the conclusion of the scene, Matthew says, “And this story has been widely spread among the Jews to this day.” But that line is part of the scene. If the scene is non-historical, then that line is a fabrication.

This is, of course, a false dilemma. Earl wishes the Jewish story that the disciples stole the body to stand or fall with the story of the guards at the tomb. But it does not work that way. How can (one of) the middle position(s), namely that Matthew (or somebody) invented the story precisely in order to answer the Jewish charge, go ignored here?

Robert Price writes (emphasis mine):

Hans von Campenhausen once suggested that just as Matthew's tomb guards (Matthew 27:62‑66; 28:4, 11‑15) were added by that evangelist as a kind of co‑opting rebuttal of a Jewish charge that Jesus' disciples stole his body, even so John's garden and gardener details represent an attempt to anticipate and refute another anti‑Christian slur, namely that a disinterested third party, the gardener, removed the body.

There is no need here to go into the matter of the Johannine gardener and the fascinating tradition that grew up around him; I just wanted to point out that this middle position that Earl shows no awareness of is indeed out there. I seem to recall (and shall try to look up) where G. A. Wells derives the story of the guards from a similar back-and-forth banter between Christians and their Jewish detractors. IOW, there is nothing nonskeptical about buying into the middle position, that Matthew was aware that some Jews argued that the disciples had stolen the body and either invented or used the story of the tomb guards to counter this argument.

The conditional statement, then, that Earl sets up (if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication) is simply not valid. It is quite possible for the scene to be an invented reaction to the reality of the charge.

I personally doubt very much that Matthew has invented a Jewish charge here. If the Jews were not charging that the apostles had stolen the body, why invent the charge at all? Why give ammunition to the opposition? Indeed, the whole story of the guard appears on its face to be a giant defense against ammunition already being used. We know that Jewish opponents of Christianity at some point began speculating about what had happened to the body of Jesus; the gardener story became popular, and Robert Price goes so far as to say (emphasis mine):

The earliest extra‑biblical occurrence of the garden‑burial tradition is in Tertullian's De Spectaculis, XXX, where the late‑second-century theologian is wistfully envisioning his Christ‑rejecting Jewish opponents' terror at the Parousia of Christ: "This is he whom his disciples have stolen away secretly, that it may be said he is risen, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowd of visitors!" Thus we can be certain that by about a century after John's gospel was written Jews offered these two alternative theories on why Jesus' tomb might have been found empty.

I think Matthew simply reflects an early version of these Jewish charges.

The story of the guards at the tomb is frequently dismissed by skeptics and historians alike as clumsy apologetics; if Earl is right, however, the story is not apologetical at all! I personally find that hard to believe.

Ben.

Ben C Smith · 05-28-2007, 02:27 PM

I have now looked up the story of the guards in G. A. Wells, as promised. I personally own only one of the Wells books, namely Who Was Jesus? This snippet comes from pages 38-39; Wells is referring to and summarizing, apparently with some measure of approval, the P. W. Schmiedel article, Resurrection and Ascension Narratives, in the 1903 Encyclopedia Biblica:

Schmiedel shows how such stories as the sepulchre guard (unique to Matthew) and the empty tomb could have arisen in stages in perfectly good faith. He imagines a Christian confronted with the charge that the disciples had stolen the body. The obvious retort would be: "The Jews, we may be quite certain, saw to the watching of the sepulchre; they could very well have known that Jesus had predicted his rising again on the third day". Another Christian, hearing this, might take it not for conjecture, but for a statement of fact, and pass it on as such.

Notice that the very premise of this scenario is that that hypothetical Christian is confronted with, and attempting to refute, the very real charge that the disciples had stolen the body. This is G. A. Wells.

We already saw that Robert M. Price regards it as certain that by the time of Tertullian the Jews were indeed offering this as one of two solutions to the problem of the empty tomb. Price also appears to regard Matthew as rebutting (by means of the guard story) a very real charge; he appears to do so both indirectly through the suggestion of von Campenhausen, as per my last post, and directly as follows:

If this story [from John about the gardener] is intended as an apologetical device it is a poor one. Matthew's intent to defend resurrection faith, by contrast, is at least clear.

