Ted Hoffman

I never made such claims. I stated that Brown would disagree with Sander's attempt to fix a date for Jesus' birth at 4BCE.

In any event, it is nonsensical for an author like Sanders to claim "that X=4 is almost beyond dispute" then say in the next page, "Well, actually, we are not certain about X Some say X=5, some like X=6 and some are comfortable with X=7." It basically means that the first statement was false. What is a reader supposed to think?

Onto Brown - Birth of the Messiah A commentary on the infancy narratives in the gospels of Matthew and Luke (or via: amazon.co.uk).

There are three basic approaches of dealing with this conflict, Brown writes. p.548

Its a sham. He shuffles back and forth and attempts to make a show that he is being sincere, after that, he assumes his conclusions and proceeds.

You didnt read the OP did you? I mentioned note 3. The relevant pages are p.87 and p.300.

Let me repeat my argument for your benefit.
Sanders references Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I-IX, 1981, pp. 404f. He notes that Fitzmyer “cites the distinguished Roman historian, Ronald Syme. Syme pointed out that the similarities between 4 BCE and 6CE easily led to confusion and still sometimes do: W. W. Tarn, a well-known Hellenistic historian, once wrote that Herod died in 6CE.” p.300
Lets see you demonstrate these void claims.

susfubb

rob17 wrote: "Overall, it just seems he [Luke] wasn't really bothering to verify his dates, which is strange as they would have been readily available to him in any of the historians of his day."

And those (implied many) historians readily providing such dates in "Luke's day" would be..?? ~jill

jgibson000

OK. So let's see your evidence that he would, even assuming that Sanders anywhere fixes the date of Jesus' birth at 4 BCE (which he doesn't).

That you have once again misrepresented Sanders since he does not say X=4.

Can you demonstrate this? All we have now is an assertion, but no demonstration.

JG

Ted Hoffman

Sanders says that the following statement is almost beyond dispute: “Jesus was born c. 4 BCE, near the time of the death of Herod the Great” p.10. He then erects bogus reasons for favoring that date.
You have once again proved that you dont understand what an analogy is and that you are more interested in wasting time than make any substantive points.
Prove it.

Chris Weimer

How can you expect someone to prove a negative? Fallacious as best, Ted.

LOon

HEY TED!:

I feel you've "hit the nail on the head" because we have the following: Our mythological hero (tee hee!) has TWO, yes that's right folks, count em', TWO birthdays !!!! Now, under the consideration we've all been taught to apply, called "Dualism", however limited it is, one of the evangelists might be right, the other guy is WRONG. Otherwise, what we have is 2 Christs, 2 Marys, 2 Annunciations; AD INFINITUM !!!! We must consider how plausible is it, that the biographers of Christ couldn't agree on something as important as getting the birth of dis' guy RIGHT ? All that nonsense about Herod and Quirinius being contemporaries, is an apologist's maudlin attempt at harmonizing. Yes, they did share a relative time frame when both were possibly alive, but the tenure of management in Syria; changes everything. We know with reasonable assurance, when Herod died. As an added sidebar remark, can we truly believe about the accuracy of the massacre of the children, which equaled roughly 10% of the total population??? Even Josephus makes no mention of it. We know what a stickler he was about Herod the Great, and his shenanigans. Gee, maybe it's like the two birthdays, it was both Herod the Great, and Herod Antipas !!!!! We know that the Roman Quirinius was governor of Syria ONCE !!!! Besides, we have as a supposition, the Christ as the only miraculous birth. As defined by other examples of the same fact claim (Immaculate Conception), we can exclude the birth of Jesus as a singular anomaly. We have plenty of udder (hee, hee) "holy" dudes/sons of god, born the same frigging way. I can take it for granted that by now, most of us, if not ALL of us; are familiar with the list of immaculately conceived gents. In order for a fact claim to be of special significance, it must be one of a kind. What does that TELL us ????? !!

Keep em' on the ropes Ted !!!!

Chris Weimer

Wow. I feel stupider already.

Ted Hoffman

It is important to note the following (which I plan to address better shortly):
1. Sanders is fixing dates to events (the birth narratives) he considers invented. I am looking forward for arguments that prove the dates or historical setting are to be considered authentic.

2. By attributing Luke's error to the 6BC-4BCE dyslexic phenomenon, Sanders is in effect vindicating Luke of any possible accusation of not knowing when Jesus was born. The implication of Sander's argument is that Luke knew the dates but this phenomenon made him mix up the dates.

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

I think it is first important to note that the Sanders analysis has multiple weaknesses. In various parts of his presentation. Here is an example.

Sanders makes an incorrect assertion that Matthew places the home of Joseph and Mary at the time of their birth (Matthew only says where Jesus was born, Bethlehem, and makes no statement at all as to what was their home at the time). Sanders goes so far as to make the obvious error of saying that Matthew claims that Joseph and Mary "lived in Bethlehem".

And this assumptive error of Sanders is a significant part of his claim of error involving Luke and Matthew.

Matthew points out that after the sojourn to Egypt they "dwelt in a city called Nazareth". In his chart Sanders has this as they "moved to Nazareth". This may be technically correct, since they had not been in Nazareth for some time (and if they moved back to a family home you could still say they "moved to Nazareth" since the phrase has a wide semantic range). However "moved to" is not the scriptural wording and it is appears designed to imply that Joseph and Mary had had never dwelt there. Such an implication is not a part of the Matthew presentation and Sanders presents his own improper inference as fact ("lived in Bethlehem").

There are a number of interesting points in the Sanders presentation but generally it is marred by assumptions not supported and the locking out or non-mention of significant alternate views.

Another example - Sanders gives us an implied Jewish genealogical/lineage assertion that is totally unsupported, that there was not a lineage system in place among the Jews in Israel. From an unreferenced implied assertion Sanders goes into flights of numerical fancy.

Ironically the 4 B.C. issue is one of the least important issues in the presentation, so not surprisingly it becomes the focus on IIDB. His view there looks like an overstatement but far less consequent than other problems in his presentation.

Shalom,
Steven

Ted Hoffman

It is the first in his list of issues that are allegedly almost beyond dispute.