Vinnie

An argument from silence is only as strong as the silence. That is what. Without any positive reasons for denying the historicity of Jesus the explanation of a figure somewhere behind all the traditional sayings, parables, actions and miracles is the default. I commend Doherty for, as I perceive it, putting forth a positive argument for non-historicity. Without any reason to doubt all the independent material attributed to Jesus by various sources, forms and streams of thought shortly after his death, it would be absurd to deny his historicity without good reason. The fence sitters are left with no fence to sit on and should go bake muffins.

Vinnie

dog-on

On the other hand, Tertullian provides all the evidence one would need...

spin

This logic has nothing to do with history or historiography. We are dealing with an unplumbed collection of traditions whose veracity apparently cannot be tested. You have failed to produce any functional test that would be acceptable to a real historian.

Can you be so easy to jump into some other unplumbed collection of traditions and decide as you do a priori that for example Arthur or Robin Hood existed or did not??? Of course you can't. You are just doing apologetics.

This is vacuous, Vinnie. Historicity is granted to information from the past that fits into the existing matrix of history. Do the legwork to establish a connection to the matrix. Otherwise you will remain with a bunch of untested traditions that you can't do anything with.


spin

Vinnie

Actually it does. No one doubts that various elements about Jesus' minitry are multiply attested in source and form via Mark and Paul except mythicists. The case is iron clad without arguments to Pauline silence. No amount of special pleading by you or anyone else on the internet can change that. The whole case of mythcisim and agnosticism rests exclusively on that leg. If you still accept it after that, it indicates more about your personality than ancient history. Dating Paul and all the gospels to the second century or saying the NT is too unstable to used textually are even more laughable.

Absolute nonsense. See source criticism and stratification.


Vinnie

spin

Wishing it does doesn't make it so.

You're stuck in a rut. As I've tried to beat into your head, one doesn't have to be a mythicist to conclude that the evidence has not been proffered for your claims.

That "no one doubts" means little when it comes to evidence. Crapping on with false claims of multiple attestations when you are ignorant of the evolution of the traditions behind the texts means that you say nothing useful. You are just finessing literary studies as history, which it isn't.

Vinnie, you are an expert on special pleading because you haven't stopped making special pleas. Your the emperor that won't look at your new clothes.

If you say so. You've been hopping around for many years convincing yourself that things have to be so, because of a tide of apologetics.

This is paltry deflection, Vinnie. You need evidence, not hollow talk.

I asked you to date Paul. You failed to do so. Here is something for you to think about: Paul supposedly was let down from the walls of Damascus while Aretas had control of the city. The only time in history that an Aretas had control of the city was before 63 BCE when the Romans kicked him out. So, what do the apologists do? They concoct ahistorical scenarios to explain away the historical data. So, do you want to try to date Paul or are you just going to listen to those willing to concoct stuff?

Another deflection. Vinnie, you don't honestly want people to trust your judgment, when you perform like this, do you? You seem blithely unaware of the problems of extracting historical facts from unplumbed traditions. Text manipulation mainly tells you about text.

So, Vinnie, using your rationale for Jesus of christian literature, what is your learned opinion for Arthur or Robin Hood??


spin

gurugeorge

Yes, and I thought the Kings reference was clearly in reference to a military victory, and the other reference was a metaphorical extension of that usage (someone's plans coming to fruition, in a semi-military context).

Here's the sort of thing I was thinking of (from a fundie website, but it's quoting what looks like a respectable textbook):-

Euaggelion was commonly used in the Greco-Roman culture as "a technical term for "news of victory." The messenger appears, raises his right hand in greeting and calls out with a loud voice: "rejoice …we are victorious". By his appearance it is known already that he brings good news. His face shines, his spear is decked with laurel, his head is crowned, he swings a branch of palms, joy fills the city, euaggelia are offered, the temples are garlanded, an agon (race) is held, crowns are put on for the sacrifices and the one to whom the message is owed is honored with a wreath...[thus] euaggelion is closely linked with the thought of victory in battle. " (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament)

Now, given the concept of Messianism, given that it's all about victory (the victory of the Jews over their oppressors, the victory of the Jews finally coming out on top), don't you think literate people who used that term would be particularly sensitive to the military/victory connotation? Don't you think that, if a Messianist EVER used the word "gospel", they would be using it precisely because of the military/victory connotation?

