Amaleq13

I was suggesting that is precisely what Paul is doing in the passage cited. He seems to be addressing members of the Corinthian community who denied Paul's claim that the resurrection of Jesus was the "first fruits" of the general resurrection associated with The End.

Are you thinking they were only arguing against the general resurrection and not an imminent End? I suppose that is possible but your objection seems founded on a weak argument from silence. That none of the handful of surviving letters contains the specific and explicit objection you seek doesn't seem sufficient to conclude no such objection was ever raised.

On the other hand, I'm not sure why we should expect anyone to object to this particular aspect of Paul's gospel. Was claiming The End was near that controversial at the time?

Vorkosigan

That's not MacDonald's method. At all. MacDonald's argument is based on (1) the ubiquity of the homeric text in the greek world, especially for learners (2) the classical idea of mimesis (3) multipoint parallels (not single-point coincidences) and (4) linguistic matches. Some of his parallels are stronger than others. But to understand MacDonald as "he had access and here's a one-point match, it's gold" is to lapse into parody.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

The Hebrew Bible wasn't ubiquitous in Baum's world? This was contained in my argument.

The idea that the Homeric epics were more circulated in the Greek world than the Hebrew Bible was in Baum's world is laughable.

It's not reasonable to expect Baum to have both consciously selected paralles (such as Auntie Em), and have parallels that occur with broader strokes?

Then why does MacDonald have broad parallels (the sea) and more obvious ones (the fictional "sons of thunder" as an epithet for children of Zeus)? Ones that are conscious and unconscious.

There wasn't a "single point," there were two points--Auntie Em is a maternal figure, and the word "Em" is the same as the Hebrew word for mother.

And I've run the gamut. I'm missing a long list though, but I can do that too. It's really not that difficult, especially with the Bible.

It's definitely a parody, but not as far off the mark as you've made it out to be.

How about you come over to the formal debate board? Topic: Resolved: Dennis MacDonald's method is wholly reversible.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vinnie

Just saw this. Was camping and just returned. I'll try to read through it and offer some responses as time permits.

Andm y newer piece with MANY updates on methodology opccurs here:

http://www.after-hourz.net/jesusmethod.html

That is slightly different than the one posted in this thread's OP. Please consult that one.

Notice in this article I did NOT claim this saying goes back to the HJ. I merely noted a progression that goes uniformly throughout the stratums. OUr picture is neither entirely conclusive or very thorough. The sampling we do have however does outline a very clear progression and I used this example only to underline the utmost important of "source stratification" in Jesus research. It underlined why generally, "earlier is better". Why we should begin in the first stratum and so on.

I did not argue it was historical. I would have responded to both Meier and Crossan's detailed treatments of this issue had I been discussing its historicity.

Vinnie

Ted Hoffman

Vinnie,
Welcome back - hope you enjoyed your camping trip.
I quote you from your article:
And what do we have at the earliest layer?

I quote you quoting Crossan:
This clearly demonstrates the presupposition undergirding your HJ methodology. You have even explicitly stated the "aim" of HJ research.

So you assume historicity like they do. Let me quote you:
Like Crossan, who criticizes Meier then does the exact same thing that Meier is doing, you make statements you don't subscribe to.

Evidently, you and like-minded methodologists hold, as a basic presupposition, that a HJ existed. It is because of this unsupported assumption that you set the first strata's lower limit to 30CE. And its because of this limitation that you are ill-equipped to identify 'sayings' that originate from the OT (or pre 30 CE): because you assume, as a premise, that the earliest point for the 'traditions' is 30 CE.

Your statement that "Historical Jesus reasearch is aimed at getting back to the historical Jesus through layers of tradition", means this historical-mining methodology is an outfit tailored to promote a specific agenda: design wooly, wish-fulfilling layers of "traditions" and lead people down the layers to a HJ. I intend to (among other things):

(a) Criticize this approach for being flawed because its based on unjustified historical assumptions.

(b) Criticize it because it employs weak, haphazard and self-destructive criteria.

(c) Subject it to rigorous tests and show that its defective as a methodology to glean historical data from suspect or non-historical sources.

Rick,
This is what I am asking for Rick. How do you know that Matthew "placed the event in is the first half of the first century CE"?

