Tercel

Iasion,
Well I'm not Vinnie, but since the rest of your post was responding to one of my posts, I'm assuming you mean me.

You should realise though that if I had the time and wasn't lazy I could dig up an equal number of quotes saying 1st century and how the Church situation of the pastorals better reflects a late 1st century dating and so on...
My point is that to the extent that the JM hypothesis depends on a 2nd century dating, it is on shaky ground. The important question is: does it matter? How much would a 1st century dating affect the JMyth hypothesis?

Except that "forgery" has negative connitations in the mind of the standard modern reader and creates doubt regarding the honesty of the forger. Such "forgery" in ancient times was not considered dishonest and hence the word is normally not used by scholars.

You've got the wrong end of the stick here: You are the one making the claim. Where did I say that Acts WAS known but not mentioned? I simply object to your apparent belief that "Not mentioned in suviving documents = unknown"
Why not just stick to the facts in future and instead of saying "unknown" say "not mentioned" or similar?

The silly idea seems to me to be the idea that the idea of a HJ is entirely absent from Paul's suviving letters.

Yes it does.

I read all of them carefully just last week as part of my research on the JM theory. An extract from my notes I made for myself:
Surely the person they are sent to knows about them? Again "unknown" is not equivalent to "not mentioned".

On the contrary, Ignatius prior to writing his letters had been escorted across Asia Minor and the way he deals with the subject matter indicates that belief in a HJ was standard accepted teaching throughout the churches of the entire region.

One person? From the letters it is clear that Polycarp and the other Church leaders Ignatius has met taught the HJ also.
I could not disagree with you more about the novelty of it. There is no hint whatsoever that the idea is "novel".

Ignatius is arguing against the heresy of Docetism - that Christ only seemed to be human. Even those he is arguing against are not J-Mythers but rather those who hold the opinion that Christ's incarnation was illusory rather than solidly physical.
Against this Ignatius writes that (as you quoted) "Jesus Christ was... truly born, and did eat and drink. He was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate; He was truly crucified, and [truly] died... [and] truly raised from the dead..."

He immediately follows that section you quoted with:
"But if, as some that are without God, that is, the unbelieving, say, that He only seemed to suffer (they themselves only seeming to exist), then why am I in bonds?" -Trallians, IX-X

He has in mind those that say Christ only seemed to suffer, ie those who say Christ's suffering was visible to humans but was not suffering in fact. Not those who say Christ suffered in a "spiritual realm" like the JM idea claims.

"And He suffered truly, even as also He truly raised up Himself, not, as certain unbelievers maintain, that He only seemed to suffer, as they themselves only seem to be [Christians]." -Smyrnaens II

I can see no other way to read these letters without presupposing that in the Churches to which Ignatius is writing the majority shared Ignatius' beliefs.

Not really.
Doherty accepts the date of late 1st century for at least the first Gospels. I'll give Doherty the benefit of the doubt on the pastorals here, thus:

Mid 1st Century - comparatively few references to HJ in epistles
Late 1st Century - First Gospels with detailed HJ, attacks on deniers of HJ, Clement
Early 2nd Century - More Gospels with detailed HJ, Ignatius, Barnabas, Pastorals, Early Apologists with clear belief in HJ. Docetism becomes a threat.
Mid 2nd Century - Heresies florish:many gnostic sects, Marcion etc. Doherty claims "silence" with regard to Apologists except for Justin in this period.
Late 2nd Century - An order of magnitude more surviving documentation from this point on indicates an established HJ belief within orthodoxy.

A clear trajectory? Not really. It only becomes a clear trajectory if you arbitrarily late date the Gospels, start splitting the epistles up into arbitrary layers of redaction with the HJ bits coming later, class accepted epistles as later forgeries (I'm thinking Ignatius here not Titus) etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you are doing an examination of just how much the evidence needs to be rearranged to fit the theory and how plausible that rearrangement would be. But once you rearrange data, you can't then claim the artificial "silences" as positive evidence for your thesis.

Peter Kirby

Tercel writes: "You should realise though that if I had the time and wasn't lazy I could dig up an equal number of quotes saying 1st century and how the Church situation of the pastorals better reflects a late 1st century dating and so on...
My point is that to the extent that the JM hypothesis depends on a 2nd century dating, it is on shaky ground. The important question is: does it matter? How much would a 1st century dating affect the JMyth hypothesis?"

Although Doherty prefers a dating in the first half of the second century, Doherty has stated that the pastoral epistles give no indication of a HJ other than a plausibly interpolated (according to him) trial before Pilate reference.(1 Tim 6:13). So a late first century dating of the pastorals would have zero effect on Doherty's hypothesis unless coupled with an argument that there was no interpolation or that the remaining parts reflect a HJ.

Tercel writes: "Except that "forgery" has negative connitations in the mind of the standard modern reader and creates doubt regarding the honesty of the forger. Such "forgery" in ancient times was not considered dishonest and hence the word is normally not used by scholars."

