Freethought & Rationalism Archive

avi · 07-01-2011, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Applying your reasoning how would anyone ever satisfy a myther that an ancient statement about Jesus was not an interpolation?

Hi Steve.

Unlike Toto, I am a myther. I am not yet card carrying, because I haven't paid my dues, but I accept the notion that the Jesus fable was concocted, rather than reported.

I would like to answer your question, because I think it is a really good one.

I would be satisfied upon discovering a newly excavated papyrus document, written in the first, second, or no later than, the third century, unequivocally, i.e. date established not by palaeaography, which claimed to represent the writings of Josephus, containing, or not, the TF.

avi

Toto · 07-01-2011, 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgoodguy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

People sometimes repeat this idea, that interpolations bear a heavy burden of proof, as if it were an accepted idea. It is not a rule followed by secular historians. It seems to have been invented for Christian apologetics.

We know that the transmission of texts was uncertain, and interpolations were common in all ancient manuscripts. It would make sense to put the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the text has not been interpolated.

My experience is in debating and observing debates with inerrancy apologists. A good tactic with an apologist is to force adherence to the plain text and force the apologist to deal with the plain text without any Christian 'interpolations'. I find your assertion that " It seems to have been invented for Christian apologetics. " to be a bit odd in light of my experience. Perhaps you have some authority to reference?

My only experience with this is in debating Christians who have learned that inerrancy is not supportable, but want to use the texts to argue for some basic truth to the Christian narrative.

Some years ago, Peter Kirby started a thread on this board to ask for authority for the proposition that a text should be accepted for its face value. There was no such authority.

Quote:

A light burden of proof, implied at least to me, by your comment seems to be at odds with skepticism. Perhaps you have some authority to reference?

Please see Walker's book on Interpolations in the Pauline Letters, referred above.

Quote:

The problem with "It would make sense to put the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the text has not been interpolated." is you do not do that. You assert specific interpolations. This is different. It is akin to asserting that a specific traffic accident occurred because in general traffic accidents occur.

I think of it as more akin to always being on the alert for traffic accidents because we know that they can occur, and always wearing a seat belt.

Since interpolations are always possible, I do not think that any ancient document is absolute proof of the events described in it, without considering the reliability of the author and many other factors.

Roger Pearse · 07-01-2011, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

With regard to the "Slavonic Josephus", I would recommend that people obtain the English version of this printed recently and read through it. It is not, in fact, a version of Josephus at all. It is a medieval Russian book, entitled "The three captures of Jerusalem". For the third section, a translation of the Jewish War was used, probably from the family interpolated with the TF, supplemented with material from the bible, John Malalas, and other sources. The old thesis that it was derived from an Aramaic first edition is not possible, and was only advanced in ignorance of the true nature of the text. Mescherskii's publication of the text in the 50's made this clear, but since he wrote in Russian few scholars noticed.

The interest with Slavonic Josephus is it's wonder-worker story. .... The ahistoricists/mythicists should not be letting the historicists get away with such an obvious attempt to discredit the storyline that is now found in Slavonic Josephus. ... The possibility is there - and should not be pushed so adamantly off the table in any discussion re getting to ground zero re early christian history.

I'm sorry if you took my comments as a dismissal of your own post -- I had no such intention. Rather I remember being very excited myself about the excerpts from the Old Slavonic Josephus which were included in G. A. Williamson's excellent translation of the "Jewish War", as I believe most people were.

But some years ago I became interested in the question of the manuscripts of the Old Slavonic text, and so obtained Meshcherskii's edition. I was able to scan the introduction, and run it through a machine translator, and I made what notes I could from the result. The notes are here, and you can form your own opinion.

But the easiest thing to do is simply get the English version, H. LEEMING, K. LEEMING, with L. OSINKINA. Josephus' Jewish War and its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison. Leiden:Brill (2003). Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und das Urchristentums 46. ISBN: 9004114386. Once we start looking through it, it becomes obvious that we are not dealing with any text independent of the Greek text of the "Jewish War". No offence, and I'm sorry about that, but it is so. The idea that it was related to the Aramaic version was simply caused by the fact that scholars couldn't get behind the iron curtain and find out the full facts.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse · 07-01-2011, 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

People sometimes repeat this idea, that interpolations bear a heavy burden of proof, as if it were an accepted idea. It is not a rule followed by secular historians. It seems to have been invented for Christian apologetics.

