Vorkosigan

I must beg to differ. Atwill's work is worth reading even if you disagree with it, for there are some interesting insights into the relationships between the gospels and Josephus

Atwill's only claim is that a select group were so clever.

Atwill's theory does not require the existence of a canon, only that these four are held to be earlier than the others. The others are all seen as derivative, which is pretty much the same POV as mainstream analysis.

A non-point as there is no specification of how much contradiction is too much.

Atwill does not claim that all four gospels are from the same hand, merely from the same group of hands. Later redactions do not detract from his theory at all, any more than they detract from the idea of Big Bang Christianity.

I think that such comments are not helpful. Nevertheless, I agree that this is a very strong point. The antecedents are all there already in Jewish culture.

I must beg to differ, as there were revolts in Cyrene, Cyprus, and Alexandria as the second century opened. The Jewish diaspora was 5-10% of the Empire. Had the Jews been restricted to Palestine, they would not have been a threat (they could simply have been exterminated). Many if not most of the early converts were Jews; indicating that Jews were in fact receptive to an even more Hellenized version of a religion that in practice already incorporated much Hellenization. In other words, the history of Jews actually becoming Christians contravenes your point.

Note that Atwill is not arguing that this attempt at pacifying Jews was a success, only that the motivation behind the stories was to pacify or suppress Judaism. Total subjugation to Christianity is not necessary for Christianity to be effective in blunting Jewish messianism.

With a large chunk of imperial citizenry Jewish, it must have been very important to keep any national aspirations they had suppressed. Especially after marching into their homeland and trashing their national temple.

Not that I agree with Atwill. I simply disagree that you have provided any real ammunition against his thesis.

I can't see how this statement can be meaningfully interacted with. The Roman empire lasted for about 300 years, and after that people kept trying to re-create it. That's not a bad record of success.....good at/bad at are not terms with any real precision.

I've blogged on Atwill on the TF and I think you might find it interesting. Also See my book review of Atwill.

Vorkosigan

Juliana

This is correct especially in light of the fact that we know who the historical Jesus was:
"Jesus is the Divus Iulius of the Flavians: on behalf of a Flavian—Vespasianus; under supervision of a Flavian—Titus; formed by a Flavian—Flavius Josephus alias Paulus; and opposed by a Flavian—Domitianus. His resistance was in vain, for Domitianus was murdered. But that is another story." -- quoted from JWC

Juliana

Toto

This seems to be a comment on Richard Carrier's post in the feedback forum here. I don't know if Carrier was notified of these responses.

Vorkosigan

Yes, it is. Sorry, I just forgot to stick the link in! Thanks Toto. If Carrier finds it, great, if not, great. There's no need to bother him.

Vorkosigan

-DM-

For the future:

Responses to items in the Feedback Forum should be made in the Feedback Forum.

And there is reason to "bother him" even if it isn't exactly a need; Carrier should have a chance to respond to criticisms of his comments.

In addition, orzelw (an unregistered user) should have a chance to continue participation, which s/he cannot do in this forum without becoming a registered user.

In any case, I'll let Carrier know about this thread so that he can respond if he wants to.

-DM-

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Richard Carrier

Those I found to be quite dubious on first glance, but I didn't take the time to explore further, precisely because I cannot justify the expense. I've seen this kind of magic trick before. That's my point. Not only that, but everyone tells me this or that "theory" is worth reading. That's what I was told about Sea Kings. That's what I was told about the Anatomical World Map. That's what I've been told about various quack pyramid theories. And on and on.

Atwill should pick his best case or two and get it through peer review in an academic journal, and then get a debate started among real scholars over the merits of each case, possibly eventually landing in a conference on the subject (after he does this for several of his individual claims). Until he does what responsibility and professionalism demand, why should I do more?

Incidentally, I expect Doherty to do the same before expecting scholars to agree with him (despite the fact that I personally think Doherty's theory is largely correct). But there are enough published mythicists now (I count at least seven living scholars, not counting myself) that we are approaching time for the organization of a conference, and I expect one may be realized within the next ten or twenty years. Indeed, I wouldn't have even picked up Doherty's book had there not already been several bona fide scholars arguing along similar lines, and a large number of people explaining to me how the work had merit. Atwill has not met even that minimal burden yet.


And I am saying that claim is implausible. Indeed, he doesn't even have any evidence that his named conspirators were such magnificent geniuses, or had such amazing sociological insights, even if we suppose any such prescient geniuses existed at the time.

