Vorkosigan

Remember what I told you before? This is what makes you so tiresome to deal with, because you only understand events in terms of either "truth or conspiracy." It's very reasonable to see that a forged passage that spoke of Jesus would find its way into all extant manuscripts of Josephus without positing any conspiracy at all. Just basic common sense.

As we know, people who quote accurately never fabricate.

Peter Kirby's review article on the TF is excellent

• In short, there is not much critical argumentation here, but rather some almost sensationalistic claims, with a purely negative defense emphasizing how late and adulterated the Arabic recension really is. Meier stays within the confines of mainstream scholarship in writing:
  
  " Feldman (Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 701) believes that Agapius used both Josephus and other sources and combined them: "We may...conclude that Agapius' excerpt is hardly decisive, since it contains several elements, notably changes in order, that indicate that it is a paraphrase rather than a translation." Nodet ("Jesus et Jean-Baptist selon Josephe") thinks that Agapius represents a deformed tradition of the Eusebius text found in the Ecclesiastical History (pp. 335-36). Personally, I am doubtful that this 10th-century Arabic manuscript preserves the original form of the Testimonium, especially since it contains sentences that, as I have just argued, are probably later expansions or variants of the text. (pp. 78-79)"
  
  One might add that this phrase of Agapius' version -- "Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die" -- seems clearly directed against Muslims who held that Jesus was not killed by crucifixion. It is not even certain that Agapius is quoting straight from a manuscript; and if he is, it is certainly very late and corrupted, and thus practically worthless.

You know that there was no real concern with this because....?

Also, given that all of the epistles in the NT are forged except for the half-dozen authentic ones of Paul, and that extensive redacting and editing has been performed on the Gospel texts.....

Vorkosigan

Steven Avery

We can get back to our discussion if you want (you situation is quite different.. it takes a while to flesh out your theories, and at least I enjoyed and appreciated the fact that you worked with the back-and-forth a bit, sincerely) ... however in this case it is 100% clear that rologan is talking in a mind-warping conspiratorial fervor, and with a singular purpose of attacking Eusebius in the most tawdry and scurrilous fashion, and for this he will use an insipid methodology of accusation.

Beyond that you offer little to the discussion, except to try to be a diversion cover for the lack of integrity.

While enjoying Peter's pages, of course I could offer interesting links as well, with various fascinating theories and discussions about both Josephus passages.

http://www.textexcavation.com/josephustestimonium.html
Josephus on Jesus and James - Ben C. Smith

http://www.uncc.edu/jdtabor/james.html
Josephus on the Death of James brother of Jesus, in 62 C.E.

And I found it quite amusing that when the newbie the other day mentioned Josephus there were about five different skeptics jumping on him and attacking the Testimonium in a bunch of ways, none even mentioned the James verse (eventually Roger Pearse brought it up), which is generally universally accepted in scholarship circles. The recent hot attacks against the James verse came almost entirely from the mythicists, who have to accuse it of being a forgery because if it is not, they would simply have to close up their shops. It's challenge is that it simply represents a direct falsification of all of their claims, no if-ands-and-buts. In a similar way the little archaelogical find with the recent crosses and apparent spiritual appeals to Jesus on Jewish 1st century ossuaries represents a similar challenge. Of course the mythicists will respond to such challenges, and that is their right, and they may even offer decent counterpoints, but let's remember that they will look for any explanation, since in cases like the James passage the acceptance of the most Occamish understanding simply means closing down business.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

rlogan

Decorum frowns on me stating things like I could not care less what you think. Or write.

On the other hand, perhaps there should be a reason for not interacting.

It isn't just that it is obvious from a review of the apologetics. It is that I have done my time as a blinded gospel singer and bible thumping parrot.

So I know what we're dealing with here, and it just is not worth the effort.


May alla bless you. :wave:

Steven Avery

Understood. There was no expectation that you would like my expose of your accusation.

