spin

I wish you'd stop this drive-by then self-ban routine. You forget much of what is said in this forum. For some reason you seem to think that Tacitus is basically new information. Rather it is old and haggard and you still refuse to deal with its content other than in a naive-literalist manner.

If you attempt to demonstrate "multiple independent attestation" you'll find your guts drop out. Perhaps you too want to stick your head in the dirt and plead that there has never been such thing as christian cultural hegemony. Pleading multiple independent attestation of christian matters from within that cultural hegemony is equivalent to babbling meaninglessly.

Tripping over your assumptions once again. Christians it seems are so incapable of writing anything in the voice of someone who is not christian. I thought that there have been so many christian fakes you'd get over this sort of tedious assumption of desires.

As to labeling the material ad hoc, you have never attempted to deal with the principal issues so it's unlikely you'd be in a position to know.

ApostateAbe

OK, thanks for that.
No, it isn't. Obviously, there was no Christian hegemony at the time of Tacitus, nor would it make a difference if there was, given the contents of the passage.
I care about plausibility. I do not accept implausible assertions, such as the assertion that a clever Christian forger inserted a passage that called Christianity "a most mischievous superstition," "evil," "hideous and shameful." Why do I find such an interpolation implausible? Not just to maintain my conclusions, though I certainly care about that. It is because it would be very much unlike all other interpolations that we know about.

You don't care about plausibility. You don't care about less ad hoc. You care about one thing and one thing only: maintaining and promoting your existing conclusions.

Shame, but I don't think you'll budge. I think I am done with you.

Juststeve

Abe:

Just want to compliment you for the quality of your arguments as well as your incredible stamina. As you are beginning to find out though, some won't be convinced of what they don't want to believe no matter how much evidence you adduce or how good your arguments are. Mythers are one such group. We know of others like Mythers but they are those whose name can not be spoken here on the free thought forum.

Something trial lawyers learn early in the careers, if they are to survive, is that some kinds of jurors are beyond convincing. Our task is to eliminate them before the trial starts because their opinions are fixed. It's sort of like the pearls before swine thing in the Bible. You I fear are preaching to the nonconvertible.

Soldier on.

Steve

Toto

The Christian hegemony was responsible for transmitting this copy of Tacitus, and for failing to preserve the volume of Tacitus' Annals for the years around 30 CE.

You might want to check on spin's blog to catch up on this issue, and recent threads such as this one. or this one. At first glance, it might seem unlikely that a Christian would insert a reference to Christianity as a mischievous superstition, but you need to consider the totality of the evidence.

spin has not committed to any existing conclusion and does not count himself in the Jesus Myth camp.

I think you are the one who will not budge.

ApostateAbe

I have been through this routine several times in the past with spin, actually, and there are times that I learn things from him. He has a specialized interest that makes him a useful resource. But, yeah, of course he is committed to his position and is beyond all hope of reasoning with, even if his position really is almost strictly a critical/skeptical position, not a positive position.

I don't think that all mythers are like spin. They are like any other group of ideologues--a few willing to be influenced by reasonable arguments, and of course most of them not. I know because I used to be one of them.

Toto

It's always good for your ego to decide that the reason others are not convinced by your brilliant arguments is because they are so stubborn or prejudiced.

In fact, spin is agnostic on the issue of the existence of Jesus, and most of the people you scorn as "Mythers" started out believing in a historical Jesus but were persuaded by the evidence or lack thereof that the case for a HJ is built on sand and religious beliefs.

And Abe's arguments are not convincing. He makes false appeals to the authority of historians, when he doesn't know the first thing about historical method.

I will refrain from any comments on lawyers or jury selection techniques.

JoeWallack

JW:
Better. You still need to try and quantify though, how much better. Without a quantification the "best" explanation does not necessarily mean much.

Your fellow correspondents here have been trying to tell you what's wrong with your argument for the historicity of The Baptism but have been unable to articulate it. Your problem is you are using a Theological Methodology (TM). TM tries to prove historicity by only considering evidence for, or positive criteria. This is the same fatal flaw of Burridge in What Are the Gospels? In evaluating the genre of the Gospels he only looks at qualities GRB has in order to evaluate parallels. He does not consider qualities GRB lacks or qualities of other genres. Generally, Christian Bible Scholarship, (CBS), uses TM to evaluate historicity.