Note that I am not saying this is impossible. I am saying he needs very good evidence, not just the ordinary, to overcome the a priori probabilities against his theory being true. In Bayesian terms, his P(H/B) on this and other points is low, therefore he must demonstrate a correspondingly low P(~H/E&B), assuming he has a sufficiently high P(E/H&B) to begin with (which I think is just a matter of correctly formulating his theory, and I would assume this to be possible regardless of whether his theory is true).


I am not convinced of this. Mark may have been the first written gospel, but was John written before Egerton, or vice versa? A growing contingent of scholars even believes the Gospel of Thomas, or at least its earliest literary redaction, is at least earlier than the later canonicals. And most of the gospels we know about we don't have content from--so it is often impossible to know whether they came after the canon. Again, I am not saying this torpedos his theory. I am saying it is a problem.


Maybe not for you, but I certainly see far too much. The nativity, for example, in Matthew and Luke is a nightmare of completely contradictory and diverging accounts that no conspirators would ever produce as far as I can see. Add to that the completely mystical replacement of the nativity account with John's "genesis" nativity and we certainly seem to be looking at communities who hugely disagree with each other on many details. This is also clear in chronology: John's chronology is totally irreconcilable with any other Gospel, and in fact decisively places the crucifixion in an entirely different year.

Someone who had an organized plan would get their facts straight--especially if their "plan" was to convince someone of the historical authenticity of these events. They would, with that in mind, not produce Luke's lame attempt to "look" like a historian, but would actually generate a real work of history, with all the expected bells and whistles, like Suetonius on Caligula or Arrian on Alexander. The authors would name themselves, describe their methods or occasionally name a source, etc. (compare Philostratus on Apollonius or the fabricated Historia Augustae, indeed the latter is a perfect example of a fabricated collection of "histories," complete with fabricated authors, passed off as genuine history--that's what the Roman elite would do: if Atwill was correct, the gospels would look a lot more like the HA). Indeed, why not invent letters from Jesus? Why not identify the Gospels internally as written by named eyewitnesses who state their credentials? Etc.

In contrast, the Fales thesis makes more sense: the reason the Gospels look so little like history, and engage so egregiously in contradicting and changing each other, and rely so heavily on the technique of midrashic haggadah (taking stories and elements from scripture and weaving them together in a symbolic narrative never even said to be history), is because these are not histories, but myths composed to represent symbolically the different teachings of different groups of Christians. This was a method of composition quite alien to the Roman elite, and nowhere in evidence in Josephus (compare his treatment of the "biography" of Moses with the supposed "biographies" of Jesus in the Gospels). And at any rate, it is a method and objective that seems contrary to what Atwill's thesis requires.

Again, that is not a torpedo. It's just a problem--albeit a serious one.


You mistake the latter point: If the texts have been messed with--and they have--this would erase a lot of the evidence and possibly produce misleading evidence. Atwill seems unaware of this and uses the texts as if they are untampered originals. Again, not a torpedo, but a problem--and his lack of awareness of this problem (as well as his apparent ignorance of the obvious contrary parallel of the HA and many other details like that) suggests I cannot trust him as a scholar. Maybe I can. But there are grounds for suspicion. Hence he needs to go through proper channels before I can justify wasting my own time on this.


That was all one cascading revolt, well after the time Atwill's theory requires them to have come up with the idea. So that's simply not applicable. Even so, it is true there were troubles with Diaspora Jews before the War, just as there were comparable troubles with Orphic cults and philosophers and druids and other groups, and all were solved by standard mainstream Roman action--the way Romans thought and expected all problems could be solved. Thus, what I am saying is that Atwill is reaching outside the box of expected behaviors, which again renders his theory initially less probable than mainstream theories.


You are not getting my point. I am saying exactly what you are: Christianity was a big hit in the diaspora, and only ever became a hit at all when it started appealing there. But it was thus transformed into something tailor made to not succeed in Palestine, and it didn't. Now, a fanatical syncretist like Paul may well indeed have fooled himself into thinking this would work, but a Machiavellian genius? Atwill's theory is based on the premise that Palestine is where the problem was (the only place up to then that presented a military threat, and the only place that was the logical source of such a threat, in the form of the Temple). Romans bent on solving that problem would not likely distract themselves with merging Gentiles into Diaspora Judaism.

