Haran

Eusebius, quoting Julius Africanus, has some very interesting information on this:
There is much more to the account than this, so you might read Chapter 7 in the document I link to above.

Africanus states in his defense: "This is not dogmatic assertion or mere guesswork: the Savior's human relations [i.e. the Desposyni], either in an ostentatious spirit or simply to give information, but in either case telling the truth, have handed down this tradition too."

This same tradition is passed on much later in the 8th century by John of Damascus in his <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33044.htm" target="_blank">On the Orthodox Faith Book 4, Ch 14</a>.

Others can deny these things if they wish, but the explanation has been around a long, long time, supposedly passed down by Jesus' own relatives, and is not some recent apologetical tactic as some seem to imply.

Haran

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>

Amos

You have to understand here that the Jesus was called Jesus because the Christ identity was born unto Joseph. This made Jesus the man with two identites and one of them had to be crucified to set free the Christ identity that had been born unto him from the womb of man here personified with Mary--who was the "womb of man" and without sin as from Gen.2 ("flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones)."

Of course the Church knows that but is for us to discover in the consolation of philosophy.

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Sojourner553

_______________________________________________
Haran posts"

Julius Africanus has some very interesting information on this:
_________________________________________________

It would have been nice, Haran if you had read the link <a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/BIRTH.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/BIRTH.TXT</a>
which includes this and shows its rebuttal.

I'll cut and paste the relevent section here:

Some biblical scholars have suggested that possibly one genealogy goes
through Joseph's real father on one side, and possibly through a STEP-FATHER
on the other.-- The early Christian chronicler Eusebius (c 265-339 C.E.)
included in his HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHURCH a letter purported to have been
written by the Christian scholar Sextus Julius Africanus (180-250 C.E.).
According to this letter, Africanus wrote: "The names of the families in Israel
were reckoned either by nature or by law; by nature, when there was genuine
offspring to succeed; by law, when another man fathered a child in the name of a
brother who had died childless."

Africanus further explained that Joseph's mother was married first
to Heli (Luke 3:23), but he had died childless. She then married Heli's
brother Jacob, who fathered Joseph. Both Heli and Jacob were half brothers,
but had different fathers. According to Africanus in the letter, he had
obtained this information from the "Savior's human relations".

One problems with this, is that during the second and third centuries
C.E., there were numerous apocryphal stories and legends that were circulating
around the area (see Section V, Chapter 3), making it possible that this
could have been one too. For example, the Christian writer Tertullian,
who also lived in the second century C.E., wrote that he knew of evidence
in the public archives of Rome showing that Tiberius (who was the Roman
emperor during the time of Jesus' crucifixion) was actually convinced of
Jesus' divinity-- Virtually all modern historians agree that Tertullian
was mistaken.

Another problem is that some biblical scholars have seriously questioned
whether any accurate genealogy records could have existed, between the
times of King David to that of Jesus (without divine assistance.)

Even assuming the letter to be true, the statistical difference in
generations from Jesus to David (41 per Luke, 27 per Matthew) is very
great--especially since BOTH of them ALSO coincidently go back to David.
That is, this difference of 14 generations, would mean that on average,
Matthew's list of descendants were 50% older at the conception of their
children, than Luke's list.

It shouldn't be forgotten that there is still the LITERAL discrepancy
between Matthew's genealogy continuing from David to Abraham, with the
version given in Chronicles of the Old Testament. Here the names are
the same, but Matthew list is SHORT four names. Thus this discrepancy
can NOT be due to reckoning genealogies through say a step-father, instead
of a father--For it is IMPOSSIBLE for BOTH a grandfather AND a father
to be the previous ancestor of (the same) son.

Of course, the entire argument over Jesus' blood relationship to King David
is meaningless, if Jesus were born of a VIRGIN--because then his genealogy
would need to be traced through Mary (assuming a blood-relationship existed
to King David.) Instead, both Matthew and Luke's genealogies are traced
through Jesus' father, Joseph.

______________________________________________

Also, Eusebius admitted in one of his writings that sometimes it is necessary to lie.In his Praeparatio Evangelica 12.31, listing the ideas Plato supposedly got from Moses, he states:
"That it is necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a medicine for those who need such an approach.

Historians have found major problems with some of Eusebius' historical claims.

more details can be found at:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT</a>
_______________________________________________


You need to resolve ALL the data; not just ignore those facts that don't make your case.


<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Sojourner

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Haran

Spin,

Sorry, this is off-topic, but I just wanted to point out this double parenthetical statement. It is not unreasonable to think that the same sort of thing happened in Galatians as we were discussing in another thread.

As to the actual statement made by ex-preacher, tradition says Matthew wrote the Gospel. I believe that Matthew wrote a list of Jesus' sayings as many of the earliest church fathers mention. Mark later put them into a framework which he had derived from Peter's teachings. Finally, Matthew probably used Mark's gospel to create his own account as an eye-witness. Matthew seems to have been the most used account in ancient history and Mark the least.