What should be used is Historical Methodology (HM). HM uses ALL criteria, positive (history) and negative (fiction). One of the few places that uses HM for "Mark" is the Legendary Vorkosigan's Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark
Chapter 1

In the big picture, as has been pointed out to you Ad Nazorean, "Mark" as a whole consists primarily of the Impossible and Improbable which impeaches the credibility of the possible claims. So the default position for any individual story in "Mark" is that it is fiction and you are on the defensive trying to demonstrate historicity.

Vorkosigan's HM is as follows:

1) First determine what is Impossible.

2) Than determine what is Improbable.

3) Than determine clear parallels to fictional sources.

4) Individual stories must have a minimum of the Possible and lack clear parallels to fictional sources in order to have a reasonable possibility of being Possible in total.

Regarding application of these criteria, they apply to the story as a whole. Everything in the story is evidence for the historicity of everything in the story. You can not just pick out the part of the story you think is historical and only apply criteria to that. That would be TM. To the extent part of the story shows evidence of fiction, that must be weighed against the evidence for part of the story showing evidence of historicity.

Vorkosigan has already done all of this but to demonstrate it here let's start with Criterion 1:

1) First determine what is Impossible.

Here's the offending story:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_1

Lines 10 and 11 are Impossible. So two of the three verses are Impossible. From a quantitative standpoint than most of the story is Impossible. From a qualitative standpoint, the primary purpose of the story is to show that Jesus received god's spirit at the baptism. Impossible. So the basic story is primarily Impossible.

2) Than determine what is Improbable.

The first verse is Improbable. Why would Jesus come from Galilee to get baptized in the Jordan?

3) Than determine clear parallels to fictional sources.


While I suspect that the parallel "Mark" was going for here was Moses being drawn out of the water to become a son and teacher of Israel, I'll disagree with Vork regarding any clear parallels here to fictional sources.

4) Individual stories must have a minimum of the Possible and lack clear parallels to fictional sources in order to have a reasonable possibility of being Possible in total.

Based on criteria 1 and 2 the baptism story as a whole is fiction. Regarding the possible historicity of any part of it, specifically here, Jesus being baptized by John, the extent of overall fiction indicates nothing here is historical.

Moving to positive criteria for historicity we have a source problem. The author is unknown, so credibility is unknown and we lack primary criteria (credibility of source). The criteria used by TM are all secondary:

1) Criterion of embarrasment

The Criterion of Embarrassment argues that something the author considered embarrassing is more likely to be historical. This argument is logical but needs to be weighed against possible literary reasons for inclusion. Here "Mark" has a clear literary need for the baptism, it is the vehicle to get Jesus god's spirit. It also provides a structural balance between the spirit coming at the baptism at the start and leaving at the crucifixion at the end and the author describes crucifixion as a type of baptism. So the heavy literary contrivance with the baptism negates The Criterion of Embarrassment here. The author has literary need of the baptism.

2) Multiple attestation

Paul is the best potential source for confirmation but is silent on the subject.

"Matthew"/"Luke" confirm but they use most of "Mark's" stories as a base and are therefore not independent.

"John" exorcises Jesus' baptism. So, no multiple attestation here.

There's just no quality evidence that Jesus was baptized by John. He may have been but the better explanation based on all the evidence is that he was not.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

ApostateAbe

I discourage debates that have anything to do with spin's blog. He does not allow key members of his "ignore" list to access the blog, nor does he allow anyone to copy and paste from his blog for critical review.

Atheos

Everyone else:

Just want to compliment you for the quality of your arguments as well as your incredible stamina. As you are beginning to find out though, some won't be convinced of what they don't want to believe no matter how much evidence you adduce or how good your arguments are. HJ'ers are one such group. We know of others like HJ'ers but they are those whose name can not be spoken here on the free thought forum.

Something trial lawyers learn early in the careers, if they are to survive, is that some kinds of jurors are beyond convincing. Our task is to eliminate them before the trial starts because their opinions are fixed. It's sort of like the pearls before swine thing in the Bible. You I fear are preaching to the nonconvertible.

Sauce for the goose...

Toto

He has made the same arguments in the open forum. The blog is just a convenient summary.

At least read the threads on Tacitus. The question is not so easily settled as you seem to think. Scholarship seems to be divided, with most experts thinking that the passage is highly suspect at least.