spin

How sad, Roger. And I found your Tertullian site quite reasonable.


spin

lee_merrill

Whence the argument here? There is in fact none, and indeed, sad to say...

"No, it's not an argument. It's a request for you to supply evidence. Without evidence you don't have an argument." (one Mr. Spin)

Ben C Smith

IMVHO the weak link is in Africanus citing Thallus. Syncellus quoting Africanus is a no-brainer; he habitually quotes verbatim. But Africanus is not quoting Thallus; he is summarizing:

In the third book of his Histories Thallus dismisses this darkness as a solar eclipse, unreasonably, as it seems to me.

The question, for me, is about this darkness. Does that mean this darkness that Thallus discusses in full with reference to Jesus on the cross at Passover time, or does that mean this darkness that Thallus discusses in conjunction with an earthquake, that I, Africanus, am surmising is the same Passover phenomenon found in the gospel accounts?

Ben.

spin

Of course you should ignore the previous post of mine in which I deal with some of the many problems, lee_merrill. Ignorance is bliss.

noble savage

On the face of it, it appears that Syncellus is directly quoting Africanus. Africanus, however, is not directly quoting Thallus. He is remarking on something Thallus said. Apparently Thallus mentioned a darkness. The issue is whether Thallus himself identified the darkness as the one taking place at the death of Jesus (“this darkness”) or whether that identification was supplied by Africanus.

Slightly later in Syncellus’ text, apparently still quoting Africanus, we find :

“According to the calculations of the Jews, the seventy weeks of years are completed from Ataxerxes up to the time of Christ.”

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/syncellus/index.htm

Are we to understand that the Jews themselves calculated “up to the time of Christ” or is that more likely to be a Christian interpretation supplied by Africanus?

NS

spin

I do tend to agree with you, Ben C, if Syncellus is actually quoting Africanus and not an some intermediate source. Despite mentioning Josephus, was Origen citing Josephus or Hegesippus?

This latter was one of the issues I mentioned, when dealing with the mediation of a writer's interpretation of another. It is the least intrusive of the difficulties surrounding Thallus, in that it requires only one simple operation.


spin

lee_merrill

Well, I was cherry-picking at work. Posts with no arguments are easy to answer.

Really now, the statement is about a matter of fact, not about some fine shade of judgment.

How could you not mention errors in scribal transcription? These happen often, though they usually are minor.

It would not seem incredible that three people could get a report of an eclipse on paper, one after the other. Really now.

But the examples you use are not interpretive, for Origen and this person, in what you mention, what is at issue is a matter of fact.

We have to weigh the evidence, yes? So what would your conclusion be? If he ended his account with events then, then no, I don't think this is a good indication of the time it was written. Especially since there are those who love to put the writing of the Christian books decades after the events of interest. It seems they positively subscribe to such long intervals.

So then when we read copies of copies of reports of what Socrates may or may not have said ... we conclude any idea of a real record here is beyond our reach?

Well, no...

spin

Rubbish, lee_merrill. I asked you to think before you spoke rubbish...

Still missing points. I pointed to a qualitative difference. Both were dealing with scribal preservation and so liable to scribal errors. However, I talked of added value on the mediation of interpreters at work. That makes your comparison with Plato's works irrelevant.

However, we have no way of knowing. Ie it cannot be used as evidence of anything other than what Syncellus found in earlier literature.

Origen got it ballsed up in his effort to red his source, cite it correctly and reflect the content of the source. We have no way of knowing in the process of transmission from one interpreter to the next whether the information truly reflects the content being interpreted. So, no, it's not simply a matter of fact. How could Origen have claimed that Josephus attributed the fall of Jerusalem to the death of James, when Josephus doesn't say such a thing and elsewhere attributes the fall to Ananus? We can't know of Thallus's content from what Syncellus tells us Africanus said.

When we don't have Thallus we can'ty weigh his evidence. We only have Syncellus on Africanus.

There is no way to verify the evidence so it has no value while it remains unverified.

I couldn't find any content that needed response in this. If you think there is you might like to reformulate for clarity.

Why are you so hasty in your judgment? Why read Plato as history? The best you can hope for in Plato is that the personages were probably based on real people, but beyond that? Plato wasn't writing history anyway.

Using Syncellus's report of Julius Africanus telling us what "Thallus" said, is not doing history. You cannot give credibility to the witness of Thallus, let alone the credibility of Thallus himself.

I'll ask you again, did Thallus actually write anything about Jesus or did he talk about an eclipse, which Africanus took to be the darkness at the time of the death of Jesus? Ie who made the connection between the darkness and Jesus?

Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the Sun in the third book of his Histories, without reason it seems to me.

Whose word is "this"? Obviously it's that of Africanus, so he is interpreting whatever Thallus said. So, what did Thallus actually say? And what is Africanus's interpretation? Which darkness does Thallus refer to?

If you can't see the multiple problems trying to make historical evidence out of Syncellus's citation of Africanus interpreting Thallus, then we can't really communicate on the issue, because I will think that you can't deal with its historical aspects.

Roger Pearse

The standard of the quotations of Syncellus can be checked, for instance against the Armenian version of Eusebius' Chronicle, and they are good. He even records when he finds differences in the number of years for some reign given in two manuscripts of the Chronicle of Eusebius.

So the question is how well is Africanus representing Thallus. This is impossible to know. But I see no reason to query it, really.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ben C Smith

Agreed, but I think Syncellus has used Africanus extensively as a prop for his own chronology. So I think it far more likely he has a copy of Africanus before him.

I believe I have answered this before.

Origen cites Josephus a handful of times (is it four in all?). He could have been citing from faulty notes or some catena. That is not comparable to Syncellus using the Africanus chronology as the backbone for his own.

Ben.