Haran

Amos

Grumpy, have you ever wondered why the was a "young man dressed in white sitting at the right" in Mk and "two men dressed in dazzling white" in Luke? The answer to these questions is that the "son of man" matured to become "fully man" and in Luke he had been to the netherworld to recapture both Jesus and Christ (the thief to who he spoke "today you will be with me in paradise)."

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Haran

Thanks, but I find your posts and website material to be somewhat prolix, asthetically unpleasing, lacking in references, and generally one-sided. The article is not much of a rebuttal in any case. Regardless of whether Eusebius' material was apocryphal (which I happen to doubt), it still makes a lot of sense. Any other supposed problems could be the result of possible errors in textual transmission (in the OT or NT) or various theological purposes.

Anyway, I was simply providing information asked for and don't appreciate the tone with which my post was greeted. You should really try quoting something other than your own website once in a while...

Haran

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>

Amos

The problem they have is in tying the metaphysical reality with the physical evidence to substantiate it. The story must be tracable in history to make it more believable for religious purpose. To tell the story without historical evidence would be to write an classical peace of literature only and that was just not the purpose of these mythmakers.

The same is true with the "Spire." To this day we really do not know about which tower it was written. The fact is that the Spire was the ego of Golding himself.

Haran

Please link to or quote this work as I have done. I have not had a chance to look this up yet, but I imagine that it is completely taken out of context. It seems to be used only when someone doesn't like what Eusebius has to say.

Even so, do you really think that those for whom he wrote his books were the ones "who need such an approach"? Very, very doubtful...

Haran

P.S. - Happened to find <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/eusebius/pe_data.htm" target="_blank">a website</a> against the silly notion of Eusebius being a liar which quotes the verse in its context.

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>

Sojourner553

Virtually all biblical historians agree with you-- that Matthew was very popular and Mark was unpopular.

Here is an excerpt from
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/NEWTEST.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/NEWTEST.TXT</a>

Over the last few centuries, a bit of clever detective work by numerous
biblical scholars have convinced most historians that the gospel of
Mark was written BEFORE the other gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. Karl
Lachmann wrote in 1835 that in researching the ORDER of events as presented
by the gospel writers, there was only agreement between the synoptic gospels
when the writer agreed with Mark's chronological order. Whenever Matthew and
Luke agree on the sequence of events, it was in agreement with Mark. Whenever
Matthew disagrees with Mark's order, he ALSO disagrees with Luke's orde,
and vise versa. Therefore Mark's order is always in agreement with either
Matthew's version or Luke's version.

Other scholars added on other layers of proof that Matthew and Luke copied
from Mark, and not vise versa. Out of Mark's 661 verses, 610 can be found
in either Matthew or Luke, or both gospels. When Matthew and Luke contain
a specific event that also exists in Mark, they have typically summarized
Mark's version, sometimes adding a new narrative of their own.

Mark's version of a biblical event is always more "primitive" and
"potentially embarrassing" than that recounted in Matthew and Luke.
There is also ample evidence to show that Matthew and Luke were not
satisfied with Mark's interpretation of certain details of his gospel,
and reworked them to "improve" on them. Whenever, an "improvement" is
made by Matthew and Luke, it is NOT in agreement by the other. One or
two instances might not be convincing-- but this pattern is seen consistently
throughout the gospels.

I have chosen just one example to demonstrate this (for other examples,
see Section II).

For example, in Mark 10, a stranger approaches Jesus with the question,

"Good Master, what must I do to win eternal life". Jesus replies here,
"Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone'.

This same incident appears in Matthew 19:17 with Jesus now replying:

"Why do you ask me ABOUT what is good?" [emphasis mine]

Clearly the latter account is a correction by Matthew over Mark's account.
It would seem unlikely that Matthew was writing first, and Mark would want
to change this account back to a position where Jesus appears WEAKER,
instead of stronger.

Today, virtually all recognized scholars believe that both Matthew and
Luke used the gospel of Mark as one of their source texts (and not the
other way around).

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

ex-preacher

I'm sorry, but "tradition says" is not an adequate proof of something. Tradition is often completely wrong or at the very least, heavily spun. Christian apologists of the 2nd & 3rd centuries were highly motivated to attribute the gospels to apostles or near-apostles.

<strong> And you know this, how? As you probably know, most NT scholars, both liberal and conservative agree that Mark was written first.


<strong> Wow, did you read that? "Matthew probably used Mark's account to create his own account as an eyewitness."

Your honor, I rest my case.

From your version, Matthew and Mark were penpals, eh?

<strong> True. This is probably why they put Matthew first in the canon when they knew that Mark was probably the earlier of the two. So what does this prove?