Steven Avery

I got a good laugh on all of this.
Sometimes I think the mythicists want to lead the great Ockham Rebellion.

Maybe they need to go back to Skeptic School.

Shalom,
Steven

jakejonesiv

The seven allegedly genuine Pauline epistles are

1. Romans
2. 1 Corinthians
3. 2 Corinthians
4. Galatians
5. Phillipians
6. 1 Thessalonians
7. Philemon

I didn't offer an opinion about 2 Thessalonians in that statement.
You have not been reading attentively.

More accurately the Pauline school. The figure of Paul is a second century fabrication. But the statement that the Pastorals are non-Pauline is still accurate. They are late second century catholic forgeries.

You should take that up with your "various skeptics." You are apparently imputing their arguments to me.

As an aside, I am not taking your word for it that the arguments against the Pastorals are being accurately stated by you. I don't know. Could you provide a link to the "circular" arguments so I can review them?

It has been now.

Jake Jones IV

ynquirer

I’ve read Prof. Doughty’s article. Thank you for the link.

My question is, Why do you endorse such a reconstruction in English language of Annals 15:44 without wondering how Doughty reconstructs his original paragraph in Latin? I am sure you will agree that the scribe suspect of interpolating mentions to Christus and the Christians did so in Latin, not in English. Every serious discussion of alleged interpolation should begin at this.

Doughty quotes the extant Latin, at least partially, while he absolutely fails to give what the original Latin he thinks to be. Funny, isn’t it? He offers a number of arguments, most of them irrelevant to the point, but he fails to give the most important one, that is, how easy - surely? - was for a scribe to have the text forged.

One thing is out of the question. If Doughty wants us to accept that forging the Latin text is as easy as he purports through the English, either his Latin is very poor or he has his argument seemingly gain such strength as it lacks actually.

Extant Tacitus is here.

S.C.Carlson

You might be on to something. Doughty cannot propose something as simple block interpolation as the following, because the relative clause, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat, would then be missing its verb:

Sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum placamentis decedebat infamia, quin iussum incendium crederetur. ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat. auctor nominis eius Christus Tibero imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiablilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque. igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt. et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent aut crucibus adfixi [aut flammandi atque], ubi defecisset dies, in usu[m] nocturni luminis urerentur. hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat, et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigae permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. unde quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non utilitate publica, sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur.

It would have been nice for Doughty to have addressed this problem (such as also striking quos or amending it to read illos or something), but we're not looking a simple block insertion of an interpolation.

Stephen

ynquirer

Absolutely right. Twice on the mark.

Doughty has construed his case in English thus leaving the reader - especially the reader untrained in Latin - with a deceitful feeling that the case in Latin is as easy, which is not. Perhaps he has left to others the task to ascertain whether his speculation is sound or unsound. That is a comfortable position for a scholar, but hardly aimed at excellence.

You have quite clearly seen that extant Latin in Annales 15:44 may not stay as it remains once the hypothetical interpolated block is removed. There are two reasons for the conclusion. In the first place, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus lacks a verb. Well, let’s say it was erant since the subject is quos. But, secondly, the sentence also lacks a verb for vulgus since the latter is nominative and the natural subject for another sentence. The extant paragraph solves the problem, in the most classic, elegant manner by merging both sentences into a single one; I shall come back to this later. Well, let’s say that the easiest way to solve the problem as posed by Doughty would be rewriting vulgus as ablative agent to complete the passive voice indicated by invisos. Thus, we would have a hypothetical original Latin written as follows:


This sentence would mean what Doughty’s English says. That would be his original Tacitus. So far so good.

The real difficulty comes now. What would the forged text look like after a post-classic Latin writer amended it to interpolate a mention to the Christians? He would have realized that the mention brings with it a second sentence. His natural reaction would be to have both sentences written in the post classic manner, that is, one after another, instead of merging them. And in doing this, he would in all likelihood have chosen illos to begin the first sentence - your second hit - while retaining quos for the last. Thus the three sentences - including the principal, which I’ve omitted so far, and both the subordinates - would read as follows:


That would be to my fairest understanding the standard post-classic Latin for the forged text. Is this what the suspect forger did? No, he didn’t. What he did was to replace an average sentence allegedly written by Tacitus with a most beautiful classic-Latin wording, which he never had the opportunity to learn. And we know this for sure because there is no template for such a sentence in the Vulgate, this being this scribe and his colleagues’ textbook to learn Latin. In particular, he would have found striking the use of quos where illos would have seemed to him - exactly as to you as well as everyone other than a classic-Latin writer - much more natural.

