Toto

I finally got my copy from Amazon.

I had some trepidation; some of Zinder's work is overly polemical, and Doherty seems to follow the Republican Party's 11th commandment -- he never speaks ill of a fellow mythicist. But from the first few chapters, the book looks good. There is no pretense of neutral scholarly detachment - this is a book by a capital A Atheist for other Atheists - but Zinder has done a lot of research, evaluates his sources fairly, and keeps his barbs to a minimum.

More later.

{Note to mods: in the previous post Geoff Hudson quotes himself to make a one word correction, and add 2 sentences. Surely this is just a waste of bandwidth, and the duplicated quote could be excised.}

Ted Hoffman

Do you care to support the first part of the statement with some examples? The claim of Zindler being Polemical and Doherty's praise being subjective?

Did you read his review of Wells and Ellegard? I dont find him to be nodding vacuously to what fellow mythicists write.

Doherty seems categorical in his praise of Zindler which is on Zindler having covered the presence of Jesus in early Rabbinical writings.

Toto

Doherty says nice things about Acharya S, where other scholars treat her as an amateur or a nut. That's all I meant. He also speaks well of Freke and Gandy, ignoring some of their errors.

As for Zindler's polemics, I recall an article here, recently cited in this forum, where Zinder says:

and other flippant things that detracted from the flow of the argument.

I may agree with his polemics, but they still go overboard at times.

the_cave

I really can't tell whether Doherty thinks this is evidence for or against the existence of JB. I have not read the work myself, but it seems to me that if a follower of JB inserted a reference to him in Josephus, that amounts to exactly the same evidence for his existence...

Ted Hoffman

Toto,

Where does he praise Archaya S?

Her nutty characterization - is it based on her work?

Zindlers polemics, are they in the book Doherty reviewed?

Vorkosigan

What's your take on the Slavonic Josephus and the Baptist?

VOrkosigan

Toto

Zindler argues that, not only is the Testamonium a forgery, but that references in Josephus to James the brother and to John the Baptist are also interpolations; that references to John the Baptist in Mark are interpolations; and that references to Christians in Tacitus are also forgeries. He thinks that different groups of Christians or followers of John may have forged different parts of Josephus, and that Eusebius was not the original author of the forged TF, but "improved" it.

I don't have time to summarize all of his arguments right now, but they range from convincing to fairly plausible. He shows how, when you remove the section on JtB from Josephus, the passage just flows; in addition, the passage claims that Herod's armies suffered defeat because Herod had JtB executed, but in another section, Josephus provides a different reason. He also notes a historical anomaly in the section on JtB - John is sent to Macherus to be executed, but in an earlier paragraph, Macherus is described as being under Aretas. In addition, John the Baptist is not mentioned in the ancient Greek table of contents to the Antiquities.

the_cave

I'm really not sure. I myself assume the additions in Slavonic Joesphus are interpolations--perhaps invented (John's interpretation of Phillip's dream clearly echoes Joseph in the OT), perhaps based on real events remembered in an oral tradition. They do seem to be even more evidence of a strong John-movement, even if their contents are legendary--you need to have a reason to make interpolations, after all...so I'm partial to the idea that they were inserted by John-followers. Of course, this assumes that there was a John to follow...which again, I myself agree with.

I don't have a problem with a John whose ministry lasted 30 years. Or perhaps the interpolators were confused about the chronology. I don't think we can really say one way or the other, and it doesn't matter so much, since these passages are even more suspect than those in "canonical" Joesphus, as it were.

If John were to be an invented figure, it's really hard to see a motivation. Also note that Jesus is associated with John right from the opening of the gospel of Mark. That means John would have to have been invented first. Since Doherty (the strongest Jesus-myther) suggests the chaos following the fall of Jerusalem played an important role in paving the way for a Jesus-myth, that suggests it would likewise have played a role in any John-mything going on, and that doesn't leave a lot of time to first invent a John for the Jesus-mythers to use. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it doesn't do much to recommend any such theory to me.

It would be ridiculous for Mark to invent both figures. All you need is Jesus--so there must be some reason for John to be there. The best reason I can come up with is, John was real.

Now I suppose you could argue that the baptism of Jesus is itself a later addition to the gospel, but then you're really making things complicated...

And besides, really, what would be the point? If Mark is all Midrash (I'm not saying it is), then the baptism of Jesus kind of makes sense as a symbolic representation of the origins of the Jesus movement in the followers of John...but if they're both invented, I fail to see the point of making the Christ undergo the baptism of John.

In other words, there had to be a Baptism Movement, at least, in order for John to end up in Mark. Why shouldn't that movement have had a founder? Or at least a leader? A leader is really all one needs as a role for John to fill.

Also, it's clear baptism was a part of early Christian practice--Paul mentions it in Galatians, perhaps the earliest Christian document--so gee, someone must've been doing a lot of baptising--perhaps a populist form of Mikvah (and as you know the Essenes appear to have used it...unless they didn't, of course )

Indeed, if John was real, there seem to me to be only two options: 1) the baptism of Jesus is a Midrash as described above, or 2) someone important actually did undergo the baptism of John, which later had to be accounted for.

As you can probably guess, I favor the latter.

the_cave

I guess I should add that they could also have been inserted by Christians, filling out events in the life of an important personage. I guess I'm just assuming that whoever did it, it isn't the hypothetical person who inserted the mentions of Jesus into Joesphus, since, well, the Slavonic edition is apparently a different edition, after all. Not that I know much about these things.

the_cave

Right, see, I would have to read this to comment on it.