Ted Hoffman

Richard Carrier Writes:
And Philip Davies has an article at BibleInterp Titled: Did Jesus Exist?.
He says:

Adam

I followed the links to the blurb for Brodie's book, and it primarily cited I Kings 19. Now that requires vivid imagination, far more than you people here at FRDB accuse me of. I try hard to get you to look at textual facts, and I'm the one that gets accused of flights of fancy.

That Jesus Mythicism is highly improbable I have established right there in FRDB with Gospel According to the Atheists. Since Toto does not want to discuss that "minimalist" thesis of mine, I might as well return to the full-fleshed version.
Once again everyone here ignores the 800-pound gorilla right here in the room, most recently in by Post #69 here in
was the johannine community jewish?
In it I referred to the capstone of my research which still stands unrefuted in my Gospel Eyewitnesses thread at Post #450:
Hypothesis: For each section of the gospels proposed as from an eyewitness, near the beginning or end the name or an identifying feature will appear. (This seems closely related to the principle of inclusio enunciated by Richard Bauckham in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006).) (See the link in #445 above.) To give it a name of its own for my purposes here, call it the Alpha and Omega principle.
Result: Seven true positives, and two false positives (Mary and Philip)

There would be no magic in the number seven as those who left written eyewitness records about Jesus, would there? Even assuming that seven is the perfect number of completeness, there would be no evidence for it, would there? Maybe there is.

Relating to the seven eyewitness sections proposed, for each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question (inclusio).

The best recognized source is the Passion Narrative. After long attributing this to Peter, I now see John Mark as the author. His name Mark is attached to the start of that gospel, and he is often considered to be the young man who fled away naked in Mark 14:51-52. The beginning and ending identifications are weaker here, so the evidence needs doubling? Fine, this is paralleled in the Gospel of John in which he may be “the disciple known to the High Priest” (John 18:15-16). As he may also be the author of the P-Strand I derived, he may have accompanied the Pharisees who went to see John the Baptist (John 1:24). If so, the basic list he inserted into John runs from first to last: John 1: 20-21, 24-28, 35-37, 42-44; 7:40-49; 9:13-17; 11:46-50, 55, 57; 12:18-22; 20:11b-14, 16-17.

The Signs Gospel is usually seen as a source, and I name Andrew as it author, named at John 1:40. His name occurs often thereafter in narrative sections of the first twelve chapters up to the end at John 12:21 (2 times). Scholars also think that the original ending of Signs has been shifted to John 20:30-31 to conclude a later edition of that gospel. This covers from the baptism of Jesus to the Resurrection, truly an Alpha and Omega.

For each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question. For Nicodemus, for whom I have given the argument that he wrote the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still alive, his name appears in John 3:1 at the very start of these. At the end, Nicodemus brings spices to anoint Jesus’s body, John 19:39. The text he actually wrote was sayings only, so his name only appears in text that brackets his writings.

As for Peter, the source for Ur-Marcus, his name turns up from the first when his brother Andrew finds him (John 1:40). Acts 15:7-12 records his speech. He is the most-named apostle, helping to identify material attributable to him in both the Synoptics and Acts. Limiting the purview to the gospels, however, Peter still turns up at the end at the Sea of Tiberius, John 21:23.

During Jesus’s life-time the Apostle Matthew may have written Q and later the associated Twelve-Source that underlies gMark as well. If so his name turns up almost at the start of his eyewitness portion of gMark, his call by Jesus at Mark 2:14. His name only occurs again in the naming of the Twelve, but this gospel concludes abruptly at 16:8 in a section most likely from the Twelve Source that can be shown to continue into much of the ending of gMatthew, or at least Matthew 28:16 with the word “eleven” denoting Matthew among them. The Twelve-Source may underlie part of the Acts of the Apostles, and the name “Matthew” is included there along with the other ten remaining apostles (Acts 1:13).

Last to write, but still active on my interpretation (and thereby) becoming Bishop of Jerusalem in 62 CE, is the eyewitness I discovered, Simon. He is one of the two disciples seeing the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 2413-35) according to Origen and my reading of Luke 24:34. The name Simon also comes at the start of the Lucan material as Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). If he is not to be identified with this Simon, he still may be (as a family member) the source for the Infancy Narrative starting up Luke 1 and 2. I see him as the author of Proto-Luke.

Writing later than most of the others, but still an eyewitness, was the Apostle John as the main Editor of the Gospel of John. His name is in the title. For “John” in the text itself, John the Baptist comes up early, but always as simply “John”. This could indicate an author not needing to give further identification about a John who was not himself. In any case, the editorial insertions I recognize (following Howard M. Teeple) begin in John 1 and continue through John 21. If we assume he was also the Beloved Disciple, then he is written about in the very ending; John 21:20-23.

