badger3k

I'm in chapter 7, on page 427 out of 639, and so far haven't seen any of these answers, just lots of assertions and rhetorical tricks. It's fine to be confident in your position, but to me, he goes way beyond that. He has some interesting points, but overall I'm not impressed with his sophomoric attempts at establishing himself as "The Authority". His overconfidence might be necessary in a polemic, or when all he wants to do is convince people into believing him like a sideshow huckster or televangelist, but in a scholar I'd prefer more honesty. Maybe my standards are too high, but I think the field has too much uncertainty for anyone to claim proof as he is doing here.

JonA

If Tacitus held Jesus' existence as a piece of knowledge then it would be dishonest for anyone reporting on the matter to downplay Tacitus' certainty, whether Tacitus was right or wrong. And, in fact, Ehrman address the possibility of Tacitus being wrong (and even cites an error):

[HR="1"]100[/HR]
Bart D. Ehrman in Did Jesus Exist? (2012):

At the same time, the information is not particularly helpful in establishing that there really lived a man named Jesus. How would Tacitus know what he knew? It is pretty obvious that he had heard of Jesus, but he was writing some eighty0five years after Jesus would have died, and by that time Christians were certainly telling stories of Jesus (the Gospels had been written already, for example), whether the mythicists are wrong or right. It should be clear in any event that Tacitus is basing his comment about Jesus on hearsay rather than, say, detailed historical research. Had he done serious research, one might have expected him to say more, if even just a bit. But even more to the point, brief though his comment is, Tacitus is precisely wrong with one thing he says. He calls Pilate the "procurator" of Judea. We now know from the inscription discovered in 1961 at Caesarea that as governor, Pilate had the title and rank, not of procurator (one who dealt principally with revenue collection), but of prefect (one who also had military forces at his command). This much show that Tacitus did not look up any official record of what happened to Jesus, written at the time of his execution (if in fact such a record ever existed, which is highly doubtful). He therefore had heard the information. Whether he heard it from Christians or someone else is anyone's guess. (pp. 55–56)¹

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

In this, Ehrman has devoted an entire one third of his section on Tacitus to a discussion of Tacitus' lack of credibility and reliability on the matter of Jesus' actual existence.

What more skepticism could you ask for?

And this is essentially what Ehrman says, again:

[HR="1"]100[/HR]Ehrman (2012):

The Gospel writers—anonymous Greek-speaking Christians living thirty-five to sixty-five years after the traditional date of Jesus's death—were simply writing down episodes that they had heard from the life of Jesus. Some of these episodes may be historically accurate, others may not be. (pp.72–73)

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

Once again:

[HR="1"]100[/HR]Ehrman (2012):

Many conservative Christian scholars use this statement to prove that what Papias says is historically accurate (especially about Mark and Matthew), but that is going beyond what the evidence gives us. (p. 100)

[HR="1"]100[/HR]

Can they can all be addressed by simply quoting a portion of the book one to two paragraphs before the section you quote in your notes where Ehrman actually shows the skepticism you accuse him of not having?

No thanks.

Jon
__________
¹ Page numbers refer to hardcover printed edition.

Solo

Well what do we know about the Tacitus evidence, Don ? We don't know if Tacitus source were Christians, do we ? If the source were Christians, we don't know if the "Christians" martyred by Nero were really "Christians" that Tacitus talked to, or messianists that had no connection to Jesus Christ, do we ? We do not know if the Christians, like many counter-culture cults, used the "naive reading" of their scriptures as history, to dissimulate and mislead non-believers, do we ?

This might sound trite but it is a big point. In May 1945, at the end of WWII., an uprising led mostly by communists in Prague (like in Paris in Aug 1944), was in trouble because the German occupiers had enormous resources and were determined to get as much in the endgame as possible to win better terms in their surrender. Thousands of Czech fighters, and tens of thousands civilians, would have died if it had not been for the Vlasov army (with the Schoerner divisions, the only other relatively intact battle-ready group that Nazi's had left) turning on their employers and forcing the bulk of them to flee to American captivity. So, Prague was "saved" by the traitors of the USSR, who in the end betrayed their new masters also, evidently to save their own skin. Everyone knew that. Yet, almost immediately, the commies started their own version of the liberation in which it was the Red Army that repelled the attack. In 1948 the commies staged a putsch and took over. By 1950, if you claimed that their version of history was an egregious lie, you were a self-identified enemy of the people, likely a Nazi werewolf, or a Bandera spy and in a desperate need of re-education in gulag. The scripture said that Prague was liberated by the Red Army.