That is all I am asking.

Vinnie

Vinnie: Historical Jesus reasearch is aimed at getting back to the historical Jesus through layers of tradition. Its only logical that one would start with the earliest material available (layers) and move on from there.

JA: And what do we have at the earliest layer?

Vinnie's Response: The earliest (ultimately) layer is the bedrock layer. Its ground zero. That would be details coming from 30 c.e. Because something is "first stratum" it does not mean it is historical. Why? There is a twenty year gap between Jesus and Paul. Thus, the earliest layer we have comes from a non-eyewitness who has extremely FEW details about Jesus to begin with. There really isn't much in the first stratum anyways.

We know developments occured early, we know very little about the oral stage (how long it lasted, we know Jesus' words were not handled precisely, we know things learnt in prayer made it in, we know there was early creativity and so on. There are pitfalls to naively using the first stratum. That is my point. Each criteria when alone has problems. That all commit a non sequitur fallacy if we go from one criteria to historicity. But each criteria also has some strengths of its own as historical tools. My methodology combines their strengths to compensate for inherant weaknesses.

Based upon source considerations my methodology tells us that where positive criteria overlapp and no negative criteria are present, we have a solid chance of it being historical. It also makes probability judgments.

JA: I quote you quoting Crossan:

Crossan Quote: JA: Quote:This clearly demonstrates the presupposition undergirding your HJ methodology. You have even explicitly stated the "aim" of HJ research.

DOn't confuse "first stratum" with "voice of Jesus". The two are not the same. Also, my methodology is tailor fitted to the sources themselves. If we had contemporary primary data I would be less stringent.

I have gone through the historicity of Jesus a hundred times before. The evidence is right there. Argument ala his followers for which some have contemporary primary data and multiple overlapping early complexes of which there are many. The nature of gospel composition from the finished product, numerous common appeals to "Jesus sayings" and so on...

"""""""""So you assume historicity like they do. Let me quote you:"""""""""

My methodology paper is about RECONSTRUCTING JESUS. It is not about DID JESUS EXIST.

Where?

I have outlined a WHOLE BUNCH of evidences for ground zero being ca. 30 c.e. elsewhere. The fact that Peter is alive in the fifties (CPD from Paul) alone is enough itself to substantiate this ground zero.

We also have nothing from the 30s. We can only reconstruct things as going back to then (e.g. Mark//Paul overlaps).

And my methodology and a proper understanding of the source material itself adequately deals with sayings of Jesus. Source considerations tell us they were not precisely memorized, handled and passed on. It tells us modifications and creativity were present.

I have written on all this here. See section 5 and 5b for the problems with the best saying we have:

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/mark.html

I am more a minimalist than virtually any "like-minded methodology" person out there. Why? I hold to my methodology.



JA: A: Can't comment on A unless you tell me what I assumed and why it is wrong.

B: The criteria in and of themselves don't tell us much. For example, two people said it so its true? Of course not. Ergo the obvious and blatant weakness of multiple attestation all by itself. I require overlap of mutual independent criteria and a lack of negative criteria for historicity.

That theoretical basing, I think, is what makes my methodology one of the more plainly laid out and consistent and harder to deviate from ones.

C: For the tests, so far someone has used 1) the garden story and 2) Robin Hood.

My methodology and the principles behind it came through with flying colors for each one. But my methodology is extra cautious granted prior source considerations. For example, if we were to stratify Garden mythology sources we see 1) its a miracle story of which miraculous is one of my negative criteria. I consider it the strongest and most solid negative criteria as well. Man walked on water? Laws of physics and buoyancy say "No he didn't". We also see 2) we only have sources for this alleged event probably several thousand years after it was supposed to have happened.

Lines of transmission are simply not there. That is the key part. Determining a ground zero for Robin Hood is also problematic and the lines of transmission were not there if my less than perfect understanding of Robin Hood sources is accurate.

Its the source considerations and my cutoff rule (where I think accurate lines of transmission can no longer be gleaned) that wouldn't even allow such events to be in consideration.

If you have any other tests for my methodology I would be happy to give them a run!

