Jeffrey Gibson

I thought you said that this sort of regress in asking for the credentials of those who rightly or wrongly held an opinion on Ross' "scholarship" was inappropriate vis a vis establishing the the truth of your claim that Ross had "the reputation of being a good classical scholar"?

Oxford Review?

Please don't speak to me of failure to do things. It's hypocrisy epitomized.

One thing is clear. You don't. So is something else: this is yet another dodge.

In any case, how would providing them show that you weren't just making things up when you claimed that Ross had the reputation of being a good classical scholar.

Please provide us with one citation of anyone from his time saying that he was.

Jeffrey

andrewcriddle

The review is anonymous as was usual in the Edinburgh Review and the other leading Victorian Reviews.
Edinburgh Review
The following is speculation; but given the date of 1878 the reviewer may be thinking of Supernatural Religiom first published 1874 (anonymously published by Cassels) which dated the Gospel of John in the mid-to-late 2nd century CE. The reviewer (rightly or wrongly) saw such writers as being ingenious but misguided in the same way as Ross.

Andrew Criddle

CartesianFart

I thought that the correct term for someone who studies the classics, is a philologist, not classicist (classical scholar).

mountainman

I did. It removes the burden to examine the source document authored by Ross onto one or more subsequent and "appropriate" reviewers.

Edinburgh Review and hence the comment about the state of mind of the collective reviewers at Edinburgh of the words of Thomas Aikenhead less than 200 years before Ross.


Ross had a review of his book published in the Edinburgh Review. Would the Edinburgh Review waste its time with second rate classical scholars in that year of the later 19th century? How did the pronouncement of this actual peer-review actually conclude? With the following words ...

What are we to conclude about this concluding pronouncement?


Best wishes,


Pete

Jeffrey Gibson

And yet you engaged in it!



Yes. This has been stated several times.

Well, someone who is on review committee of a noted journal "wasted his/her time" in reviewing your journal submission, and you -- notably, by your own criterion of what constitutes a classical scholar (i.e. knowing Greek and Latin) -- cannot even claim to be a classical scholar, let alone a second rate one. So you tell me.

That contrary to your (still) unsubstantiated claim, Ross did not have the reputation of being a good classical scholar at least among the editorial and reviewing staff of the Edinburgh Review, that the particular reviewer thought Ross' claim about Tacitus was very weak and not substantiated, that you see only what you want to see, and that by focusing on this conclusion some three times now, you've once again dodged the request to provide anything from anybody from Ross' time that supports your claim that he "was regarded as a very good classical scholar" and shown yourself once again as someone who stoops to fabricating "evidence" for his claims and who does not know what he is talking about.

Jeffrey

Civil1z@tion

We are to conclude that the reviewer of Ross in this case saw his work as just more crap from a looney fringe group trying to attract attention to itself. Think about it this way, the reviewer did not agree with Ross and lumped him in a category with more people he did not agree with. While polite, the review is basically saying the guy is a crank no different than any other one.

mountainman

Since the "higher criticism" of the 19th century,
historians have largely rejected the gospel of John
as a reliable source of information about the historical Jesus.[3][4]
"[M]ost commentators regard the work as anonymous."

Gospel of John

I dont think that this higher criticism was anonymous - or was it?
Who are the contempories being referred to by the reviewer?



Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

You avoid the question of why was he was published at all.
Obviously in your opinion someone made a (big) mistake.

Best wishes


Pete

Roger Pearse

As ever with 'MountainMan', his post misrepresents the source.

If you take the time to read the review, which is very lengthy and very detailed, the reviewer is far from dismissing Ross unheard, and the above paragraph has been pulled out of context.

These comments in fact follow a long discussion of Ross' thesis, in sympathetic terms, and then a detailed discussion of why it simply cannot be right, from the literature and the archaeology. They are then followed by his conclusion about the article as a whole.

I suppose those who call Ross a scholar and don't produce evidence for their claims are a fairly low form of life. But, when provided with a real example of a contemporary review, to engage in this kind of ad hominem argument to try to ignore it is the mark of a scoundrel.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

A concluding proclamation remains a concluding proclamation no matter what context you choose. It highlights the utter nievity of the age.

Who were those scoundrels in the eighteenth century to whom the reviewer compares to Ross who attempted to shake the foundation of the fourth gospel? Who were these scoundrels, since which time historians have largely rejected the gospel of John as a reliable source of information about the historical Jesus?

We now know that these eighteenth century scoundrels, the peers of Ross, who attempted to undermine the authority of the fourth gospel were actually successful in doing so in the field of ancient history.

I count this as a small blessing. These guys deserve some credit, Who were they? Does anyone know?


Best wishes


Pete