Ted Hoffman

I asked:
Bede,
Toto asked your like the following questions a while ago. Its time we got an answer:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...al+methodology

Rick,
Birth of Christianity p. 140

I will let you cite Sanders as I go home since you wrote in the other thread said Sanders assumes existence of a HJ .

Amaleq13

Aren't those some of the same scholars who observe that Paul appears to have added references to crucifixion to the alleged pre-Pauline hymns in his letters?

Regarding comparative explanatory power, I think my current "subjective" stance is largely due to reading Maccoby and finding his thesis, despite the flaws I perceive in his approach, to be just as potentially explanatory as Doherty's. (That and reading Holbling where that rotten bastard {in the best possible sense] has me questioning everything I think is true. ) The notion of a historical Jesus existing essentially independent of Paul's theology seems to me to adequately address many of the questions I have when considering the evidence. For at least one passage, in fact, it seems to address it better than Doherty. Specifically, I'm thinking of the portion of Acts where Gamaliel is depicted as comparing Jesus' activities to those of two other messianic contenders (traditional style with all the appropriate political agendas) with no indication that the former was in any way different. Maccoby contends this is the author of Acts forced to deal with a historical reality and I can't think of a plausible alternative (argument from person ignorance).

Good point although I wonder if his "field familiarity" (that is the term he uses isn't it?) reduces the subjectivity of his assessment or only makes it more informed. It does seem significant to me that he felt compelled to change his position after considering Doherty.

I will have to take your word for it. The last quantum-physics-related book I read was Greene's Elegant Universe and it gave me many headaches. Almost as many as Hugo's essays.

And, speaking of headaches, I think we've gone and derailed this thread into yet another HJ/MJ thread of its own. I think it might need a place of its own.

Amaleq13

This was my first split so let me know if I missed anything crucial.

Bede

1. What are the odds of single man, armed only with a whip of some sort, committing an act of such violence and disruption at a major institution and not being arrested and/or executed immediately? 1%? less?

First, the one man is attacking merchants who are not best known as fighters. He started a panic and lots of people ran off. Not hard to do, especially with plenty of animals about. I have seen bars empty in five seconds flat when a fight is about to start. And who should arrest him? The place is full of crowds with everyone similarly dressed. It would be easy to slip away.

2. How did this single lightly armed man clear out the Temple, which I understand was comparable to a football field? A few money changers together could have foiled him and wrestled him to the ground. End of disturbance, end of messiah.

As I said, he probably created a panic among some fat merchants who ran away. Clearly, the idea that he totally emptyed the place is hyperbole. Think is, even though I don't know the exact details, I can still assert it happened from the evidence available. I don't need to go into microscopic detail.

3. What was Jesus' motivation? He claimed to want to uphold the law, and the moneychangers were a vital part of the law and the Temple administration.

His motivation is clearly stated.

4. Is it not more likely that "clensing the Temple" had some sort of symbolic meaning for early Christians, relating to clensing the body?

No. It has multiple attestation with no sign at all that it should be interpreted symbolically. Furthermore, Mark explicitly tells us that it was the reason the sadducees decided to deal with Jesus.

5. Given that this act probably never happened, why was Jesus crucified? Isn't that also more likely to have symbolic as opposed to historical implicatoins?

No. It did happen and we know this because we have a multiply attested event with a clear cause and recorded effect. That your questions are meaningless is demonstrated by the fact I could take any event in history and ask similar ones. Is it likely that Hannabal would really march elephants over the alps? Surely this is a symbolic Africa entering Italy. Surely the assasins of Julius Caesar could not just walk away after they did the deed - what about the guard? Surely the German barbarians couldn't actually wipe out three whole legions? This must just be a story Augustus put about to justify drawing the border at the Rhine. etc etc etc

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Rick Sumner

I'll need an explicit citation, as I don't have the book. One that says he does so a priori.

I stated in the other thread that "a priori" probably isn't the best description of Sanders position, because he never elaborates. We don't get to presume he's done so without analysis of the evidence unless he tells us as much. All we can safely say is that it's his working hypothesis.

A priori means before analysis of the evidence, you seem to think it means before I present argument X I presume premise Y for any reason. Premise Y must be presumed for no reason.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Steven Carr

2 events surely?

Didn't it happen twice?

Or do you have rules which allow us to tell which are retellings of the same events and which are events which were similar , but happened twice (such as Jesus preaching two similar sermons - one on a plain, and one on a mountain)

Rick Sumner

Bede:

How necessary is the temple incident to a reconstruction of Jesus? Fredriksen doesn't think it's terribly necessary at all, and her presentation accounts for a lot of things that most others do not.

I might start another thread on this, which of course inspires another question: How likely is it that that thread will go longer than five consecutive posts without becoming yet another thread on the Jesus-Myth?



Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

This is not a bar, it is more like a large shopping mall.

How convenient, you can explain away the embarrassing details as "hyperbole" but deny that the entire scene is hyperbole. The "evidence" available consists of only a few ancient manuscripts which contract each other on the details. How can you so confidently assert that this happened?

So what was it?

Multiple attestation in different gospels? It is missing from the earliest documents, Paul's letters. And the Gospel according to Mark is full of supernatural events and symbolic happenings. Why is this not one of them?

What is this multiple attestation? We have Mark. Then we have two gospels that clearly copied his language, and another gospel that might have. All are liturgical poetic documents that have no clear signs of historical reliability.

Bede - the questions are not meaningless. You should in fact ask similar questions of any event in history. For Hannibal and his elephants, there are in fact many sources, there is a clear history of the use of elephants in warfare, etc. There is no particular motivation to invent the story - Hannibal is not a mythic type. We know that people do assassinate political leaders in spite of their guards, and that there are military upsets. But each claimed historical event has to be treated with at least some skepticism, because we know that people invent tales for various reasons and repeat them as fact.

Amaleq13

According to Josephus, there were armed guards surrounding the entire area. He mentions a riot starting when one of them mooned the Jews in the courtyard below. IIRC, there tended to be even more guards during the Passover holiday given its political potential.

I thought you were arguing that they had cleared out in a panic. It is difficult to blend into a crowd that you have sent into a panic with your violent actions. They tend to move away from you and leave you standing in an empty clearing.

But his motivation is suspect given that the money changing was a necessary part of the Temple system.

We have Mark's version and we have John's version but one claims the event took place at the end of Jesus' career while the other claims it was one of his first acts. Do you know of any other allegedly historical event with this sort of divergent evidence?

Yet we are also told that the Jewish leaders felt compelled to bring false witness against him at his trial before Pilate. That would be totally unnecessary if he had committed such a blatantly disruptive act during this highly volatile holiday. In fact, the allegedly valid charge of disrupting the Temple is never brought against Jesus in any of the versions of the trial.

The historicity of the Temple disruption scene(s) is clearly far more in doubt than your confident assertion suggests.

Bede

Shrugs.

I'm not playing tag wrestling with Sec Web mods. You can launch a thousand questions against anything you like. The fact is we have multiple attestation of an event which is quite possible. It seems quite clear to me that a panic could be caused by a lone man who could easily get away afterwards. If you walk into a shopping mall and pull and gun you will have little trouble escaping in the ensuing pandemonium no matter how many security guards were around. Here are two modern examples where CCTV footage caught the killer in the second case but he was still able to walk away.

Anyway, end of discussion, It's not really worth it.

B