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7th December 2017, 07:04 AM | #121 |
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Wherein we see, yet again, an ISF thread going from requests for clarification and/or challenges to assertions rapidly going downhill to mud-slinging, moving goalposts (a 1,800+ year playing field gives wonderful latitude), deflection, and other hilarious bits.
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7th December 2017, 07:26 AM | #122 |
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7th December 2017, 07:39 AM | #123 |
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7th December 2017, 07:56 AM | #124 |
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So, then, Princeton Theological Seminary is "fanciful fringe"? And Union Theological Seminary? Among other institutions of similar high reputation? You tried the dodge that some of Ehrman's writing is quite technical and difficult for the average reader, and indeed it is; he specifically addressed that issue in the works mentioned earlier in this thread which are intended for the average reader not trained in the technical aspects of such research. You had no problem with those works at that time. I suggested you try Metzger, one of Ehrman's prime mentors but as yet you make no mention of his writings. You will find him definitely not "fanciful fringe." You seem not to be aware what little we have from a few early Christian era writers exists only in quotes and references found in others' writings. You seem aware of only one non-canonical gospel when there are a dozen or more of importance to the study of the early Christian era. We've seen this manner of dodging and weaving before. |
7th December 2017, 08:15 AM | #125 |
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I know who Metzger is, and I did not say that I found Ehrman's work too TECHNICAL, I said that I found it annoyingly dumbed down at times. You have repeatedly mischaracterized me to go on condescending, namedropping tirades and I suggest you cease doing that. As an aside I much prefer to read Ehrman's scholarly texts - Orthodox Corruption is fantastic.
Anyway. Last time I checked, Metzger was a devout Christian. So I kind of doubt he believed Jesus did not exist at all. I understand from your writing that you enjoy namedropping him a lot, but it honestly doesn't make you look erudite. Just a hint. So. You choose to get hung up on a few words, Peregrinus, "Original" and "Credible" so far, trying to spin them into an absurd web of mizcharacterization to 'discredit' me and I suppose intimidate me with your vast knowledge of Metzger. Both those instances have been addressed by me. You have shown no effort to address the substantive points that we have an absolute wealth of near-contemporary sources for Jesus, even compared to figures who were very prominent in their times. I honestly don't get where you find "what little we have from early Christian writers" - we have Paul's letters, the Gospels, Acts, Revelations, and the somewhat later letters. True, we don't have the originals and we will never be sure exactly what they looked like (though as Ehrman expounded on once, 'original' is not necessarily well defined. Is it the first draft, the first distributed versiok, the first widely spread version..?), but that has very little bearing on the consistent biographical details we find about Jesus. To the extent the variations do matter, they show the types of tensions and competing traditions we'd expect given what we know about the context, what we can glean from Paul, etc. Yes, there are many important apocryphal writings for early Christian history. But not ones important for the historicity of Jesus (or Paul, as per the topic). They ahow a continuation and development of the conflicts and divergent traditions we see early on. |
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7th December 2017, 08:19 AM | #126 |
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7th December 2017, 08:30 AM | #127 |
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7th December 2017, 09:04 AM | #128 |
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Eh? I can remember things that happened sixty uears ago, and I can relate such things to my children, and younger people in general.
But one may get things wrong. "Stories" may be accurate, partly accurate, or false. If Josephus was recounting stories, that tells us nothing about whether his account is accurate or not. The question is, does his story refer to the same Jesus and James who are are found in the stories told by Paul and the Gospels? I incline to think yes. Is Josephus independent of Paul and the gospels? I incline to think yes. And that is all I'm saying. |
7th December 2017, 09:35 AM | #129 |
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But is your memory reliable? Also, can you remember things that you DIDN'T witness? Josephus wasn't there on Calvary hill or Golgotha. He wasn't there during the Sermon on the Mount. Its not like they broadcasted the crucifixions on WJEW radio or TV station.
It wasn't published in the Sunday edition of the Jerusalem Daily News. So how the hell could he remember? And he would have been 2 to 5 years old. Are you suggesting your memories from that age are reliable when you're 60? Have you also heard of false memories? They are very common and we all have them. I remember listening to my mother and father telling me about their wedding and when and how they met. Their memories of these events are very different. Lots of people like our President have false memories of 9-11. A great many people say they were watching live when the first plane hit the tower. But they couldn't have. Trump says he saw people cheering in NJ. Totally false. |
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7th December 2017, 10:25 AM | #130 |
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According to Tubba Bubba Josephus provides the best record of Jerusalem during the first century. While it might be true that his writings are the most extensive found that doesn't make them more credible or reliable than other sources.
I thought it quite interesting reading the estimates by those at that time the population of Jerusalem in the first century. They range from a low of 20,000 to a high of 600,000. Josephus says 1.1 million people died during the Jewish war. These numbers are simply not reconcilable. Somebody is wrong by a lot. What does that tell you? It tells me that anecdotes and stories both true and false became part of history. We may have a general idea of Jerusalem in 35 AD but we have no idea how accurate it is. |
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7th December 2017, 11:18 AM | #131 |
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We have also often seen this in ISF threads.
