tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47533059542892566522024-03-13T10:40:54.892-07:00The Mythicism Files<big>A Who's Who/What's What in the ongoing discussion on the historicity of Jesus.</big>Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-62455872779700804372017-03-23T04:59:00.001-07:002017-03-23T05:09:06.249-07:00David Fitzgerald<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span>avid Fitzgerald's <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nailed-Christian-Myths-Jesus-Existed/dp/0557709911" target="_blank">Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All</a></b> has been in my kindle for several years now. I've listened to various podcasts and interviews featuring Fitzgerald over the years. I gave the book a quick perusal when I first got it, but because my introduction to New Testament minimalism (a.k.a. "mythicism") was through the work of Earl Doherty and Robert Price, and because I had thought that Fitzgerald's little book was just a bullet-point rehash of the Doherty theory, I didn't feel it necessary to read the whole thing. But now that he has completed his anticipated <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Mything-Complete-Heretics-Religion-ebook/dp/B06XRQYGBV/ref=la_B004ASD9M4_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1490270214&sr=1-6" target="_blank"><b>Mything in Action</b> </a>series, I remembered this former book and decided to read it in its entirety, and I must say that I enjoyed it more than I anticipated. </div>
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The Good</h2>
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The most famous story in the Talmud concerning Rabbi Hillel describes a request made by a would-be disciple for the rabbi to teach him the Torah "while standing on one foot." Because no one could stand for very long on one foot, what this expression meant was "as simply, as briefly as possible." In other words, he was asking Hillel to condense the teachings of the Torah down to its basics. This is essentially what David Fitzgerald has done for mythicism. He writes in a clear, lucid, and concise style unencumbered by the jargon and the convolutedness that usually characterizes academic writing. He writes for regular folk, not for scholars. What's more, he has a sense of humor that is usually lacking in the field of New Testament studies, without losing sight of the seriousness of the subject. Because of this accessible aspect, <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nailed-Christian-Myths-Jesus-Existed/dp/0557709911" target="_blank">Nailed</a></b> is an excellent introduction for any lay person interested in why some scholars question the historicity of Jesus but who doesn't have either the time or the concentration to wade through 800 pages of Doherty or of Carrier. I recommend it highly as a gateway book.</div>
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The <sup>not-so</sup> Bad</h2>
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What criticism I would level at this little book is much the same criticism that I would level at most works in the field of New Testament studies in general, and so Fitzgerald is not alone in these missteps. Namely, I'm referring to a tendency to uncritically accept as given certain "consensus" positions which presuppose what remains to be demonstrated. <br />
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To wit (and just cursorily):<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">1</span>- The dating of the Epistle of 1 Clement to the late 90s CE. <br />
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Most people don't realize that the primary (nay, the <i>only</i>) reason for dating this epistle so is the phrasing in the opening paragraph, which includes the line, "<i>Owing to the sudden and repeated misfortunes and calamities which have befallen us, we consider that our attention has been somewhat delayed in turning to the questions disputed among you,</i> …", which commentators (most notably Lightfoot) interpret as referring to persecution during the time of Domitian. But is this necessarily so? If we read it removed from this preconception, doesn't this line sound just like, '<i>sorry it took us so long to answer you, but, you know, we got tied up; shit came up </i>... '?<br />
In other words, it sounds like a typical vague and ambiguous opening to <i>any</i> belated letter. Consider as well that several commentators (including Loisy) date it closer to the time of Justin of Neapolis (Fitzgerald calls him Justin of Caesaria—I'm not sure why).<br />
Moreover, even a cursory reading of this "letter" reveals a hyper-prolix style that reflects a later date than the one proposed.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">2</span>-The dating of the Ignatian corpus to the first decade(s) of the second century.<br />
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The spuriousness of the Ignatian corpus has been suggested since the time of the Reformation. More recently, Peter Kirby has written a thorough refutation of claims to authenticity for these "letters."<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">3</span>- The axiomatic acceptance of "seven authentic letters of Paul" (and their dating to the 50s and early 60s) — <span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">(A perennial peeve of mine.) </span><br />
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F. C. Baur (Tübingen school) only accepted four epistles as genuine. Later, the Dutch Radical school, using similar methodologies (a crucial point) came to the conclusion that it is reasonable to doubt that <i>any</i> of them is a genuine article. I've yet to see a compelling refutation of Van Manen on this.<br />
