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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
 Posted - 06/07/2002 : 05:59:47 [Permalink]
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quote:
Oh, I'm sorry, reasonable. I didn't mean to get you upset, or in any way question your beliefs.
On the off chance that this post was not intended to be facetious or sarcastic: (a) I see no need to be "sorry", (b) I was not upset, (c) you did not question my beliefs and, had you done so, I would not have viewed that as a bad thing.
BTW, the Finkelstein/Silberman book is interesting, but you might want to also pick up Dever's "What Did the Biblical Writers Know and when Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel".
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2002 : 10:47:37 [Permalink]
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Now, now let's not lose our tempers gang. Remember we aren't talking about an historic Christ, we are talking about an historic Jesus. A subject of very little import and only a little less dry than dust. On a level with the historic King Arthur.
On the topic I find myself in the same school as Professor A. G. Wells and company, although I arrived there independently I might add.
Josephus…I still can't get that web site to come up. Too bad because I'd like to know how someone can write an entire book based on only a handful of lines of copy. Sounds like something I might do.
The problems with the Testimonuim are many. First it's writing style doesn't match the rest of the book. Second the earliest fragments of scrolls that we have of it include tables of content and none of them mention it, although later copies do.
Early church father Origen (circa 185-254 CE), who in his own writings relied extensively upon the works of Josephus, didn't mention this passage or any other passage in Josephus that mentions Christ. This conspicuous absence speaks volumes about the passage in question. Even if this section was the vestige of a genuine passage that had undergone the revising hand of the Christian Fathers, you would think Origen would have mentioned it, even if just to criticize it for being critical of Jesus. No mention from Origen at all of this passage or any like it.
Then you have Jerome (circa 347-420 CE) who cites Josephus 90 times, but is oblivious to the Testimonuim. Jerry was desperate to show a historic Jesus.
L. H. Feldman, in Josephus and Modern Scholarship, lists two fathers from the second century, seven from the third, and two from the early fourth, all of whom knew Josephus and cited his works, but "do not refer to this passage, though one would imagine it would be the first passage that a Christian apologist would cite."
The first mention of the Testimonium is Eusebius (who openly boasted about creating church history), and a full century passes (including, most notably, the era of Augustine [354-430 CE]) before it is again mentioned. This suggests that it took that long for most of the copies to include this passage.
The earliest copy still existing that contains this passage dates from the eleventh century.
None of the "Fathers" before Eusebius used the word "tribe" in describing the Christians. Neither does it fit Josephus' usage of the word elsewhere (Josephus uses it to describe only national groups.) This is further indication that Eusebius probably inserted the Testimonium into Josephus's works.
The Testimonium even breaks the thread of the narrative where it occurs, interrupting the narrative in a style quite unlike that common in the works of Josephus. Elsewhere, when Josephus inserts a parenthetical section, he introduces it as a parenthesis and then announces that he is returning to the original narration. The paragraph into which the Testimonium was inserted is itself a parenthetical section. It deals with "uproar" and this word connects the passages after the Testimonium with those preceding it, making the Testimonium parenthesis unnatural and unannounced.
Also, there is a parallel passage in his The Wars of the Jews, that repeats the surrounding text almost as fully as does Antiquities, but it omits the Testimonium.
Although several Jewish scholars see the Testimonium's designation of Jesus as "a wise man" too modest an assessment for a Christian, Josephus himself, in the remaining body of his works, applies this designation only to Solomon and Daniel. He doesn't even say this about David. It is doubtful that he would placed the casually mentioned Jesus in the same category as the extensively covered characters of Solomon and Daniel.
Meanwhile, Josephus himself mentions "an ambiguous oracle" (Wars 6:312-13) in the Jewish scripture which foretold the emergence of a world-wide ruler from Judea. In it, he is careful not to call this a Messianic prophesy (since he disliked Messianism as the source of many nationalistic uprisings and he was after al a buddy of the Romans), but the Testimonium has Josephus being shameless in his mention of how "the divine prophets had foretold" of Jesus's career.