But could this process be carried on and on? Might there be other names we could associate with an occurrence at the beginning and end of relevant sections? There are not actually very many other names to consider. James is one. The last instance is Mark 10:35, with still six more chapters of Mark to go. The first occurrence does fit, in Mark 1:19. I’m setting it aside as not close enough a parallel

Finally, I encounter two that don’t fit. There is inclusio, but they are not eyewitnesses. The name “Mary” does appear at first and last. She’s in the start of both gMatthew and gLuke. She is present at the Cross (John 19:25) and in Acts1:14. She is named at Luke 1:27, and concluding this section we read at Luke 2:52, “His mother stored up all these things in her heart.” Shouldn’t we have an eyewitness text from her also? I guess Luke 1 and 2 would fit? Eight eyewitnesses? And yes, it fits. Practically everything could have been known to Mary except Luke 1:1-4. Personally, I had never given much thought to Mary as having written an eyewitness record; just that Luke had gotten good information from her. This story goes back three decades before the rest of the gospel narratives, leaving more time for legendary accruals, however. The scholarly literature on these two chapters is heavily weighted to the Roman Catholic side, as elegantly reviewed by Raymond Brown in Birth of the Messiah (1999). He has lots of doubts about historicity of Luke 1 and 2. As for any eyewitness claims, he dismisses this on page 575, “that the Lucan infancy narration came from Mary has been deemed untenable from the start (1B)”
The Birth of the Messiah ( via: Amazon UK )
(The above link to Amazon gives the largest preview I have ever seen. Of course the book is 750 pages. Highly recommended.)

Another name that gives a false positive is Philip. His name appears basically wherever the name Andrew appears. Did both of them write eyewitness accounts spanning the same sections of narrative? The best that can be made of this is a reinforcement of the Muratorian Canon that a team of apostles wrote gJohn, and that Andrew is a better choice as the writer because the name “Philip” appears over a chapter beyond the relevant section (in the Farewell discourse, John 14:8, 9).

Close, we might say, with seven true positives, two false positives (Mary and Philip. For ordinary purposes that might serve, but here I’m seeking confirmation from God that He ordained these seven eyewitnesses and no others. Since I’m using names in the first place as my primary identifiers of eyewitnesses, it’s not saying much that the same name appears more than once, and that the primary occurrence is at the start of the section.

So my hypothesis is not confirmed in exactly the way I wanted it. My seven eyewitnesses are confirmed, but something equally meaningful may apply to the other two. The name “Philip” in paralleling “Andrew” may indicate he also had a part in writing gJohn, maybe in tying the Signs Source together with the rest of gJohn by his name getting into the Farewell Discourse at John 14:8, 9. As for Mary (aside from the old standard that women don’t count), there could be good reason(s) to emphasize her under the Alpha and Omega principle.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....nesses&page=18
(See Post #450)

Or maybe it's time for someone to go over to my thread and make some serious attempts at refutation. I'm not depending upon conventional scholarship, nor do you people here, so you have to refute me on my terms, not by authoritarian pleas to convention.

gurugeorge

I don't know about anyone else here, but I most definitely do depend on conventional scholarship. As an interested amateur, unless one has the relevant languages and some training in the field, one must perforce take a triangulation from conventional scholarship; one must base one's hypotheses on at least some of conventional scholarship's philological and higher critical conclusions, even if one disagrees with it on some of the hypotheses it draws from those conclusions.

But anyway, part of the point of interest of the OP is that at least 2 conventional scholars seem to be taking the broad hypothesis of mythicism seriously. Maugre your somewhat feeble and cursory acknowledgement of the subject of the thread in the first paragraph, your post seems off topic.

Juststeve

Ted:

Your quote from Phillip Davies is a bit selective don't you think. Jerked from context perhaps?

As one who thinks Jesus most likely existed as an identifiable person around whom myth grew I agree with Davies in almost everything he said in his little essay but that would not be the case if he had only written what you chose to post.

Steve

Steven Carr

It really doesn't take 'flights of fancy' to see how Kings became models for stories about Jesus.

http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/mirc1.htm shows word-for-word copying from Kings to Gospels.

Steven Carr

'Hypothesis: For each section of the gospels proposed as from an eyewitness, near the beginning or end the name or an identifying feature will appear.'

And your control texts which show this principle in action in ancient authors is.....?

Iskander

Excellent work!

Juststeve

I'm not sure what "proposed as from an eyewitness" even means. Does it mean an eyewitness account? It is clearly unlikely that any Gospel was written by an actual eyewitness. Perhaps it means whoever wrote the Gospels got their information from an eyewitness. If that's the case the second hand account is hearsay and would not even pass muster in a civil trial. Most likely it means that it is an account of what the Gospel writer thought happened based on the stories people told. No reason to give that much credibility at all.

Steve

outhouse

I wouldnt even begin to call this mythicism gaining ground.


More like two more scholars loosing credibility


OMG you mean they really used previous mythology to influence new theology!! run run tell everyone!!!!!!!

religions have done this since writing began

outhouse

steve, I think it means they really believed the source was from a eyewitness. probably wasnt, but somewhere down the line in oral tradition, there probably was a real eyewitness.


and if you studied any law, you would know the two rules to hearsay often convict people.