I agree with Price; the Matthean attempt is indeed clear. The story of the guards is a transparent rebuttal of the charge that the disciples had stolen the body. We need not believe that the story is true, nor that the charge is as old as the resurrection event itself, nor even that the charge was as widespread as Matthew makes out; had he polled the Jewry of the entire Mediterranean basin? But that the charge itself was real and contemporary to Matthew is by no means an acritical leap; critics such as Price and Wells seem to have no trouble reading Matthew 28.15 for what it is worth.

Now, even if one rejects this charge as a Matthean fabrication, as Earl apparently does, what gives one the right to skip clean over the middle position as if it did not even exist?

I find the twin omissions of both ancient and modern sources a trifle troubling. Earl claims that no Jewish spin on any HJ tradition survives before Lucian and Celsus, but does not bother to mention Matthew, not even to dismiss him; then, after I have brought Matthew up, and in order to dismiss him, Earl quotes himself (if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication) committing the fallacy of the excluded middle, completely ignoring the completely logical medial position of modern writers such as Wells.

Ben.

EarlDoherty · 05-28-2007, 02:45 PM

I will make some short responses to various things, in no particular order. The first is Ben's reaction to my dismissal of Matthew's Guard at the Tomb.

I didn't nod in its direction because I assumed it was pretty clear to all but die-hard historicists that this episode was very unlikely to be factual, being restricted to Matthew. Maybe I should have at least dropped a word about it. But Ben argues for the integrity of that final line about the Jews having come up with the excuse that the disciples had stolen the body, and argues thus for a "middle ground."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben

The conditional statement, then, that Earl sets up (if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication) is simply not valid. It is quite possible for the scene to be an invented reaction to the reality of the charge.

It should be obvious why this is a very unlikely 'out'. No one else outside of Matthew witnesses to such a Jewish spin. My remarks apply as I said in Challenging the Verdict. If that final sentence in the Guards scene witnessed to an actual 'spin' by the Jews, if it was “ammunition already being used” in the time of Matthew, it would be popping up all over the place in Christian apologetics against it—long before Tertullian, who himself was undoubtedly simply drawing on Matthew. Not even the Jewish Talmud (which began to be set down in writing shortly after Tertullian) preserves such a 'spin'. Ben's "middle ground" is to be rejected as unsupported by any reliably corroborative evidence.

As for the reference to the gardener in John, this is made far too much of. I very much doubt that John has any intention of countering some “The gardener did it!” claim by the Jews. The reference is far too weak and indirect (unlike Matthew’s sequence) for that. I think even Price has gotten carried away on this point. I read it simply as a bit of color by John, having Mary simply not recognize Jesus at first and mistaking him for the gardener; her recognition then has even more emotional impact. It’s a nice touch, worthy of a writer of fiction.

Consequently, it is a valid deduction, in regard to Matthew, that “if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication”. (For which Matthew is to be particularly faulted. It is one thing to provide a sequence in the Gospel which, if not identifiably midrashic, still serves a purpose in an allegorical story. It is another for the evangelist to intrude himself with an editorial comment and give the reader an obvious lie!)

So why did Matthew include the guard at the tomb if there was no such spin in the real world? Well, in one way it is "apologetics". Within Matthew's storyline. In enlarging on Mark's 'novel', Matthew decided that this idea (the accusation that the disciples stole the body) would be something that would occur to the reader, just as it occurred to him, and he decided to include a reproof against it by having the guards bribed to use such an excuse. For that, he needed to place the guards there in the first place, something no one else did. (Again, minus the "lie", it's a nice touch for a fictional account.)

Incidentally, for those of you who reject a Q and have Luke copying Matthew, why did Luke not carry that element over into his Gospel? Particularly if the final line and Ben's "middle ground" were true--and surely Luke would have known of such a spin--it is unthinkable that he would reject and delete Matthew's entire guard sequence as a useful counter to such a spin.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty · 05-28-2007, 03:04 PM

And a bit of miscellany here…

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnosis

Then, when Mark wrote his historicist gospel, it almost overnight wiped out all Christ-mythicist Christians, converting them instantly to historicist Christians, and there is no unambigous reference to the original spiritual Christians anywhere in the record in an era where there was no internet to instanteously transmit information.

While anything is possible, history is about what is recontructing from our sources what probably happened, and this scenario strikes me as highly unlikely.

