jjramsey

Then you ought to propose a realistic scenario where such a forgery would be useful. You have yet to fulfill the "realistic" part.

Pardon me if I find it unlikely that a debate that supposedly broiled in Christianity for several decades would escape the notice of a prominent bishop.

spin

I must admit I don't really have much of an opinion. Your conjectures sound reasonable given the textual indications, though, assuming the genuineness of the exchange, I don't know how far we could trust Pliny's interlocutors. (I'm ambivalent about the veracity of the Pliny/Trajan exchange, given that I see Tacitus A.5.44 as spurious, the TF as spurious, as I see Suetonius's criminal christians; I see no inherent problems with Pliny.) I have always argued that Mk was probably written in Rome, though I don't know when. If the question is related to Josephus, I doubt whether he would have been interested, if he knew anything at all about it, in a gentile group which had borrowed a number of Jewish trappings for a mystery cult (be that it may have been started by Jews).


spin

Doug Shaver

Pardon me if I think your objection is irrelevant. I am claiming nothing specific about either the duration or the intensity of the debate. You're the one insisting that had there been one, it would have been so intense, or lasted so long, that we would certainly have some unambiguous evidence of it.

It doesn't make a bit of difference whether you or I would have thought it realistic. All that mattered was that the scribe thought it was realistic to hope that his effort might advance the cause. Pope Benedict seems to think it realistic to suppose that if Christians pray for peace, their prayers might bring an end to war. Obviously, I think he is very mistaken, but I dont think he is an idiot.

But, I've been forgetting something, too. I don't recall whether you, I, or someone else first brought it up, but as soon as you mentioned the forger's trying to persuade pagans, my attention latched on to that. What I overlooked was my realization within the past few years that the function of apologetics rarely is to convert unbelievers. Apologetics generally, it seems to me, functions instead to maintain the faith of those who already believe. Apologists might ostensibly be addressing their remarks to skeptics, but what they're really doing for the most part is telling other Christians that they may freely and safely disregard anything the skeptics have to say to them. That is how it is nowadays, and I know of no reason to think it was any different in Christianity's early days.

This is not to deny that apologists wish to convert unbelievers. They surely do hope they will. But it is not necessary that they succeed. What is sufficient for apologetics is that believers with doubts be persuaded that their doubts are without merit.

spin

I have suggested that the original text involved James who seems necessary for the narrative of the paragraph, supplying a reason for Ananus losing the high priesthood. What causes me difficulties is the nexus of problems relating to "the brother of Jesus called christ". Excise it and make minimal adjustments we get "a (certain) man, James his name" and the text reads without problems. This alleviates all the difficulties I listed earlier without the need to accuse anyone of anything untoward. We have a simple marginal annotation regarding James as "brother of Jesus called christ" which was incorporated into the text by a later scribe who thought it was an omission. This seems to me the most likely explanation for how we got the problematic qualifier for James. The Jesus, son of Damneus, requires substantive alteration to the text, which seems far less probable, as it implies impropriety and doesn't reflect the majority of textual changes I've seen, which are mainly expansions, rather than substantive altering of what is already there.


spin

aa5874

I found some curious passages from Eusebius in Church History 4.5 with respect to the Bishops of Jerusalem.

Church History 4.5.1
But then immediately, the very next line, Eusebius claimed he did learn from writings about fifteen bishops.

Church History 4.5.2
But in giving the names of the bishops of Jerusalem, Eusebius says that James, is the so-called brother of Jesus, seems like he is not too sure.

Church History 4.5.3
So, initially he could find no writing at all of the chronology of the bishops of Jerusalem, but immediately produces the names of 15 bishops in chronological order, and then call James the so-called brother of the Lord. Very curious.

Ben C Smith

What exactly is the son of David clarity that you see as having been added after Mark? I am not familiar with that phrase.

Once again, you are having to do weird things with the Pauline corpus in order to make such arguments; in Romans 1.3-4; 2 Corinthians 1.19; Galatians 2.20; and other passages the idea that Jesus is the son of God is already embedded.

