Toto

It was the point I was curious about in my initial response on the first thread on this topic. But as I said there, Robbins has immersed himself in Hellenistic literature on an academic level for several decades. He may have a feel for it based on that background.


No, you have him on an email list that is supposedly for people who have a basic level of scholarship. Do you think he is going to copy his entire article onto the list just because you didn't read his it before you attacked it?

Robbins impresses me as a careful and methodical scholar, but also as someone who is not sure what motivates others' unwillingness or inability to see his point. He may be proceding slowly. He may think things are so obvious he does not need to belabor certain points.

In person he would make a point and wait to see your reaction before deciding how best to proceed. That's the point that you are stuck at now.

Layman

"may have a feel" for it?

Based only on "that background"?

What he may have and what he has shown are completely different things. But you are free to have as much faith in the man as you like. You are appealing to an authority who is not defending his conclusions.

No, I expect him to respond to my pointed criticisms. How can the Voyage of Hanno/Third Syrian War be examples of a literary convention to portray sea-voyages in the first-person plural when those works were written from the first-person perspective b/c of the author's perspective? How can a work of Tatitius' fiction be such an example when it was an entirely fictional work written in the first-person singular from the point of view of its main character?

The easiest way for him to defend his conclusion would be to defend it. If he's so careful and methodical he could rip me to pieces.

He "may" be this or "may" do that.

I cannot argue against "maybe", only point out that he's dodging the questions.

We are stuck because he appears to think he need not offer any evidence that his alleged convention existed. Much less that it was used in Acts.

Sauron

Generally, yes.

In this specific instance? No. We have no such evidence for any extinction. Only the fact that your position *needs* such an extinction. But need is not evidence.

Please explain the relationship between forest canopies and venomous snake extinctions. Remembering to account for existence of such arid and semi-arid species as asps, rattlers, and the various, highly poisonous snakes of the Australian outback - areas without forest canopy.

Besides, there's no reason to think that such a hypothetical extinction occurred right after the 1st century. Malta was the site of considerable activity in the crusader period. If poisonous snakes existed on the islands at that time, surely someone would have noted it. Or during the Byzantine times. Or during the Arab years. I suspect that if your unfounded speculation is true, Layman, it wouldn't be that hard to find such a reference - if such snakes *ever* existed there. I think you simply don't want to do the legwork necessary. That's fine; but just don't pass off unsupported speculation as a valid counter-argument.


It's exactly like it - you want to claim a set of conditions in the past is contrary from how they are now. But you want to make this claim, with exactly zero supporting evidence.

In fact, the only reason to even suggest such a situation is the first place is that it explains away a troubling fact - there's no other reason to even think of such a situation, or to invoke it here.

No one said there were never any snakes - the discussion was about venomous snakes.

However, you're the one arguing for historical authenticity. That's an affirmative claim. If your conclusion is "nobody knows", then you've lost your case.

Layman

A change in environment lends credence to the possibility.


We are talking about a change in environment, not whether any conceivable species of snake could have existed there.

Why surely?

Pointing out how speculative any assertion that there were never any poisonus snakes in Malta is a valid counter-argument.

Assuming complete uniformity is as much a speculation and has zero supporting evidence as allowing for the possibility of change.

This depends on one's overall assesment of Acts. If it is detemrined to be a source that often gets local details correct, then it's not a troubling fact but an attestation to the point itself.

Acts does show a lot of accuracy when it comes to local details, including for Malta specifically.

On the other hand, if you assume that Acts does not get any or much local detail correct, you will no doubt disbelieve his statement about the snake.

Actually, Toto did say this.

My assertion is that your assertion is unduly speculative.

Actually, the argument was that Acts screwed up by claiming there was a poisonous snake where there were none. I never claimed I could prove poisonus snakes existed in Malta. I pointed out that a claim that we know whether there was or not is speculative.

Yes, I have a high opinion of the historicity of Acts. No, I do not believe that all of its assertions need be correct to have that opinion. Such would be an unreasonable standard. No historian or historical source would ever meet it.

Might Luke have been mistaken and thought the snake was poisonus? Yes. Might the locals have been mistaken and thought the snake was poisonus? Yes? Might Luke have invented the whole thing? Yes. Do we know that he was wrong? No.

Toto

Layman, if you had read his article, you might have realized that your "pointed criticisms" in fact missed the point. I suspect that the reason Robbins has not ripped you to pieces is that he is not that sort of adversarial, ego-driven, maniac debater who feels a need to pound his adversaries into submission. He seems to be more of a consensus builder who would like other people to understand what he is talking about.

Regarding the Island of Malta, there is a google cache (hope that link works) that recounts the stay of a French priest named Johannes Quintinus on the Island of Malta in 1533. This would presumably be before deforestation removed the favorable habitat for snakes. Quintinus recounts the legends of the locals and their explanation of their "miraculously harmless" snakes - that St. Paul took their venom away.

Layman

I would be more impressed if you (or he) could explain this instead of just asserting it.

And.... what is your point?

Why do you think that the forestation canopy was lost in the 400 or so years since Quintinus and not in the 1500 or so years before him?

Sauron

Only if the change in question is relevant to the species in question. You've yet to demonstrate that. Not all environmental changes cause extinctions; it depends on what the relationship between the change and the species was. You've yet to demonstrate any such relationship here, and I've given examples refuting the idea that canopy loss would necessarily cause extinction of venomous snakes.

