Joe Atwill

Hi Jay:

The parallels you use in your “King Kong” analogy (though witty) are not meaningful from the perspective of probability and have no analytic value relative to the thesis in Caesar’s Messiah. None of the parallels between Titus and Kong you have invented would be detected by random sampling of readers– will be reliably seen by groups of readers chosen at random – but every one of the ones I show between Jesus and Titus would be. (I have done the tests)

Parallels that can be reliably selected by such random sampling are rare – are improbable – though they can occur accidentally. An example of such accidental parallels would be the famous Lincoln/Kennedy ones. However, parallels that were created accidentally are, by definition, subject to the rules of probability concerning random events and they will therefore not occur in the same order. This is, of course, the principal behind DNA evidence.

As an example of how to test this methodology simply take the passage below from Josephus and place it into twenty other passages from Josephus selected at random. Then ask a series of readers to pick the passage most parallel to Luke 23: 32-53. You will find that Josephus’s crucifixion story will be selected most often as the passage closest to Jesus’s crucifixion story. (In fact it is the closest parallel to Jesus’s crucifixion in literature, and this is without recognizing that the last names of the ‘Josephs’ are homophones – ‘Bar Matthias and ‘Arimathea’.)

And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered. Josephus Life 75

Next repeat the process for rest of the parallels – ‘fishing for men on the sea of Galilee’ – ‘the son of Mary who is a human Passover lamb’ etc. Then work out the sequence for each stream of events and you will see that they occur in the same order, and were thus deliberately created.

Notice that this methodology is correct in that it would detect the incontrovertible parallels between Jesus and Moses used in Matthew to typologically map Jesus’s childhood unto Moses, but will not produce false positives (it will not detect false sequences like the one you invented between Kong and Titus). This is why we can be certain that the parallels between Jesus and Titus are dependant – that is to say that one sequence is based upon the other. Literary parallels such as the ones between Jesus and Titus that can be detected by random sampling above the percentage expected by randomness will not occur in the same order accidentally.

Hope this is clarifying.

Joe Atwill

Joe Atwill

I thought it might be amusing to have a discussion of the bold faced confession by the Flavians that they invented ‘Jesus’ and produced the Gospels.

The confession is found in Josephus’s version of a human Passover Lamb, (B J 6, 201-219) Josephus describes the ‘son of Mary who is eaten as a Passover lamb’ as a “mythos” or ‘myth for the world’ (B J 6. 207) whose killing will be seen as a “mysos” (B J 6, 212) or atrocity that will be responded to by the Romans with “misos” (B J 6.214) or hatred.

Like Jesus, the child in the passage can be seen as a human Passover Lamb. He is flatly described as the ‘roasted sacrifice of the house of hyssop’ an obvious depiction of a Passover lamb. Obviously the concepts that can be used to create a human Passover Lamb are few. To find these concepts in a short passage that also describes the human Passover lamb as a ‘myth for the world’, who’s killing will be seen as an ‘atrocity’, that will produce ‘hatred’ of the Jews is unlikely to have been circumstantial.

I mean, gee, sure sounds like Josephus is describing Jesus doesn’t it?

Scholars as far back as Melito have understood that the child in Josephus’s passage was a symbolic Passover Lamb. Thus, as I see it, for NT scholars to not have not even tried to link a human Passover Lamb that is a “myth for the world” whose killing will be seen as an ‘atrocity’ that will create ‘hatred’ of the Jews to the Gospels is more than merely bad analytic technique, it is a breakdown in human intelligence.

Any thoughts?

Joe Atwill

Malachi151

Mr. Atwill,

What you say may be true, but your final conclusion still does not follow. Here are a few things we need to take into account.

1) Mark was written first, and your parallels don't show in Mark.
2) The author of Luke states explicitly that he is writing his gospel from other historical references, so it is reasonable that "Luke" USED War or Antiquities.

That Josephus was used as a reference or even to pattern the events on, doesn't mean that the writers of the gospels were Romans crafting a religion to try and lead the Jews into worshiping their Emperor, and if this was their goal, they obviously failed miserably, since they had to go to such trouble to get Christians to worship the Emperor, and they had more problems with Christians than they had with Jews.

