Ben C Smith

I do not think so. The word for deny carries with it no implication that it is the existence of the person that is being denied. The same Greek word is used in 2 Timothy 2.12-13:

If we endure, we will also reign with him; If we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

Now look at the mincemeat the notion of denying existence would make of this passage:

If we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny that he exists, he also will deny that we exist; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny that he himself exists.

And in Titus 1.16 certain people are said to know God and simultaneously deny him. How can they know God without supposing that God exists? Finally, Peter is said to have denied Jesus three times; same Greek word. Was he denying the very existence of Jesus?

Rather, the notion is one of denouncing or disowning. Peter was denying that he was associated with Jesus, not that Jesus even existed.

It often would, but in this case the Greek looks a bit ambiguous. The reason is simple: The Greek word for death is masculine, and of course any pronoun referring to Christ would also be masculine. The nearest antecedent in this case would be death, so that may be what is being denied, although I am actually not sure that the Greek word can bear this meaning (nor am I certain that it cannot). Several early Christian groups denied that Christ had really died; some thought that he only appeared to die, others that Jesus died but Christ had left him beforehand. Ignatius himself discusses the group that thought Christ only appeared to suffer (this would be the docetics) in Smyrnaeans 2[.1].

Ben.

spamandham

I'm wondering if this is what Ignatius is referring to in regards to the completion of his thought, which I cut off originally figuring it wasn't relevant to the discussion.

Is Ignatius referring to the death here as the 'mystery'? If so, does that add weight to the idea that the denial is in regard to the death of Christ?

Ben C Smith

It is as ambiguous in the Greek as it is in the English. If it is the death that is being denied (by the docetists, for example), then I think the mystery virtually has to be the death, too.

Ben.

gstafleu

I'm back .

Let me try again. I do not claim that no documents with HJD existed in period I. I do claim though that, given the fact we only see documents from period I with little or no HJD, we can only conclude--given the evidence rule--that there were HJD-poor documents in period 1, while we cannot conclude that there were HJD-rich documents in that period. Since we cannot conclude that there were HJD-rich documents in period 1, we cannot use the presence of HJD-rich documents in period I in any arguments.

So, let us say that there were, in some unclear sense (unclear because how do we know this?) HJD-rich documents in period 1. Would this change my argument? Only once these documents come to light: it is the evidence of these documents' existence that counts, not there platonic existence per se. I don't care about das Dokument an sich until it pops up and thus turns into evidence of its existence. As far as I'm concerned there may be countless caves filled with HJD-rich documents, somewhere. Until someone de-caves them they don't count.

Gerard

gstafleu

Not completely, but materially. In other words the documents we have are not a biased sample. Isn't that the most parsimonious assumption, as otherwise you have to posit a biasing mechanism?

Gerard

Ben C Smith

Exactly. Your argument depends on knowing the contents on nonextant documents; if it did not, then the discovery of those nonextant documents could in no way change your argument.

Let me see if I can help you formulate the argument a bit more clearly. Perhaps you wish to say (especially given your post to spamandham) that, in all likelihood, the extant documents are a basically reliable predictor of the nonextant documents. This is a means, not of ignoring the nonextant documents (which is what you say you are doing), but rather of predicting their contents (which is what you are actually doing).

This kind of predictor may not be the most reliable thing in the world, obviously. I personally think it best to simply rely on the documents we have without making any predictions about what the documents we do not have might or might not have said. Under this principle, the following statements are fine:

We have evidence that Jesus existed and was crucified.
We have evidence that Jesus had 12 special disciples or apostles.
We have evidence that those 12 apostles believed and even preached that Jesus had risen from the dead (notice that this casts doubt on at least some aspects of the Judas story).

These statements are positive statements based on positive evidence from various early epistles. (I am ignoring the gospels for the moment.) But, under the same principle, the following statement is not fine:

We have evidence that there were few Jesus details in existence in the early period.

This statement presumes to know the contents of texts that we no longer possess. It is better phrased:

We have no evidence that there were many Jesus details in existence in the early period.

This statement is a simple statement of fact, and is fine. I suspect the reason some on this board prefer to morph this negative statement into the previous positive statement, which overreaches, is that statements of no evidence really do not move the debate forward. (We also, for example, have no evidence that Judas Iscariot joined the circus at age 14.)

Ben.

Doug Shaver

Nothing else? The judgments of the institutions running the scriptoria as to which documents were worth preserving had nothing to do with it?

I do, and I think it's relevant to this question.

gstafleu

This could go on for a while..., but: no, I don't care about the non-extant documents. Their non-extancy assures they cannot touch my argument. Of course the moment a non-extant document is discovered it is no longer non-extant, and that is the moment when it can start influencing my argument. Again: as far as I'm concerned there may be tons of undiscovered documents full of HJD. They only start touching my argument once they become discovered.

This may be an important disagreement. I think that the combination of (1) "We have no evidence that there were many Jesus details in existence in the early period," combined with the fact that the documents we do have from that period are HJD-poor, is sufficient to constitute evidence (not proof) that there was little HJD in the early period. Now, if we did not have these HJD-poor documents, then we would indeed be in a situation where we would have no evidence one way or another, and we could not say whether HJD was or was not abundant in the early period. But the existence of the early HJD-poor documents moves our position from agnostic to "most likely their was little HJD." (Notice the "most likely" here: as usual we can do no better than figure out what is most likely, the Platonic ideals that cast the shadows are always out of our reach.)

Gerard

Ben C Smith

Your conclusion includes them; you care about them whether you care to admit it or not.

I think it is; it is intractable.

It is one thing to make a positive argument against the historicity of some particular detail (I gave the example of Judas) based on positive evidence (such as 1 Corinthians 15 and other texts with the 12 apostles), and then to say: After all, we possess no early evidence that goes against my argument.

It is quite another to generalize across the board as you are doing.

Ben.

gstafleu

Maybe it is, but I think it is in this case allowed, for the reason I have stated: all the documents we do have support the thesis. And that makes it the most likely hypothesis. Can the other hypothesis (there was plenty of HJD) be as likely, given the available evidence, as mine? No, because mine has some evidence (the extant documents), while the other has none (it has a possibility: maybe the lost documents contained HJD). Can the other hypothesis be equally likely as mine? No, for the same reasons (in this case I think you could achieve agnosticism if either the extant documents were missing, or there was a similar volume of extant documents with some HJD). So, conclusion: the no-HJD hypothesis is the most likely one (but not the only possible one).

Gerard