Vorkosigan

GD, can you make clear the rule you are appealing to here? I am not aware of any scientific, historical, or literary rule that says a particular passage cannot have more than one possible source. Perhaps you can locate it for us?

Vorkosigan

Evangelion

There is no rule. His "method" (and I use the term with some generosity) is nothing more than an appeal to the fallacy of equivocation. That is the sort of foolishness we're being asked to accept as a legitimate argument.

If a Christian tried it on, he'd be pinned to the wall. But I predict that IIDB will indulge the double standard...

Evangelion

• A Rabbinic view of Jesus' Execution
  
  It is taught:
  
  They hanged Jesus [Yeshu] on the eve of Passover.
  Now a crier went forth for forty days before this (saying):
  --"He goes forth to be stoned because he practiced magic
  and stirred up Israel to apostasy.
  Let anyone who knows anything in his favor come forward
  and speak up for him!"
  
  But they found nothing in his favor
  and they hanged him on the eve of Passover.
  
  Ulla said:
  --"Do you suppose a revolutionary had anything in his favor!"
  He was an instigator [mesith] (to apostasy)
  and the Merciful has said:
  
  --'You shall not spare or conceal him!' (Deut 13:8)"
  
  But it was different with (Jesus), for he was near to the kingdom!
  --- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a
  
  [Note: this account was probably formulated to contradict Christian claims that Jews engineered Jesus' execution without giving him a fair hearing. It agrees with the Fourth Gospel in dating Jesus' death prior to the Passover meal. Otherwise its details are based on Jewish procedures for stoning rather than on information in the gospels.]
  
  Source.

• Jesus' Age
  
  A heretic [min] said to Rabbi cHanina (bar Hama):
  --"Have you heard how old Balaam* was (when he died)?"
  
  (Hanina) said to him:
  --"The record does not record (it).
  
  But (I would say) he was 33 or 34 years old from the text:
  --'Men of blood and frauds shall not live out half their days' (Ps 55:23)."
  
  (The heretic) said to him:
  --"What you say is right!
  I myself have examine the account of Balaam and it is written:**
  --"Balaam the lame was 33 years old,
  when he was killed by Phineas the Robber."***
  
  --- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 106b
  
  
  * "Balaam" the false prophet; a frequent epithet for Jesus by later rabbis to avoid Christian censorship.
  
  ** The calculation of Jesus' age as 33 at the crucifixion is based on Luke 3:23 plus the Fourth Gospel's account of a public career spanning three Passovers.
  
  *** "Phineas the Robber" is probably a code name for Pontius Pilate, who confiscated temple funds.
  
  Source.

• Healing in Jesus' Name Forbidden
  
  22 The case of Rabbi Eleazar ben Dama, whom a serpent bit:
  Jacob of Kephar Sama came in to cure him
  in the name of Jesus [Yeshua] ben Pandira.*
  
  But Rabbi Ishmael did not allow it.
  
  He said:
  --"Ben Dama, you are not permitted!"
  
  (Ben Dama) said:
  --"I will bring you a proof (text) that he may heal me!"
  
  But he had not finished furnishing the proof when he died.
  
  Rabbi Ishmael (ben Elisha) said:
  --"Happy are you, ben Dama!
  For you have departed in peace
  and have not violated the commandments of the sages!"
  For lasting punishment comes on anyone who breaks through a fence of the sages, as it is written:
  --"A serpent shall bite him who breaks through a fence" (Eccles 10:8).
  --- Tosefta, cHullin 2.22-23
  
  
  * ben Pandira = "son of Pantera": reference to a Talmudic tradition that Jesus was really fathered by a Roman soldier named Pantera or Pandira.
  Source.

Toto

I guess you think you're a satirist (don't give up your day job), but you've really missed the point.

Freke and Gandy find multiple precedents for the idea of a dying and rising savior-son of God. However, they do not even discuss the details of the Passion Narrative that are the subject of this thread: the betrayal by the treasurer of the group of believers, the arrest at night, the trial on trumped up charges, the mockery scene, in which a man is clothed in royal robes and mocked as King, etc.

Similarly, there are Jewish stories of Jeschu who was stoned for heresy or sorcery, but they do not involve these details (and may be a reaction to the Christian story rather than a source). A better discussion of the Talmudic sources is on another of Peter's sites, Did Jesus Live 100 B.C. by G. R. S. Mead.

Leidner finds literary parallels between Philo's Flaccus and the Passion Narrative, which indicate that the gospel writers took material from Philo and worked it into their own story, a story with a different subject. These themes make sense in Philo's narrative, but create difficulties and embarrassment in the gospels (from here:

(The Servant is analogous to the Christ figure, an embodiment of the Jewish community. The Judas figure is Flaccus, who after his acts of betrayal of the Jews, is turned into a more sympathetic character when the Romans arrest him; the gospels' Last Supper parallels his last supper.)

Some of the elements may have muliple sources. Dividing the clothes comes from the OT. The "Temple Act" echoes a scene in Homer. Being scourged and beaten before being crucified was probably a common practice. But overall, even if only half of these points are shown to be unique, there are too many points of reference to be mere chance or life imitating Art.