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My point in objecting to these details is not to argue that the datings given by Fitzgerald (and everyone else in the field who asserts those dates) are "wrong," <i>per se</i>, but to argue that such certitude is unwarranted. Given the nature and scope of the evidence, some hedging is advisable. <span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">(Robert Price is usually wise enough to do so, for example.)</span><br />
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The irony is, of course, that the very nature of mythicism is about challenging these kinds of too-easily accepted axioms, such as when Fitzgerald challenges (rightly so) the commonly (and similarly) asserted 125 C.E dating of P52. I would really like to see more methodological consistency in mythicists.<br />
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Somewhat similarly, but worse (if just a tad), ... when he is discussing the likely ahistoricity of Joseph of Arimathea, Fitzgerald says, "<i><b>Richard Carrier has shown</b></i> ..." [... that the word Arimathea is a semantic pun].<br />
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No. This is an overstatement. Although Carrier's is a good, arguable semantic hypothesis, it is one of several speculations which can be pretty much equally argued. Another, for example, is that "Arimathea" possibly refers to Ramathaim-Zophim. Another is that "Arimathea" could be a botched transliteration of BarMathai (son of Matthai), which has also been proposed. <span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">Once again, I am not arguing that Carrier is wrong, <i>per se</i>, but that certitude on the matter is unwarranted. <br />These may seem like minor points of contention, and, indeed, they don't necessarily affect the main thrust of Fitzgerald's (or Carrier's) thesis, but these inconsistencies, i.e. the misplaced certainty, should be pointed out.</span></div>
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All in all, though, I think David Fitzgerald's <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nailed-Christian-Myths-Jesus-Existed/dp/0557709911" target="_blank">Nailed</a></b> is a great mythicist primer. Straightforward and charismatic, his is a much-needed voice in the N.T minimalism wilderness. I think he will continue to make valuable contributions to the ongoing discussion on historicity. I will very probably get his new three-volume set eventually and review it here. <br />
I look forward to it. </div>
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#mythicism #christmythQuixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-22705534689676540362017-03-14T02:58:00.000-07:002017-03-26T17:04:03.386-07:00Antecedents of NT Minimalism: Bauer's 'Christ and the Caesars' <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Bruno Bauer was for a brief time in the nineteenth century the <i>enfant terrible</i> of New Testament scholarship. He was a brilliant man who crossed paths and kept company with such notable contemporary Germans as Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. He became professor of theology in 1834—first in Berlin then later in Bonn—but by 1842 his radical rationalism provoked his academic superiors to revoke his teaching license. Insolent and defiant, he pissed off a lot of academics. He never regained a formal teaching post, but he continued to write books on New Testament criticism (and many other subjects) that challenged the orthodox narrative, particularly its view of Christian origins. He became <span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">even more scandalous than Strauss or Schleimacher, who had already begun the process of demythologizing the New Testament before Bauer came along, of examining scripture from a literary perspective rather than a devotional one.</span></div>
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He published <b>Christ and the Caesars</b> in 1877. This particular book is noteworthy as an influence on what would come to be known as the Dutch Radical school (Loman, Van Manen, Pierson, van den Bergh van Eysinga, et al). The Dutch Radicals mainly focused on the problems with the dating, provenance, and/or authenticity of the Pauline corpus, but they were (at least indirectly) the precursors of the mythicist scholarship of the early twentieth century (c.f. Drews). Bauer may have been scandalous, but he was far from obscure in his day. He was notorious. He was so widely known that Albert Schweitzer even dedicated a whole chapter of his seminal Quest of the Historical Jesus to discussing his view of Bauer's place on the continuum of scholarship, but Bauer's work has been all but ignored and neglected ever since. Evidence of this neglect can be seen in the fact that there has not been an English edition of this work in print for many decades.<sup style="color: red;"><b>1</b></sup> In fact, translations of the works of the whole Dutch Radical school—not just Bauer—into English are relatively rare, and so I was delighted to hear that <a href="http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000740887/Christ-and-the-Caesars.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a new translation</a> of Christ and the Caesars is now available. <sup style="color: red;"><b>2</b></sup></div>
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Bauer's main contention in this work, in a nutshell, is that Christianity owes more to Greco-Roman philosophy than to anything else, even than to Judaism itself. Specifically, the seeds of Christianity are to be found, says Bauer, in the Stoic philosophy as exemplified by Seneca, the famous orator and tutor of Nero. To illustrate and argue this, Bauer tries to highlight similarities and parallels between the New Testament teachings and the Stoics. That the gospels and epistles reflect at least some Stoic influence has been argued even by conservative commentators and it is a difficult thing to deny. <span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">But what of the supposed teacher? To what extent was <i>He</i> a stoic? What we know about the Caesars—culminating in Nero's feigned über-humanity—provides us with enough typologically to flesh out a model for the reluctant-messiah/suffering-servant trope which would eventually result (so Bauer) in the literary character of Jesus the Redeemer. </span></div>