This sort of thing is what makes it so frustrating to debate people here. My case is continually misrepresented. No matter how hard I emphasize certain points, they simply go over people’s heads or are ignored.

I have hardly presented it that Mark “almost overnight wiped out all Christ-mythicist Christians, converting them instantly.” Anyone who knows anything about my position and scenario knows that I have represented the process as taking decades if not close to a century, as proceeding unevenly in terms of time and location, as involving diverse circles and threads of development.

I am simply going to ignore ignorant (ignorant, because they reflect a stubborn unwillingness to even understand and consider the mythicist case) responses like this in future.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ideologist

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty
I have also pointed out elsewhere how scholars have come to acknowledge that Paul had very little influence on 2nd century Christianity, until much later in the century when Paul was brought back into the “orthodox” fold by the Roman church, by reclaiming his epistles from the Gnostics and by inventing the Acts of the Apostles.

Which scholars have "come to acknowledge" that Acts was written in the later parts of the second century? That sounds like a late date even by a very extreme timeline.

I guess I have to make my postings twice as long so as to eliminate all possibility that ‘ambiguities’ will be misunderstood. The scholars “have come to acknowledge” only the immediate phrase: that Paul had very little influence on 2nd century Christianity. The rest is my enlargement, to further explain the circumstances of Paul attaining that delayed influence; “much later in the century” refers to the mid century on, when the reclaiming of him by the church of Rome began. John Knox, followed by J. T. Townsend, place Acts no earlier than the 140s. Considering that there is no attestation to it before 170, I think considering it a “mid-2nd century work” (by the same ecclesiastical redactor who performed the final redaction on Luke, adding the Preface with still no reference in it to a “Luke” as the author) is quite reasonable. Mack and J. C. O’Neill also date Acts post-120.

As for Jiri…

Quote:

John's gospel has Jesus himself defend against the 'Jewish spinning' (8:41), and transparently drops the virgin birth mythologem to forestall it. If then John prefers teasing Nicodemus with the 'second birth', then these things would have arisen probably 40-80 years earlier.

I fail to see how 8:41 represents the type of spin we were talking about, bad-mouthing the historical Jesus and casting aspersions on his parentage. In fact, it does not even appear to be a Jewish spin against Jesus at all. Jesus in v.42 may make a very veiled allusion to his derivation from God, but it is hardly "transparent" that this is in response to any such spin. In fact, it is clear he is doing it because he is picking up on and taunting the Jews for their own claims of divine parentage, nothing more, and he intimates that they have a different father (Satan). It is in no way to counter any Jewish spin of the type found in Celsus or any other aspect of the Gospel story. (I don’t guarantee to carry this further, as I usually find most of Jiri's posts obscure and lacking in logical coherence.)

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith · 05-28-2007, 03:04 PM

In the interests of complete accuracy, I wish to comment on something that Price writes in his article:

The earliest extra‑biblical occurrence of the garden‑burial tradition is in Tertullian's De Spectaculis, XXX, where the late‑second-century theologian is wistfully envisioning his Christ‑rejecting Jewish opponents' terror at the Parousia of Christ: "This is he whom his disciples have stolen away secretly, that it may be said he is risen, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowd of visitors!" Thus we can be certain that by about a century after John's gospel was written Jews offered these two alternative theories on why Jesus' tomb might have been found empty.

Price finds two contemporary Jewish slurs on the resurrection of Jesus here, first that the disciples stole the body, and second that a gardener took the body away. The purpose of the article is to trace the latter, so a little clumsiness on the former might be forgiven Price.

I personally think that the reading Price seems to be making, that Tertullian was independently aware of a contemporary Jewish charge that the disciples had stolen the body, requires nuancing. If it turns out that Jews contemporary with Tertullian were indeed saying that, so be it; I have no problem with the notion itself, but I do not think that we can necessarily automatically presume as much from Tertullian alone. Here is a more complete quotation of Tertullian in On the Spectacles 30.6, where he is writing of the taunt he will raise against certain pagans at the advent of Jesus:

Hic est ille, dicam, fabri aut quaestuariae filius, sabbati destructor, Samarites, et daemonium habens. hic est quem a Iuda redemistis. hic est ille harundine et colaphis diverberatus, sputamentis dedecoratus, felle et aceto potatus. hic est quem clam discentes subripuerunt ut surrexisse dicatur, vel hortulanus detraxit, ne lactucae suae frequentia commeantium adlaederentur.

