Brooke

LOL, Ben. Looks like we both thought of Bauckham simultaneously. Incidentally, I think that Bauckham is more representative of where historical Jesus studies is moving than the Jesus Seminar.

Brooke

Thanks for the compliment, Littlejohn. My goal when writing is to be clear, rather than clever. As for my background, not a drop of Italian. English Canadian born and raised.

spamandham

The author clearly constructed the story. That being the case, it is not an eye witness account by any stretch, nor is it an account at all. It's a story.

Parts of it might be based on actual history, but there's no a priori reason to assume so.

Luke does not claim access to eye witnesses, and if he had, we would know he was lying, because the stories are grossly implausible.

Further, in Acts, the same author explicitly tells us his information was handed down to him.

The author of John does not claim to have been an eye witness. Rather, the author (or more likely later editor) claims to be the disciple who wrote the book. ...a rather cryptic and meaningless claim.

Further, the Gospel of John is so filled with fantasy, that if anyone did claim to have witnessed it, we would know they were lying.

spamandham

The listing above is not a listing of high priests who happen to be named Jesus.

It's a listing of all Jesuses named in Josephus. Almost all of them are high priests or have immediate family ties to a high priest.

If we make the reasonable assumption that Josephus' mentionings of "Jesus" are representative of important historical figures, then the conclusion is that anyone named Jesus, who is in the public eye, is likely related to high priest.

This is a discussion of probabilities, not logical proofs.

Paul says that Christ existed before time. It is not a valid form of historical analysis to simply discard the impossible and accept the rest as likely.

Brooke

That's not an argument. That's an assertion.

Of course Luke refers to eyewitnesses, as any glance at the Nestle-Aland will confirm. In 1:2, he refers to hoi ap apxhs autoptai, which is best translated as "the eyewitnesses from the beginning." In fact, autopths (the nominal form of autoptai) can really mean very little other than "eyewitness." If you are familiar of any other way in which this word can be translated, please let me know (then proceed to publish an article in Journal of Biblical Literature, as it would be quite an exciting breakthrough in NT philology).

As for the "gross" implausibility of the narratives contained within Luke's Gospel, again, that must be argued, not asserted. Moreover, even if one demonstrates that narrative X is implausible (and more than a few are, of course), one has not sufficiently demonstrated that the even text is implausible. What is implausible, for instance, about the Roman administration of Palestine crucifying a popular teacher who was perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a trouble-maker? It happened with apparent frequency during this period.

Point? I never claimed that Luke was an eyewitness (an untenable claim, to say the least), but rather that he preserves eyewitness testimony.

Are you in the habit of throwing the baby out with the bath water?

Either way, my point still stands: the Gospel of John claims to be the work of an eyewitness, the disciple whom Jesus loved. John 21:24 is hardly cryptic in this regard (and, even if cryptic, it would not follow that it was meaningless).

Littlejohn

OK!...Thanks you.

Seeing that my English was quite different from that used by the majority of users of the forum, I thought sadly that I would not have ever been able to express me in this way. Your words to me much comfort! Thanks! ..


Littlejohn
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Brooke

You are right: it is a discussion of probabilities. That is precisely the point. The evidence presented does not establish a statistical probability that most people named Jesus are associated with the high priesthood. Moreover, your dataset only takes into account the few references from Josephus. It doesn't take into account the dozens of other occurrences of the name John recorded for Hellenistic and Roman Palestine (again, cf. Tal Ilan's Lexicon). Thus, even if the evidence presented was sufficient to demonstrate a necessary connection between the name "Jesus" and the high priest (it's not), it is based upon a very small sampling of the extant evidence and thus invalid as it stands. Morever, it is hardly surprising that Josephus focuses upon "big name" figures such as the high priesthood. He's not interested in recording all the farmers and fisherman named Jesus, as they were not movers and shakers. Works such as Ilan's take into account epigraphic sources, which tend to be a bit more "democratic" in this regard. They are thus a necessary corrective to Josephus.

aa5874

The basis for your assumption is severly flawed.

It cannot be assumed that Achilles was the son of a sea-goddess because no other ancient source claimed that he was not.

And in fact the likelyhood of Jesus not existing or not to have been from Nazareth increases when no other source confirms or mentions Jesus existed or was from Nazareth.

Brooke

The analogy is flawed. Why? Two reasons. First, epic is not the same genre as biography. Following the compelling work of Richard Burridge, I think that most every NT scholar now agrees that the proper generic identification of the Gospels is bios. Bioi were narratives meant to inform the readers about historical figures. This is an entirely different exercise than what Homer, Aeneid, etc., were doing in telling their stories about Troy and the Myceneans.

Second reason: as I argued elsewhere in this thread, one can be quite mistaken about a person's significance and still relate quite accurate information about his or her life. My opinion of George W. Bush does not affect one bit whether or not he was President of the United States from 2000-2008. I could give a very polemical accounting of his Presidency, and still include many quite true statements. For instance, my telling of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 might be highly tendentious and biased, without negating the fact of said invasion. The task of the critical historian, in that case, would be to discern between fact and polemic. Only a quite uncritical historian would use my polemic as evidence for the non-occurrence of the invasion.

Brooke

Well, the best way I know to improve one's language skills is to practice, practice, practice. Just keep reading and--more importantly--writing, and they will come along