The actual adjective you used was "tiresome." (In that post you did NOT say anything about dumbed down or annoying.) I mentioned that some of Ehrman's writings are technical for the average person and he recognizes that fact.
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Oh. And it's not "Revelations." It's "Revelation." At least get your trivia right. |
7th December 2017, 12:03 PM | #132 |
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I recognized the reference. I was expecting you to explain its relevance. Of course, you cannot, because it has none, and you are engaging in this obnoxious gotcha:ism because you do not actually have, or are afraid to commit to, any substantive point.
Yeah, buddy. I've seen your type before.
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7th December 2017, 12:06 PM | #133 |
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7th December 2017, 12:27 PM | #134 |
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What difference does it make if he's the only source? And clearly he's not if you believe the Gospels. That doesn't mean what he wrote is true anymore than Lord of the Rings to be true. Most of my life, I've believed the story of Moses is true and virtually everything I've read recently suggests that none of it was true. If Moses was a fabrication, that means the first 5 books of the bible is a fraud...does it not? (Not that I believed Noah, or in Adam and Eve.)
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7th December 2017, 12:44 PM | #135 |
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7th December 2017, 12:49 PM | #136 |
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Actually I'm not sure the gospels tell us much about the time and place Jesus lived; they were probably written by diaspora Jews and gentiles elsewhere in the Empire. But that's tangential.
As for Moses, something does not either have to be true or fraudulent. That is why we have terms like legend, myth, folklore, etc. People did not always understand truth the way we do, something did not have to be either allegory, fairy-tale or fact, if you will. Things like number discrepancies plague very much of ancient historiography, it's far from peculiar to Josephus (e.g. the Greek accounts, which are all we have, of the Graeco-Persian wars tend to inflate the number of Persians and deflate the number of Greeks in any battle, sometimes by fantastical exaggeration (Herodotus' account of Thermpylai etc), or by conveniently forgetting to mention 30 000 Helots, and so on.) It's just one of those pesky realities historians of antiquity wrestle with. |
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7th December 2017, 12:53 PM | #137 |
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I'm actually not sure there are any, of note, really. Contemporary, almost certainly not. I believe there's lots of stuff for which Josephus is literally our only source. It's not a matter of Josephus' virtues as much as, well, he's what we've got with regard to Jewish matters, by and large.
People often have an exaggerated view of how much writings survive from antiquity... it's not uncommon for a single problematic author to be a sole surviving source. E.g. Herodotus on the origins of the Achaemenid Empire (literally the most powerful and expansive state that had existed in history at that point!) |
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7th December 2017, 01:20 PM | #138 |
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I have no doubt at all that the Torah couldn't have been written by one person, let alone to be the work of Moses. Especially when you consider that the events accounted in them occurred before he lived and obviously after he lived ...if he lived at all. He certainly didn't deliver millions of Jews out of bondage from Egypt.
What we have with ancient history are stories and very little ability to separate fact from fiction. Maybe Jesus was a real person or maybe Jesus was just a good story going around the Middle East. What really blows my mind is that people take these old stories seriously. I think extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and the evidence for biblical claims of miracles and deity are not even ordinary. The Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba is said to have performed miracles today. He is said to have a virgin birth. He has millions of followers and yet I bet you don't take the claims about him seriously. Then why take biblical claims seriously? |
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7th December 2017, 01:33 PM | #139 |
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Josephus doesn't say anything about the events in the gospels. The TF is either fake or so distorted by Christian scribes as to be useless. Later events like the death of James, the lead up to and the revolt against Rome he covers in great detail because he was there. He was part of the Priesthood when James died and was a military leader in the early stages of the revolt. So not too far removed from these things at all.
The Jewish War destroyed cities all over Judea and Galilee, not just Jerusalem. Also Jerusalem's population fluctuated enormously every year when people from all over Israel came to the Temple for religious reasons. I think anyone interested in this topic should read Josephus. Maybe don't bother so much with most of "Antiquities" as it is just a retelling of the old testament, but the later parts have some interesting stuff. "The War" is amazing. It's all online too: https://www.biblestudytools.com/hist...vius-josephus/ |
7th December 2017, 01:34 PM | #140 |
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7th December 2017, 01:39 PM | #141 |
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7th December 2017, 01:43 PM | #142 |
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7th December 2017, 01:46 PM | #143 |
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7th December 2017, 01:54 PM | #144 |
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7th December 2017, 02:06 PM | #145 |
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It is. But one is infinitely interesting and the other I can't imagine would result in anything but boredom. I find it insulting to humanity that people are even vagely interested in all this religious nonsense. I long for the day that the Abrahamic religions are dumped in the trash bin with the religions that preceded it.
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7th December 2017, 04:23 PM | #146 |
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So this bit of idle speculation touches on something worth addressing: what features would such a good story have that the Jesus narrative lacks and vice versa?
