dog-on

Of course, the whole point of this thread is the question of historicity...

Toto

Not that there's anything wrong with fairy tales. . .

aa5874

What you say about "most of the ancient histories" cannot be proven or even assumed to be true when you would have no knowledge of the actual events of antiquity.

Please tell me what is the actual ratio of real events to non-events in Suetonius' "The Lives of the Twelve Caesars" or Philo's "Embassy to Gaius"?

It is extremely difficult to look at writings of antiquity and claim that most of it is not about actual events except when it is filled with implausible entities and activities, with bogus chronologies, like in the NT.



But, Josiah, Jeremiah, Moses and Jacob were not described as Gods, who created the world before anything was in the world.

You appear not to have read how Jesus was described.

Jesus was described far more mythical than Josiah, Jeremiah, Moses and Jacob.

The God of Moses and Jacob sent Jesus to die and resurrect for the sins of mankind to make obsolete the Laws of Moses given by God while the Jewish Temple was still standing.

Jesus was most mythical, the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God.



But, you yourself have claim that it is agreed that the narratives are not about actual events, surely you must mean the narratives are fiction.

You are exposing your hypocrisy.

spamandham

Josephus is historical propaganda. Why? Because we know his motives, or at least his stated motives, and we can independently confirm some portions of what he wrote. By modern standards, Josephus is a mix between a tabloid journalist and a political tract writer.

So now it's your turn. What were the motives of the writers of the various Acts style documents, what did they base their stories on, and why?

spin

Yes, and there are different fictionally based theories that we have had to deal with here, theories that assume a specific authorial intention. And it is different from "mythical", which presupposes events which take place in a different context from daily reality. And these three options are not the full range of sources for material entering the tradition.

We know all this, though "fiction" isn't necessarily a retrojection. There are fine examples of ancient fiction. However, what we've found are writers such as Carotta and Atwill who claim that christianity is a Roman conspiracy to manipulate ignorant masses. This may be new to you but we've had to live with the line of thought for years.

This is too glib. Ancient histories, those histories of one's times, frequently narrate actual events. Herodotus knew what he was talking about when dealing with the Persian Wars, because he fought in them. Polybius was a slave to a very politically influential family in Rome and was in the thick of the time he wrote about. Josephus was in the thick of the early part of the Jewish War and we have narrative of ancient events. Ammianus Marcellinus also was a soldier for Julian and lived through the times and captured real events. You can place each of the writers there for their narratives to be in the know. All wrote narratives of actual events in varying degrees of success. You cannot make such claims of any of the biblical writings. Not one. You are conflating these with writers that you know nothing about personally, nor when they wrote, whose connection with the information they write about you cannot say. It is irresponsible to make such a conflation.

This is a little too waffly. To clarify your umm exemplary bone of contention, a word is demonstrated to have a core meaning (there are 40 instances). It is taken that way unless the context requires the word to be read some other way (hopefully, the 10 other examples). This issue is simple to understand at least in theory. The example doesn't seem strongly enough related to the rest of your thought.

You are trying to cloud the genre of tradition and history of one's own time, which is a waste of time. The history of one's own time offers material that is verifiable. The tradition does not offer this. There are two different genres that reflect different commitments to audience and content. The history of one's own time is public writing and has a certain desire to communicate neutrally to any reader. The tradition is a closed communication, private writing, which requires adherence to a community which maintains the tradition.

(The distinction is analogous to the elaborated and restricted codes of Basil Bernstein. The history by necessity reaches outward to communicate in an equivalent to "elaborated code". The tradition is equivalent to "restricted code". You are more likely to get something out of the elaborated code, not needing the context of the community.)

Yeah, yeah, sure. We deal with this stuff frequently. You've missed out.


spin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Yes, nothing wrong with fairy tales at all. In fact, fairy tales are extremely important tools for socialization.

As a child, I learned to never lie from "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and I learned to have a bright and optimistic outlook on life no matter how bad things seem from "Hansel and Gretel" I would say that these were good life lessons to learn.

On the other hand, the only thing I learned as a child from the Bible was that there was an old, old man with a beard who watched everything I did and read my thoughts, and he would burn me forever with fire if I ever did or thought even one thing he didn't like. This is not a good life lesson at all for a child in today's exciting, fast-paced, postmodern society.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

aa5874

You cannot definitively claim Josephus was historical propaganda until you can point out the propaganda. You are assuming that Josephus was incapable of reporting or writing about what he saw or heard, and that his writings did not reflect the traditions of his time.

