Juliana

I would like to know whether you have the expertise to talk about that in a qualified way, or whether it's "boiata" simply because it looks like that to you.
If you are an expert than please go ahead and disprove it and some other examples of corruptions explained in the book. They are all very well within the bounds of corruptions that can take place in the transition between languages. This has been confirmed by a specialst on the matter, Kavoukopoulos. So if you want me take your "objection" seriously, show me. "Boiata" is not an argument.

And you think it's not essential, not useful? Others do.
If you have specific questions, why don't you pose them to the author?

I have no specific example of that at the moment. Keep in mind, however,
that the Hellenes wrote with a kalamos, ‘reed’. "[...] For this purpose the surface of the front side was made smooth, whereas on the reverse side the fibres clearly protruded. On this rough and uneven reverse side the ink ran more along the fibres than it did with the stroke, rendering whatever translations, notes and commentaries that were written there difficult to read."

No, it is not applicable. First off, Popper's theory is not without controversy, cf. eg. Feyerabend. It is quoted often though by those who want to defend the status quo that serves certain powerful interests. A historical figure or event cannot be proven scientifically, history is not an empirical science, you can't do experiments. You can even doubt that Julius Caesar existed (actually there are some who claim the whole era of antiquity was invented) but common sense laughs about that.

You've studied your Popper well, haven't you. It doesn't apply.

I don't know whether he had dyslexia, but he certainly wasn't an erudite scholar, he didn't have expert knowledge of Latin nor of Greek, sacrae scripturae sermo humilis.

No, it doesn't go. In antiquity the evening of a day was counted as the next day already. If this is how you want to refute that the historical Jesus was Caesar nobody is going to take you seriously except strict believers who take the gospel word for word, who believe Jesus walked on water, changed it into wine and raised the dead in the physical/biological sense.

Ok, "so what", no problem. You don't find it interesting, others with more expertise in the matter do. No need to continue this.
I am not an expert in linguistics nor a professional historian, but I have been checking Carotta's facts with my local university library and haven't found any factual errors. If you know better, please, go ahead, write a solid rebuttal and publish it.

Amaleq13

Carotta doesn't provide known examples to substantiate this claim?

This seems to suggest that such a mistake might be common but an absence of known examples suggests otherwise.

I would think you would wait until spin has answered your question about his expertise, directly or indirectly, before you assumed he lacked it in sufficient quantity to render a sound judgment.

Juliana

Ad 1) Your contention is wrong. Mark's story is perfectly explained by Carotta's discovery rather than assuming it was made up by arbitrarily picking elements from the Jewish bible to make up a (mythological) figure and an invented story. Where is love-thy-enemy in the OT, e.g.?

Take the gospel of Mark disregarding the quotations from the so-called OT (you lose nothing doing that) and you have a story of one Jesus starting in Galilee and ending with his crucifixion and resurrection in the capital, Jerusalem. Just look at the story elements. Then compare this with the biography of Caesar from the time he became real big in Gallia crossing the Rubicon thus opening the civil war

- "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." Mt. 10:34-35, doesn't that sound like civil war? -

until his assassination and apotheosis in the capital, Rome.
When you do that systematically chapter for chapter you see that the gospel story is a corrupted account of the civil war. EVERYTHING that is found with Jesus is found with Caesar. There is nothing in the gospel of Mark that cannot clearly be identified in the reports of the civil war. Even the sequence of events, with few exceptions, is the same. Futhermore by doing this you can explain many incongruities in the Gospels wich become perfectly clear when you look at the reports about the civil war (e.g. why does Jesus enter Jerusalem only once in Mark and five times in John? Carotta even provides a rule for that. Am I supposed to report the contents of 512 pages here?).
The complete synopsis is not online yet, but if you read only what is online you will see that your assertion simply is wrong.

Ad 2)
Provide a historical Jesus in Galilee

I said I have no specific example of that at the moment.

I am not Carotta, and I just didn't remember one when I wrote that (I have other things to do as well). But I'll look for one if that makes you happy.

spin

I asked you to be specific in your enquiry, because I wanted to know if you have any perception of what is involved, but as you don't and are relying on some unknown expert, there is no point in going into it. But as a matter of fact there is very little in the way of linguistics involved in the material you posted. It was mainly centred around orthographic guessing and appearances. There is no substance to the whole matter.

According to Carotta the Marcan writer was in a dim way citing from what Antonius had cited from Pacuvius at the presentation of Caesar's body to the populace, as though Caesar was saying this from:

men seruasse, ut essent qui me perderent?

First twist: we start off manipulating the text to say that it wasn't "men" that was said, but "mene" and that's how our proto-christian writer must have received it.

