Solitary Man

Genre is genre.

1. No, I was referring to the work itself. I already pointed out to you that I do this. I did it with Josephus. By Matthew, assume for now I'm referring to the gospel of Matthew.

2. Is there any evidence of multiple hands? If not, then there's no reason to assume that there were multiple hands.

What comes before a text in an oral culture?

You'll have to be more explicit, and present your case elsewhere. I've found thematic unity within Matthew, from the first narrative to the last words.

No? Does the slaughter of the infants and the flight to Egypt conjure up any stories that may occur in Exodus?

Yes, I do not know if there was a divergent tradition. But John is unaware of such traditions, and it isn't in our earliest sources of Q and the later Mark. In fact, being absent in the prior only leaves us with a matter of decades given the reasonable amount of time between the appearance of Mark and the appearance of Matthew. I would personally estimate no more than 2 decades time. While that's enough time for some tradition to develop, Matthew's narratives doesn't have any of the other characteristics of tradition borrowing present in his use of Mark or Q. It appears to be wholly his creation, though the big themes such as Joseph, Mary, and virgin birth are his taking. The virgin birth and the name Joseph do not lend themselves easily to Matthew's theme.

You're obfuscating here. Why are you separating a writer from his community?

Solitary Man

Yes, but you've shown no way of distinguishing between the ahistorical characters that entered tradition and have grown and those that were historical and entered into the tradition and grown.

Yes. You're on to something there. Take it a bit further.

What was Paul's association with James? Or Cephas with Paul and with James? What they the Pillars of? I think you've a too narrow definition of Christian.

Paul associates with Cephas. Cephas accepts Paul, but later returns to James. There was some success there. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on.

Apparently you do, if you dare to call them the Jerusalem messianists?

Yep. There's not a single mention here where Paul says that he doesn't need anything else. You've assumed that.

Prestige and support for what?

I'm aware of what it is. I was asking for evidence for it. You provided none.

Titus Petronius was family? No. That's a logical impossibility. Perhaps you had meant to ask: Who were the Titi Petronii? The question deserves some ridicule, since praenomina aren't always passed down. Quintus Tullius Cicero was the son of Marcus Tullius Cicero and the brother of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Roger Pearse

I rather agree with SolitaryMan. Rationally we start with all the evidence, and then see what it says. Where the base of data disagrees, then we compose suggestions as to why this happens.

I'm afraid that "recognizing the high probability of legend in ancient texts is ... evidence" sounds a lot like the arrival of prejudice on the scene to me. It isn't evidence. It is a deduction from a (usually unexamined) database. Life is simple if we know in advance that whatever a text says can be disregarded when inconvenient. But surely this is precisely what we are trying NOT to do?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

Fact is, I don't need to. It's not my problem. For anyone who wants to argue historicity they have to find a method. A nice piece of epigraphy works well. An otherwise missing part of an already reconstructed passage of history also does well.

Traditions are trickier in that, once they contain the information, that information has life of its own, whether it is based on a real source or not. So there you are with a christian tradition about Jesus. How do you get out of the bind?

I'm not the one trying to eke out diverse sources.

This was J-D's approach. He eventually tried abandoning Jesus altogether for argument's sake. Are you prepared to do that? You know, the source of christianity but without a Jesus?

Cephas was slumming and got caught out.

I know that they were non-standard Jews as Paul had given related groups a hard time. The major disturbance in Judaism of the time was messianism.

? The gospel that he touted was "not of human origin".

His new form of messianism.

And I wasn't trying to. It was supplied as a method that would explain in a neutral manner.

Very amusing. You've studied classics. And you've already admitted metonymy.

You got there all by your lonesome. :wave: Let me shake the limb for you.

Doh!


spin

Solitary Man

Epigraphy isn't the only answer. I already mentioned you seem to lack an awareness of recent studies on oral cultures and oral tradition. You exclude that as evidence, but I don't see why. You don't give a reason why.

You look at the sources and determine a trajectory. It's easier to posit a real man named Jesus who was crucified before Passover than it is to posit an imaginary Messiah who doesn't even wholly fit the scripture.

Well, if you don't want to follow it through...

I didn't keep up with your and J-D's discussion.

But why was he slumming?

So, why is it ok for you to assume that the James group were Jerusalem messianists, but not Christian?

Right. I can read. There's still nothing that says that he didn't need other sources.

Now, what makes you think that Paul's messiah differs from James' messiah? Or Cephas' messiah? Or John's messiah?

But a method that doesn't have any evidence going for it? I'm sure there's some, but if you don't provide any, it's kind of hard to accept that's what happened, especially since at first you gave it so authoritatively.

I admitted metonymy, but you have had a problem with it, asking me twice for clarification. And mine was limited to the works by an author.

And actually, using a part to represent the whole is properly synecdoche.

spin

And it is only one of the indicators that I mentioned to help us get closer to contextualization.

In that case a text is not "able to know" anything.

With uncontextualized texts you should not rule it out. And I gave one indication that it could have multiple authorship.

If you have texts then earlier texts.

I have argued the matter at length here.

So not the birth narrative.

Do you mean that Mark wasn't written well after the fall of the temple? Then why does it have the overthrow of the temple symbolized by the rending of the curtain?

I see. On what do you base it?

I remain unconvinced that a writer in a gospel tradition created materials. Obviously the Matthean writer for example didn't invent the genealogy he shaped because it contains at least one error (an omission) which was received by the manipulator of the information.

You're obfuscating here. Why are you separating a writer from his community?[/QUOTE]
I don't see how you could arrive at that assessment from what you are commenting on. A writer uses a (living) tradition at a particular time. The tradition is held by the community.