See also Hebrews, 1 John, and Revelation.

Wars 3.7.21 §229.

So I am a partisan for the party that thinks it can palm off multiple corruption problems? Frankly, I think you have misused the term partisan.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Lots of the fathers were not too sure that James was the brother of Jesus; many preferred to see them as half-brothers or cousins. A byproduct of the doctrinal disputes of the time.

Ben.

jjramsey

I had read you as suggesting that the debate extending into late second century, or early third, but looking back, you were suggesting that the gospels had not been widely disseminated until that time. Again, though, during that time, the church fathers were referring to the Gospels themselves, and Irenaeus in Against Heresies, Chapter III. "Texts of Holy Scripture used by these heretics to support their opinions", was describing how the heretics were using these Gospels, which indicates that his opposition had access to the Gospels as well and were expounding on them.

I simply insist that we have little warrant for supposing that it would have been treated much differently than the other controversies.

And again, you have not demonstrated that a scribe would think such. There is a huge difference between believing that there is a God who listens to prayers and acting accordingly, and not thinking through the mechanics of getting a forgery to serve its purpose.

And still, you have to establish that the scribe thought it was realistic to hope that his effort might actually help the apologists.

spin

The notion of Jesus as son of David was made clear by the time the genealogies were added to the gospels.

Perhaps you have a clearer idea of the relationship between the gospels and Paul. However, the progression we see is from ambivalence in Mk re Jesus being son of David to Mt's bold declaration of Davidic sonship in 1:1 (along with the genealogies), the significance of which gets clouded in phrases such as Mt 1:16. Then again, Paul depicts Jesus as son of David according to the flesh who gets declared son of god in Rom 1:3-4. That should clarify Paul's position regarding the terms. However, the gospels have had the notion changed (though not from someone declared son of god, for the notion I don't think is found in the gospels at all), but from real son of David to someone born son of god, rendering the genealogies meaningless.

And how do they relate chronologically to the gospels?

Ben C, this is not a parallel to the problematic structure. The first information we have is of "a man who was worthy of record and remembrance among the Jews." Only after this do we get information about his father. The only thing its favor is that the father's name comes before the man's, but the man isn't being introduced simply by a fronted patronymic.

With the exception of the Pliny reference to christians, all the mentions of christ and christians in pagan literature of the turn of the second century are suspect. That is not strange given the fact that pagan literature was maintained for many centuries by christians. What is strange is intimating that the number of claims of interpolations is significant, as you do. Perhaps the number of claims is significant: perhaps I might have expected more.


spin

Ben C Smith

Exactly. Paul acknowledged that Jesus was son of David, but repeatedly asserts that he was son of God. (And I doubt Josephus would be inclined to credit either of these.) My point, which was that Christians called him son of God more often than son of his father (Joseph), and that therefore it is not surprising that Josephus should not know the name of his father (and by extension the name of the father of James), is completely on target, even here on your own showing.

You claimed that identifying James by his brother was problematic, but you gave an exception, to wit, any case when the name of the father is not known. It is patently obvious that Jesus and James have every reason to fall into that exception; therefore your objection is groundless.

I think Hebrews predates 70. The others are less certain. But the point is that Christians customarily referred to Jesus as son of God more than as son of some human father. This tendency is hardly disputable.

More overqualification. A certain man worthy of remembrance is not a personal identifier, any more than the certain men who get stoned along with James. The identification of the man begins in this case with the naming of his father.

My own impression is that pagan and Jewish literature is virtually studded with Christian interpolations, marginal notes, and forgeries, and also with Christian assertions of content that are mistaken. Many of these are not all that widely known, since they are easily recognized as such and do not make it into the more widely distributed editions (remaining as footnotes even in many of the critical editions). The James reference in Josephus, the Christ reference in Tacitus, the Christian reference in Pliny, the Christian reference in Suetonius, and the crucified sophist in Lucian are the earliest references that do not look forged. Every argument that makes, say, the TF look like a Christian forgery or modification fails with, say, the James reference, and one is therefore forced to resort to what you have to do, which is to overqualify arguments.

Ben.