However, the usage, intended to merger two subsequent sentences sharing the same subject into a single one, is typical in classic Latin, as in Caesar’s beginning of De bello gallico - Tacitus‘ first textbook:


Annales 15:44 is authentic.

Steven Avery

Actually I was wrong when I said that I had not seen this Marcion argument. I have seen this argument. And it is very weak. Here was my response on JesusMysteries, 6/1/04 (can't get link, booted from forum )

Polycarp and Ignatius used the Pastorals, it is generally conceded, so that makes a Marcion omission almost inconsequential.
http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1337
"Irenaeus is the first explicitly to cite them as Pauline, though there are virtually definite quotations from them in Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Heracleon, and perhaps 1 Clement."

In fact, Daniel Wallace looks at some of the evidences around these earlier writers, and concludes that Ignatius or even Clement would be the "terminus ad quem for the writing of these epistles".

So any claim that they were "not yet written" based on Marcion becomes simply a diversion of no import. And you used it to dodge the circularity issue.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Johann_Kaspar

Did you read Deschner? Most ancient texts were destroyed by xians. Do you have any evidence that the imperial archives were destroyed before 1065 auc? "no-one" = no xian. They were interested in fighting the heretics and the pagans, and why wouldn't they use any archive mentioning any crucifixion of one Yeshua under Pontius Pilatus?

Edit: typo fixed.

Johann_Kaspar

Yes, you did not know even that?


Did you read Deschner? Obviously not.
Where is the evidence that Tacitus and Suetonius had access to the imperial archives?

Those are only the words of someone able to blunder so easily about two texts so easy to compare. You cannot be trusted.

Why don't you read it yourself?

Thanks. That is all I wanted to know. Yes, for quite a long time. You made a blunder. You have no argument. You tried to build an argument on a blunder. Unreliable.

I do not care about a monk in Monte Cassino. The forgery could have been done any time before the 11th century, from the 4th century. And all Annals without that forgery "did not survive".

About internal evidence, there was one thread on iidb, much more interesting than your prejudicial nonsense and pointing to a forgery. Read and try not to blunder.

Roger Pearse

Excuse me, but I see no reason to read some modern author. Either he has data to offer from antiquity -- in which case let's see it -- or he does not, in which case his opinions must be irrelevant. Surely?

You do not seem to have read my comment. This is factually untrue. If you propose to assert it, please provide some evidence. Is that too much to ask?

You perhaps are not aware that some of us in this forum are rather interested, as amateurs, in the transmission of texts, and the evidence for this? This is why we want to see evidence, you know!

Ahem. Is there a reason why you use AUC, other than to obfusticate and annoy? Converting to AD, you mean from 753 BC, i.e. 312 AD. Why this date?

The point of your demand is unclear to me -- sorry -- as indeed were the remainder of your remarks and their relevance to my query. Were you asserting that all Christians have a moral duty to copy all literature available to them? But no doubt I hopelessly misunderstand you.

In the absence of any evidence from you for what you asserted about the Roman imperial archives, and about "most ancient texts" -- that they were destroyed by the Christians --, I'm not sure that I have more to add.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

ynquirer

If I asked, “Did the Christians had the control of the texts for more than a millenium?,” I would be asking for information I don’t have, and your reply would be most appropriate. Yet if I ask, “The Christians had the control of the texts for more than a millenium?,” that is a rhetorical question that means to convey my skepticism as regard something you have said about the issue, and your reply then is mere subterfuge to avoid backing your claim.

I’ll reword my skeptic remark as follows. Your sole evidence so far that the Christians forged the texts is that they had the control thereof. This is kind of a reversal Murphy’s law, so to say, if something heinous or criminal could possibly have been done, it was done. That’s not evidence at all.

Forgive me. I wasn’t aware you had tolled me of a compulsory reading of Deschner.

That is a good question. The answer about Suetonius is much easier, being well documented as it is. Suetonius was under the protection of Pliny the Younger, a member of the senatorial order and a friend to emperor Trajan. (In a letter that has been preserved, Trajan calls Pliny “my dearest Secundus” - as meaning “junior.”) Pliny asked Trajan for a especial privilege to be bestowed on Suetonius - an imperial pension granted only to a father of three, which Suetonius was not; Trajan yielded. (Both letters, in English, can be visited here.)