Tis true, Rlogan that you got caught in a spirit of false accusation. You strained logic, common sense, and every type of sensible discussion in order to launch your tirade from NT antipathy through Josephus Testimonium theories over to Eusebuius scholarship to fight NT authenticity.

Yep, you can play that to the rah-rah'ers here, with mixed success, however when you streettchhhh logic so far, simply to manufacture and fabricate a tawdry accusation, it leaves a noticable odiferous residue.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Toto

This is a bit of fanciful thinking in itself. Eusebius is not considered to be a consumately careful or accurate scholar even by his defenders - merely honestly gullible or sloppy, or doing his best to balance the political stance of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

I refer you back to some exhaustive threads on Eusebius:

Eusebius the Liar

The Josephus Passage

Vorkosigan

Of course it is a forgery. If one passage is, the other must be. I do not worry that authenticity is the majority position of scholars, since no one has a methodology to confirm it. Hence, the majority opinion has no meaning, especially given the fact that virtually all NT scholars are Christians who have taken an oath that Jesus was a historical person.

My own reading is that the "Jesus" reference was to the Jesus mentioned further down in the passage -- Josephus was explaining how it was that Jesus Damneus became the High Priest, and has been written over by Christian interpolators. Of course there is no way to prove that <shrug>. I am agnostic on Eusebius' forgery of the TF, especially since reading Atwill's analysis of it in conjunction with the paragraphs around it, which together form a very neat parody of early Christianity, one which Eusebius would have had very little motive to create. Even if the original Josephus had no TF but did contain the two passages about the cheated women, it would still take a snarky sense of humor to put the TF where it is, something I do not attribute to Eusebius. But KO has put together a very interesting case for Eusebian forgery.

Vorkosigan

Steven Avery

Accurate with high scholarship and quoting standards then, as discussed above by Roger.

Where one can see again that when skeptics want to throw out accusastions of lying without substance, they don't let integrity get in their way.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Toto

Steven, you have a way of slinging insults that don't quite hit the mark.

Surely after reading those threads it is clear that charges of lying are not without substance. Eusebius endorses the Platonic "Royal Lie," and Bede was forced into verbal gymnastics to try to save Eusebius' reputation.

And please be explicit about who demonstrates a lack of integrity and where, or withdraw that comment.

Roger Pearse

Thank you for the support. But I would qualify this: I'm not sure that 'careful and accurate' is a correct description of Eusebius, any more than most ancient writers. He's no worse than anyone else, but the standards of care and accuracy that we expect are the product of centuries of development, including the development of reference materials and methods of referencing. However Eusebius initiated various trends within that process, and the lack of recognition of this is curious.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Book 12 of the Praeparatio is going through Plato -- mostly the Laws but also chunks from the Republic looking at these passages on the education of the young, and commenting how the bible actually implements some of Plato's idealistic proposals. The 'fit' between the two isn't very good, but that's a weakness of Eusebius' argument, rather than a problem for us.

I have scanned this work, which is online here, and I really suggest you have a read of book 12 from the start. It may help.

The passage in chapter 31 involves a quote from the Laws, where the word 'pseudos' is rendered 'fiction' in the Loeb text. We can render it throughout the chapter either as 'lie' (as Richard Carrier does) or 'fiction' (as I think we should). If we do the former, we must presume Eusebius is saying the bible is lying; so strange a view requires more than one ambiguous passage to support it. If we follow my suggestion, the whole chapter then becomes about how to teach dense people, which makes sense.

But form your own opinion, by all means.

Which part of book 1 of the Demonstratio do you have in mind? And, since that is the stated purpose of that work, I'm unclear how this would prove him dishonest.

Since he is doing this in different works, I don't see why.

J. Carleton Paget in the Journal of Theological Studies in 2001 says that the idea that Eusebius composed the TF is only held by Ken Olsen (who I believe is a mythicist) and rejected by all other scholars.

But I don't know that I have anything special to offer on the TF.

All the best,

Roger Pearse