Once it can be confirmed that parts of his writings are not propaganda, then the classification of tabloid journalist and political tract writer cannot be true.

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay and Toto,

Another reason by which we may be convinced that Mark and Paul present "evidence" which is insufficient to contribute to the historicity of an HJ is the appearance of non canonical NT tractates in which the common and popular childrens' tales of antiquity (and of today) were conflated with these two "apostolic figures" - especially Paul. Of course I am refering to the "Acts of Paul [and Thecla] in which the author places Paul into the role of the mouse in Aesop's Fable about "The Lion and the Mouse".

The author of the "Acts of Paul" could hardly have loved Paul, despite the Eusebian assertions of Tertullian from the second century. The author is arguably placing Paul in a fairy-tale Greek romantic fiction in which anything is likely to happen and does.

The existence of "fairy-tale" texts from antiquity in which the major character is Paul (for example) suggests strongly that the author of the fairy tale has no historical respect for Paul -- or indeed the "HJ".

DCHindley

Renassault,

I just found a review of Dungan's book I posted 7 years ago (Sept 2002) on Crosstalk2:

I kind of liked Dungan's A History of the Synoptic Problem (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Part One:
* The chapters on the early attempts to understand the relationship between the four canonical gospels and defend them against critics inside and outside of Christian circles (the innocent, almost naive "first form" of the synoptic problem) are very helpful.
* The chapters on rational attempts to harmonize the differences, characterized by the differing approaches of Origen and Augustine (the "second form"), are also very helpful.

Part Two:
* The chapters on the origins and development of the modern critical method of understanding the relationships between the gospels (the "third form" relying principally upon the synopsis) have strengths and weaknesses.
* The primary weakness is his attempt to identify Baruch Spinoza as "the" overriding primary cause of the whole undertaking. I think that simplifies the problem too much. A more nuanced analysis of the factors that dominated modernist critics and how they stand in relation to one another on epistemological grounds can be found in Hayden White's _Metahistory_. White, FWIW, does not even mention Spinoza (at least he is not to be found in the bibliographical or subject indices).
* The primary strength, though, is Dungan's recognition that historical understandings are expressed on more than one level. To Dungan, there may be varying argumentative strategies employed by critics, but modern critics all share a common modernist political/economic agenda, whether they be fundamentalists or radicals or something else. Interestingly, this theme has many points of contact with White's theories (ibid.), although Dungan seems to be unaware of him (White is not cited in his bibliography or subject index).

Part Three:
* These chapters seem to be unfocused, and perhaps represent an appeal to re-evaluate some key assumptions in the hope that it might lead to improved acceptance of approaches that mix theological/faith-based and critical elements. The simple naive faith-based understanding of the early Christian movement is compared favorably with the similar understandings that prevail among theologians in Asia, Africa or South America.

All in all, Dungan's _History ..._ would be an excellent choice for a White-like deconstructive critique, and someday I may try to do that. I mention this mainly because White goes beyond argument (agreeing that there are more than one valid ways to look at a problem) and agenda (seeing four principal types of agendas rather than seeing it as one overarching "modernist" one, although all of White's agendas are in fact subtypes of modernist agendas), and sees other facets, such as emplotment (FWIW, Dungan is using the tragic model of emplotment in which critics are engaged in a quest where final success is eventually thwarted by a tragic flaw) and deep level tropes operating on a psychological, even unconscious level.

DCH

Rick Sumner

If memory serves, a big part of how he's trying to do it with relation to Jesus involves Otto Rank's mythic hero scale. Not the most objective method.

But even beyond that, while the formula might be objective, the values plugged into it are not.

It is an unfortunate reality that we cannot remove whim of the exegete from the equation in any branch of historical criticism. Why did Alexander marry? We can give an analysis of all the gains made by that wedding, but we cannot--objectively--answer the question.

If exegetes would spend a little less time trying to pretend they're engaging in mathematics, and a little more time assessing and admitting their leanings, we'd probably be on firmer soil all around. On that point Allison is fundamentally correct. The quest for the historical Jesus is a misnomer. All we're hunting is a plausible Jesus.

Plausibility is, by definition, a subjective term.

Regards,
Rick Sumner