We know that the transmission of texts was uncertain, and interpolations were common in all ancient manuscripts. It would make sense to put the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the text has not been interpolated. ...

Some years ago, Peter Kirby started a thread on this board to ask for authority for the proposition that a text should be accepted for its face value. There was no such authority.

Quote:

The problem with "It would make sense to put the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the text has not been interpolated." is you do not do that. You assert specific interpolations. This is different. It is akin to asserting that a specific traffic accident occurred because in general traffic accidents occur.

I think of it as more akin to always being on the alert for traffic accidents because we know that they can occur, and always wearing a seat belt.

Firstly, any text may, in principle be interpolated, or damaged in other ways. We can say this with confidence because we do not have the autograph copies (if, indeed, they existed, as may not have been the case with dictated letters), because we know that material can find its way from the margins of manuscripts (where both comments and accidental omissions were written) into the body of the text.

But I do not see how this is useful, unless we can draw some conclusion from it. The conclusion that we are asked to draw here is that we cannot rely on any text. (The alternative conclusion, that this is interesting but useless for practical purposes, is rejected here I think).

If we accept this, if we treat every text as unreliable, then how can we work with them? If this is so, that renders all our history from Xerxes to Theodore Rosevelt merely some form of guesswork; and that promptly takes us to the kind of obscurantism that tells us "history is mostly bunk". For we all know, truly, that this is not the case, and that, while we live in a fallible world where any statement can be pushed to such an extreme as to become untrue, it is generally the case that literary texts are not widely interpolated in such a sense that we cannot rely on any text. Where we can see the transmission of texts by copying, as in the renaissance, where we possess the copy which arrived in Italy and the copies all derived from it at many removes, we do not find such interpolations.

In practice nobody follows this argument. Everyone, even the most maddened hypersceptic, accepts that texts are generally preserved OK. How else can they work? And so they write, whatever they profess, as if the texts transmitted are fine, right up until the point at which they wish to dispose of a piece of testimony inconvenient to some theory of other. When that happens, suddenly the theory of interpolation is deployed.

This will not do. This very tendency is one of the reasons why the editions of the late 19th century were often found to be unsound by 20th century critics. The editions of Tertullian prepared by Emil Kroymann were undoubtedly a huge advance; yet they have been found "brilliant, but unsound", because of the arbitrary alterations made under the influence of this theory, and too great a readiness to suppose interpolations or other damage. Great philologists like Kroymann are human too; and psychologically the argument is deleterious, for it allows people to escape easily from a world of difficulties in the data.

We must work on the basis that the transmitted text is OK unless we have objective reasons to suppose that it is not. There is no magic to this, nor any kind of authority we can quote. It is quite simply that any other approach takes us straight to subjectivism, if not to obscurantism.

But at the same time, we must be aware that interpolations do happen, and indeed whole texts reach us which are not in fact what they purport to be. I do not mean to suggest that we should brush aside arguments that this and that text are interpolated. It will usually be difficult to prove an interpolation. It will often be somewhat subjective, often it will involve the use of an educated judgement. But that is no reason not to try. It is a reason to do the task, and do it well. It is best done, at least initially, on texts where there is no violent fear of the text being genuine (or not being genuine, as we prefer).

Modern criticism begins, I think, with Lorenzo Valla's critique of the Donation of Constantine, and his arguments are worth a review, since they are evidently sound, and the basis for all subsequent work.

What I would resist, and what I think we should always resist, is the kind of argument that alleges that some inconvenient item is interpolated, and produces only the arguments that special pleading would adduce; or worse, relies on the argument "interpolations sometimes happen, therefore this is one."

Quote:

Since interpolations are always possible, I do not think that any ancient document is absolute proof of the events described in it, without considering the reliability of the author and many other factors.

I suspect you've not quite said what you meant here, Toto? As written it seems to confuse the question of whether the text has reached us with whether the author is reliable? These are, of course, separate issues. A perfectly preserved text may be fiction; a damaged text may be of the highest value as a historical source. But I'm sure you know this as well as I.

Alternatively I allege that this part of your post was interpolated. Can anyone prove otherwise? No? Then it must be so! Come, let us talk in learned-sounding voices about proto-Toto and deutero-Toto....

Always treat with suspicion any argument which involves finding reasons to dispose of testimony.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

maryhelena · 07-01-2011, 12:12 PM

Hi, Roger

No, I did not find you were particularly dismissing my post - but I did find that you were dismissing Slavonic Josephus.