The main thing we see with pseudohistory in the ancient world such as various cities claiming to have been founded by Hercules, is that not even major biographical details (Time and place of birth, of some defining event(s), of death) are remotely consistent. Whereas with people we have good reason to suspect did exist certain such details seem very reluctant to change (which is why we get e.g. the Betlehem relocation - just changing his place of birth was apparently unthinkable!). This is why we tend to be reasonably sure someone like Pythagoras existed even through the anecdotes about his life that survive are pretty much utter nonsense - sources do agree on him being born on Samos, and one or two other things like where he moved at one point or another. |
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7th December 2017, 04:31 PM | #147 |
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Do you then take this extremely pessimistic view of all ancient history? Is it all just a stupid waste of time to better try to understand the ancient world? Or are we just to go, "Maybe xyz existed or maybe they were just totally made up, mo way to tell!" about every single figure? Once you start hyperskeptically plucking people out of the record you're left with precious little.
You're really taking an exceedingly pessimistic view of historians' abilities here - it's rather dismissive and insulting to the entire field. Re: Sai Baba and virgin births, where the **** did I say I accepted Jesus' virgin birth being true? |
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7th December 2017, 04:36 PM | #148 |
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This is about History, not Religion. Unfortunately the Abrahamic religions are a fact of life and no amount of pseudohistory about a mythical Jesus is going to make Christianity disappear in a puff of incense.
On the other hand, a well researched and convincing Historical work on the non-miraculous and frankly political origins of the Jesus cult might lead to a better understanding of world history. It won't change the minds of religious fanatics, but at the very least it could be educational. |
7th December 2017, 04:37 PM | #149 |
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I tend to think the TF had a genuine core based on how it is written (it looks like the successive incorporation of margin notes and such), but the reason it's not worth losing sleep over is that it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know from much better sources. It just doesn't make much of a difference as far as historical Jesus is concerned.
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7th December 2017, 04:38 PM | #150 |
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7th December 2017, 04:50 PM | #151 |
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7th December 2017, 04:51 PM | #152 |
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And after his capture by the Romans, he sided with them and, i.a., tried to act as a negotiator during the siege of Jerusalem (but the zealots wanted nothing to do with the turncoat). He was an eyewitness of much of the Jewish War.
Afterwards, he was a protégé of Vespasian and his sons. He may well have had access to Roman records that now are lost. |
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7th December 2017, 04:59 PM | #153 |
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7th December 2017, 07:02 PM | #154 |
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I don't think you have grasped what I'm claiming, as if you are stating that in a literate civilisation in the ancient world it was impossible for the names of people - individuals moreover who interacted with a high priest! - to be recalled accurately in more than one source over a period of sixty years; and we have no idea what written or oral records existed in the intervening period, which is in any case within the scope of recall of a single human lifetime.
So I say it again. The persons referred to by Josephus, who have the same names as people mentioned by Paul and by the Gospels: I am inclined to think that these are the same people, who have been recalled by more than one writer over a period which can be encompassed by a single human memory, and is for example encompassed by my own. If you think that is too impossibly absurd to contemplate, I can't argue the point with you. I simply rebut you. This thread is about whether Paul existed. Do you regard his existence as absurdly impossible too? |
7th December 2017, 07:33 PM | #155 |
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'Literate civilization in the ancient world'. Sounds like an oxymoron. How literate do you think it was? And more importantly why do you think that? There is no printing press. Paper is not cheap.
But you are right that we have no idea what written records there were. You'll excuse me. What are oral records? As for Josephus, I have no idea how common the names James or Jesus was at that time in Judea. Do you? There were 2 other kids with my first name in 1st grade. In fact I went to school with lots of kids with my first name. |
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7th December 2017, 07:44 PM | #156 |
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How many of those names were street-common in the Levant? How many people named Craig in the town where you live? That two writings mention a given name is not of itself any assurance they refer to the same individual. A bit more than similarity would be required for any competent researcher to conclude there's more than simply a coincidence.
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7th December 2017, 07:47 PM | #157 |
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What is this all about? "Literate civilisation in the ancient world" is not an oxymoron. An oral record is a datum retained in human memory and passed from one person to another by means of speech. Literacy existed prior to the printing press. I don't attach importance to how many names you can remember from your school days.
Do you think that Paul existed or not? That would be more interesting. |
7th December 2017, 08:34 PM | #158 |
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Really? Not that Wikipedia is necessarily an authority. But let's look at what it has to say.
That's not a record, that's a memory. Of course you don't. But the Jesus and James Josephus wrote about is necessarily the ones from the bible. Sorry, I meant to answer this. I absolutely believe Paul existed. It seems to me that someone wrote those epistles. |
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7th December 2017, 08:41 PM | #159 |
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A memory is a record. You've decided to redefine the word. But see for example
THE ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVAL Congress held in Paris on "new archives" (22-26 August 1988) demonstrated the differences that exist among countries in their collecting, processing, and promoting of oral recordsThen he lived in a literate society. OK? |
7th December 2017, 08:46 PM | #160 |
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