Sure, the word might be used, by extension, elsewhere in milder contexts like announcement of a wedding. Words develop in meaning like that. But given the concept of Messiah as a kingly, military victor, surely Messianists would mean it in relation to Messianic victory?

Or to put it another way, do you think intelligent, literate Messianists would have been insensitive to the military/victory connotation? Would they have just blithely used the word just because it was a general term for good news, without regard to the older military/victory connotation?

Give me a break! (In fact, if the term was connected "in Graeco-Roman culture" with the military victories of non-Jews, isn't there even a hint of irony, a bit of slyness, in the usage of it by Messianists?)

Well, maybe, but I was just going by what I'd read about the word, as above.

Is the coming of a Messiah good news? The coming of a Messiah is merely the Messiah idea itself. All Messianists said the Messiah was coming. Is that, in itself, a "gospel"?

So where else is the word "gospel" used in connection with honest-to-goodness-ordinary-traditional Messianists? If we bracket Messianists that might or might not have been Christians, what about common or garden Jewish Messianists - do we find them using the term "gospel" to describe what is merely the Messianic idea itself? (I'm asking you because you are the expert here!)

Neither is Christ to Christians, but the Messiah myth is what we would think of as a myth, isn't it? If there was no historical personage behind the myth, then I suggest it's what we ought to think of the Christian Christ, as he originally was. Same myth, just with a temporal reversal (and revaluation of values from kingly to humble, military to spiritual, etc.). An inverse Messiah, a Duck-Rabbit Messiah.

Later note: just in case this discussion gets shunted off, I should just point out that I think it's a legitimate digression. There is "silence on HJ in the Pauline corpus" in that there is no compelling evidence in Paul of some human Messiah claimant eyeballed by the people Paul was talking about. However, Paul says those people preached "another gospel". This, to my mind, is the real "smoking gun" in all this business, if the word "gospel" has the military victory connotations the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says it has.

spin

Wow, what a dependable site! I've already supplied with instances from the LXX that clearly show you that this stuff is rubbish.

This is a new fudge. Messianism is about the arrival of god's kingdom, of liberation, peace. In fact in the literature the achievement of victory side of the activities of the messiah is rarely stressed.

"[B]y extension"? You haven't established what is being extended upon. You merely cited stuff from a fundy that you think is worthy -- but on what grounds? Etymologically, the word is simple: eu = "good", aggelion = "message". The examples I gave regarding the election of Solomon and from a psalm are about good news, not about victories.

You're just flogging fundy material.

So how does a wedding or a coronation relate at all to a victory?? I mean "by extension"? They don't.

Can you show me that that isn't merely by extension form the major meaning of evaggelion, ie "good news"?

Why not?

No... ... Well,... umm, alright. What do you want broken?

Are you now better informed?

The good news is that you can prepare for the coming of the messiah. Repent. Be baptized. Whoooosh. You're a new man. You are now ready, so let's wait together.

We don't have any texts from the period by honest to goodness traditional messianists.

For the Jews it was merely an expectation that god would send someone to fix things up. The christians have a myth about a transcendental dying savior.


