jdl

Roger Viklund has a blog post up -- Did Paul write that the Jews killed Jesus? -- wherein he notices something rather amusing in Did Jesus Exist?, i.e. that one of Ehrman's arguments against interpolation in 1 Thessalonians can be turned against him in respect of his reconstructed TF.

Ehrman:
Viklund:
I recommend the whole post, but IMO that was the highlight.

Joseph

graymouser

Here's a quick hint. If you can think of a ready answer to the last rhetorical question, maybe the substitution game didn't quite work like you intended it to.

sotto voce

Palpable nonsense. Jerusalem, Temple, priests and all the paraphernalia had been redundant since the Temple curtain had been torn in two.

jdl

Well, it succeeded at amusing me, which is all that really matters. You know what else amuses me? Ehrman's scholarly discussion of sherbet and ice cream.
But you know what they say, small things amuse small minds.

Now, did you actually intend to make a counter argument, or are you quite satisfied with your vague, unelaborated dismissal? Because it hasn't removed the problem that Ehrman is happy to conjecturally emend when it suits him, only to become more cautious when it doesn't.

Joseph

Diogenes the Cynic

Ehrman does not argue for the authenticity of the TF and specifically says it is NOT evidence for HJ, so Viklund's whole premise is flawed.

jdl

I've read the book, Diogenes. Ehrman clearly does argue for an authentic core. He says "It is far more likely that the core of the passage does go back to Josephus himself."

Joseph

graymouser

Honestly, I hoped you'd figure it out on your own. Ah well.

The rhetorical question has an obvious answer with the longer TF: it's obvious to any textual critic why Christian scribes would favor the interpolated version, and it's well-known why non-Christians did not copy Josephus. All of our copies are from well after So we know why an interpolated version would be in circulation but a non-interpolated version would be missing. It's certain that it's an interpolation of some sort, given that it's totally out of character for Josephus; I mean, it confirms that Jesus was the Christ and that he was resurrected. So there is as solid of a case for the TF not being original as you can get short of a copy of Josephus with a missing or shorter TF.

If you want to be able to engage with textual criticism, you should be able to tell the difference between a passage that may as well have a sign on it saying "Hi! I'm an interpolation" and a verse controversial in its content where the case is far from obvious.

Toto

Most people read that passage in 1 Thess and think it might as well have a sign saying "Interpolation here!" It is the only passage where Paul's attitude towards the Jews displays such anger and talk of God's wrath, as opposed to the hope that they will one day see his point. And it seems to refer to the destruction of the Temple, after Paul's alleged death. The scholarly consensus among non-mythicists is that this passage is in fact an interpolation, one that sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb. Ehrman's analysis is very puzzling here.

stephan huller

Yet the ancient witnesses to the material is very strong - much stronger than many other passages in the Pauline material (as I demonstrate on Roger's site). Also, who knows when Paul was a missionary? The Marcionites say Paul wrote the gospel in some form by revelation. The gospels themselves indicate that they were written around the time of the destruction. It's only Acts and the added personal correspondence sections at the beginning and end of letters (which were not present in the Marcionite recensions) which make any reference to Paul living in the so-called 'apostolic era.' There is no way to determine when Paul wrote outside of the spurious codex of the Catholic tradition (cf. Megethius, Adamantius Dialogues where the Marcionite says that none of the people who wrote the Catholic gospels saw Jesus in the flesh). Who cares what the 'mythicists' say. A lot of their opinions are even stupider than the historicists. What matters is what the ancient witnesses say. When Catholic witnesses are taken alongside witnesses of the traditions outside of the great Church there is no clear consensus on the missionary activities of Paul or indeed when the gospels were written or by whom for that matter.

sotto voce

As so often, Paul (and no doubt Silas) was coolly using the promises of Moses to confirm the epochal change that Jesus had anyway said was imminent. There's no trace of anger here. The persecution of prophets had been no mistake; the crucifixion of Jesus had been no mistake, as perhaps some had thought, and as some say, even now. The rejection of the church from the synagogues, predicted by Jesus, confirmed that there was no mistake. Jews deliberately hated their own Messiah, in this perspective. And now, Jews in Thessalonica were actively persecuting the church, more than Gentiles were doing. There is sadness if not shock that those who were chosen by God to be his own 'royal' messengers were actually assaulting those messengers; and their violence proved that they could not be the messengers of God. This cannot be interpolation. It is contextual, momentous, inevitable, sober record of terrible culmination of a millennium-old dispensation. As perceived, of course. Any other assessment does it injustice.