andrewcriddle

Harding is quoting here a view with which he disagrees.

Harding himself would date the Testament c 500 CE. He emphasises that due to the fluidity of the Testament's text one has to define what one mean's by the date when the Testament was written. IE some of the traditions may be very ancient but the text in anything like its present form is much later.

Andrew Criddle

Grog

My point on Casey, through Horseley, is that the stories could have developed orally in Aramaic. A later compiler of the story may not have known Aramaic well. Horseley points to a number of indicators that gMark existed orally including connecting words (true he says some are no longer there) and the narrative structure indicates orality.

Horseley, in the paper I am citing (I'll have to review it again to be sure), is silent on whether these Aramaic stories originated with an historical person. At least that plays no role in his argument. However, the very structure of gMark, I believe, works against this. Instead, it has the feel of folklore, with a message and a narrative structure. Dating this oral tradition to the 40's is gratuitous, though, and entirely dependent on an already early Mark. I believe gMark is written closer to the turn of the century, in particular because of what I consider to be literary dependence between gMark and Josephus (which I would argue can only flow from Josephus to Mark). In this context, the Jesus of Nazareth belief would have arisen out of conjecture related to Paul's teaching that Jesus was "born of a woman."

The gMark story makes more sense as a folk tale about the renewal of Israel.

hjalti

I find this whole businesss around Mark 2:23 to be very interesting.

Casey spends a lot of time arguing against the suggestion that "Blogger Godfrey" supposedly makes: that latinisms explain away all the aramaic influences in Mark. Casey informs us that this suggestion is "quite incompetent, which is why, as far as I know, it had not previously been suggested"

But this of course isn't the point Godfrey is making, and the only "quote" Casey points out to support that Godfrey makes an absurd claim like this is the title of the infamous blogpost: Roll over Maurice Casey: Latin, not Aramaic, explains Mark’s bad Greek. Casey has apparently only read the title. Perhaps this is why he seems incapable of gathering information available on Godfrey's blog with any semblance of accuracy.

When you actually read the blogpost you will see that Godfrey is talking about Mark 2:23. Because of this misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt, although he really doesn't deserve it), almost all of what he writes is totally irrelevant and wrong.

Casey is for example shocked that "Blogger Godfrey" talks about "bad Greek" (it's "crude", "misleading"), because he thinks he's talking about stuff like latin loanwords, but Godfrey is talking about Mark 2:23, and Casey himself talks about this being "not satisfactory Greek" (p. 64)

And can anyone explain this to me:Because "Blogger Godfrey" didn't refer to any "learned scholarship", but only to the list of latinisms that he stumbled upon at a fundie university's website, that's evidence of him being "incapable of leaving his fundamentalist Christian background behind"?

aa5874

Again, re-construction of the past has been carried by ORDINARY people since Mankind has lived.

The VERY SURVIVAL of Mankind is DIRECTLY linked to UNDERSTANDING the Past.

Ordinary people know that in order to LEARN of the Past that CREDIBLE SOURCES are IMPERATIVE.

Credible Sources are the Fundamental and Critical FACTORS for the re-construction of the past.

But, astonishingly, the so-called Experts in the HJ/MJ argument ADMIT their Sources are NOT credible.

The history of the so-called "historical Jesus" CANNOT ever be re-constructed from sources that are NOT Credible.

Ordinary people do NOT rely on ADMITTED Non-historical Sources.

The so-called Experts in the HJ/MJ arguments have VIOLATED the very fundamental principles of History when they employed sources that they know are NOT Credible.

The argument for an "Historical Jesus" is a VIOLATION of the Principles of History when the Bible, a Source of Admitted Fiction, False Attribution, Implausibilities, unknown time of authorship, and historical inaccuracies, is used as a Credible source by so-called Experts.

Grog

IIRC, This is Doherty's position on the Testament. Well, ok, I thought he mentioned this in his response on Vridar, but it doesn't look like, only AoI. I thought I had read this somewhere, though. (I haven't read his latest book, though.) I would think that this is his position since that is how analyzes similar works.

Steven Carr

He hardly uses it at all in Jesus:Neither God nor Man, virtually only to back up the claim that 1st century Jews believed in demons.

Is Casey going to claim that that is 'ludicrous'?

EarlDoherty

And how does one get Hoffmann or Casey to admit this? Hoffmann keeps coming back like a stuck record parrotting his "4th-6th century" dating as a stick to beat me with, while ignoring Duling's account of general agreement that its elements may well go back as early as the first century.

I mean, the whole objection is ludicrous. The Gospel of Thomas, in its extant form, is 4th century, and even the total extant content is regarded as going back no further than about 140 (see Koester), yet in the same breath they can claim that a certain stratum goes right back to the mid-1st century (which I have no objection to). Is the Gospel of Luke in its present form not regarded by many critical scholars as a product of the mid-2nd century? Will Hoffmann ridicule those who say that an Ur-Luke goes back well into the first?

These kind of tactics by historicist defenders are so transparent they are embarrassing. To everyone, it seems, except those who indulge in them.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Yes, and by admitting that we have all the proof we need in the Gospels and an epistle like Ephesians (6:12) to see that first century Jews believed in demons, what do Casey and Hoffmann think they are accomplishing?

They have so few straws to grasp at, they can hardly even construct a decent straw man.

(I haven't had time today to check The Jesus Process to see if Hoffmann is still beating the same dead horse.)

Earl Doherty

anethema

Forgive me a qoute "you are not going to be an expert in aramaic without becoming one." The whole process is rigged. All the evidence is "interpreted" and explained by "experts".

Grog

Anethema, who are you quoting?

By the way, you make a good point and one I have seen made here before: The response to skeptics, "mythicists" is similar to the response by the Church when faced with heresies. Only experts can interpret and understand these texts.

In the end, I think the hypothesis that "Jesus is existed" is unfalsifiable. Jesus himself recedes to beyond an artifical event horizon. Texts are interpreted to make them say what they do not say. For example, Paul does say Romans killed Jesus he just doesn't say it in his letters because he doesn't need to. He said it verbally, but unfortunately, left no recording. Instead, in his writings, he says demons killed Jesus but everyone knows that Paul means demons acting through their Roman agents. Romans 13 poses no problem for this hypothesis because even though evil demons in 1 Cor 2:8 killed Jesus through Roman proxies they actually were doing the will of God anyway so Paul and Jesus' other followers would harbor no ill will nor blame Rome for flogging, humiliating, and executing Jesus. Thus it all really fits, see?

How does one argue with such logical flexibility?