angelo

David Mills,~Atheist Universe (or via: amazon.co.uk)~ [ my italics]

Roger Pearse

Tacitus, our best source about the life and policies of Tiberius, is thus excluded from use as a source on this emperor? Likewise Suetonius and Cassius Dio? That would seem to dispose of all the main sources of all first century history.

This sort of argument merely indicates the lack of familiarity with ancient history of Mr. Mills.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Cheerful Charlie

Yes, so it is odd all these people knew Josephus, but they did not mention the TF, which being THE KEY passage about the existence of Jesus in Josephus, and a rather flattering one, should have been mentioned by someone somewhere. And there is no secondary mention of the TF from later writers, nor tertiary mention of mentions byTertullian, Origen et al of the TF by later writers.Taken in toto, this spells pious fraud. Why would every Christian writer for 300 years ignore this set of verses?

They did know Josephus, so the problem is how to explain why all these writers missed that set of verses. There is no good explanation. This is why all major scholars I am aware of find the TF rather doubtful.

The other issue is fraud and forgery. It is well known that was rampant among Christian writers in these early time.So it is not like a fraud like the TF is unusula or out of the bounds o fpossibility.

CC

spin

You shouldn't preach this lame folly, Roger. We start with the evidence that we have from the period (ie epigraphy, statuary, coins and whatever else) and we try to eke out from the later literary sources the narrative that makes the hard evidence together. You don't start with the assumption that this or that author is veracious, but whether what he says fits what we already know.

You are aware of the vast epigraphic wealth of information available. We find having nice narratives easier to deal with.

One needs to validate testimony which has nothing we already know about behind it somehow. Otherwise we attempt to find evidence we hadn't considered which may support the testimony.

Pot and kettle?


spin

spin

Let me just remind people here of the flyspeck model of dealing with the TF.

Everyone who is up with the subject is aware that the text has been tampered with. It's like a piece of buttered bread which has been dropped on the floor. In the past people rejected the whole piece of bread as contaminated. These days the apologetically minded seem to feel they can pick the fly specks off the bread and it becomes good as new. A tasty morsel indeed.

The upshot of the situation regarding the TF is that the apologetically minded have the onus to show that the piece of bread is clean. You can't just say, "Well, I don't like this bit or that, but I'll keep the rest." One has to justify the keeping of the whole passage (which for a number of reasons does not reflect what one should expect from a literary apologist for the Jews and his own faith or a writer who is attempting to be coherent).

Both the christian passages in Josephus are suspect and we have debated the subject long. Has anyone attempted to show how they can tell the piece of bread is clean?


spin

Roger Pearse

I'm a little confused by this remark, so thought I would query it. You see the page in question merely tabulates all extant references to Josephus in all literature prior to the time of Eusebius. So we can tell which authors knew what parts of his work.

Not sure what assumptions you have in mind -- the point of the page was really to supply data, not theories. Theories we can all make for ourselves, I suspect.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Minimalist

Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone. Origen specifically refers to Books 18 and 20. They were thus in existence in his time. As such, Origen is the most compelling argument against the TF.

I suppose it is possible, which is why I gave you a "could be" that a whole series of Christian writers might have failed to consult Josephus' works until Eusebius carefully reads the text for the first time and Voila! There it is. Exactly what they need. I'm astonished that Eusebius didn't write " Holy Hell! How could all you guys miss this!" It "could be" but it doesn't pass the smell test. Your painstaking (and I am sincere in that) research can also be explained (far more easily) by the fact that the TF did not exist in Josephus' original and was a later interpolation. Did Eusebius do it? Who knows? He seems to have been the beneficiary of it but no one can say that it wasn't some nameless scribe who went to him and said "Hey, boss, look what I found."

As far as my comment about apologetics in general, some of the work done on the Exodus question can be truly mind-boggling, but it all proceeds from the certainty that the story is factual. Egyptologists and archaeologists find no evidence for an "Israelite sojourn" in Egypt....anywhere...anytime. Literalists will then take something like

and count backwards from "Solomon's" alleged time (c 940 BC) and come up with a date for the Exodus of 1420. Except 1420 doesn't work for a host of reasons so people like Kenneth Kitchen (and many others) start interpreting the data for us. You see, it is the literal, unerring, word of god until it doesn't make any sense...and then these people have to step in and "interpret" it for us. It is intellectually dishonest but I give this as an example as I don't want to derail the thread. There have been other discussions about Exodus.

At some point one has to employ the "What Is More Likely Test." Is it more likely that literally generations of christian writers were negligent and inept in that they failed to see an "authentic" TF or failed to grasp the implications of a so-called "original" TF, or, that the TF was a later forgery which was only created after their time.

I guess I don't have your faith in human nature, Roger. Seems like a pretty obvious case of forgery to me.


Peace,
Bob

Roger Pearse

Hello Bob,

Origen does know these books. But what about the others? You see, you listed a bunch of writers. What about them? Do you know that they had seen any of these books? If not, how can they refer to something contained in them?

Yet, do not such comments involve presumptions about a whole load of people whom none of us know? And that all these people had access to this long and uncommon work? E.g. I know you get Josephus off the internet, but are you certain that it was just as easy in antiquity? (Hey, are we certain it was that easy in 1990, never mind 190!?!)

But, you know, this is why I asked you to consider whether we had evidence of knowledge of the text.

Vague assertions are easy enough. But they can be rebutted just as easily. In our uneducated opinion these people 'must' have read Josephus, and 'must' have quoted him in their works. But we don't know that. The evidence before us tells a different story, you see.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

angelo

What is in question here is, can we take what was written decades later by Josephus and others as any proof of anything at all. That there were Christians around the time Josephus wrote his T/F is not in doubt. What is in doubt is, did the later Christians forge their interpretation of who Jesus was into his history. A majority of scholars seem to think so. If that's all the proof we have of a non-biblical existence of Jesus, then his historicity remains in doubt. Cheers.

Roger Pearse

Absolutely. He's our best source for all Jewish history, the Herods, the Hasmoneans -- let's throw him in the bin on grounds that we would prefer to have contemporary sources!

I think what you mean here is that you don't know of people who deny it.

There have been people -- scholars even -- who found in advantageous to do so in the past.

Current Jesus-myth stuff recognises that so doing weakens, rather than strengthens, their polemic. Instead they use this acknowledgement instead to try to transmute all data which contradicts their claim into evidence of the existence of Christians, which can then be ignored.

I would only query, you know, whether you know what a majority of scholars think? Probably you -- like most people -- are relying on hearsay from the web? Are you sure that, as someone inclined to reject the consensus of scholars, that you want to make an argument from that consensus on a different issue?

It is certainly possible to make a case based on

1. Finding excuses to ignore all the data
2. Arguing from the 'silence' so manufactured that this means non-existent

Whether we feel comfortable with this depends on how critical we are. I would suggest that ignoring all the data and then claiming there isn't any amounts to treating theory as better than data.

Rereading a couple of comments above, I sense that this thread is drifting imperceptibly towards "is the TF genuine as now found in the Greek mss". That is a different issue, and I am not expressing an opinion on it.

All the best,

Roger Pearse