Vinnie

Paul wrote in the fifties. Its a historical fact (whatever that means).
Do we really need to hash the evidence for this?
I just don't see it as a line of inquiry worth pursuing.
Convince me and I'll take the time to type up the reasoning.

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

Could he have also wrote in the late forties or early sixties? Of course; your statement is just inexact.

The question is whether the letters were written by Paul at a later date, say in the 70s, or whether they were written by someone other than Paul at an even later date.

It will also be interesting to see what reasoning involves only external evidence for Paul's letters, what reasoning involves only the internal evidence of Paul's letters and background knowlede, and what reasoning involves the evidence of Acts and other sources on Paul.

I think these kinds of basic questions are the sort that we can attempt to be more rigorous about, and rigor is in great demand. Bring it on, Vinnie!

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

spin

If Jesus had made the splash the gospels say he did, it would be a fair bet that Josephus would have said something about him (that would have made more sense that the TF: besides, why should Josephus have described Jesus as the "ointment" to his Roman Greek-reading audience?).

Josephus mentions various disturbances that christians would consider to have been on a much smaller scale than the activities of Jesus. Thousands go out to him at various times. He causes riots in Jerusalem. He gets a messianic reception in Jerusalem. He causes a ruckus at the temple. He restores sight and raises the dead. And Josephus gives us silence. The downplay by people, such as Sanders, shows Orwellian doublethink.

What we know:

1. messianism in various forms had been popular throughout the diaspora since at least the beginning of the 1st c.;
2. numerous messiahs went to the wall in Judaea;
3. the diaspora Jew,Paul, has a vision of a messiah who went to the wall;
4. Paul makes contact with Jerusalem messianists, who show little interest in him;
5. Paul directs his energies to the diaspora and the gentiles, including writing letters;
6. Paul's letters were collected edited, redacted and expanded upon;
7. Messianism continued in various guises until the downfall of Simeon ben Kosiba.

What else have we got from the first century? How much of the theological material in the Pauline tradition is actually Pauline? How does one know? Was any of the christian testament written in Judaea and how does one know?


spin

krosero

Actually any hard-headed skeptic can downplay Jesus. You imply that Sanders and other HJ scholars are not using what skepticism they might have and are actually engaging in doublethink, which is defined in 1984 this way:

"the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

This is such pathology that it really does us no good to debate whether current scholars are engaging in it. Don't get me wrong, people of all walks of life probably can engage in some doublethink, but Orwell's depiction of it is monstrous (e.g., "to tell deliberate lies"), and you used the adjective Orwellian.

If you're a skeptic, and you have the NT and Josephus to examine, you decide quite reasonably that the picture of Jesus given to us by those who loved and worshiped him must be inflated. You know with some confidence, then, that Josephus could have been a contemporary of a Jesus who was a lesser figure than the one in the Gospels, though he may have heard of the Gospel Jesus. As a skeptic it's doubtful to your mind that Josephus, a Jew, and a man concerned not to give credence to Messianism in writings directed at a Roman audience, would give credence to the Gospel picture of Jesus (if he even heard it). He'd be likely, at most, to report Easter as a belief, not a fact. So then the investigation of the TF proceeds, with all the pros and cons that we know -- but my point is that reducing Jesus to a marginal Jew looks very much like skepticism. Why cannot an HJ scholar be granted that quality among other qualities? Are HJ scholars merely credulous? That does not seem possible -- and I say that from my skeptical side.

Look, to decide about the TF one has to be skeptical about it -- perhaps it was an interpolation by those who loved and worshipped Jesus; but then, perhaps the Gospels were a glorification of Jesus by those who loved and worshipped him. Why insist on the formula, "If Jesus had made the splash the gospels say he did, it would be a fair bet that Josephus would have said something about him"? The only thing challenged by that formula is biblical literalism. A skeptic already knows on naturalistic grounds, and on grounds of psychology, that Jesus did not do everything people credited him with doing.

spin

That entails analysis of the texts which should denude them of functional theological content.

Those who both hold Jesus as the performer of many gospel deeds yet not worthy of contemporary note, seem to me to be able to hold two conflicting opinions at the same time, ie doublethink.