Second twist: our proto-christian writer must have read the letters in "mene" backwards and found the strokes equivalent to ELIELI, not withstanding the fact that

1. LI backwards looks little like either an M or an N,
2. There is a different number of strokes between an M and an N, and
3. As the rest of the sentence is read forwards why read this backwards?

This in itself is ingenious but ridiculous.

Try this for a laugh: "Mark has further correctly translated ut with eis which means ‘for what’ rather than ‘why’ (not by chance, the Vulgate also has ut here)"

Now Jerome translated the Vulgate nt Greek materials, but how do you think he could have got the "ut" from the original line from Pacuvius?? There is nothing in the literary tradition to suggest it to him. Then there's the absurd claim that Mark got eis from "ut" and not from the original Greek of Ps 22:1, which has a nice little eis of its own.

Next twist, sabaxQani is a translation both of "perderent" and of "seruasse" at the same time.

In fact there is no sign of a translation of the sentence that has been grabbed casually from Suetonius's history of Diuus Iulius.

Then there's the serendipitous reuse of "men" to come up with "manes" with which follows random musings.

All of this adds up to a boiata totale.

(Incidentally folks, "boiata" is Italian and comes from the word "boia", literally "executioner", and executioners were not known for their clean work, so a boiata is the mess that is made.)

"Che boiata" was never an argument. It was a judgment.

I'm not asking you to take it seriously. You don't know anything about the subject. Where's your Kavoukopoulos?

Of the materials I found online, almost all of it is background or conclusion. It is the stuff that goes in between that is necessary.

You came here with this stuff.

This is not a boiata: this is a "cazzata" (a stroke of little value). Without examples to support the claim you support, ie that PI and MU were confused due to similarity of shape, you are urinating into a gale.

(They'd have to deal a) with the statuary from different times in his life, b) the references from everyone from Cicero to Suetonius, c) the comparison between textual indications and the statuary [Caesar's medical condition] and d) the vast amount of evidence for his activities in Gaul as illustrated in the comparison between BG and the archaeological evidence.)

OK, I don't want you to drag the discussion further into this tangent in which you, against modern historians, see no relevance to Popper in historical analysis. Suffice it to say that a theory which has no facts to support it and no way even to show how it could be wrong is a meaningless theory unattached to anything.

Well, how about some evidence that the writer did the same thing elsewhere??

And the Marcan text was clear that the figure died before the evening, dying at the ninth hour (see 15:34ff, the evening arrived at 15:42).

If you want to fiddle the evidence, then don't cry to me when it is pointed out to you.

Well, why the hell are you wasting our time, when you cannot defend the stuff you are selling??


spin

Amaleq13

Your attempt to deny my "contention" is flawed because the notion of AMk using Hebrew Scripture as a source for his text does not involve "arbitrarily" choosing passages nor, as I quite clearly indicated earlier, does it require an entirely fabricated Jesus. It only requires an author with little factual information but tremendous faith in a Savior Christ as well as the Hebrew Scriptures.

You have not answered my question at all.

Where is it in Mark?

I see "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."(Mk 12:31, KJV) and I see the source is Hebrew Scripture (Lev 19:18).

Actually, you lose about 30 verses but it is misleading to suggest that Mark's usage of Hebrew Scripture can be confined to direct quotations. This should have been made quite clear from Vorkosigan's earlier posts. There are many more examples (I believe he mentioned ~150) where the author appears to have been inspired by specific stories from Scripture in the creation of his story and he typically includes linguistic indentifiers of the source.

Not really. It reads to me like the "sword" is a figurative reference to the potentially divisive nature of the speaker's preaching.

"Clearly" does not appear to be an appropriate description of the convoluted linguistic contortions you've described. A more accurate description would be:

There is nothing in the gospel of Mark that cannot be identified in the reports of the civil war if one is willing to accept various complicated (and unique?) linguistic alterations have taken place in the creation of the existing text.

The different number of visits to Jerusalem appears to correspond to the different number of years in duration each author depicts Jesus' ministry. The Fourth Gospel depicts more visits because there were more Passovers that required it.

Is that necessary to describe and explain the rule?

That is a specious criterion and I think you know it. What sort of textual evidence might contradict Carotta's theory?

It isn't about making me happy. It is about providing Carotta's claim some much-needed credibility.