To get away from Jose for a bit, the section in the Talmud that tells the ribald tale of Jesus, the bastard son of Mary and a Roman soldier, who is a womanizer and a crook post dates the Roman institution of Christianity (see Randel Helms Who Wrote the Gospels? and Gospel Fiction)
The Jews and the Mithrains were not pleased over what Christianity had stolen from each of their faiths. The Jews tended towards satire the Mithrains towards arrows. (One of the reasons that there are still Jewish comedians but no Mithrain archers)
One of the big problems with tagging the Jesus H. Christ story on a Jewish Messiah type from the time is that there is almost nothing Jewish in the story. The first Jewish thing JHC does is be circumcised. The second Jewish act is he has a botched version of a Passover dinner the night before he is crucified. Nothing he does in the middle has anything to do with Judaism, it's all Mithrain and Dionysian.
All of the would be Messiahs were Jewish and behaved after the manner and custom of the Jews.
Your best bet for some historic bones to lay the Jesus myth on is Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius is very much historic. Although a Neo-Pythagorean he started the cult of the worship of the god Christna in the first century CE. He was credited with exactly the same healing miracles, preformed in the same spit and mud fashion, that Jesus was supposed to have done. He was arrested by Nero at exactly the same time Peter & Paul were. But (1) he escaped by miracle and (2) the Romans kept a record of him but not of the other two. His writing on the Christ are exactly the same as some of Paul's letters (which might explain why Paul didn't actually know when Christ lived) that some Xian scholars attribute the Paul's assistant Apollons.
If you look Apollonius up be warned that he was the darling of the Spiritualist movement of nineteenth century England. There was a lot of mumbo jumbo pinned on him then that you'll have to cut through. Best to try to find source material.
I still am convinced that the whole thing is a Roman concoction. Not really "a conspiracy to defraud" because that would mean that they were trying to trick people. It was a rewriting of history that people were ordered to believe (just as slaves were ordered to worship their owners as gods) by "the Emperor of the World" filled with pro-Imperial government sentiment.
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Philippians 4:22 : All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household.
4:23 : The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 10:26:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Your best bet for some historic bones to lay the Jesus myth on is Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius is very much historic. Although a Neo-Pythagorean he started the cult of the worship of the god Christna in the first century CE. He was credited with exactly the same healing miracles, preformed in the same spit and mud fashion, that Jesus was supposed to have done. He was arrested by Nero at exactly the same time Peter & Paul were. But (1) he escaped by miracle and (2) the Romans kept a record of him but not of the other two. His writing on the Christ are exactly the same as some of Paul's letters (which might explain why Paul didn't actually know when Christ lived) that some Xian scholars attribute the Paul's assistant Apollons.
Remarkable. I would be very interested (and, in fact, surprised) to learn of any scholarship that supports this contention, particularly since Apollonius was consciously promoted as a competitor against Christianity. Furthermore, such scholarship would necessarily invert the relationship between the Pauline and the Palestinian 'Christian' communities and would challenge virtually all current scholarship surrounding the Synoptic Problem.
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 12:13:27 [Permalink]
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quote:
Furthermore, such scholarship would necessarily invert the relationship between the Pauline and the Palestinian 'Christian' communities and would challenge virtually all current scholarship surrounding the Synoptic Problem.
Again we are stuck with lack of evidence being passed off as evidence.
The current Christian scholarship makes assumptions that there were Pauline and the Palestinian 'Christian' communities in the first century CE. However the physical evidence dates only from the fourth.
But Christian faith based scholarship is hardly all that there is.
Any number of serious secular historians hold the very position I espouse: G. A. Wells is one, Arthur Drews was another, Randel Helms a third.
Helms is a rather dry writer and tends to belabor points with fact after fact after fact but his Gospel Fictions covers Apollonius more than well.