I don't see why you need to go past the actual definition you cited for doublethink, ie "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." I am looking at those who manifest doublethink, not analysing the causes of it. The notion of doublethink is extremely clear without needing any concomitant cause clause. You have read too much into my statements by over-applying your reading from 1984.

Where are you getting this picture of what those "who loved and worshiped him" from? How do you know what Jesus, if he actually did anything, did?

Modern common sense is not a guideline when doing historical research. You must attempt to make your analysis not on what you want ancients to have done, but from what you can observe that ancients did.

How would you know? Answer: you wouldn't.

Once you've watered down the story, you have no way of verifying it, so why bother watering it down? You aren't doing history, you are just rationalising the tradition to your experience.

How do you separate good tradition from bad tradition?

Perhaps they were, but you aren't interested in epistemology at all, are you?

Because, in its statement, it is quite reasonable. You haven't attempted to actually critique it and probably not even attempted to understand it, given your comments. In fact, I think you should be able to agree with it, as stated with its limitations.

You are just misusing the term "know". You know nothing of the sort. You just believe your position according to your experience. You have no way of going beyond that.


spin

Toto

Under the usual dating, Josephus would not have been contemporaneous with Jesus, but with Paul. Josephus shows no sign of having read the gospels if they were in their current form; as Leidner has argued, Josephus in Contra Apion attempts to refute all of the anti-Jewish literature of the day, and he does not mention the gospels, which contain a fair amount of anti-Jewish material. (Some excerpts from Leidner are here.)

The attempted historical recreation of Jesus the Marginal Jew (whom I have labeled "wimpy Jesus" in the past) is a possible, but not a probable explanation of the data. It does not explain the reference in Josephus as well as Ken Olson explains the particular language and concepts used as a later interpolation by Eusebius. It doesn't explain the early "high Christology" of first century writers, followed later by more historical details in the gospels.

Once you realize that there is no history to be reconstructed from the gospels, you are left with no particular reason to assume that Christianity started with a founder figure around 32 CE, or that there was any person to be "inflated" into the gospel Jesus.

krosero

Spin, so many of your points in reply to my last post are about how I could not know this or that suggested reconstruction of the past -- when I was in fact just suggesting. It's probably my fault for not using a phrase like "if we take for granted..." I spoke of a hypothetical skeptic who "knows", for instance, that Jesus did not do everything attributed to him: in other words, after he's done his analysis he'll most likely accept at least the modest conclusion that Jesus was less than the Gospels say he was (a conclusion more modest than full-blow mythicism). I did not say how he arrived at his reconstruction, except to say that we know he'll get there just starting with the fact of his skepticism and rationalism (he'll reject miracles). There are more than one specific reconstruction by which you could arrive at mythicism, or naturalistic HJ, or traditional belief. I was not insisting on specifics like Josephus and Jesus being contemporaries because their lives might have overlapped. I was trying just to set out a position that everyone in the current discussion could agree on, for the sake of argument -- Jesus probably did not do everything attributed to him -- with some of us holding to an HJ, and others going all the way to say that he didn't do anything in the Gospels because fictionalization was full (he never lived). I do not dispute the need for such basic things as "analysis of the texts which should denude them of functional theological content." Nor am I uninterested in epistemology just because I was focusing on something else in this thread.

This thread was about whether there's any inconsistency in arguments about Josephus that are used to challenge Jesus' historicity. I say that if we all here can agree at least that Jesus did not do everything in the Gospels, the Testimonium question should not consistently be phrased "If Jesus caused the splash that the Gospels say he did..." It should be rather, "If Jesus did some of the non-supernatural stuff attributed to him, and perhaps other similar unrecorded things, and none of the supernatural things, but had these latter feats attributed to him, would Josephus have mentioned him in his work?" I still have not seen any argument that seriously challenges the plausibility of Josephus writing one paragraph (later tampered with, "glorified" so to speak) about such a man. He wrote about failed Messianic claimants, defeated by the state, and Jesus was such a man according to the NT (and he was nothing else, if you remove a literal Resurrection).