I describe this as literary borrowing, because some of the scenes involving Jesus are analogous to the scenes involving Flaccus, who is the Judas figure. The Gospel writers did not steal the story from Philo, but they did use his material. This is how Greek speaking students of the period were trained to write, using classics as a guide. (See MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark for a description of the process.)

The smoking gun is the mockery scene. In Philo, it is a piece of political street theater; the mob takes a lunatic and dresses him up as King and pays homage to him, as a jibe at an actual King. In the gospels, it makes little sense. If the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman governor have condemned someone (for whatever charges Jesus was convicted on), who exactly is being mocked? Certainly not the Roman governor or the Jewish authorities, but why would the convict be mocked in this manner, instead of just being crucified?

Evangelion

I just love the way atheists will never admit that the primary source for the Christian tradition is Judaism - as the 1st Century Christians freely and openly confessed themselves.

A leisurely stroll through the NT will show that the early Christians drew heavily from the Jewish prophetic literature. Exactly why this glaringly obvious point keeps being ignored, I'll never know. But I can guess.

It's because (a) people see what they want to see, and (b) atheists are just as capable of blind faith as theists. (And that's without even mentioning the intellectual dishonesty...)

They can't afford to credit Christianity with the suggestion that its roots may have been found in the Jewish tradition, because that might legitimise it. And we won't want that, do we?

No, it's far more sensible to claim that Christianity somehow managed to borrow its material from every other mythological source on the entire planet - regardless of era, context or geographical location - except the Jewish tradition (from which they're always quoting, but never mind) and succeeded in fabricating a new religion from this conceptual conglomerate, collected from every corner of the globe and every mythological tradition under the sun. (Even those with which Christianity was to have no contact until centuries later!)

Yeah, right.

Evangelion

Oh, halleluyah!

First bit of intellectual honesty I've seen in a long time.

Toto

Ev - let's watch the insults. Why do you see intellectual dishonesty? I started this thread with a cite to a paper that discusses the Jewish Septuagint sources in the Passion Narrative. I have never denied those sources.

The particular book I am discussing here, by Leidner, traces Christianity to Jewish sources, in particular the Hellenistic Judaism represented by Philo.

You say:

This is just bizarre. In what way would finding Christianity's roots in the Jewish tradition legitimize it? If you are Jewish, there are large parts of Christianity that you will probably reject, including the long history of Christian anti-Semitism. If you are not Jewish, how does that legitimize it?

As to the era, context, and geographic location - Philo is right there, in the right place at the right time.

I'm not talking about the Jesus Mysteries book or the idea that Christianity stole from Mithraism. Bringing those up is just muddying the discussion.

Toto

Leidner is an amateur in the best sense, and the production values of his book are not up to the quality of his writing.

In fact, being a patent attorney is probably better preparation for textual criticism than theology. Theologians learn to wrap their minds around ideas that they want to believe, and justify them. Patent attorneys at least have to deal with the facts in front of them.

Toto

Would you care to clarify why you think that the fallacy of equivocation is relevant here? How does one "appeal" to it? What is the particular ambiguous word to look out for?

Evangelion

Toto -

I didn't accuse you of it. But Acharya S (and others of her ilk) are full of it.

Again, it wasn't a specific attack on you personally, nor was it a specific attack on your own personal position.

And how the hell does it do that, pray tell? Christianity from Philo, of all people? Get real.

By "legitimise", I don't mean "prove to be 100% true", but rather, "vindicate the claims as to source."

You see the 1st Century Christians insisted that their religion was based on Judaism; specifically, upon the Messianic and prophetic material. Judaism and its sacred literature constitutes the theological source for Christianity. That was the claim of the 1st Century Christians themselves, and that claim is abundantly demonstrated by the content of the NT.

But no, that's not good enough for the "Jesus Mystery" types. They want to ignore all of the evidence which clearly links the NT with the OT, in preference for vague "parallels" and superficial "similarities" in alternative literature. They want to claim that Christianity had its origins in the alleged "redeemer myth tradition" from a myriad of sources. They extrapolate entire pages of "evidence" from a single word or concept, and indulge with reckless abandon in the fallacy of equivocation.

Acharya S is a classic example. For some strange reason, she is permitted to get away with the kind of amateurish bungling for which a Christian would be justifiably pilloried here at IIDB.

So what I'm saying here, is that the standard atheist claim ("Christianity plagiarised mystery religions, etc.") is nothing more than a blatantly contrived attempt to discredit Christianity by "proving" that its actual sources are not the sources which the 1st Century Christians claimed to be using. That is the standard atheist argument from "parallels" and "similarities."

But it is demonstrably true that the 1st Century Christians drew on the Jewish Scriptures for their theology (as they tell us themselves) and so their religion is legitimised as the natural development of an older tradition, rather than an ad hoc rip-off of various mythical sources.

Can you see what I'm saying here?

Firstly, I'm not Jewish. Secondly, see above for my use of "legitimise."

Well no, not entirely. He lived in Alexandria, not Jerusalem. And in any case, where's the evidence that anybody made use of him at all? What, specifically, are they supposed to be borrowing - and why?

Glad to hear it.

If that isn't the understatement of the year, I'm a wild aurochs.