The Ebionites may represent the last breath of the original sect, and they remained a tiny fringe group that didn't survive the 3rd century or have any impact on Judaism in Palestine, any more than the Qumran sect did. In short, the original Jewish Christianity was a failure. Christianity only succeeded when it became catholic, i.e. merged Gentiles and Jews, Hellenism and Judaism. I agree some Jews would see the use in that, and I can see how Romans might find that useful. But as a top-down plan, it is hard to see how, for example, Titus or Josephus would see this as a good idea for solving the Palestinian problem. That would be like trying to solve the present Middle East Crisis by trying to invent a religion that merges the best elements of Islam and Judaism, something like Bahai, and expecting it to become all the rage in Palestine and Israel, eclipsing the "problem" religions there, thus defusing the violence. Local fanatics might dream up such silly aspirations, because they would believe them with all their heart as the will of God. But the Jewish and Roman elite? Someone who was so amazingly prescient and ingenious as to think up and carry off the plan Atwill's theory entails is also supposed to be so incredibly ignorant and dense as to utterly fail to see how their plan could not possibly work?

This is a common failing of conspiracy theories: they require the conspirators to be magnificently brilliant and astonishingly incompetent at the same time (like those who claim the U.S. government can completely conceal the existence of an entire UFO program for fifty years, yet can't even keep secret the identity of its CIA agents nor conceal scandals like Abu Ghraib).

Again, I'm not saying this kills his theory. I'm just saying it's a problem, thus requiring some really good evidence to overcome.


From a Roman perspective, I don't see how. I can see how someone like Paul could convince himself such a scheme would work, but Titus? That seems at least a little less likely.

And so on. I think you can get a sense of what I'm getting at.


That's not what I asked for. I'll ask again:

Choose what you think is the best single piece of evidence he has--one thing that is so peculiar it seems it could have no other explanation--and present that case to me by email and I'll check that one claim and see where it takes me.

With this I close. Moderator, please remove my subscription from this thread. I will not waste any more time discussing this issue, except in that one single respect, which I will repeat:

Choose what you think is the best single piece of evidence he has--one thing that is so peculiar it seems it could have no other explanation--and present that case to me by email and I'll check that one claim and see where it takes me.

My email address is rcarrier@infidels.org.

Roger Pearse

I agree with Richard Carrier here. Books like that of Atwill belong to a *genre*, which some of us have seen a great many examples of. All of them employ the same fallacious methods of argument, and all of them 'prove' different things, all mutually contradictory (which shows that the methods are fallacious). Most of them smell of the quick buck.

If anyone doubts this, a search of a database of past book reviews in something like the Times for 'Jesus' will bring up a shoal of the better class items of these -- most don't even merit attention.

Eric von Daniken did it longer ago, and more entertainingly. Anyone can write a book, seek publicity, sales, etc. We have the standard methods of scholarship -- peer-reviewed articles, etc -- precisely to sift out this sort of chaff.

I'm sorry if some people feel that this is unkind. But consider -- people who want to make money do so by writing books that target particular groups. You are one of those targets. Why should you be milked? If we want to avoid this, we must learn to be sceptical of the cheap paperback that is too good to be true.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

JoeWallack

JW:
Great advice Roger. When exactly do you plan on starting to advise people not to buy any more Bibles?



Joseph

STORY, n.
A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Clutch

It's perfectly reasonable to demur from engaging a view that can't get published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The altogether distinct "give me a single piece of evidence" challenge is less obviously reasonable. Many credible views, or at least intellectually worthwhile ones, depend on convergent lines of reasoning, no single one of which fits the description "so peculiar it seems it could have no other explanation". Indeed, it is very rare for any piece of evidence for any theory to fit that description.

So setting the bar at this height really seems a way of asking not to be bothered with the isse. That's a fair request -- when made in good faith, in so many words.

-DM-

As a somewhat relevant and perhaps interesting fact: only a relatively small percentage of books that are published actually "make money" for either the author or the publisher. Caesar's Messiah : The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus was apparently one of the exceptions, making money for both.

This book was published by Ulysses Press, a small publishing house which "In the 1990s ... began to publish a variety of titles on alternative health, fitness and spirituality for adults and teens. Subjects range from yoga and meditation to Pilates to the timeless and profound insights of Buddha, Lao Tzu and Jesus."

If you go to Amazon and find Caesar's Messiah, you will also probably see Jesus was Caesar: On the Julian origin of Christianity, an Investigative Report as well. Both books are probably in the same genre.

-DM-