Several years afterwards, Suetonius was reported by Roman historian Aelius Spartianus (“The Life of Hadrian”) to have been dismissed from the post of imperial secretary (click here for Aelius’ text). Imperial secretary was the highest post a non-patrician could ever have reached. As such, Suetonius had all official documentation available to him, the imperial archives included.

Until 1950 this is all we knew of Suetonius’ bureaucratic career. In 1950 an inscription was found in the Forum of Hippo Regius that briefly narrates his career, first as a bibliothecis in charge of public libraries of Rome, then as a studiis or the director of the imperial archives, and finally as ab epistulis in charge of the emperor’s correspondence. Free access to archives is out of the question. There are many references on the Hippo Regius inscription. I have chosen the following three:

• E. MAREC and H.G. PFLAUM, Nouvelle inscription sur la carrière de Suétone l'historien, in CRAI (Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), 1952, p. 76-85.

• G.B. TOWNEND, The Hippo inscription and the career of Suetonius, in Historia, t. 10 (1961), p. 99-109.

• C. BAURAIN, Suétone et l'inscription d'Hippone, in LEC (Les Études Classiques), t. 44 (1976), p. 124-144.

You can also find online news of the discovery of the inscription here

Knowledge on Tacitus is much scarcer. We however know that Pliny the Younger was himself a historian, though no match to a Tacitus. He paid tribute to Tacitus’s greatness in Letter LXXXV:

• I predict (and I am persuaded I shall not be deceived) that your histories will be immortal.

And this assessment was reinforced by Pliny’s praise of Tacitus’ seriousness in source management (Letter LXV):

• Your request that I would send you an account of my uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments…

This remark is interesting, since it tells that Tacitus had an account of such a death, but he wished to have a closer one - Pliny’s - “in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity.”

Given both these opinions of Pliny about Tacitus and Tacitus’ work and his own protective attitude toward Suetonius, which helped this follow a successful career very close to two emperors, one can hardly figure out either that Pliny did not offer Tacitus the same protection or that such protection did not afford Tacitus at least a privilege to access the imperial archives.

Maybe I’ll do. I’ve found a version in Spanish language - 9 volumes BTW, not 8 - and I don’t lack interest in it. Its bearing to this discussion is quite a different thing, though. You use citation of Deschner as argument of authority. However many times you have been asked here, by others and myself, to mention just one single fact in support of your claim that the Christians forged every documentation as fitted them to rewrite history, you have always replied that evidence is there, asking, “Why don’t you read it yourself?” That is argument based on authority, in this case Deschner’s authority. I find such arguments the most boring, frankly. Either you produce argument based on facts, or your case is desperately lost.

As you repeat this type of argument three times in this post, and many more in all your posts (10) in this thread, I may infer that you base your case exclusively on destroying your opponent’s reputation. I might have disposed of the argument very quickly, perhaps just by recalling the millionaire’s words at the very end of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, “Nobody is perfect.” But in the ultimate analysis it is too serious an issue as to dispose of it as it were mere fun, which is not.

To begin with, please tell the truth. I did not make the blunder on Severus. I did endorse a blunder issued by someone else who as a rule has produced reasonable arguments though I may disagree. Of course, it was a mistake not to mind that in such a particular instance he might be blundering. It was easy to check the text, but I didn’t. I apologize for it. I am very sorry for inconvenience, in particular if someone still thinks that there is a mention of Pontius Pilate in Severus - which there is not.

Once this has been said, I must add a few remarks. Your blunder is much greater. First, you try to mislead the readers by quite clearly saying that I made the blunder, which is untrue, and an instance of libel; just read the thread. By repeating your libelous charge time and again, you reveal yourself as an advanced disciple of propaganda theories that one would prefer not to become the target of.

And last but not least, I have posted 24 four times - this one included - in this thread. I’ve produced a number of arguments in support of both the authenticity of Tacitus’ Annales 15:44 and the reliability of his sources, none of which you have addressed, according to you because they are uninteresting. Again, it is striking that you deem issues of reputation to be more interesting than the issues of content. You want me and other readers to accept that my credibility as a whole critically hinges on a minor issue like Severus on Tacitus? To realize that someone is eager to pass judgment on me like this makes me panic. Believe me, man; really panic.

The good news is that I need not destroy your reputation - you do it fairly well yourself.