So, yeah, the parallels are there, but I think you need a different explanation of what that means.

By the way, thanks for posting here.

Malachi151

Can you provide some links and better quotes? I'm having trouble with this.

So far I have found:

http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-6.htm

I'm not sure I see the parallel to the gospels here....

Joe Atwill

Malachi151:

Have you read CM? The parallels are in Mark and an explanation of connections between the two human Passover lambs. Also see "A Myth for the World" by Honara Chapman - it's on the web,

Joe

aa5874

Is it Mark was written first or Mark is accepted as being written first? Is the date of the writing of Mark written in stone?

When I look at dates of the writing of Mark, I see about a 10 year difference, 60-70 CE, but I am of the opinion that at least some passages were written after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem, 70 CE.

I assert that Jesus was a mythical figure and was fabricated by unknown authors, so all the words that were claimed to be of Jesus are those of the fabricators.

Now, if Jesus is said to have prophesied the fall of the Temple in Mark, then that prophecy is false and means that the authors of Mark were writing after the fall of the Temple.

Look at Mark 13:1-2, 'And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buidings are here!
And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon, that shall not be thrown down.

Those 2 verses, in my opinion, has shown the authors were writing after the fall of the Temple, because there was no person named Jesus, who could have fore-told such an event.

gstafleu

If the target sample is the only one among the 21 that is about crucifixion the test would be biased. Plus you'd need controls that show the target sample is not for some reason extra pick-outable. Is there a methodology chapter in your book that explains exactly what you did?

Gerard Stafleu

Joe Atwill

Gerard:

To your point:

“If the target sample is the only one among the 21 that is about crucifixion the test would be biased.”

No, the test would not be biased; in fact this is the whole point. If there are a series of “extra pick able” events that occur in the same sequence as their parallels, it is unlikely that they occurred by random. The only question is how unlikely the sequence is, not whether or not it is improbable.

In the case it would it not make any difference as the story is the closest parallel to the crucifixion story in literature. Notice that the passage in Josephus combines the following elements found in the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. A group of three being crucified, taken down from cross by ‘Joseph’, the Josephs’ last names are a homophone - ‘bar mathias’ ‘Arimathea’, one survives from the group of thre, and an appeal to supreme Roman commander.

Can you cite another passage that might even be considered a close second?

To your question:

“Is there a methodology chapter in your book that explains exactly what you did?”

No, I ran the tests after the book was released because I was asked to by a number of readers of CM.

Joe

PhilosopherJay

Hi Joe,

I grant that the test would be successful. I grant that the parallel scenes you picked between Josephus and the gospels objectively have more parallel elements than other scenes within Josephus. We would expect to find the same thing in any two literary works we compared. Some episodes would match more closely than other episodes.

As far as the chronological matching goes, the four gospels all give different chronologies. For example, Mark has a fishing scene in chapter one, while Matthew has a fishing later in chapter 4. Luke in chapter 5, John has a fishing scene in chapter 21,the last chapter. No matter where you find a fishing scene in Josephus, beginning, middle or end, you can always find a parallel fishing scene in the gospels to match it.

It is hard to imagine any two works the length of the complete gospels and Josephus' Wars where you could not find ten events with certain parallels presented in the same order. We may compare it to all the things that two people do in a day. Because two people both 1)wake up, 2)brush their teeth, 3) eat breakfast, 4) go to work, 5) work, 6) stop work and eat lunch, 7) go back to work, 8) go home, 9)eat dinner and 10) go to sleep; we need not suppose that one person is copying the other or that there is any conscious connection between them.

A better test would be to find ten events in another independent work of the period, let's say Lucius Apuleius' novel "The Golden Ass" (or Philostratus' "Life of Appolonius",) and find ten parallel events between it and the gospels that occur in the same order. Then have independent readers see if they detect more similarity between the parallels found in Josephus or Apuleius (or Philostratus).


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

“A Myth for the World”: Early Christian Reception of Infanticide and Cannibalism. in Josephus, Bellum Judaicum 6.199-219. Honora H. Chapman, Santa Clara University, Oct. 2000
http://josephus.yorku.ca/pdf/chapman2000.pdf