By the way: I'd like a reference for your claim that forest canopy has changed substantially since the first century. I'm not arguing that it hasn't changed; I'm asking for specific proof that the changes occurred within the timeframe you allege.


You implicated loss of forest canopy as the culprit in this alleged extinction. It's up to you to demonstrate a relationship between forest canopy and venomous snake extinctions. You can do that eitehr in the general sense (all venomous snakes) or in the specific sense (this hypothetical species that you claim existed in Malta).

I gave plenty of examples of venomous snakes developing and thriving in areas with no such canopy.

So you also cannot implicate loss of canopy as the culprit behind such an extinction - especially since you have offered zero proof that canopy ever mattered at all.


Because people notice the land that they live in - especially if they are newcomers to the area, and are sensitized to the differences between where they *are* now, and where they used to live. Settlers on the prairies did it. American colonists in New England took such notes. Missionaries in Africa took such notes. It's natural for people to notice such things.

This *really* is your claim to prove, Layman. How long will you do the backpedal ballet?


Sorry; no it isn't. No speculation involved. It squares with current facts about Malta, and no evidence has been offered to indicate that the past was any different than the present. It is not speculation to assume that, absent any mechanism for change, the past and the present situations are identical.


BWAHAHAHAAA!! What a howler, Strawman. No one is assuming "complete uniformity". We're only talking about one item, the presence of venomous snakes, within a very narrow time window (from a species extinction perspective).

Oops - did I call you Strawman? I meant to call you Layman.


No. Making a mistake about the fauna of Malta does not enhance the veracity or credibility of Acts.

Except when it comes to discussing venomous snakes, evidently.

Red herring. I am not judging the entirety of Acts. I am only commenting on this one point. I am not under the misguided belief that accuracy in one part of a document meant other parts were equally accurate. I examine each claim one at a time, and it either rises or falls on its own merits. Others prefer to have a binary view.


I'll let Toto speak to it, then.


And your assertion is unsupported, while my statement above is not speculation at all. It's a reasonable conclusion drawn from the available facts, and not contradicted by any of them. A point which your 'counter-argument' cannot claim.


No. To assert a condition that is:

* contrary to established facts as we know them;
* without a mechanism to explain the existence of the contrary condition;
* only asserted as a result of the need to salvage a hypothesis, and not because the contrary condition is hinted at by any piece of unexplained evidence;

now *THAT* is speculative. Your claim that "things might have been different in the past" is precisely that - unfounded conjecture and speculation.


And again, you argue for the historicity of Acts even while trying to maintain that it isn't key to your position.

Since (you claim) we can't say that Luke was wrong - that is your case for the historicity of this event? If so, then your case for historicity is weak. There are three possibilities:

a. We know that Acts is historically correct on this point;
b. We don't know for sure if Acts is historically correct or not here;
c. We know that Acts is historically wrong about this

a conclusion of either (b) or (c) refutes the affirmative case for historical accuracy of this tale.

Layman

Simply assuming that conditions on Malta are the same today as they were 2000 years ago is not enough to demonstrate that Acts is in error on this point. (c) is not the most reasonable answer because it requires speculation that only those snakes that exist on Malta today existed on Malta 2000 years ago. Nor is (a) the most reasonable answer, standing alone, from the evidence available to us. Therefore, (b) is the most reasonable answer and I have not claimed anything more.

Failure to prove one assertion in an ancient literary work as being definitively true does not render the entire work unreliable.

Toto

You quoted from my post before I fixed the link.

The modern industrial age has seen massive deforestation. That's the primary reason I assumed it happened in the last few centuries. If the island had been deforested in 1500, it probably would have also been deserted.

On Robbins, I don't know what more to say. I read the article, and understood his point, and realized that you and his critics didn't. And I suspect that the only reason is that you are deathly afraid that it undermines the one little strand of "evidence" you have that Acts might be based on an eyewitness account. This shows me that you are too insecure in your beliefs to subject them to scrutiny where you think you might lose a point.

Like you say,

We don't know that he was wrong, but what are the odds? We have a rip roaring sea adventure with many miraculous events and many scenes borrowed from classical themes. Why should the Maltese snake be any different from the angel that let Peter out of jail, or the earthquakes that mimicked Bacchus and let Paul out of jail?

Layman

On a small island with limited resources, especially wood, I don't think your assumption is justified.

You keep saying this. But you have failed to prove it. How does he know such a convention existed? How? Hanno was not written in the first-person plural because it was a sea-voyage. It was written in the first-person plural because it was written by a participant or participants in the event.

Does Robbins suggest that Hanno, despite being a first-person account, would have been written in the third-person if it was a land adventure?

The Third Syrian War was not written in the first-person plural because it involved action at sea, but because the "we" was the author's side of a war and the "they" was the enemey. Would Robbins suggest that the author would have called the enemy "we" and his side "they" if the enemy had been attacking by sea?

Right. Robbins hasn't even attempted to answer HOW he knows such a convention exists. The examples offered in his article obviously fail to establish it. You can't explain it. He won't.

You are grasping at straws here, Toto. There is nothing about Robbins' theory of Acts that should cause any Christian insecurity.

I dunno, Toto. What are the odds?

If you refuse to lend any historicity to Acts at all because it contains miracle accounts you must do so with Josephus and many others. Your selectivity in doing so with Acts is just another example of your willingness to grasp at any argument, no matter how unpersausive, to toss in the face of a Christian.

It is truly amazing that you think Robbins' is acquitting his theory well on Cross-Talk.