Let me make one thing clear. It does not matter to me in what publication the wonder-worker story is found. I'm interested in the story. I'm interested in following a storyline re the development of the gospel JC story. Yes, I'm an ahistoricist/mythicist - have been for around 30 years. I find that the wonder-worker story answers a lot of questions re the developing gospel JC story. That the wonder-worker story ends up in something called Slavonic Josephus is a side-line not my main focus at all. The history of Slavonic Josephus may be interesting in it's own right - but that wonder-worker story is a story that is older than the book in which it is now found. As I have made an attempt to demonstrate in the chart in an earlier post. If Eusebius had this wonder-worker story in front of him, or had access to it, or heard it via oral tradition, then his adding Christian elements to it - and his updated version of the wonder-worker story found it's way into Antiquities - well, then, a lot of the controversy surrounding the TF could be viewed from a different perspective.

As to the Slavonic Josephus being compared to War - yes I have viewed this on google books - and it's a very interesting comparision!

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be spending around 250 pounds to be purchasing it...

No offense taken, Roger - however, I do think the historicists are dealing with Slavonic Josephus through their canonical gospel eyeglasses. Yes, it's incompatible with the gospel JC story - or let me rephrase that - it's incompatible with gLuke. Put gLuke on the shelve for a while - and things can begin to look rather different re that developing gospel JC story.

regards
maryhelena

Josephus' Jewish War and Its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison (or via: amazon.co.uk)

http://books.google.com/books?id=gu5...page&q&f=false

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

With regard to the "Slavonic Josephus", I would recommend that people obtain the English version of this printed recently and read through it. It is not, in fact, a version of Josephus at all. It is a medieval Russian book, entitled "The three captures of Jerusalem". For the third section, a translation of the Jewish War was used, probably from the family interpolated with the TF, supplemented with material from the bible, John Malalas, and other sources. The old thesis that it was derived from an Aramaic first edition is not possible, and was only advanced in ignorance of the true nature of the text. Mescherskii's publication of the text in the 50's made this clear, but since he wrote in Russian few scholars noticed.

The interest with Slavonic Josephus is it's wonder-worker story. .... The ahistoricists/mythicists should not be letting the historicists get away with such an obvious attempt to discredit the storyline that is now found in Slavonic Josephus. ... The possibility is there - and should not be pushed so adamantly off the table in any discussion re getting to ground zero re early christian history.

I'm sorry if you took my comments as a dismissal of your own post -- I had no such intention. Rather I remember being very excited myself about the excerpts from the Old Slavonic Josephus which were included in G. A. Williamson's excellent translation of the "Jewish War", as I believe most people were.

But some years ago I became interested in the question of the manuscripts of the Old Slavonic text, and so obtained Meshcherskii's edition. I was able to scan the introduction, and run it through a machine translator, and I made what notes I could from the result. The notes are here, and you can form your own opinion.

But the easiest thing to do is simply get the English version, H. LEEMING, K. LEEMING, with L. OSINKINA. Josephus' Jewish War and its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison. Leiden:Brill (2003). Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und das Urchristentums 46. ISBN: 9004114386. Once we start looking through it, it becomes obvious that we are not dealing with any text independent of the Greek text of the "Jewish War". No offence, and I'm sorry about that, but it is so. The idea that it was related to the Aramaic version was simply caused by the fact that scholars couldn't get behind the iron curtain and find out the full facts.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

jgoodguy · 07-01-2011, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

People sometimes repeat this idea, that interpolations bear a heavy burden of proof, as if it were an accepted idea. It is not a rule followed by secular historians. It seems to have been invented for Christian apologetics.

We know that the transmission of texts was uncertain, and interpolations were common in all ancient manuscripts. It would make sense to put the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the text has not been interpolated. ...

Some years ago, Peter Kirby started a thread on this board to ask for authority for the proposition that a text should be accepted for its face value. There was no such authority.

Quote:

The problem with "It would make sense to put the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the text has not been interpolated." is you do not do that. You assert specific interpolations. This is different. It is akin to asserting that a specific traffic accident occurred because in general traffic accidents occur.

I think of it as more akin to always being on the alert for traffic accidents because we know that they can occur, and always wearing a seat belt.

Firstly, any text may, in principle be interpolated, or damaged in other ways. We can say this with confidence because we do not have the autograph copies (if, indeed, they existed, as may not have been the case with dictated letters), because we know that material can find its way from the margins of manuscripts (where both comments and accidental omissions were written) into the body of the text.