I understand that the word is not used by scholars normally, as it is an emotive term that would be taken as an indication of a non-scientific approach to the subject matter. However, scholarly statements to the effect and the desire to appear non-judgmental aside, I have not encountered any documentary evidence to show that ancients considered it to be honest to write falsely under someone else's name.

best,
Peter Kirby

Radorth

Can we have a URL with your cut out quotes?

You're lucky Buffman isn't here man.

Rad

Tercel

Neither have I, I just generally assume that scholars know what they are talking about unless I have serious reason to doubt them.

Buffman

Rad

You aren't correct about that either.

Tercel

If I'm writing a letter to someone, I don't bother to tell them this planet is called "Earth" because I expect them to already know it. It's common knowledge. Given that all early Christian epistles were written from Christians to Christians, the "common knowledge" explanation for the "silences" seems quite valid.

When exactly do you alledge these stories to have become "common knowledge"?
I would note that Ignatius "shows no knowledge" of the earthly Christ in his epistles to Polycarp, Romans, Philadelphians. Funnily enough, when he's not attacking a heresy that denies Jesus' true humanity he doesn't bother to repeat it endlessly or even at all.

I'm not a Marcion expert, but I was under the impression he was a Docetist: ie he doesn't support the JM case.

Again this is Docetism, the idea that JC "only" appeared to be dying... again not supportive of the JM case which asserts Jesus wasn't visible in the physical realm at all.

I get VERY sick of people using this Celsus quote.
CELSUS ACCEPTED THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS. Clear?
Celsus argued that Jesus had an illegitimate birth via a Roman soldier, learnt magic in Egypt and was thus able to perform his "miracles" etc. Celsus does not support the JM theory: He absolutely assumes the truth of a historical Jesus and also takes for granted that Christians belief in his historicity.

Radorth

Yeah, I forgot. Even quotes with ellipses around them are OK from skeptics. Sorry, even the loosy-goosy Rad has a rule about that.

Radorth

Looks like we hit the bottom of the barrel, misusing quotes and placing elipses around them so the faithful have something to hang on to.

Layman did a thread on the issue of Marcion's beliefs, if anyone cares to have their memory jogged.

Rad

Peter Kirby

I think that the motivation to appear non-judgmental, plus the absence of any ancient evidence used in this regard, is sufficient for me to have doubt until I see something substantial to back the "pseudonymity is honest" theory.

best,
Peter Kirby

Yuri Kuchinsky

But, Greg, I don't really see this theory as being very parsimonious.

Quote:

In other words, it began more with a concept--an idea or belief developing among numerous Greek and Hellenized Jewish philosophers in a divine intermediary who brought salvation, either through revealing wisdom or through a cosmic redemptive act.

Sorry, but this sounds pretty vague to me.

Quote:

Many others, such as Paul, seized on this concept and started adding their own ideas. Some regard Paul as the real "founder figure" of Christianity, but we really don't know if he was as influential as he appears to have been.

Myself, I certainly don't think so.

Quote:

He may have been, but it's also possible that "Mark" was heavily influenced by Pauline ideas, and since Christianity really took off with Mark and the other Gospels, people became more likely to preserve early Christian letters that seemed to accord with the Gospels. If this is the case, it might be more accurate to regard the anonymous "Mark" as the founding figure of Christianity as we know it today--since it was because of the Gospel that Jesus eventually came to be regarded as a historical figure.

But, myself, I don't buy Markan priority at all.

Quote:

[YURI: In fact, I'm saying that the true story of early Jewish-Christianity is still being covered up by our bigoted and/or incompetent NT scholars.] GREG: I dunno that it's being "covered up." All the information is out there, it's just that most scholars don't like the implications that arise when the information is pieced together--which is exactly what Doherty has done.

But I don't think that "all the information is out there". A lot of it isn't really there, because a lot of these books are out of print and unavailable. For example, how come the ancient Aramaic gospels, which feature all sorts of Jewish-Christian elements, have been out of print for something like 80 years?

The bottom line is that hardly anyone today -- whether a professional scholar or an amateur -- knows about these things. So this looks like a cover-up to me.

Quote:

[YURI: Still, I would suggest that much of this Pauline material should really be dated to the 2c. And in such a case, explaining why this Pauline material is so silent about the HJ may be a somewhat different problem than what is generally assumed.] Now this is a remarkable claim, I must say.

Greg, what I'm saying is based on the work of Loisy.

Quote:

Remember, you don't have only the Pauline letters to consider, you have the entire corpus of epistles. If the Christian letters were contemporary with the Gospels, then it becomes stranger than ever that they would not mention anything about the HJ. "Somewhat different" problem is an understatement--it's a serious problem, and an insurmountable one, IMO. Gregg

But there's quite a simple answer to this problem; the circles that were re-editing the Pauline literature in the early 2c had different theological concerns, compared to the mainstreamers who were working on the gospels at the same time.

It's been noted by many commentators that those circles that were re-editing the Pauline literature had a lot of interest in gnosticism.

All the best,

Yuri.