This, I shall say, is that son of a carpenter or hireling, breaker of the sabbath, Samaritan, and one held by a demon. This is he whom you purchased from Judas. This is he who was struck with reed and fist, who was spat upon in contempt, who drank gall and vinegar. This is he whom his disciples secretly stole away so that it might be said he had risen, or the gardener took out lest his lettuces be damaged by the abundance of visitors.

Notice that, while the charge that a gardener removed the body comes seemingly out of nowhere (though it seems obviously based on the Johannine account and Price traces its development expertly), the charge that the disciples stole the body might actually have come straight from Matthew, unchanged, since the rest of the charges (son of a carpenter, sabbath-breaker, demon-possessed, Samaritan, betrayed by Judas, and so forth), appear also to come from straight from the pages of the gospels.

IOW, it is possible that Tertullian has, with the exception of the gardener, simply summarized charges against Jesus from the gospels rather than passing on charges that he himself has heard from contemporary Jews. OTOH, it is also just possible that Jews contemporary with Tertullian were in fact scouring the gospels for exactly these sorts of charges, and that Tertullian had in fact heard them in debate. The easy possibility of either option is what makes me say that the argument requires a bit more nuancing.

Ben.

Post-script: Justin Martyr has this to say in Dialogue 108.2:

Και ου μονον ου μετενοησατε, μαθοντες αυτον ανασταντα εκ νεκρων, αλλ, ως προειπον, ανδρας χειροτονησαντες εκλεκτους εις πασαν την οικουμενην επεμψατε, κηρυσσοντας οτι αιρεσις τις αθεος και ανομος εγηγερται απο Ιησου, τινος Γαλιλαιου πλανου, ον σταυρωσαντων ημων, οι μαθηται αυτου κλεψαντες αυτον απο του μνηματος νυκτος, οποθεν κατετεθη αφηλωθεις απο του σταυρου, πλανωσι τους ανθρωπους λεγοντες εγηγερθαι αυτον εκ νεκρων και εις ουρανον ανεληλυθεναι κατειποντες δεδιδαχεναι και ταυτα απερ κατα των ομολογουντων Χριστον και διδασκαλον και υιον θεου ειναι παντι γενει ανθρωπων αθεα και ανομα και ανοσια λεγετε.

Yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that he rose from the dead, but also, as I said before, have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those who confess him to be Christ, and a teacher from and son of God.

This too may derive from Matthew, but it is interesting that Justin lapses into the first person plural (as if the Jews themselves were talking) in the middle of what is otherwise in the second person plural (addressing the Jews face to face).