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Quote:

Originally Posted by show_no_mercy Quote: Originally Posted by andrewcriddle IE if it is legitimate to speculate, with no solid evidence, that our existing text of Paul has been edited so as to increase the allusions to a Historical Jesus, then it is equally legitimate to speculate, with no solid evidence, that our existing text of Paul has been edited so as to reduce the allusions to a Historical Jesus. Both events are possible, and I think that both events happened. Which is why I think it's a hopeless endeavor to try to find any sort of "historical Jesus" from Paul's letters. The MSS evidence is abjectly one-sided - e.g. why would any orthodox Christian keep around manuscripts of Paul's letters that contradicted or didn't explicitly support "orthodox" dogma?. Quote: Originally Posted by andrewcriddle IF our existing text of Paul has been significantly edited at some time after 150 CE .... such relatively late rewriting of Paul is unlikely .... more of an issue is possible rewriting of Paul at a very early stage...which I would date late 1st cenury CE.

There is a huge logistical problem in these types of theories of non-extant textual changes of any kind in any NT documents, especially if ascribed to some type of orthodoxy or apologetics concerns.

Bible texts were written and translated and disseminated in multiple languages over a wide geographical area to groups of various suasions by the end of the 2nd century, before the institution of any substantive "orthodoxy" establishment (about 2 centuries later). An establishment that itself had major geographical and language limitations and internal doctrinal non-uniformities, as well as there being an existing circulating set of writings about the texts themselves (Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen etc).

Thus any doctoring, on any side, on purpose or accidental, is very likely to (essentially must) leave a marker in the extant manuscript evidences. As in fact did often occur with textual variants, whether begun by simple homoeoteleuton or complex causes.

e.g. 1 John 1:18 and 1 Timothy 3:16 and Acts 8:37 had differences that, whether caused originally accidentally or on purpose by copyists, might be thereafter copied and transmitted with the doctrinal implications considered, especially if the mixed manuscript evidence was noted. As a sidenote I think that Ehrman has a lot of this backwards and should first be compared to Dean Burgon's treatise on orthodox corruption and then additional examination. However all of that is not my point on this post.

This marker of mixed manuscript evidence would be that much greater on full verses and that much greater on whole sections (Pericope Adultera, ending of Mark). And this is true whatever the cause of the original divergence.

Thus any theory of non-extant individual section redactions must come up with a bypass mechanism for the early NT transmission into multiple languages and wide geographical areas to diverse groups. This I have never seen done, not even remotely.

(On a smaller level this comes up with Hort's primitive corruptions as well .. although he can try to push the initial changes way back close to authorship .. e.g. 1st century, as a bypass. Nobody tries to defend that today, much like I have seen nobody really try to defend the redaction theories on a level that takes early NT transmission into account.)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

gurugeorge

Hang on a sec - are you saying that the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is a fundy work? Wasn't this Kittel guy a Tubingen dude? Was he a fundie?

I guess the fundy website could be misquoting, I don't have the 10-volume work to hand myself

Also, bear in mind that that definition is digging into the past, the original uses of the word by the ancient Greeks. Did the word continue to have such connotations into the LXX? Seemingly, sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, but I think it extremely unlikely that people for whom military victory was part of their meme would have been insensitive to the ancient connotation: it's ready-made to apply to some kind of victory that Messianists might crow about.

So are you definitely saying the TDNT definition quoted by the fundie website is wrong?

OK, but there has to have been a victory for there to be peace.

I see what you are saying now: that the fact that there was the possibility of baptismal preparation for the coming of the Messiah was itself a kind of good news.

Pretty weak kind of "good news", if you ask me, compared to the idea that the saviour had already been and that the kingdom is already established, here and now, if you only have eyes to see ...

show_no_mercy

Really? So where is Marcion's canon? Where's the complete Egerton gospel? What about the Ebionite Matthew? The Valentinian version of John? You're operating under the assumption that every single MSS that was ever written by Christians is still extant, or that the only "real" Christians were the "orthodox" and that, say the Marcionites weren't "Christians". Minor fubs in translations could be passed on as long as the general support for the "orthodox" dogma was still there.

Christians were changing texts to suit their theological agendas. No one doubts this. The major problem is that the "orthodox" simply claimed to be presenting the originals and it was only the "heretics" who were making changes to suit their theological needs.