Vinnie

P.S. Thx, camping was really relaxing

ichabod crane

I think I see Rick's point - and it is an interesting one. If we accept that Paul believed that Jesus' return was imminent, and I think we seem to all agree on that, then why would the writer of Matthew portray Jesus as speaking of an imminent second coming unless he was writing relatively early (before the generation of initial believers had died out). Otherwise, if he was writing say early 2nd century, he would know that the prediction of the end that he put on Jesus' lips had failed to materialize. It seems unlikely he would want to portray Jesus as a false prophet.

The problem is not so serious for Luke, because Luke tended to rework the apocalyptic elements in the Olivet Discourse to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, rather than the end of the world. Since he knew of the destruction of Jerusalem, and that it occurred within a reasonable period of Jesus' alleged presence, he reworked the stories of Jesus' apocalyptic preaching to make them refer to that destruction, rather than the end of the world. That was a neat way of solving the problem. But Matthew presents a more acute dilemma, since although there are elements that can be taken as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem, there are other elements that are more difficult.

The only answer I can think of is that the passages in Matthew which portray Jesus as preaching an imminent second coming (e.g. Mt. 10:23, 24:34, etc.) represent sayings that were so well established in the community that there was no use in omitting or changing them. Perhaps Matthew was hoping to alter their interpretation by means of the context in which he placed them, to rehabilitate the sayings, so to speak. A good example of this is Jesus' alleged statement that "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power", which all the synoptic gospel writers, following the example of Mark, place before the transfiguration and thereby make it seem to refer to that event. By doing so they make the statement appear to be non-eschatological. The statement about "this generation" not passing away is found in both Matthew and Luke and can be traced to Q (if you believe in that). It might represent a fairly early saying which was attributed to Jesus. But that forces us to put the origin of the historicising of the Jesus Myth fairly early (say < 70 AD), which is hard to reconcile with the theory. Frankly, I don't know the answer to this question. It does seem a problem with the Jesus Myth theory.

Rick Sumner

Since this really doesn't belong on this thread, and I'm not terribly inclined to start another one unless it's on the formal board, this will be my last post on the matter.

Jacob Aliet has contended that MacDonald's method is valid. Vorkosigan has strongly implied his agreement. Neither have provided a method by which we can test this.

We must:

1) Use known dependent and independent sources in order to tell if MacDonald's method can tell the difference.

2) Discern whether it consistently extracts valid parallels (by Vorkosigan's own admission, it doesn't--MacDonald himself comes up with weak parallels utlizing his own method).

This must be done across a range of texts both relatively dependent and relatively independent. Without such a testing, there are no grounds to decree the method valid.

Jacob had acclaimed the method's validity, it should be him conducting the tests to demonstrate this. I have relieved him of the burden of proof, and gone one better--taken up the burden of proof myself. I will do so only on the formal board, as I am not persuaded that any thread on the topic here will stay on topic (Jesus-Mythicism really has no direct relationship to MacDonald's thesis).

This provides an adequate means of validating or falsifying the method. All that has been presented in its defense thus far is a condemnation of my failure to comprehensively rebut the matter with a single, flagrantly satirical example, and a new definition of special pleading that seems to run to the effect that if you agree with MacD, but disagree with Sanders, you aren't special pleading, but the converse indicates you are. I need to start inventing fallacies like that for myself--the advantage is obvious.

Failing a validating of the method--a trial to see if it can, in fact, consistently tell the relationship between texts--there is no reason to accept it. None. You can't utilize an untested criteria to show dependence on texts that we do not know for sure are related or not--it's akin to uncalibrated radio-carbon testing.

Topic: Resolved: Dennis MacDonald's method is wholly reversible. . .

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

I'm not arguing for or against the Jesus Myth theory with it, simply arguing for what you've noted--the tradition was deeply ingrained. Which would seem to indicate that Paul and Matthew got it from the same place--the Christian community.

Whether Jesus said it, or the man on the moon said it, or Animal from the Muppet Show said it doesn't change my point--it's multiply attested.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

Because he tells us so--he explicitly mentions Pilate and Caiaphas at the time.

What do you mean how do I know where he places it? If I read a book about WWII, the book is placed during WWII. If Matthew writes a book about the time when Caiaphas was high priest, and Pilate the praefect, he places it in the first half of the first century CE.

I'm not sure why this is troubling you?

Regards,
Rick Sumner