Toto

I associate Eliade more with Shamanism and Yoga and religious myth, more than Egypt and the Abrahamic religions. He has also been criticized for overgeneralization ("parallelomania" of a sort).

Check p 124 of the book for his comments on sun worship, and compare to Acharya S.

avi

Jeffrey, may I inquire, is there anything particular about Victorian era scholarship which renders it invalid, or perhaps suspicious, in pursuing an answer to the question of influence from ancient Egypt on the development of Christianity?

Egyptian mythology& Egyptian Christianity: with their influence on the opinions of modern Christendom (1863) (2nd edition 1896)

(page vi from the author's preface)
http://books.google.com/books?id=0Vv...age&q=&f=false

Here is Samuel Sharpe's quote given by Murdoch in her article: The Nativity Scene of Amenhotep III at Luxor
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/luxor.html

Personally, I don't find objectionable Samuel Sharpe's opinions, simply because of the date wherein his ideas were published. Is there something about his work which you know about, and could explain to someone like me, (who knows so very little, and cannot distinguish genuine Egyption scholarship, for shoddy journalistic endeavors, as I have no doubt, you can)?

In particular, Jeffrey, as you are, in my opinion, very knowledgeable, both about Greek, and the New Testament, can you please confirm, or repudiate the notion of Samuel Sharpe, expressed above, one and a half centuries before the birth of this thread in 2004, that "...the chapters in Matthew's Gospel...are an after addition not in the earliest manuscripts, ..."?

Perhaps Sharpe is in error on this point, if so, that would seem a valid criticism, both of Sharpe, and Murdoch!!
In my humble opinion, Jeffrey, your assessment of Sharpe would be of extraordinary benefit in clarifying the extent to which Murdoch has erred, if she has.

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, there's its Romantic assumption that Jesus was just a quietist preacher of morals and that therefore anything that shows him to have been something other than this must have been later additions to the "original" gospel story.

The first question to be answered here befeore an assessment can be made is: What did Sharpe meant by the "earliest manuscripts". Does he say?

The second question to ask is: When he made his claim, was he aware of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus -- both of which have a complete text of Matthew? Was he aware of the papyri such as P1 which contain sections of the text of Matt 1-2 and thus testify to Matt 1-2 being an original part of the text of Matthew?

If he was, then he was not telling the truth. If he wasn't, then he might be somewhat excused for making the claim he does, depending on what he delineates as the "earliest manuscripts", but he is still factually in error.

(We may also ask if AS is aware of these MS and how they make Sharpe's claims dubious. If she isn't, why isn't she, especially in the light of claims made about her as one who is on top of things, as one who is conversant with matters text critical and all other aspects of modern NT research? If she is, then why does she use as a support of her claims the "data" from Sharpe she knows is contradicted by actual evidence and is therefore untrue?)

And is it really legitimate to conclude from "early" MS that are missing Matt. 1-2 (and again, which ones are they according to S?), that Matt 1-2 is a later addition to the original text of Matthew? Some of the MS witnesses (though all fifth century!) are also missing other sections of Matthew's Gospel (A starts with Mt. 25:7 (!) C is missing 5:15–7:5; 17:26–18:28; 22:21–23:17; 24:10–45; 25:30–26:22; 27:11–46; 28:15–20. Codex Bezae does not have (because of damage to the text) 6:20–9:2; 27:2–12. Should we conclude that because these witnesses lack these texts, that these texts are later additions?

In other words, S seem to think that the only explanation for the absence of a text in an "early" MS witness to Matthew (let alone a "early" MS witness that is patently fragmentary) is that it wasn't originally a part of the text. And this is extremely shoddy -- not to mention agenda driven -- scholarship.


There doesn't seem to be any "perhaps" about it.

I believe I commented in an another thread (or in an earlier message in this one) about how Sharpe has to cook his Christian and Egyptian evidence in order for him to make the claims he does about the parallels that "exist" between the Lukan "infancy narrative" and the Egyptian material he says is its source.

Jeffrey

avi

Alas, I do not have the answer. I am not sufficiently conversant with Sharpe's work to know the answer. Perhaps Dave knows. I do not.

Again, sorry, I don't know the answer to that question, either.
Ooops. Again, I don't know the answer.

Hurrah, at last, a question which I can answer. So, Sharpe had already been dead a quarter century before discovery of P1. Again, I don't know if Sharpe knew about Codex Vaticanus or Sinaiticus. We have them available to us, on the internet, so, presumably, does Ms. Murdoch.

This seems to me to be crucial to the discussion, and far more salient, in addressing the fundamental issue of the extent to which Egyptian mythology may or may not have contributed to the evolution of earliest Christianity, than several of the earlier posts in this thread.

Thank you Jeffrey, well done. To the extent that Sharpe's original thoughts depended on his apparently incorrect supposition that Matthew 1:18 was not extant in the earliest manuscripts, but represented, instead, a later addition, one must conclude that Sharpe's analysis is suspect, and therefore, the task for Ms. Murdoch, in my opinion, is to demonstrate how other Egyptologists interpret those images of the nativity scene at Luxor, the point, I suppose, that Jeffrey, Toto, Richard Carrier, Apostate Abe, and others, have been making for some years now....(I am a little slow...)
avi

Toto

Acharya has posted a free 12 page e-book:

The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ

Her email announcing this states: The basic thesis:

ApostateAbe

The e-book is typical of the Acharya S writings I have known, and it is great that she put that online to freely distribute. For a while now, I was concerned that she may have been running a scam where she sells a bunch of outrageous bullshit and then asks all her critics to read her printed books before they can be justified in challenging the arguments, which means they have to buy them. Now all her critics have to do to prove their points is to cite that e-book.

Roger Pearse

Well, it is good to have the sources. But I got no further than the first page of references, page 4, where the Diegesis of the renegade clergyman Robert Taylor (who was jailed for financial fraud) is quoted as an authority, followed by Joseph Wheless Forgery in Christianity also given as an authority, complete with Gibbon's mistranslation of the title of a chapter in Eusebius PE. All this material has long been comprehensively rebutted.

JoeWallack

JW:
Yea, I know what you mean Roger. I stopped reading Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, after I read the title.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Clivedurdle

I wonder if we are rehearsing a basic difference in how we look at subjects.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...343/gnosticism

And the problem is that those who take more of a gestalt perspective do tend to be labelled as pseudo scientists, a bit strange in the arena of bch as everyone is primarily dealing with just so stories, but somehow some just so stories are thought to be more just so than others!

A major premise of the xian mythos is that it is the crossroads of the world - alpha and omega, the turning point, the saviour, the cross. Death where is thy sting. New heaven and earth. Behold I make all things new.

Bit embarrassing if it is actually syncretic and cobbled together from existing ideas.

dog-on

But doesn't Martyr admit exactly that?