But I do not see how this is useful, unless we can draw some conclusion from it. The conclusion that we are asked to draw here is that we cannot rely on any text. (The alternative conclusion, that this is interesting but useless for practical purposes, is rejected here I think).

If we accept this, if we treat every text as unreliable, then how can we work with them? If this is so, that renders all our history from Xerxes to Theodore Rosevelt merely some form of guesswork; and that promptly takes us to the kind of obscurantism that tells us "history is mostly bunk". For we all know, truly, that this is not the case, and that, while we live in a fallible world where any statement can be pushed to such an extreme as to become untrue, it is generally the case that literary texts are not widely interpolated in such a sense that we cannot rely on any text. Where we can see the transmission of texts by copying, as in the renaissance, where we possess the copy which arrived in Italy and the copies all derived from it at many removes, we do not find such interpolations.

In practice nobody follows this argument. Everyone, even the most maddened hypersceptic, accepts that texts are generally preserved OK. How else can they work? And so they write, whatever they profess, as if the texts transmitted are fine, right up until the point at which they wish to dispose of a piece of testimony inconvenient to some theory of other. When that happens, suddenly the theory of interpolation is deployed.

This will not do. This very tendency is one of the reasons why the editions of the late 19th century were often found to be unsound by 20th century critics. The editions of Tertullian prepared by Emil Kroymann were undoubtedly a huge advance; yet they have been found "brilliant, but unsound", because of the arbitrary alterations made under the influence of this theory, and too great a readiness to suppose interpolations or other damage. Great philologists like Kroymann are human too; and psychologically the argument is deleterious, for it allows people to escape easily from a world of difficulties in the data.

We must work on the basis that the transmitted text is OK unless we have objective reasons to suppose that it is not. There is no magic to this, nor any kind of authority we can quote. It is quite simply that any other approach takes us straight to subjectivism, if not to obscurantism.

But at the same time, we must be aware that interpolations do happen, and indeed whole texts reach us which are not in fact what they purport to be. I do not mean to suggest that we should brush aside arguments that this and that text are interpolated. It will usually be difficult to prove an interpolation. It will often be somewhat subjective, often it will involve the use of an educated judgement. But that is no reason not to try. It is a reason to do the task, and do it well. It is best done, at least initially, on texts where there is no violent fear of the text being genuine (or not being genuine, as we prefer).

Modern criticism begins, I think, with Lorenzo Valla's critique of the Donation of Constantine, and his arguments are worth a review, since they are evidently sound, and the basis for all subsequent work.

What I would resist, and what I think we should always resist, is the kind of argument that alleges that some inconvenient item is interpolated, and produces only the arguments that special pleading would adduce; or worse, relies on the argument "interpolations sometimes happen, therefore this is one."

Quote:

Since interpolations are always possible, I do not think that any ancient document is absolute proof of the events described in it, without considering the reliability of the author and many other factors.

I suspect you've not quite said what you meant here, Toto? As written it seems to confuse the question of whether the text has reached us with whether the author is reliable? These are, of course, separate issues. A perfectly preserved text may be fiction; a damaged text may be of the highest value as a historical source. But I'm sure you know this as well as I.

Alternatively I allege that this part of your post was interpolated. Can anyone prove otherwise? No? Then it must be so! Come, let us talk in learned-sounding voices about proto-Toto and deutero-Toto....

Always treat with suspicion any argument which involves finding reasons to dispose of testimony.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

The way I view text is the text we have before us as text not as truth. Josephus had several references to the supernatural in his writings as well as known inaccuracies. However that is not the question, but is the text of the supernatural and the inaccuracies what Josephus wrote? What we have is what we have. If we have text that is inconvenient to a theory, then we cannot just wish that text away.

Roger Pearse · 07-01-2011, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgoodguy

The way I view text is the text we have before us as text not as truth. .... is the text of the supernatural and the inaccuracies what Josephus wrote? What we have is what we have. If we have text that is inconvenient to a theory, then we cannot just wish that text away.

That would be my own view as well.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

DCHindley · 07-01-2011, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

But the easiest thing to do is simply get the English version, H. LEEMING, K. LEEMING, with L. OSINKINA. Josephus' Jewish War and its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison. Leiden:Brill (2003). Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und das Urchristentums 46. ISBN: 9004114386. Once we start looking through it, it becomes obvious that we are not dealing with any text independent of the Greek text of the "Jewish War". No offence, and I'm sorry about that, but it is so. The idea that it was related to the Aramaic version was simply caused by the fact that scholars couldn't get behind the iron curtain and find out the full facts.

