DCHindley

To be honest I wasn't able to figure out exactly what LOM was getting at, other than that he thought Spin was <shudder> wrong to use the technical term "marked" as he did.

My point, on the other hand, is that it is not clear at all whether Josephus intended James and Jesus of Christian fame, or some other James and Jesus. Chances are good that in the early 1st century Jerusalem one might find a hundred brothers with those names. Of James, I am not sure where else that name is used in Josephus, but I have looked up Jesus.

The only Jesus of high priestly stock who is not identified by family name is the Jesus who gave speeches to the Rebels, along with Ananus, on the wall of the temple, hoping to dissuade them from calling God's wrath down on the city by taking the rebellion too far. Both Ananus and this Jesus were later executed by the Zealots and their bodies thrown from the temple wall and denied burial. Josephus said that the execution of Ananus was the likely cause of the destruction of Jerusalem at the hand of the Romans by an angry God.

What is interesting is that the depiction of Ananus in War 4.314-320 (5.1-2) is very positive. The depiction of Ananus in Ant 20:200 is that of a mean spirited fellow. All it takes is one scribe taking note of this different portrait of Ananus (sans "called Christ), glossing "Is this (really) the (same) just man (Ananus) who(se dead body) was thrown from the wall, who was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem?" Without punctuation, it could be taken as "This just man who was thrown from the wall was the reason Jerusalem was destroyed."

What if a Christian read this marginal gloss in 20:200 and didn't recognize the different portrait of Ananus than in War? Wouldn't he think of James the brother of Jesus Christ? If anyone is starting to recognize in this hypothetical the belief of Origen [Against Celsus 1.47b-d; 2.13; On Matthew 13.55] that James was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the origin of Hegesippus' story of James being flung from the wall [Church History 23.19], you have just had a Paul moment, when "something like scales" fell from his eyes.

In short, Spin and LOM were arguing so intently about the nature of linguistic "markedness" without defining who fits these names besides Jesus Christ and James his "brother." I can live with being wrong about my identifications but I am not sure that LOM and Spin can live without being "right" about "markedness."

DCH

LegionOnomaMoi

The term "marked" has a specific meaning. Granted, as I said in the first post here, that meaning has changed over the years (such that for many linguists it is not a part of syntactic theory at all), but all that is irrevelant. The only thing that matters is if there is any syntactic theory you didn't make up which you are using to apply the term. And after god knows how many posts and two different threads, you still can't do anything other that point to a google scholar search to defend your use of this term.

And if you want to argue that the syntactical structure of Josephus is so irregular (despite the fact that this is not the only time Josephus introduces someone with a reference modifier first, even at times introducing the kinship first) that we have a syntactic reason to believe the line is an interpolation, than you could refer to something other than
1) You're private theory of markedness or
2) Your basic and limited grasp of 30+ year old transformationalist generative

spin

:horsecrap:

Please try to include some content in your ranting...

...such as what you think the word order of our phrase in 20.200 indicates.

JoeWallack

JW:
No, don't be honest. Professor Hengion Hongom's complaint is that "marked" is a general reference to a language while the offending analysis was specific to Josephus (who wrote it in Greek). Thus the context for "marked" is a specific language and not a specific author as it refers to styles for a language as a whole and not an individual author's style. Got it. That being said, how the use of "marked" could than not be applicable to the offending analysis is perhaps more amazing than the supposed resurrection. For those who need points sharply explained, what is wrong with applying this general term specifically to Josephus. The context is style either way, Greek style or Josephus style. The complaint is that "Josephus' style" should have been used instead of "markedness"...shhhh. Even more amazing is that this complaint could not only rise to the level of deserving its own Thread (in a Biblical Criticism Forum) as opposed to being, oh I don't know, a side comment in the original Thread, but be the case study for a larger Thesis of spin's language incompetence.

Ironically here, Greek was not Josephus' first language, but I have faith that it was for many Christian editors, so analysis of differences in phrases is especially relevant.

The Professor's OP was unusually long, even by the standards of this Forum, explaining that the whole thing is very complicated and that is why spin clearly made a simple...oh shit, now I'm doing it. Repeating the word "shit". I said "shit". I said "shit" again. I feel like the Knights who say "Ni".



Joseph

ErancyWiki

LegionOnomaMoi

I have. Both in this thread and in the last one. You still haven't come up with an excuse as to why my latest examples don't apply, despite the fact that the familial relation comes first, isn't mentioned before (or again), etc. I'm waiting for another personal interpretation of linguistic theory you can apply to those references. It doesn't fit into the "semantic map"? Or maybe it's phi-probe violation? I know! The "mental space" constructed doesn't fit. Don't worry. There are so very many linguistic models you can use incorrectly.