Apollonius' Christianity to have been a competor of Jesus' Christianity makes broad assumptions. Jesus didn't win over the hearts and minds of the citizens of Rome by virtue of it's merits. Conversion was by Imperial edict.
In the first century Rome there are many records of the Apollonius' Christians but none of the Jesus flavor.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860
Edited by - slater on 06/11/2002 12:14:44 |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 13:49:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
Any number of serious secular historians hold the very position I espouse: G. A. Wells is one, Arthur Drews was another, Randel Helms a third. Helms is a rather dry writer and tends to belabor points with fact after fact after fact but his Gospel Fictions covers Apollonius more than well.
Apollonius' Christianity to have been a competor of Jesus' Christianity makes broad assumptions. Jesus didn't win over the hearts and minds of the citizens of Rome by virtue of it's merits. Conversion was by Imperial edict. In the first century Rome there are many records of the Apollonius' Christians but none of the Jesus flavor.
Thanks for the reference to Helms. I'm sure you've read his work and are well familiar with his position. He begins by discussing the exploits of your religious leader, and then asking "Who was this teacher and wonder-worker? His name was Apollonius of Tyrana; he died about 98 A.D., and his story may be read in Flavius Philostratus's Life of Apollonius". Does he then assert that this is the source of the mythical Christ. Not at all. Rather, he states:
quote:
Readers who too hastily assumed that the preceeding described Apollonius's slightly earlier contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth, may be forgiven their error is they will reflect how readily the human imagination embroiders the careers of notable figures of the past with common mythical and fictional embellishments. ...
We may say much the same of Jesus of Nazareth, though without needing to insist that all the mythical biographies of his figure entirely disregard his genuine acts. ... Of course, all works of fiction have an element of history, all works of history have an element of fiction. The Gospels, however -- and this is my thesis -- are largely fictional acounts concerning an historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, intended to create a life-enhancing understanding of his nature.
As for the dating of the Gospels, Helms argues:
quote:
This liturature was oral before it was written and began with the memories of those who knew Jesus personally. Their memories and teachings were passed on as oral tradition for some forty years or so before achieving written form for the first time in a self-conscious literary work, so far as we know, in the Gospel of Mark, within a few years of 70 A.D.
He goes on to speak of Paul, "writing to the galatians about 50 A.D."
You wrote: "Again we are stuck with lack of evidence being passed off as evidence. The current Christian scholarship makes assumptions that there were Pauline and the Palestinian 'Christian' communities in the first century CE. However the physical evidence dates only from the fourth. But Christian faith based scholarship is hardly all that there is."
Nevertheless, it appears that Helms agrees more or less with Markan priority and the current consensus on dating. What I cannot find is his discussion on the "Apollonius' Christianity" that you find so compelling.
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 14:26:42 [Permalink]
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Again with the "consensus" there is no consensus. Helms is the one who points out that there were a minimum of three authors to Paul.
I've never heard a 50 CE date cited before it's usually 70 CE. But, of course no one claims that they actually have the 70 CE bible. The best that they can ever do is 325 CE. 70 (50) CE is only a best guess based on language usuage not on physical evidence.
If you would not pick Apollonius of Tyana as the "real life Jesus"--and admittedly you can make a much stronger case for him being the model for Paul--then who would you suggest.
Personally I think that the character was based entirely on gods with only a little street magician hocus pokus throw in to make it more exciting. With no actual person whose legend grew into Jesus Christ
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 15:15:53 [Permalink]
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Does he then assert that this is the source of the mythical Christ. Not at all. Rather, he states....
By the bye if you will read what I actually wrote you will see that I didn't claim that either Helms nor myself thought that Apollonius was the bases of Jesus.
The piece you found, from the ad for his book, about A of T does however show a few of the many similarities . That is what I was talking about when I suggested that AoT bore much more of a resemblance to JHC than any of the Jewish would-be-messiahs did.