05-28-2007, 12:01 PM	#46
Ben C Smith Veteran Member Join Date: May 2005 Location: Midwest Posts: 4,787	I want to keep my original inquiry separate from the actual merits of the case with Matthew 28.15, since my question had to do with the data only; this post will deal with my interpretation of those data. Earl writes of the Matthean story of the guard at the tomb (emphasis mine): I realize that at the conclusion of the scene, Matthew says, “And this story has been widely spread among the Jews to this day.” But that line is part of the scene. If the scene is non-historical, then that line is a fabrication. This is, of course, a false dilemma. Earl wishes the Jewish story that the disciples stole the body to stand or fall with the story of the guards at the tomb. But it does not work that way. How can (one of) the middle position(s), namely that Matthew (or somebody) invented the story precisely in order to answer the Jewish charge, go ignored here? Robert Price writes (emphasis mine): Hans von Campenhausen once suggested that just as Matthew's tomb guards (Matthew 27:62‑66; 28:4, 11‑15) were added by that evangelist as a kind of co‑opting rebuttal of a Jewish charge that Jesus' disciples stole his body, even so John's garden and gardener details represent an attempt to anticipate and refute another anti‑Christian slur, namely that a disinterested third party, the gardener, removed the body. There is no need here to go into the matter of the Johannine gardener and the fascinating tradition that grew up around him; I just wanted to point out that this middle position that Earl shows no awareness of is indeed out there. I seem to recall (and shall try to look up) where G. A. Wells derives the story of the guards from a similar back-and-forth banter between Christians and their Jewish detractors. IOW, there is nothing nonskeptical about buying into the middle position, that Matthew was aware that some Jews argued that the disciples had stolen the body and either invented or used the story of the tomb guards to counter this argument. The conditional statement, then, that Earl sets up (if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication) is simply not valid. It is quite possible for the scene to be an invented reaction to the reality of the charge. I personally doubt very much that Matthew has invented a Jewish charge here. If the Jews were not charging that the apostles had stolen the body, why invent the charge at all? Why give ammunition to the opposition? Indeed, the whole story of the guard appears on its face to be a giant defense against ammunition already being used. We know that Jewish opponents of Christianity at some point began speculating about what had happened to the body of Jesus; the gardener story became popular, and Robert Price goes so far as to say (emphasis mine): The earliest extra‑biblical occurrence of the garden‑burial tradition is in Tertullian's De Spectaculis, XXX, where the late‑second-century theologian is wistfully envisioning his Christ‑rejecting Jewish opponents' terror at the Parousia of Christ: "This is he whom his disciples have stolen away secretly, that it may be said he is risen, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowd of visitors!" Thus we can be certain that by about a century after John's gospel was written Jews offered these two alternative theories on why Jesus' tomb might have been found empty. I think Matthew simply reflects an early version of these Jewish charges. The story of the guards at the tomb is frequently dismissed by skeptics and historians alike as clumsy apologetics; if Earl is right, however, the story is not apologetical at all! I personally find that hard to believe. Ben.

05-28-2007, 02:27 PM	#47
Ben C Smith Veteran Member Join Date: May 2005 Location: Midwest Posts: 4,787	I have now looked up the story of the guards in G. A. Wells, as promised. I personally own only one of the Wells books, namely Who Was Jesus? This snippet comes from pages 38-39; Wells is referring to and summarizing, apparently with some measure of approval, the P. W. Schmiedel article, Resurrection and Ascension Narratives, in the 1903 Encyclopedia Biblica: Schmiedel shows how such stories as the sepulchre guard (unique to Matthew) and the empty tomb could have arisen in stages in perfectly good faith. He imagines a Christian confronted with the charge that the disciples had stolen the body. The obvious retort would be: "The Jews, we may be quite certain, saw to the watching of the sepulchre; they could very well have known that Jesus had predicted his rising again on the third day". Another Christian, hearing this, might take it not for conjecture, but for a statement of fact, and pass it on as such. Notice that the very premise of this scenario is that that hypothetical Christian is confronted with, and attempting to refute, the very real charge that the disciples had stolen the body. This is G. A. Wells. We already saw that Robert M. Price regards it as certain that by the time of Tertullian the Jews were indeed offering this as one of two solutions to the problem of the empty tomb. Price also appears to regard Matthew as rebutting (by means of the guard story) a very real charge; he appears to do so both indirectly through the suggestion of von Campenhausen, as per my last post, and directly as follows: If this story [from John about the gardener] is intended as an apologetical device it is a poor one. Matthew's intent to defend resurrection faith, by contrast, is at least clear. I agree with Price; the Matthean attempt is indeed clear. The story of the guards is a transparent rebuttal of the charge that the disciples had stolen the body. We need not believe that the story is true, nor that the charge is as old as the resurrection event itself, nor even that the charge was as widespread as Matthew makes out; had he polled the Jewry of the entire Mediterranean basin? But that the charge itself was real and contemporary to Matthew is by no means an acritical leap; critics such as Price and Wells seem to have no trouble reading Matthew 28.15 for what it is worth. Now, even if one rejects this charge as a Matthean fabrication, as Earl apparently does, what gives one the right to skip clean over the middle position as if it did not even exist? I find the twin omissions of both ancient and modern sources a trifle troubling. Earl claims that no Jewish spin on any HJ tradition survives before Lucian and Celsus, but does not bother to mention Matthew, not even to dismiss him; then, after I have brought Matthew up, and in order to dismiss him, Earl quotes himself (if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication) committing the fallacy of the excluded middle, completely ignoring the completely logical medial position of modern writers such as Wells. Ben.

