show_no_mercy

Where is the evidence that Jesus said anything like what's in our current gospels?

"Tradition".

That's it. That's your only evidence. How can you differentiate between what "Jesus" said and what apostles preaching in his name while invoking the Holy Spirit said? How do you differentiate between what Jesus said and what his followers wanted him to say for theological/polemical reasons?

While I don't consider them an authority, I think the Jesus Seminar concluded that up to 18% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels were said by him. But that's still assuming the Jesus they want to find. They were working on the assumption that Jesus was a rational, benevolent itinerant rabbi and not an apocalyptic, deranged crazy preaching the end times. So still - you're only left with some Jewish guy named Jesus who was crucified who possibly said only 18% of the things that were attributed to him. Still a very one-dimensional character.

Chaucer

So what did you have in mind?

Chaucer

Oh, for crying out loud: What citation would you give that humans are indeed evolved from apes? Of course, we're evolved from apes; but now, tell me what's the source for that claim?............

O.K., we can say it's Darwin and Wallace, I guess. But so many have enlarged on their work since then that to say it's just Darwin and Wallace is simply misleading and trivializes the enormous scope of all the work done on evolution since then. Similarly, I could say that the most state-of-the-art analysis of Scriptural and non-Scriptural texts comes from Weisse, but that too is to ignore the enormous scope of all the philological analysis done since then.



Yup.



Other than the fact that the two earliest extant texts for these three sources, Mark and Thomas, both ascribe these sayings to Jesus, no.............

Yes. --


30 And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.


-- And the two earliest extant texts for these three sources, Mark and Thomas, both ascribe these sayings to Jesus, so.............

Chaucer

Chaucer

You never read my post right here in this thread at

http://www.freeratio.org//showpost.p...&postcount=128

particularly, my reply to Spin's question: "How do you test any of the substantive content?" My reply starts at "Primarily by double or triple attestation, although that is not all." The reference there to First-Tier material refers to the apparent transcriptional independence from each other of the earliest three sources in both Scriptural and non-Scriptural texts, the Mark, Thomas, and parallel-sayings material in Matt./Luke sometimes termed "Q".

To the secular humanist like me, that 18% already makes for more than just a one-dimensional character.

Chaucer

show_no_mercy

I did read that post. It wasn't impressive. Your "triple attestation" is simply an assertion. I might be more impressed if you offered some evidence of "sayings attributed to Jesus" prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Mark, Matt, Luke, "Q", and Thomas have no evidence of existence prior to that.

Toto

Humans and apes have a common ancestor. There are numerous scientific sources and ongoing research that lead to a scientific consensus on that matter.

So please be more explicit when you talk about "analysis of Scriptural and non-Scriptural texts." Are you talking about text criticism? Basic philological research? Surely you have a more modern authority that Johannes Weiss of the early 20th century?

So you've got nothing. Thomas is not especially early, nor is Mark, and neither clearly describe a historical person.

So? . . . . . Pathetic.

Chaucer

I was referring to Christian Hermann Weisse, whose articulation of his analysis in 1838 first gave legs to the two-source theory, to Markan priority, and to the Q theory as all operating together. As to scholars of the last two generations further refining and sometimes revising particular aspects of Weisse's conclusions, we have had people like Funk, Miller, Crossan, Meier, Ehrman, D'Angelo, Collins, Cameron, Broadhead, and so on.

But they independently ascribe the same seven sayings to the same person, and nothing in any other ancient sources contradicts that. Now, the (erroneous) statement was made here that the rock-bottom stratum we're left with, once we strip away numerous obvious accretions like the supernatural miracle baggage etc., is merely a crude assemblage of a few stark things that happened to a one-dimensional criminal executed by the state. Clearly, that's erroneous, because stripping away those accretions still leaves us with these core seven sayings that are anything but one-dimensional.

Two generations of mostly secular, and often "Bright", scholars disagree with you.

Chaucer

spin

One gets the idea that Chaucer hasn't grasped the notion of multiple attestation. One needs to individuate different origins of sources. It is not sufficient to point to different texts within a religious tradition, especially when there are clear literary relationships between many of those touted.

Note the weaseling "independent"? More of the same confusion about multiple sourcing. One should of course go through the motions and show the independence of those sources in the cultural milieu. (And if there were eight? or three? How senseless.)


spin

Chaucer

And how convenient to ignore totally something I already said directly to the point of what makes double or triple attestation and what doesn't. --

This --

"Having studied the Gospels in editions ranging from Funk & Miller to Harper/Collins to the New Revised, etc., all I've gleaned has been strictly from translations and from modern analysis from the likes of Crossan, Funk, Kloppenborg, Borg, Mack, etc. For years, I would have essentially agreed that the First Tier materials, chronologically, are the earliest Paulines, the letter of James, Q (as redacted in Matt. and Luke), and the non-canonical Thomas."

This --

"Primarily by double or triple attestation, although that is not all. Since Mark is first, and since Matt. and Luke derive partly from Mark, that means that double or even triple attestation means pretty little in such cases, since each is most likely copying from the former. No, the kind of multiple attestation that could count more would be instances where we see the same remark in textually unrelated First Tier material, both canonical and non-canonical, or where slightly different remarks are found in First Tier material that all seem to point to the same general point of view coming from Jesus."

This --

"But all the sources have sayings of one sort or another. And the most recent analyses of both Scriptural and non-Scriptural texts seem to suggest that, while there are transcriptional connections among the Synoptics that mitigate against the full significance of double and triple attestation among them, there are OTOH no -- apparent -- transcriptional connections among Mark, the sapient sayings in Matt./Luke (sometimes termed "Q") and Thomas. Hence, the sayings that all these three have in common do, at the least, add more to this Jesus character than just "some one-dimensional guy named Jesus [who] got executed sometime in the first century"."

This --

"The reference there to First-Tier material refers to the apparent transcriptional independence from each other of the earliest three sources in both Scriptural and non-Scriptural texts, the Mark, Thomas, and parallel-sayings material in Matt./Luke sometimes termed "Q"."

Chaucer

spin

Gosh am I taking a leaf out of your book? I mean ignoring things?

OK, so you're a librarian. So you accept apologetic analyses that assume their conclusions. So what?

It's still blindly shifting texts around within a single tradition, isn't it??? How do you get out of this quandary?

Is there some dawning here? (Let's forget about the cross-fertilization through scribal intervention in later eras.)

Still stuck in the one tradition. It bites you and yet you are too numb to feel it.

Here's a serious double attestation: the treaty between Egypt and Hatti at the time of Ramses II has found exemplars both in Egypt and Hatti, the former in Hieroglyphic and the latter in chancelry Akkadian. Given the archaeological contexts there is not a hope in hell of being able to question the fact that it is a double attestation.

When unrelated authors Tertullian, Hippolytus, Epiphanius and Jerome talk of the figure of Ebion, the founder of the Ebionite movement, these for you might be multiple attestation, but sadly the story of Ebion seems to have been received by Tertullian from a source that was in elaboration and continued to be so until the time of Jerome. What we have are four witnesses to the developing tradition, not of historical indications of Ebion (who didn't exist).


spin