Juliana

Spin, I thought this discovery might be of interest to some and since the media (mostly) refuses to report it so far, I though I'd bring it in this Forum. If you are not interested, fine, why do you bother to comment at all. Be assured that a refutation doesn't work like what you have delivered here. You pick single linguistic points which you don't (want to) understand and refuse to look at the whole picture. I did not profess myself as an expert on the linguistic matters involved (though most are obvious to see for the lay person as well), but I know the book because I have read it and checked the historical facts and they are correct and the result that the historical Jesus was Caesar is as valid as any historical conclusion can be. Since historiography is basically predication of (those in) power, however, it probably won't be recognized until the powerful deem it opportune and then they will again work it so that it benefits them.
Nevertheless it is an epochal discovery and those who read it say that they learned a lot and it has broadened their horizon. But probably it's nothing for you.

spin

My question was a different one from what you have answered. I asked you why the hell are you wasting our time, when you cannot defend the stuff you are selling??

I have spent time looking at the material in two languages. That indicates some interest, which you were unable to glean.

My problem is about you and your never dealing with anything that a critic says.

You provided a part of the argument and it in no way holds up to scrutiny. You look at each "single linguistic point" of that argument. What's strange about that? Nothing, naturally. You just have nothing better to say. The single linguistic points don't make sense, therefore neither does the whole of the linguistic argument -- which after all was what I was looking at.


Wrong assumption. A person who knows nothing about linguistics can't expect to be able to analyse a linguistic argument.


No, that is not what historiography is. You are just describing the motivation of some historians.

What facts are you talking about anyway? the facts in Caesar's life?

Spoken like a true believer.

There was of course no point in me analysing the material I posted for you. You disregarded it, obviously because of your lack of expertise. Why send a tyro to do an adept's work?


spin

Juliana

You are the one who uses rethorics, you wise adept. So what are your problems, the Pi My and the Eli, eli? The "sent tyro" (haha good one, apart from the fact that no one sent me and I am not a tyro) will look after those two. In the meantime you have possibility to analyze the umpteen other linguistic delicacies which are online. You might also want to have a close look at the iconography and, very significant, the funeral of Caesar among other things. When you have done that I'd like to hear what you have to say about the matter, because I'm always eager to learn from upright scholars.

spin

I at least know a bit about linguistics and the languages involved.

That's a start, but what about the rest of the Pacuvius line?

If you weren't a tyro, you'd deal with them immediately. But go, get some help.

While you're there you might like to dig up a better argument to explain the presence of the citation from Ps.22:1 in Mk, given that Mk refers in several places to Hebrew bible citations, usually in forms related to the LXX. Not only can "my god my god why have you forsaken me" be explained more simply as from the LXX, so can a heap of others. Get Carotta to explain why these are cited: "Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord", or "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone", or "The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand, and I shall make your enemies a footstool", all from biblical sources. And if you need a source for "love your enemy", what about Pythagoras whose sayings were at least in Greek and who said "To revenge yourself on an enemy, make him your friend."

I had a look at the material on the funeral and the lovely design which misrepresents events with Caesar's wax effigy on a cross of all the most stupid things. Such an idea would have been anethema to a Roman and naturally there is nothing in the source texts (Appian and Suetonius) to suggest it.

I suggest that you find a new, less ridiculous, wagon to jump on. Don't expect your zeal to get you very far with others.


spin

Juliana

Yes, you certainly know your sources and your languages, don't you?

You might want to read here:
[...]
Suet. Div. Iul. 84.1: ‘When the funeral was announced, a pyre was erected in the Campus Martius near the tomb of Julia, and on the rostra a gilded shrine was placed, made after the model of the temple of Venus Genetrix; within was a couch of ivory with coverlets of purple and gold, and at its head a tropaeum from which hung the robe in which he was slain.’
Funere indicto rogus instructus est in martio campo iuxta Iuliae tumulum et pro rostris aurata aedes ad simulacrum templi Veneris Genetricis collocata; intraque lectus eburneus auro ac purpura stratus et ad caput tropaeum cum ueste, in qua fuerat occisus.

App. BC 2.146-7: ‘Then, swept very easily on to passionate emotion, he stripped the clothes from Caesar's body, raised them on a pole and waved them about, rent as they were by the stabs and befouled with the dictator's blood. (…) When the crowd were in this state, and near to violence, someone raised above the bier a wax effigy of Caesar – the body itself, lying on its back on the bier, not being visible. The effigy was turned in every direction by a mechanical device, and twenty-three wounds could be seen, savagely inflicted on every part of the body and on the face. The sight seemed so pityful to the people that they could bear it no longer. Howling and lamentating [they surrounded the senate-house, where Caesar had been killed, and burnt it down, and hurried about hunting for the murderers, who ]…’.(vertaling John Carter, ISBN: 0-14-044509-9.
For comments on these two passages cf. ‘Jesus was Caesar’, p. 384-7, note 157 [ ** ].

And I suggest you refrain from such personal remarks and rather study the matter at hand, spin. Nomen est omen?

Juliana