I am confused. You previously said

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

With regard to the "Slavonic Josephus", I would recommend that people obtain the English version of this printed recently and read through it. It is not, in fact, a version of Josephus at all. It is a medieval Russian book, entitled "The three captures of Jerusalem". For the third section, a translation of the Jewish War was used, probably from the family interpolated with the TF, supplemented with material from the bible, John Malalas, and other sources. The old thesis that it was derived from an Aramaic first edition is not possible, and was only advanced in ignorance of the true nature of the text. Mescherskii's publication of the text in the 50's made this clear, but since he wrote in Russian few scholars noticed.

I have also read the introduction of Leeming & Leeming's book and seem to recall it saying that Slavonic War is a distinctly Russian retelling of Josephus' War, based on the standard Greek text, leaving out the stuff of little interest to the elite classes of Russian society and adding some things from other sources and reflecting quite a bit of the rather well read editor's own views on politics, religion and warfare. Leeming & Leeming, in fact, consider it so unique that it is essentially a new work -based on- Joesphus' War, and a masterpiece of Russian literature at that.

Like you, I was exposed to the Slavonic "additions" through the same translation (G. A. Williamson, Jewish War (or via: amazon.co.uk), 1981). Since it referenced the source as from an appendix to one of Kirsopp Lakes' Loeb volumes of the War, I looked it up and noted it contained English translations of most of the major additions as given by Robert Eisler before he died. What struck me about them was that Jesus and John the Baptist were much more political animals than what you find in Greek Josephus, and also suggested that Jesus was arrested and released, then later arrested again before he died. I felt that left open the option that the "Report of Pilate" published by the Emperor Maximin in 311 CE, which dates his arrest to something like 21 CE, related to a first arrest, and not the later arrest that led to his execution.

Of course, the Slavonic editor could have been aware of this "Report of Pilate" from Eusebius' Church History, and it came to serve as the basis for his "two arrest" portrayal of Jesus. While he was unusually well educated and was familiar with a wide range of ecclesiastical literature, the Slavonic editor didn't seem to have any trouble imagining Jesus and John outside of the Gospel box. If only more folks could do so ...

DCH

stephan huller · 07-01-2011, 03:46 PM

I've examined and compared the Slavonic Josephus texts from other sources and have read enough commentary to say with a great degree of certainty that the Slavonic text is an expansion of De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae (On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem) or Historiae (History) commonly attributed to Pseudo-Hegesippus. The Yosippon is in this family of text as well - I suspect - the various other versions of 'Josephus' that survive in different languages.

mountainman · 07-01-2011, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCHindley

..... the Slavonic "additions" through a translation (it happened to be Kirsopp Lakes' Loeb volume that translated the major additions as given by Eisler). What struck me about them was that Jesus and John the Baptist were much more political animals than what you find in Greek Josephus, and also suggested that Jesus was arrested and released, then later arrested again before he died. I felt that left open the option that the "Report of Pilate" published by the Emperor Maximin in 311 CE, which dates his arrest to something like 21 CE, related to a first arrest, and not the later arrest that led to his execution.

Of course, the Slavonic editor could have been aware of this "report of Pilate" from Eusebius' Church History, and it served as the basis for his two arrest portrayal of Jesus. While he was unusually well educated and was familiar with a wide range of ecclesiastical literature, he didn't seem to have any trouble imagining Jesus and John outside of the Gospel box. If only more folks could do so ...

Hi DCH,

What text precisely are you referring to with this "Report of Pilate" published by the Emperor Maximin in 311 CE? The only one that I am aware of advertised at that date is the heretical "pagan" "Acts of Pilate", which is well and truly outside the Gospel Box by virtue of it being a non canonical Gnostic work, in which Pilate informs the Jews that Jesus is able to heal, and resurrect, and cure, etc, etc, etc (on Sunday) by means of the power of the Graeco-Roman healing deity Asclepius, son of Apollo, son of Zeus.

Best wishes

Pete

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07-01-2011, 03:46 PM	#109
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	I've examined and compared the Slavonic Josephus texts from other sources and have read enough commentary to say with a great degree of certainty that the Slavonic text is an expansion of De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae (On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem) or Historiae (History) commonly attributed to Pseudo-Hegesippus. The Yosippon is in this family of text as well - I suspect - the various other versions of 'Josephus' that survive in different languages.

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