Diogenes the Cynic

I think it also needs to be pointed out that the primary audience for the Gospels was gentile, not Jewish.

freigeister

Strange message to be directed primarily at gentiles.

Toto

Could "sheep that are lost of the house of Israel" be referring to Diaspora Jews?

freigeister

No, "lost" here means spiritually errant. This is evident from the fact that most of Christ's tropes are about spiritual errancy.

neilgodfrey

Mystery babylon and more mysteries than I can shake as stick at . . . .

This reminds me of another literary reference that some notice but don't know what to do with: Petronius' in-some-ways-seeming lampoon of the resurrection in his Satyricon http://community.middlebury.edu/~har...ucifixion.html

Not only this by Petronius but the coincidental Gospel of Peter's naming the guard of Jesus' tomb "Petronius" -- which I don't know if anyone else has commented on.

Like looking at fireflies and wondering what makes them work the way they do.

Toto

From neilgodfrey's link:

The obvious question - why assume that Petronius' story is a parody of a Christian story based on actual history? It makes more sense to see the gospel story mimicking Petronius, since the gospel story has every indication of being a literary creation.

Diogenes the Cynic

Matthew got this pericope from Mark, and Mark was definitely not a Jew. Neither was his audience. If you keep reading you'll see that the pericope goes on to justify a ministry to gentiles.

The fact remains that the post 70 CE Christian movement was far more successful among gentiles than among Jews, and even the Jews who converted were mostly (if not entirely) Hellenized Jews, who were more amenable to the pagan aspects of Pauline Christianity.

Christian Jews were pretty much completely squeezed out by the end of the 1st century and Christianity became a virtually exclusively gentile movement.

Vorkosigan

Yes, that's the last piece i needed. There was no intermediate level framework for that story that I could find, only the broad skeleton from Dan 6. But Neil here has kindly solved a difficult puzzle for me.

Vorkosigan

rlogan

A few comments.

One, Atwill stretches beyond the text he is using. For example:

That isn't in the TF.

Also this:

That isn't in the TF, and I think it should not be allowed for us to infer for one and not the other when Atwill's thesis is mirror-opposite parallel based on the text.

Josephus, if he is doing this on purpose, has no reason to make one story a highly detailed account and the other "mirror opposite" a mere few sentences. What is "mirror opposite" is Atwill's arbitrarily inflated version of the TF.

If you are going to allow in all of the things that Atwill wants to import without their presence in the TF, then you also have to consider the importation of things in the gospel stories that do not mirror the stories in Josephus. And there are plenty.

This part on "probability" I do not find compelling at all, upon inspection:

First of all, and again, the TF does not have Jesus proclaiming to be a God.

In addition, there are plenty of "third day" stories. In particular there is the third-day HB pseudo-prophesy in Hosea that Jesus did not actually fulfill. It's close enough for the Bible-thumpers to say he fulfilled it. But he didn't.

The Syrian cult of Adonis and the Egyptian cult of Osiris both had "third-day risers from the dead". We can look for more, but suffice it to say that Atwill is really overstating the case here.


The theory of the stories being "interchangeable" on account of some apparent inconsistencies I find unmoving. For example this one:

I'm sorry, but I need more than this to buy into the idea that these stories are interchangeable. Non-Jewish woman rends clothes. Jewish woman does not. Rending clothes is Jewish trait. Therefore stories are interchangeable?

Sorry. Doesn't move me.

Now in addition to putting words in the mouth of the TF in order to claim mirror opposite parallel, we have the ignoring of things that are actually in the TF without parallel.

Ten thousand wonderful things. The tribe that is still with us. What is the opposite of the crucifixion? The business about it being lawful to call him a man? The suggestion of the principle men among us?

Finally, there is a real suspicion in saying A,B,and C are all interchangeable with one another because A shares some traits with B, and B shares some traits with C.

In such a method, it does not follow that A, B, and C share any traits in common whatsoever. So on methodological grounds it is weak in approach.

Vorkosigan

Atwill is comparing two characters, Jesus and Decius, not two passages. I probably was not clear enough.

Atwill is comparing two characters, one named Jesus, the other, Decius.

No, we do not, since you are not understanding this. Based on that, we could never argue that two stories contain parallels because naturally, they are different. Thus, we could never argue that Barb Wire parallels Casablanca because Barb is a woman while Rick is a man. We could never argue that Independence Day parallels Star Wars because in ID4 one hero dies while the other lives, but in Star Wars there is only one hero and he lives.

But the Jesus stories do.

Which ancient stories have divinities rising on the third day from death to declare themselves?

Did Osiris rise on the third day? I wasn't aware of that. Can you substantiate these claims. Further, Atwill's claim is that not only are three-day stories rare but none occur back to back like this anywhere else. Please address both forks.

Again you have misunderstood. It is the consistencies that are suggestive. Both women have trouble with wicked priests, both women have husbands named Saturninus who both know Tiberius....and both look like parodies of NT accounts.

Your "restatement" of Atwill's argument is a strawman.

Why should they be there? A story does not have to parallel everything in another story, in order to be parallel.

Vorkosigan