05-28-2007, 03:04 PM	#50
Ben C Smith Veteran Member Join Date: May 2005 Location: Midwest Posts: 4,787	In the interests of complete accuracy, I wish to comment on something that Price writes in his article: The earliest extra‑biblical occurrence of the garden‑burial tradition is in Tertullian's De Spectaculis, XXX, where the late‑second-century theologian is wistfully envisioning his Christ‑rejecting Jewish opponents' terror at the Parousia of Christ: "This is he whom his disciples have stolen away secretly, that it may be said he is risen, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowd of visitors!" Thus we can be certain that by about a century after John's gospel was written Jews offered these two alternative theories on why Jesus' tomb might have been found empty. Price finds two contemporary Jewish slurs on the resurrection of Jesus here, first that the disciples stole the body, and second that a gardener took the body away. The purpose of the article is to trace the latter, so a little clumsiness on the former might be forgiven Price. I personally think that the reading Price seems to be making, that Tertullian was independently aware of a contemporary Jewish charge that the disciples had stolen the body, requires nuancing. If it turns out that Jews contemporary with Tertullian were indeed saying that, so be it; I have no problem with the notion itself, but I do not think that we can necessarily automatically presume as much from Tertullian alone. Here is a more complete quotation of Tertullian in On the Spectacles 30.6, where he is writing of the taunt he will raise against certain pagans at the advent of Jesus: Hic est ille, dicam, fabri aut quaestuariae filius, sabbati destructor, Samarites, et daemonium habens. hic est quem a Iuda redemistis. hic est ille harundine et colaphis diverberatus, sputamentis dedecoratus, felle et aceto potatus. hic est quem clam discentes subripuerunt ut surrexisse dicatur, vel hortulanus detraxit, ne lactucae suae frequentia commeantium adlaederentur. This, I shall say, is that son of a carpenter or hireling, breaker of the sabbath, Samaritan, and one held by a demon. This is he whom you purchased from Judas. This is he who was struck with reed and fist, who was spat upon in contempt, who drank gall and vinegar. This is he whom his disciples secretly stole away so that it might be said he had risen, or the gardener took out lest his lettuces be damaged by the abundance of visitors. Notice that, while the charge that a gardener removed the body comes seemingly out of nowhere (though it seems obviously based on the Johannine account and Price traces its development expertly), the charge that the disciples stole the body might actually have come straight from Matthew, unchanged, since the rest of the charges (son of a carpenter, sabbath-breaker, demon-possessed, Samaritan, betrayed by Judas, and so forth), appear also to come from straight from the pages of the gospels. IOW, it is possible that Tertullian has, with the exception of the gardener, simply summarized charges against Jesus from the gospels rather than passing on charges that he himself has heard from contemporary Jews. OTOH, it is also just possible that Jews contemporary with Tertullian were in fact scouring the gospels for exactly these sorts of charges, and that Tertullian had in fact heard them in debate. The easy possibility of either option is what makes me say that the argument requires a bit more nuancing. Ben. Post-script: Justin Martyr has this to say in Dialogue 108.2: Και ου μονον ου μετενοησατε, μαθοντες αυτον ανασταντα εκ νεκρων, αλλ, ως προειπον, ανδρας χειροτονησαντες εκλεκτους εις πασαν την οικουμενην επεμψατε, κηρυσσοντας οτι αιρεσις τις αθεος και ανομος εγηγερται απο Ιησου, τινος Γαλιλαιου πλανου, ον σταυρωσαντων ημων, οι μαθηται αυτου κλεψαντες αυτον απο του μνηματος νυκτος, οποθεν κατετεθη αφηλωθεις απο του σταυρου, πλανωσι τους ανθρωπους λεγοντες εγηγερθαι αυτον εκ νεκρων και εις ουρανον ανεληλυθεναι κατειποντες δεδιδαχεναι και ταυτα απερ κατα των ομολογουντων Χριστον και διδασκαλον και υιον θεου ειναι παντι γενει ανθρωπων αθεα και ανομα και ανοσια λεγετε. Yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that he rose from the dead, but also, as I said before, have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those who confess him to be Christ, and a teacher from and son of God. This too may derive from Matthew, but it is interesting that Justin lapses into the first person plural (as if the Jews themselves were talking) in the middle of what is otherwise in the second person plural (addressing the Jews face to face).

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