The tradition is open to continuous change -- partly in the retelling under new conditions, partly with the incorporation of external material, as from wandering preachers who passed from community to community.


spin

spin

I never claimed epigraphy was the only answer. It is an indicative peg. I've already frequently put forward the notion that history works with strong points from hard evidence, epigraphy, archaeology, coins. From there we learn about Caesar and Augustus and all his family (Ara Pacis), chronological relationships between figures (an aqueduct might have an inscription with names its builder and those who then repaired it). You can get a lot of Roman history without touching a literary source. It is with a grid of hard evidence that literary historians get placed into context, writers who supply a wealth of verifiable information. This provides a wider fuller complex of historical information in which other works can be incorporated.

Talking about oral cultures is all well and fine, but you try to do the work of verification of the content of the oral traditions. The sad story is that you can't. This might not be acceptable in a pc world, but that's because the pc world isn't really interested in history. Oral history is as good as the memory of the oldest recorder. It might be fine to do a folk history based on the stories, but it doesn't provide us with a past, just an idealized one.

Once material enters a tradition you have no way to evaluate its trajectory. You need a way to see where it entered the tradition in order to get a trajectory. Once it is in a tradition all the tools of the tradition are available for its use.

If you want to take a substantive position, go for it.

Well, you won't mind if I repeat myself.

Does the text help you to answer that question? If so, what does it say in your view?

I'm working on the notion that we cannot assume what they were because Paul doesn't say. We know that they weren't one of the mainstream positions as Paul had left his claimed mainstream position. There must have been something that Paul saw in them, and as Paul was a messianist of sorts and messianism was popular at the time, it seemed like a safe bet. They may have been something else; they may have been christian. Whatever they were, they didn't accept Paul's gospel.

If he says that the gospel he proclaimed was not of human origin nor was he taught it, why do you want to contradict him?

Can we assume that they weren't? I'm providing a valid alternative reading to the data. There is no reason from Paul's description to read it as you seem to want to.

Chinese whispers:
I don't need to provide evidence at all. I'm merely heading off accusations based on assumptions of how things happened because people will not allow that we may not know how though they have to have some explanation which usually boils down to fiction or truth. You pick a method that appeals to you and argue for how a particular tradition developed.

Casually.

You haven't got it right yet.


spin

Solitary Man

I disagree. To argue otherwise is just playing with semantics.

And what comes before those earlier texts? What comes before texts? Don't play dense here, spin.

Do you ever give straight answers?

How in the world were you able to twist my words to get that out of it?

Reasonable time of circulation. We have to have enough time for Mark to circulate around the Mediterranean so that Matthew can use it and allow enough time for Matthew to become popular and circulate so that Luke can use it. By this time we start having attestations.

You are assuming (which you apparently like to do) that Matthew's error was first an error and secondly that Matthew inherited it.

But no, actually I think that Matthew did inherit the genealogy, or at least some of it.

You need a serious course on oral tradition and collective memory. I'm afraid this statement is 3 decades or more behind the times. It's not "PC", it's basic anthropology.

Assumption.

It does. It says that Cephas and Paul shared a religious affiliation.

Just because Paul doesn't outright say it doesn't mean that it's not inferred.

Is that what Paul says?

Are you done beating that strawman? Would you like to actually read what I wrote for once?

There is no reason... What a load of crap.

Bullshit. You can't say that something happened in a certain way and not provide evidence that it happened.

spin

I'm sorry, this is starting to lose itself as a discussion through dispersal. You said:

"Is Matthew able to know what happened at Jesus' birth?"

You've said that you mean the text by "Matthew" and I said, a text is not "able to know" anything. You can hardly dispute this. A text is not a volitional agent as a writer is. I plainly didn't understand whatever it is you were saying and you haven't tried to clarify. Hence the dispersal. If you have something you wanted to say with the above cited sentence you might like to rephrase it so I'm in a position to understand it.

Don't you pretend to be able to divine what you can't.

Straight answers are for reasonable questions. You're wearing your holster low.

Answer the questions so we can continue. I'm trying to understand your unstated presuppositions, while providing some ulterior possibility.

So it's all a bunch of guesses based on assumptions that you have no way of testing. Your Q-less stance is also worth noting.

Please propose a less complex explanation for the evidence.

On what grounds do you base that exactly?

You need to stop pursuing your tangents far enough to lose track.

If you believe so, give me a method of being able to extract backgrounds of tradition elements.

I have no doubt of that. But do try to define what it is.

Just supply the grounds from the text to make the inference.

That's how I understand Paul saying that he got nothing from them. Paul is presenting the events to his Galatians, so we have to be careful not to accept his presentation on face value. That requires analysis of what he actually says and not what we bring to the text. This leads to reading for intent and how he is shaping the events to represent himself as well as possible.

Your comment doesn't seem to be helpful or related to what you are supposed to be commenting on. When he specifically says that his stuff was not from other people, what the fuck are you on about?

What a crap response. Let's try and reconstruct the argument as it meanders:
You seem to be complaining about a casual phrase and avoiding the general content. All you need do is to show that I'm not correct from the text.

Please read what I said again. I don't want to have to deal with the usual leading reasons for why something happened, so I suggest a method of how it could have happened -- in what I see as the most neutral way. I've already explained why I said it. After all you asked the question: "And just where do you think that the extra-synoptic stuff came from?" This was asked in response to my:
This was yet another tangent on your part that has taken you away from the discussion.

Now please, answer your own question "And just where do you think that the extra-synoptic stuff came from?" with a more useful response than the one I gave.


spin

Solitary Man

I agree with your first sentence. Why don't you pick a topic and work on this one at a time. I don't like this nitpicking one line at a time.