All of that can lead us further into the specific TF arguments, pro and con, but let's stick to the inconsistency question. I think it's an inconsistency to insist on the Gospel Jesus (the one who made a BIG PUBLIC splash, supernatural or not) when asking about Josephus and then insisting on a minimal or mythical Jesus when asking about the Gospels. The actual Jesus (or the nonexistent one) -- is the only Jesus that Josephus could have known, or given credence to. Perhaps he heard about the Gospel Jesus, but I don't think so, and neither does Toto. In short: Josephus would not have heard of the Gospel Jesus (that is, he would not have seen the Gospels); why insist on this Jesus when asking whether Josephus would have written about Jesus?

This whole business about doublethink is related to the Josephus question, in my opinion, but allow me a short note on definitions. I quoted the full definition of doublethink because I don't regard it as merely referring to the holding of "two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them," nor does anyone I know limit it to that. If that's all it is, it's likely to be confused with F. Scott's Fitzgerald's remark that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.� Doublethink, which is practically synonymous with saying Orwellian doublethink, entails all those other nasty things from the quote I used. What you're talking about, Spin, is just one of the elements of Orwellian doublethink, one that's ordinarily referred to as being self-contradictory, or inconsistent (i.e., not sticking to one premise but retaining two incompatible ones so you can make use of each whenever it's convenient). Along with lies and other nasty stuff, it's described as part of Orwell's doublethink: "to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed."

Everybody does that, or something approaching that, because when you're driving home a point or a few points, you lose sight of previous points you made and let yourself get into an inconsistency. Christian apologists certainly do this. I also perceive it happening -- but you can tell me where I'm wrong -- when skeptics use the Gospel Jesus to judge the text of Josephus but they actually argue for a Jesus who was nothing like the one found in the Gospels. As I said, the one they argue for, if their argument is correct, is the only one that Josephus could have known about (and it's the only he could have given credence to, given what we know from the rest of his writings).

Maybe there's no inconsistency here. I look forward to more.

krosero

I didn't find a good way to include this in my last post:

I can give some meaningful assent to all but one of these points as things that we know with great certainity, though I may not see them each the way you do (particularly the statement about Paul having a vision of a messiah). And I certainly would not agree that this is all we know; it is all that you (Spin) feel confident knowing. And I would add that many reconstructions of the past can be changed wildly if we strip our conclusions down to those things, only, that cannot be doubted and do not have counter-challenges. I mean, seriously, all the important questions in history have counter-challenges; everything that's "in question" or "in doubt" or "under discussion" is there because there are counter-challenges. The proper way, though more difficult, IMHO is to bring into our account of the past not just the absolute certainties but those things which are even plausibly suggested by the evidence; not bringing them in literally, of course, and without challenge, but bringing them in.

The one thing I really question is that the Jerusalem community had little interest in Paul. You say yourself that we don't know if the Christian testimony was written in Judea, and that we don't know who the authors are (all granted), so then how do you know that the author of Luke-Acts, someone very interested in Paul, is not to be associated with the Jerusalem community and their interests? Or do you not hold that Luke and Acts were written by the same person? If not, why? and tell me how you have certainty about this negative ("Acts and Luke are not the product of the same pen") when you don't have certainty about who wrote the Christian testimonies?

Toto

But a true skeptic would want some evidence of Jesus' existence, and that's what we're looking for.

There are Christians who argue that the reason there is so little historical record of Jesus is that he was just a backwater preacher, but then bootstrap their way to believing in the gospel Jesus by various means. That's where the inconsistency lies.

The liberals who just believe in Jesus without the miracles tend to accept the TF as reflecting some person named Jesus.

Toto thinks that he never heard about any Jesus of Nazareth.

Who are those skeptics? spin has certainly not argued for any Jesus for any sort. Most of the skeptics here argue that if Jesus had been close to the figure described in the gospels, or if he had had any significant following, he would have been mentioned in Josephus, (and if he were too insigificant, who cares if he existed or not?)

I think that the only "evidence" of the historic Jesus is the gospels, and if there is no gospel Jesus, there is no HJ.

spin

You're talking to yourself.


spin