The Bishop

Oh, man! All this time I thought I was an atheist. Apparently not! As an HJ-er, I must be a miracle-believing Christian!!

I'm quoting Toto here, but someone else said it too:It's too easy to take the TF and its obvious devotional interpolations and then automatically think, "Josephus, phooey". Well, Josephus may be the only extrabiblical source for JtB, but it's actually a pretty damn good one, and he says a great deal more about JtB than he says about Jesus - which militates against it being a Christian interpolation, because why interpolate more about John than about Jesus?

I haven't followed the link to see exactly what he said, but there are two problems with the statement. First of all, though some works that we have, like Josephus, have indeed been preserved through the mechanism of Christianity, surely it's going too far to have early (pre-Constantine) Christianity have some kind of blanket veto on what writings get preserved and what gets censored. And the other problem I have with the idea of the censor-Christians is that they never excised the embarrassing stuff about Jesus and the movement as a whole from the canon of the Gospels and the other books which became revered as New Testament, also early Christianity certainly never had any problem combatting denigratory references to Jesus or itself, rather than feeling embarrassed about it - nothing early denigrators of Jesus said would not be taken on as a point of pride by Christians. So I'm afraid I find the whole censor theory as suspect.

Well done, once again, by whoever it was pointed out that JtB wasn't mentioned in Philo. If JtB wasn't mentioned in Philo, then there's no reason to suppose that Jesus would be, and one pillar of the "Jesus was later or never existed" argument is removed. So much, I'm afraid, for "irrefutable" - bad time to use that word, Malachi.

Amaleq13

The Gospels stand as evidence of followers and I think it is a reasonable inference from Josephus.

Therefore, the author does use it that way.

I tend to understand Mark as holding a similar belief as Justin's Trypho (ie the Messiah only becomes aware of his identity upon his anointing by "Elias")

Yes and that matches up nicely with the above. One doesn't think one needs to repent unless one thinks one is a sinner.

First, I do not presume competition between John and Jesus but between groups in existence when the story was written (ie c.70CE). Second, depicting John as ultimately subordinate to Jesus does deal with competition.

Vivisector

FWIW, JtB is mentioned in Q reconstructions as Jesus's forerunner, so this could be taken as an attempt to deal with a competing sect prior to GMk. I can also read Mk 2:18ff as the author's way of dealing with differences in Jesus's and JtB's teachings, and Peter's confession (Mk 8:27ff) clearly establishes Jesus's superiority over John. Other gospels pick up the theme, with variations, of Jesus's superiority. I think Acts 18:24ff is interesting, although it's tough to figure out what might have been the situation that occasioned the passage.

I read all this as suggesting that there was a real Jesus/JtB connection that became problematic at an early stage (though perhaps after the deaths of the principals) and had led to competition between the Jesus/JtB groups no later than the composition of GMk (and perhaps Q).

Cheers,

V.

spin

One of the small ironies in all this is that early christians had to contend with John. His presence in gospels in no way influences the historicity or lack thereof of Jesus, but adds to his own historicity. The scant evidence that we have of John is of a mere man with no other pretentions than the fact that he could advocate baptism, which in itself has nothing to do with the start of christianity.

If one doesn't like the name John, give him another, but there was someone who initiated the line of thought.

And Josephus's John (AJ 18.5.2) has no room for a christian theology, for the baptism is for the "purification of the body", as he supposed "that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness."

I don't see how you can get to this.


spin

Doug Shaver

That is best explained by supposing that the gospel authors wanted to prove that the only people who could reject Jesus were people so thickheaded or morally degenerate that nothing could make them see the truth about Jesus -- not even personally witnessing his divine power.

This does not tell us anything about how real people would have reacted to any real Jesus, and it has nothing to do with whether a real Jesus could have performed any real miracles. All it tells us is what some early Christians believed, not so much about Jesus himself but about people who did not believe in Jesus.

That might tell us what the gospel authors believed about the Pharisees, or it might tell us what they believed about Christianity's critics in general, or perhaps both. It does not tell us about any actual reaction to any actual Jesus.

We have only one source of information about Celsus, and that is the apologist Origen. Assuming that Celsus was a real person and not just a fictional interlocutor for Origen to debate with, his work seems to have appeared in the late second century. By that time, belief among Christians in a historical Jesus was probably widespread. We need not suppose that Celsus would have known anything about Jesus except what he could have read in the gospels or heard from Christians who had read the gospels and assumed them to be authoritative.

Chris Weimer

Yes. And why not? As you mentioned earlier, he's not a necessary character, like Pilate or Herod, but his remaining must mean that at one time he was, or that he grew the role as a theological device, which is possible.

There is not one Christian Testament. This is what I was unsure of - did you mean the current Christian canon of books, or did you mean the Christian groups who commonly preached an oral gospel, probably including the earliest Christians of which differ greatly from later Christians.

spin

Do me a favour, Chris, and take your fangs out of my leg. It's sufficient that it is a gospel, at least one of the ones we have which features John.

I said that I used the term "christian testament" (and will continue to do so) to mean the common collection of christian documents most call the new testament. It was merely a convenient term of reference in my original statement. Do you have reason to believe that I believe that this collection was born as is at the beginning of the faith? If not, you're biting for some unknown cause.


spin

Gamera

But this is even more unlikely, since he claims to have know Peter and James, if not having put Stephen to death. He clearly had close contact with the early witnesses. Unless they were all deluded or all involved in a conspiracy, somebody would have let on that this Jesus fellow was made up.

Toto

Paul does not claim to have put Stephen to death - Acts claims that "Saul" was present when Stephen was stoned.

Paul knew Peter and James, but doesn't claim that they knew Jesus personally. Nothing that he says about them indicates that they told him anything about a recently deceased Jesus.

spin

Don't be so hasty. We are mixing Pauline letters with Acts. The people Paul mentions are James and Cephas and John -- there is also a confusing insertion about Peter due to later clarity, though working from first works one cannot assume Peter and Cephas are the same, especially when the Epistle of the Apostles lists them as separate people. Paul knows a James, Cephas and John, pillars of a Jerusalem religious, presumably messianic, sect. What Paul got from them is another matter. He shows no respect for them whatsoever. And Paul doesn't mention a Stephen to my knowledge. If you want to use Acts, you have to show its relevance -- try dating it for example. And no, assuming that Luke must have written it isn't a valid approach for dating a text given the vast amount of pseudonymy in circulation.

What exactly does Paul say on the issue?

When all other approaches fail, one falls back on false dilemmas.


spin