To put it in perspective: what Ehrman presents as evidence for historical existence of Jesus (said to be of Nazaret/Nazara/Nazareth) is no evidence at all. It's a rehash of pseudo-arguments he was taught at Moody Bible Institute which he now cross-dresses as historical positivist "science" that cannot be disputed. Bultman and Dibelius, whom he falsely intimates share in the methodology of his viewpoint, both said specifically that Jesus' of the gospels could not be authenticated by methods of modern, objective historical inquiry. But Ehrman is not behind the 1940's, he falls behind the 1840's idea of history. As Constantin von Tischendorf, the discoverer of Sinaiticus, said : "We must frankly admit that we have no source of information with respect to the life of Jesus Christ other than ecclesiastic writings assembled during the fourth century."

Best,
Jiri

judge

Yes maybe there were two messianists around the same time, Jesus christ, and some other guy never ever heard of again.
And both of these guys were thought to have been executed under Pilate.

aa5874

Pilate only crucified one obscure guy named Jesus. :devil1:

GakuseiDon

Sure. Questions can be raised about most texts. But my point is that whatever our understanding -- whether "Tacitus wrote this" or "Tacitus meant that" or "Tacitus didn't write this" or "Tacitus didn't mean that" -- it needs to be factored in as data for whatever theory one has on Christian origins. If a mythicist believes that Tacitus wrote the passage in question, it needs to be factored in. It means that somehow the beliefs of Christianity had changed by the time of Tacitus.

la70119

Actually, that is exactly how they wrote back then when they were careful: in all caps. Otherwise it was chicken scratches.

andrewcriddle

Hi Jiri


Can you give a source for the Tischendorf quote ?

I've been unable to track it down, and given Tischendorf's very conservative position on these issues it seems unlikely. (For Tischendorf see whenwereourgospelswritten originofthefourgospels )

I suspect that the bit about assembled during the fourth century is particularly problematic.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

It seems to come from this website:

After years of dedicated New Testament research, Dr Tischendorf expressed dismay at the differences between the oldest and newest Gospels, and had trouble understanding...

"... how scribes could allow themselves to bring in here and there changes which were not simply verbal ones, but such as materially affected the very meaning and, what is worse still, did not shrink from cutting out a passage or inserting one." (Alterations to the Sinai Bible, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1863, available in the British Library, London)

The page identifies the writer as by Tony Bushby, who publishes Nexus Magazine, and says the page is extracted from Bushby's article "The Forged Origins of the New Testament," in Volume 14, Number 4 (June - July 2007)

The website, Biblioteca Pleyades, claims to have had 2,560,704 visitors since July 14, 2003.

"This site contains copyrighted material encountered in the Internet, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.

We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economy, democracy, scientific and social justice issues, etc...

We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law."

The article supports the claims of Eduard Bordeux Szekely, and is spammed all over the internet. Anyhow, no such English title exists as far as I can tell, but the publication date is the same as:

Novum testamentum sinaiticum : sive, Novum testamentum cum Epistula Barnabae et fragmentis Pastoris, ex Codice sinaitico : auspiciis Alexandri II. omnium Russiarum imperatoris ex tenebris protracto orbique litterarum tradito / accurate descripsit Aenotheus Fridericus Constantinus Tischendorf Lipsiae : Brockhaus, 1863

Sinaiticus New Testament: or, New Testament with Epistle of Barnabas and fragments of the Shepherd, from the Codex Sinaiticus: under the auspices of Alexander II. Emperor of all Russia.

I believe the book above is actually vol 4 of:

Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. / auspiciis augustissimis imperatoris Alexandri II. ex tenebris protraxit in Europam transtulit ad iuvandas atque illustrandas sacras litteras edidit Constantinus Tischendorf, Petropoli; [Lipsiae : Typis exscriptserunt Giesecke et Devrient], 1862
v. 1. Prolegomena. Commentarius. Tabulae -- v. 2. Veteris Testamenti pars prior -- v. 3. Veteris Testamenti pars posterior -- v. 4. Novum Testamentum com Barnaba et Pastore

The name used in the article, "Alterations to the Sinai Bible" is probably a chapter heading from volume 1. Now that I think of it, the comment seems to have more to do with the scribes who made corrections to the original text, which in the case of one corrector Tischendorf did think corrections were made helter skelter from both older and younger exemplars without rhyme or reason.

DCH

andrewcriddle

I think the quote may be related to this passage from When were our Gospels written ? There is no reference here to material assembled in the fourth century.

Andrew Criddle