Also if you read the two threads that lead up to this blurb you will see that although I'll site sources I do not claim that the conclusions that I have reached are echoes of the authors conclusions. Rather they are my own. Explanations of how I reached them are there in excruciatingly minute detail. I do, after all, have a Ph.D. and am licensed by the State of California to have independent , and sometimes original, thoughts.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 17:58:02 [Permalink]
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I've never heard a 50 CE date cited before it's usually 70 CE. But, of course no one claims that they actually have the 70 CE bible. The best that they can ever do is 325 CE. 70 (50) CE is only a best guess based on language usuage not on physical evidence.
Perhaps you've "never heard of 50 CE" because you hold current scholarship in contempt, prefering to weave stories about Apollonius' Christianity. You raised Helms, not I. You point to him as one of the "serious secular historians [who] hold the very position [you] espouse." You assert that "his Gospel Fictions covers Apollonius more than well". What little I saw suggests that he in no way suggests Apollonius and the source of the Jesus myth. Nor, I believe, does he share your belief "that the whole thing is a Roman concoction. Not really "a conspiracy to defraud" because that would mean that they were trying to trick people. It was a rewriting of history that people were ordered to believe (just as slaves were ordered to worship their owners as gods) by "the Emperor of the World" filled with pro-Imperial government sentiment."
Nor do I believe that you can demonstrate that G. A. Wells, who likewise holds "the very position [you] espose", shares such a belief. In fact, Wells writes: "I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural ‘Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual." This is hardly a reference to "a Roman concoction".
I do not know Arthur Drews position but, given the inventiveness displayed so far, I have zero confidence that you do either. The relevant publisher's note states only: "First published in 1910, THE CHRIST MYTH drew violent criticism from theologians, the press, and the public. Eminent German philosopher Arthur Drews (1865-1935) shows that Christianity is a syncretism of various pagan and Jewish beliefs. This is a valuable sourcebook for students of religion and all those interested in examining the origins of Christianity." Such a position is far from remarkable, but equally removed from 'Roman-conspiracy' theories.
quote:
I do, after all, have a Ph.D. and am licensed by the State of California to have independent, and sometimes original, thoughts.
Such a statement is beneath contempt. Should we bow? There are more than a few Ph.D.s spewing ICR's creationist silliness. Should we bow to them as well? Do you truly believe that a Ph.D. (from the State of California no less) relieves you of the responsibility for cogent and honest argument?
As for your license "to have independent, and sometimes original thoughts", originality is fine only so long as it is acknowledged openly and delivered without arrogance or pretense.
Edited by - ReasonableDoubt on 06/11/2002 17:59:30 |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 18:06:59 [Permalink]
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I want to bring up a previous point that Slater has mentioned in other threads needs to be pointed out again, though the idea may be scorned by many, that authors may feel the need to put forth a CYA in their advertising and publicizing blurbs.
Some seem to show point after point that leads one to reasonably conclude that Jesus was never an historical figure, then tack on a "oh, but of course I believe Jesus actually existed!".
Is this a reasonable consideration when reading these authors? (I think so.)
[Case in point, from RD's post just above:
quote:
THE CHRIST MYTH drew violent criticism from theologians, the press, and the public.
]
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fortiter in re, suaviter in modo
Edited by - tokyodreamer on 06/11/2002 18:08:48 |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 18:18:07 [Permalink]
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Thank you TD, but as RD tends to have hysterics and become abusive no matter what anyone writes I don't think that you can expect to get a reasoned response.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 18:34:19 [Permalink]
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quote:
quote:
I do, after all, have a Ph.D. and am licensed by the State of California to have independent, and sometimes original, thoughts.
Such a statement is beneath contempt. Should we bow? There are more than a few Ph.D.s spewing ICR's creationist silliness. Should we bow to them as well? Do you truly believe that a Ph.D. (from the State of California no less) relieves you of the responsibility for cogent and honest argument?
As for your license "to have independent, and sometimes original thoughts", originality is fine only so long as it is acknowledged openly and delivered without arrogance or pretense.
