Vorkosigan

I've blogged a very long summary of Atill's discussion of the TF, too long and too hard to format for this venue.

Atwill on the TF

Vorkosigan

Toto

This is mind boggling. It makes sense, but then it would seem that Josephus wrote a puzzle that puts the Da Vinci Code to shame.

Jackalope

Did someone mix up their egyptian deities? This makes sense if you're talking about Osiris. Anubis wasn't killed and resurrected, he's god of the underworld. He's the one who weighs the hearts of the dead to see if they can enter paradise. Either there's a translation mistake or Atwill made a serious mistake here.

Vorkosigan

Yup. Looks like you're right. I'll have to blog that.

Vorkosigan

Amaleq13

Is Atwill saying that all Josephus' writings are intended to be read with all of the 'New Testament' or just parts of J and the Gospels/Acts?

JohnHud

Atwill's work relates primarily to the similarities between Jewish War and the gospels, and to the TF passage in Antiquities. However there are also some parallels elsewhere, for instance the crucifixion account in the Autobiography. The next volume will deal with Acts and the letters.

The Anubis/Horus point was caught during editing. my apologies, I thought the sentence had been dropped. It is in any case of minor importance--the key point is Atwill's discovery that the Flavian Emperors, as the Great World Mouse Decius Mundus(Mus), are wearing the mask of a false god to deceive the Jews --and this then supports the parallels between Jesus's career and that of Titus as described in the Gospels. Essentially this is the Roman confession of how and why they created the religion

JH

Vorkosigan

The letters of Paul do not get much play in Caesar's Messiah. I'd go with parts of Josephus where he deals with the history of his own time, and primarily the Gospels/Acts. I'll clarify that.

Vorkosigan

DramaQ

As usual, when I look at items like this I think less in terms of linguistics and structure and more in terms of motivation. Must be why the “D� stands for “Drama�.

With regard to the theory behind “Caesar’s Messiah�, I should start by saying it’s a really fun idea and fascinating to delve into.

However, I have a few points I’d need some more satisfaction on before I buy into it. (Well, ok, before I buy the book.)

1. It seems that in order for the parallels to work it requires at least a partial harmonization of the four gospels. I’m not the only one with a problem with this. Motivation-wise, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would the supposed creators of these documents want to spread their propaganda out over disparate books? What good would that do? And worse still, unless they were physic or had a hand in the later formation of the canon, how did they know which books would be the “right� ones to parallel Titus’ history in?

2. Atwill apparently depicts the material in the gospels as containing “inside jokes� and cruel lampoons of historic characters. Almost as if there is a wink and a “See Josephus� reference. Once again: where’s my motivation?? What possible reason could the perpetrators of such a ruse have for putting in such material? If their goal was really to quell violence among the various Messianic cults by “herding� them into a benign, authority-loving cult, why on earth would they even take a SLIGHT chance of screwing that up by putting in such insulting material? They might have assumed their audience was a bunch of illiterate fishermen, but they couldn’t know that someone wouldn’t spill the beans to them. Why even risk it? What could they gain by infusing their cult-making stories with lampoons?

3. If I were a literary genius and had been assigned the task of creating pseudo-historical documents for the purpose of uniting disparate Christ movements, I would probably NOT do so by writing something like “Mark�, which is CLEARLY unkind to the disciples in general and Peter in particular. Presumably there were Petrine groups that I would want to be part of my unification. Why would I start out by writing a version of my story that is so insulting to them (and/or their presumed patron)? Shouldn’t ALL four stories be equally enticing to ALL the groups without antagonizing one of them?

From a director’s point of view, the script is flawed, and my actors are milling around not understanding their motivation at all.

dq

JohnHud

the four gospels were written as an intertext because that was the Hebrew style of reading. If you email me I will send you a pdf copy to get you going, since you need to actually read it in order to comment

JH

spin

Sounds exceptionally loopy to me. Loaded with presuppositions about make-up of texts, construction, writing background (and probably location of writing), knowledge of audience, Hebrew style, etc.

If Mark was written in Rome as seems most likely, how can one assume any "Hebrew" component to that text? If the other synoptic gospels were developments on Mk, going their different ways based on the materials available to the communities in which they were written, how can one assume some overriding concept of "intertext" other than the simple descriptive fact of their having been collected and placed together (which in itself says zippo)?


spin