ApostateAbe

I am a Jesus Historicist. I used to be a Jesus Myther, and one turning point was when I saw that the copycat claims of Acharya S were bogus, and another was when I read the false prophecies of Jesus' return and the awkward excuse of it by later Christians as seen in 2 Timothy 3:3-9. That convinced me that Jesus was a real doomsday cult leader.

mountainman

It would be expedient of you to think through your analogies.
The fossil record is preserved by means of static unchange.
The literature record prior to 1500 required pro-active scribes.
Oranges and lemons: the bells toll for many reasons.

Another inappropriate analogy. The new younger tree rings preserve
the layers of the older rings. What happens to the old papyrus after
a scribe has hand-copied its contents for the sake of posterity? You
are not taliking about bark however.

Have you heard of the expression "bloated with the will to believe"?
Entire disciplines of man across the planet, let alone across the insular
academic environment, have been entirely wrong after centuries of
intensive study and work. So I am afraid you'll need more than a
plea to a non existent authority.

The hypothesis of fiction has not been adequately explored in the
centuries of biblical studies. Within a generation of Nicaea we have
the supreme emperor Julian taking the time to write Against the
Galilaeans the following:

Forgery used for the purpose of "intellectual" persuasion
would have been mandatory for the perpetration of such
a fiction at Nicaea, such that all attendees could convince
themselves PALEOGRAPHICALLY the literature was
old ... look at that Hadrian script of years gone by ...

The theory for FJ (Fictional Jesus) as distinct from
the HJ and MJ class of theories has not been adequately
explored to date, but will be found IMO valuable in the
understanding of the history of antiquity.

Finally, the theory of the FJ predicts that there will be
found no carbon dating results that preceed Nicaea, on
the basis that the first wave of the fictitious literature
of christianity was written out of the whole cloth under
Constantine.

Subsequent waves of fiction will be found attributable to
subsequent centuries of christians. However, it may be
that to decent paleographers, the word "forgery" should
never be countenanced in professional terms, and if this
is the PC thing to do in your specialist industry, then I'd
like to take the time to apologise.

Picture someone in, say, the 4th Century,
consciously writing in a 250-year old style
in order to fool handwriting experts at the
Council of Nicaea! : banghead.

Furthermore, who was within a generation of the fraud,
called out by name - by the emperor Julian in the above
work as "the wretched Eusebius.




Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/namaste_2006.htm
NAMASTE: “The spirit in me honours the spirit in you”

Vivisector

Well said. I've seen a few others blithely suggest that this occurred, without - as far as I can tell - any evidence in support of the idea. I suspect that, in other contexts, such a suggestion would be laughed away as simply another conspiracy theory.

But back to the topic. I'm in the HJ camp on the basis of Gal 1:19. My simpleminded reasoning suggests that if James was Jesus's (or the Lord's, to be truer to the text) brother, then it follows that there was an HJ. There is no textual basis for questioning the integrity of this reading, and I'm not persuaded by alternative explanations of the term "Lord's brother." There's also the issue of this interpretation arising from a plain reading of the text - something people like me have encouraged Christians to do countless times.

V.

darstec

That analogy is not even close. You do not have scientists offering huge ranges of dates for dendrochronology. However you do have that from Paleographers. Instruction texts for determining tree-ring counters can be gotten by anyone with access to a good library. Access to manuscripts is limited. Most of those who have access to them are in the religious services or employed by such. Most of their education is through religious services.

Are you stipulating that there is no such thing as fraud among scribes in the ancient world?


That is fair. Having been called as an expert witness as a document examiner in several court cases, I will state it is my professional opinion that handwriting can be faked.

Could you please stipulate all those many carbon dated manuscripts of the first, second, and third centuries CE that have confirmed paleographic assertions?

Why postulate trying to fool someone 1500+ years in the future? Was Hoffmann trying to fool someone 1500+ years in the future, or do you think he was trying to fool someone, a contemporary of his?

Besides, I doubt they were trying to write in a 250 year old style. It is more like 150 year old style. And the margin of error for those document is at least that large. Handwriting styles did not change as frequently as they do in these literate times. And you point is rather moot because we do not have many manuscripts that have a provenance that goes back to the fourth century. We have a few that range from the 1tth through 15th centuries, and quite a few discovered in the last 100 years or so. Almost none with C14 confirmation.

If it was considered common practice to use someone elses name to lend authority to the text, i.e. assigning Mark, Matthew, Luke and John to the gospels, why would making the handwriting look old be such a stretch. And for one who claims in his profile to be an atheist you sure do write in support of Inerrantists and Fundamentalists almost exclusively. Are you a card carrying member of Atheists for God?

Vivisector

Sure there was.

No disagreement here.