At the risk of being thought of as a sycophant, surely you realize Slater was making a joke?
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fortiter in re, suaviter in modo |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 18:48:03 [Permalink]
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quote:
I want to bring up a previous point that Slater has mentioned in other threads needs to be pointed out again, though the idea may be scorned by many, that authors may feel the need to put forth a CYA in their advertising and publicizing blurbs.
Some seem to show point after point that leads one to reasonably conclude that Jesus was never an historical figure, then tack on a "oh, but of course I believe Jesus actually existed!".
Is this a reasonable consideration when reading these authors? (I think so.)
I noticed this as well and brought it up in some long gone by post when I was checking out some info on Mithra. One had elements of Christianity on one side and Mithraism on the other with a line down the center and the two were damn near identical but nowhere was there a sentence that actually said "Maybe these 2 have some relationship" although it was more than implied. I do not pretend to be able to read the minds of the authors though.
 @tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 18:56:03 [Permalink]
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quote:
I want to bring up a previous point that Slater has mentioned in other threads needs to be pointed out again, though the idea may be scorned by many, that authors may feel the need to put forth a CYA in their advertising and publicizing blurbs.
Some seem to show point after point that leads one to reasonably conclude that Jesus was never an historical figure, then tack on a "oh, but of course I believe Jesus actually existed!".
That may well be true in some cases. In all honesty, I've not noted such a tendency, nor am I sure what its relevancy might be to the topic at hand.
quote:
At the risk of being thought of as a sycophant, surely you realize Slater was making a joke?
At the risk of being thought of as overly literal, the possibility never occurred to me -- my fault, entirely.
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2002 : 19:02:26 [Permalink]
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One had elements of Christianity on one side and Mithraism on the other with a line down the center and the two were damn near identical but nowhere was there a sentence that actually said "Maybe these 2 have some relationship" ...
THE book on Mithra is Franz Cumont's The Mysteries of Mithra. Cumont was a devout Catholic and was shocked by all the shared mythology. So much so that he made a point out of stopping at each and denying it. His main point of contention was that Jesus was historic and Mithra, although older and with the same story, was not. He was so good at this that I would have missed a third of them if he hadn't stopped and said that they weren't there.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 06/12/2002 : 05:54:23 [Permalink]
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quote:
quote:
I want to bring up a previous point that Slater has mentioned in other threads needs to be pointed out again, though the idea may be scorned by many, that authors may feel the need to put forth a CYA in their advertising and publicizing blurbs.
Some seem to show point after point that leads one to reasonably conclude that Jesus was never an historical figure, then tack on a "oh, but of course I believe Jesus actually existed!".
That may well be true in some cases. In all honesty, I've not noted such a tendency, nor am I sure what its relevancy might be to the topic at hand.
I believe the relevancy comes in when Slater says "Look at what these authors are saying, their evidence jives with my ideas", and you say "But here the authors are saying that they believe in an historical Jesus, therefore your ideas have no merit."
It seems reasonable to me to be highly doubtful of the existence of an historical Jesus using the writings of Wells, Helms, Doherty, Cumont, et. al., regardless of whether these authors claim to believe Jesus of Nazareth ever walked the earth (you know, like Cain in "Kung Fu"  ).
If one points to the authors' claims that they believe in an historical Jesus as an argument against this doubt, I think it is relevant to consider that the authors may feel they have to say that in order to even be considered for publication.
quote:
quote:
At the risk of being thought of as a sycophant, surely you realize Slater was making a joke?
At the risk of being thought of as overly literal, the possibility never occurred to me -- my fault, entirely.
To be honest, I posted that for entirely selfish reasons. I would much rather continue reading a back-and-forth between you and Slater regarding this subject than someone like darwin alogos, whose entire argument consists of "Jesus existed because the Bible says so, period!".
I don't want either one of you to throw their hands up and walk away.
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fortiter in re, suaviter in modo
Edited by - tokyodreamer on 06/12/2002 05:55:30 |
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