Steven Carr

It was you who claimed that we had to look at manuscripts which *mentioned* the person.

And then produced a manuscript which doesn't mention Jesus....


So you have no way of showing that Paul was not condeming the Jesus of Mark or John....

Ben C Smith

I think Steven means 1 Corinthians 10.4.

Ben.

Gamera

A fragment of one that does. And that's remarkable in antiquity.


No, but that makes my point not yours. If Paul is arguing against a fictive Jesus, it's because he assumes a nonfictive Jesus. Whether Mark or John got it right in Paul's eyes (and of course their gospels didn't exist at the time), hardly matter to the issue of a (more or less) contemporary reference to one Jesus.

You seem to want some kind of historical purity in texts, whereby any text that is completely historical is ipso facto completely fictive. This is course effaces virtually all historiography up until 1900 or so (and even then . . .)

I take it for granted that texts refering to historical persons in antiquity are filled with legendary material, inventive re-tellings, supplements, appendages, confusions, etc. You don't?

Gamera

Well, like I say, an obscure reinterpretation of an obviously figurative passage by Paul, who is interpreting a text, not an event.

aa5874

Your posts are all contradictory. If texts of historical figures of antiquity are filled legendary material, inventive re-tellings, supplements, appendages, confusion, etc...then you really can't tell fact from fiction. All your arguments for historicity are fatally flawed. You only propagate confusion, etc.

Steven Carr

Which manuscript is p52 a fragment of? Where can I see the manuscript that p52 is a fragment of?

Are you claiming that there are more fragments of the NT, even if they don't mention Jesus, than there are whole texts about Alexander?

Gamera

No, my posts are consistent. I have one standard: history is always subject to the accretion of legendary material, reconstructions and political agendas. You simply have to accept that fact. And indeed we see it all the texts of antiquity, and more modern texts, as can be seen from such figures as Richard III or Joseph Smith, historical figures with an accretion of legend that is in some ways more important than what is historical.

Once we cross that threshold of acknowledging that historiography isn't some pure unbiased process (especially not in antiquity), then we can calmly evaluate the texts in front of us for what they are, instead of making dubious tendentious categories that Tacitus's works are "history" while Acts is not.

They are all tendentious narratives, which is all history ever is. And having said that, it appears that Jesus is of the same status as Pericles and Alexander, as far as his historicity is involved. All these personages attracted legends and retellings.

In contrast your position is contradictory. You want to apply a standard of historicity to Jesus, which if applied to the rest of the texts we have, would efface antiquity as we know it. I'm OK with that. I'm not saying your standard is necessarilly wrong (though I think it leads to uninterestesting results). I am saying that if you apply it to Jesus, you have to apply it to Socrates and Pericles, and I'll think you find you have virtually depopulated the ancient world of all the characters that I think you think are historical.

You can't have it both ways. Your skepticism seems directed only at particular texts, while you have privileged others based on some agenda that I don't think you can explicitly defend.

Gamera

It's clearly a fragment of a text of the gospel of John, mss of which do exist from about 300 or so -- unless some really astounding anagrammatical coincidence has occured.

Are you claiming the latter as the explanation?

aa5874

That sums up your confusion. You can never tell fact from fiction, since all we have are tendentious narratives.

You have already effaced antiquity as we know it. You cannot tell the difference between Achilles and Alexander the Great.

Gamera

Saying that historiography is tendentious is not the same as saying it's fiction. You have confused two categories that aren't alternatives.

Fiction is tendentious, and often usually in form. Historiography is tendentious and usually narrative in form. The difference is in the role they play in our society, not in some essential distinction about what is real and what isn't.

So to call historiography tendentious in no way means that the persons written about lack historicity.