An oldie but goodie, courtesy of Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. Not exactly what you were looking for, and perhaps something you've already seen. Interesting, nonetheless, in terms of a rough feel for how results from the two techniques compare.

If this were the case, it seems there would be little need to try to deceive in terms of the script.

I doubt it would be any stretch at all for an accomplished scribe. The question is, how much of this was going on ca. 4th CE? Are there any reports of someone having been discovered using a deceptive script? Sure, it's possible that, 1300 years or so before the origin of systematic paleography, someone could have faked a somewhat older script (as well as papyrus and perhaps ink, for that matter). But where's the evidence that anybody did this?

Cheers,

V.

darstec

Yes, I have. The one thing we see is that paleography doesn't seem to agree much with C14. The second thing we see is that both methods seem to date some of those fragements after they were buried. And there was almost nothing representative of the time period I inquired about. Few of those manuscripts would have been as controversial as anything from the NT.

Why? Wouldn't most literate people recognize "old" script if they saw it? If you are trying to counter Gnosticism, wouldn't it help your case if the document you proffered was "older" than that of your opponents? There was a hidden point there that you might have missed, i.e. that the gospels and epistles were created later than conventional dating would have placed them. I think it is perfectly reasonable that the gospels and epistles including Paul were written after 134 CE. In fact Paul's entire dating hinges around one tiny phrase relating to Aristas which could very well be interpolation.

Most of those documents haven't been with us that long. Very, very, very few documents have a documented provenance going back 1300 years. Very few of those documents can be accessed by those who do not have a vested interest in their dating.

Have you ever read about the Glozel archaeological find and Emile Fradin? Interestingly enough it was a find of the century of neolithic artifacts. All the experts agreed (paleographers included). Tnen the fraud was discovered and the original discoverer of the artifacts, Fradin, while it couldn't be proven he was criminally involved with fraud, was suspect as part of it. The experts by consensus agreed it was fraud. About 50 years after the episode was forgotten science labs with new technology decided that some of the artifacts considered fraud had been used in kilns during the Middle Ages. The new theory was that those objects dated from 700 BCE to 100 CE -- an ancient fraud pretending to be from 8000 BCE. Other scholars disagree. Glozel is still a mystery. It is the closest writing controvery that I know off the top of my head.

While not much on this site, http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2005...ry-hoaxes.html is truly ancient, it does give a starting point and Bart Ehrman does cover some ancient forgeries.

No Robots

Here is more from the same work by Julian:

But you are so misguided that you have not even remained faithful to the teachings that were handed down to you by the apostles. And these also have been altered, so as to be worse and more impious, by those who came after. At any rate neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to call Jesus God. But the worthy John, since he perceived that a great number of people in many of the towns of Greece and Italy had already been infected by this disease, and because he heard, I suppose, that even the tombs of Peter and Paul were being worshipped ----secretly, it is true, but still he did hear this,----he, I say, was the first to venture to call Jesus God.

So we see that Julian does not contest Christ's historicity, but merely contests the fabulations attached thereunto. This is a most reasonable position.

Clivedurdle

Basics - superstitio versus religio. Pedigree was fundamental to being listened to. Geneologies, odd references to Pilate, are necessary strategic moves!

Tie it to an ancient emperor, Augustus Caesar, all the better for a tasty cake!

How many here have read Ellegard?

Peter Kirby

Christianity's only (hope at a) pedigree was its claim to be the continuation of Judaism. The time of Augustus is laughably recent, especially for a religion. The odd reference to Pilate is odd because the provincial governor offed the dude, a fact which nonplussed hearers.

I have.

regards,
Peter Kirby

mountainman

On the contrary, it seems quite evident, for a number of reasons,
that Julian would be unlikely to subscribe to any HJ theory. The
reasons why your position is untenable are as follows:

The first two sentences of the first (reconstructed) paragraph
appear follows:
Clearly Julian is convinced of a monstrous tale of fiction.
We consider Julian is simply calling out the fiction for what
it is ... a monstrous tale of fiction. It is not history,
it is not myth, it is a fable, a fiction, a monstrous tale.

The next sentence of the first paragraph deals with a court
of law, and it is quite reasonable to conjecture what Julian
may have originally written in his work, certain other charges
(or invectives) against the Galilaeans, and against christ.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ju...ns_0_intro.htm

IOW, what is preserved of Julian's account has been watered down
substantially by Cyril, and we have every reason to think that the
nature of these charges against the galilaeans were far more serious
that just writing fiction. (eg: forgery and interpolation, perversion of
the patristic literature, etc)


The supreme emperor Julian within a generation of the Council
of Nicaea clearly subscribed not to an HJ or an MJ theory,
but to an FJ (Fictional) theory of (the history of)
the Galilaeans.




Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/namaste_2006.htm
NAMASTE: “The spirit in me honours the spirit in you”