Adam

Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? asserted Aramaic sources for the gospels from the 30's, but did not cite Maurice Casey for this. Perhaps he did not do so because Casey and his protege James Crossley went farther than Ehrman would have by dating the whole Gospel of Mark to 40 CE or even earlier (pg. 78). You can read 120 pages of preview of Casey's 2010 Jesus of Nazareth.
The preview of the Life fortunately includes as preliminary the historiography of the Synoptics. He even explains the process of writing on wax tablets and transcribing off wax tablet sources. He's quite good on Q, the Chaotic-Q theory, that there are many different Q sources--the more the Aramaic evidence, the more likely it's authentic. It's full of Aramaic study, but just take that to support Ehrman's case for Aramaic sources. He does not accept everything as authentic even when he can date it to 35 CE.

Steven Carr

Casey is amazingly good at reading wax tablets he has never seen.

Casey can read these wax tablets, better than the author of Mark who had them in his hand.

'the more the Aramaic evidence, the more likely it's authentic.'

The more likely the Hitler Diaries were written in German, the more likely it is authentic.

And , of course, quite a bit of Daniel is written in Aramaic.

That means, in the simple-minded world of mainstream Biblical scholarship, where pretty much any argument will do no matter how obviously it is full of holes, that Daniel is authentic.

Casey can actually tell you the very words in Aramaic that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper.

This is just plain bonkers.

Adam

It's more funny when I know, like with aa, that it's not supposed to be funny. I don't argue with aa, so no sense arguing with you. I guess that's the attitude I should have taken with Shesh.... Or am I thinking that now that Shesh's doing his take-off on aa to lampoon mountainman? Why am I thinking about that Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's on first?"

Steven Carr

I can't understand what you are saying here.

Please give me the name of one Greek document where Casey has successfully reconstructed the Aramaic it was translated from.

Please give me the name of one Christian Aramaic document from the first century.

And how did Casey manage to read wax tablets he has never seen?

How did Casey manage to tell us what words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper?

I have the email Casey sent to me. It is plain bonkers, full of stuff Casey just made up and claimed we can infer it must have happened.


stephanie louise fisher summed it up best when she wrote - 'no, texts are not authentic because they might have an aramaic background. Not even casey says so.'


Casey relies on junk scholarship, such as his claim that we should accept that Matthew was a tax-collector, because the author of ‘Matthew’ would not have added that detail ‘…unless he had a good source for it. We should therefore accept this.’ (!)

Amazing. Does Casey have any standards, even low ones?

How does Casey know that one of the Twelve took notes on Jesus during the ministry? Casey knows that happened because ‘it is entirely natural’ that somebody would do such a thing. (Pause while people take that in....)

It is also ‘entirely natural’ that the teachers in Hogwarts would write school reports about Harry and Hermione.

We should therefore accept any school reports which appear.

aeebee50

Interesting. Without a better knowledge of the languages, I can only observe. Thanks.

Adam

It's this logic that is just plain bonkers that I thought you might just be playing with. In contrast where the gospels in Greek go back to an Aramaic source they would be more likely to be authentic, anyone would agree (except you?).

Toto

If the gospels go back to an Aramaic source, that defeats the objection that they are written in a language that Jesus didn't even speak. But there are many more objections to the authenticity of the gospels.

Does an Aramaic source increase the likelihood that they are authentic from 0% to 2%? Is that what you mean by "more likely to be authentic?"

Steven Carr

So when Ehrman claims that the words 'Talitha koum' refer to an Aramaic source describing how Jesus raised a child from the dead, raising a child from the dead is more likely to be an authentic story if some is in Aramaic, rather than Greek?

But if you want to say something is more likely, then put numbers on it

10% more likely?

What sort of number are we looking at here?

1% more likely?

Adam

11 hours earlier SC moved the discussion over to to take the offensive on Ehrman's invisible documents, so I'll follow his lead.

Oh, if I did say "10% more", would that mean I moved from 10 to 11% probability, or from 90 to 99% probability?

Sheshbazzar

You're putting it at a 90-99% historical probability that with the magical Aramaic incantation of 'Talitha koum', a dead girl was brought back to life?

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