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The first part of the book is an analysis of the early imperial mindset that prepared the ground for the emergence and proliferation of Christianity. The formative Julian period is crucial to Bauer's central thesis. He is arguing that Christianity is a direct result of Greco-Roman influence <i><b>on</b></i> and a syncretic redaction <i><b>of</b></i> the Oriental mythologies that the Jewish Diaspora came into contact with during this period. Before he can make this case, this first half of the book necessarily reads like an abridged history of the development of imperial rule in Rome—first the Julians, then the Flavians, the Antonines, and finally culminating in Marcus Aurelius. <span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">When he reviews and considers the influence of the Flavian Caesars, he includes some discussion of the influence of Josephus and the Jewish people on the subsequent cultural and imperial development in Rome. I should mention that reading this section I get the feeling that Christ and the Caesars is very likely the springboard that Joseph Atwill used in the development of his own peculiar variation of mythicism. One may compare and contrast Atwill's radical hypothesis (nay, his theory! ... it is quite elaborate—I'll be writing about it at some point soon) that the New Testament texts can be directly and specifically traced and attributed to Emperor Titus himself, who saw this as a way to pacify the nationalistic passions of the Jews after the razing of Jerusalem and the Temple. Now, I don't think that this is what Bauer is saying in </span><b style="text-indent: 0.25in;">Christ and the Caesars</b><span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">, at all, but it wouldn't surprise me if this is where Atwill ultimately got the seed of the idea. </span></div>
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Bauer gives much detail regarding the war. And there's much to provoke thought there in his view of Josephus' influence. I find something intriguing, for instance, about Josephus' notion of the "victory" of a god whose rule had been transferred from the Temple in Jerusalem beyond Judea. This god could now extend his influence and effect his glory onto the whole world. This raises the question: Is there any precedent for this kind of Jewish radical universalism, or was Josephus its pioneer? <br />
Did he <i>invent </i>this expression? <br />
If so, he unilaterally and intentionally diverged from all the normative Judaisms of the time,<sup style="color: red;"><b>3</b></sup> all in the interest of pleasing his new master (or in the interest of survival, which in this case was one and the same thing). The question remains, though, did this kind of departure from Judaism that Josephus evinces here influence early Christianity? In order to make any sense, t<span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">he direction of this influence would of course require that the works of Josephus precede the composition of the New Testament, which can be argued (and has been, by Steve Mason, Richard Carrier, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Robert Price, and others) pretty compellingly,</span><span style="text-indent: 0.25in;"> whether or not Atwill's Vespasian/Titus assertions bear out. (I think they don't.) While it's not a part of Bauer's thesis, I only mention it now because it's a thought that has pressed itself on me while reading this work, and to which I'll return in the course of blogging here, I'm sure. </span></div>
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The second half of <b>Christ and the Caesars</b> focuses on the parallels between Greco-Roman philosophical thought and the content of the New Testament, noting a particular strong connection between this and the Alexandrian allegoricalist school. Bauer finds an indubitable link between the Pauline epistles and Gnosticism, as well, specifically the Valentinian variety. This link has also been argued before by many scholars since Bauer's day.</div>
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In one of the most terse challenges to the tenets of fullfilment theology that I've encountered, Bauer writes:
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"Not to dissolve, but to fulfill!" was the call of this man who created the antitheses to Matthew. To call that man, the organizer of the reaction, a Judeo-Christian [...] is a very weak and hasty rush to judgment; it is more likely that this organizer was a Roman who was fed by the spirit of Seneca. The artist who so powerfully united the idea of dissolution and completion was able to speak boldly of completion because he was himself aware with equal conviction of having dissolved the Law up to the last iota.</blockquote>
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I think he is spot on in this assessment.
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The book finally culminates with an incisive dialectical analysis of the dichotomy between Cephas and Paul, which Bauer sees as a kind of Yin Yang construct, that is, as a synthesis between a traditionalist organizing principle (thesis) and a liberating one (antithesis). Bauer does not use these terms, but his analysis reminds me of these Hegelian concepts that are used to describe historical dynamism.
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I think Bauer was in some ways ahead of his time and I think it's great that <b>Christ and the Caesars </b>is now accessible to enthusiasts of the history of Christian origins. I do however think that he reveals an inadequate familiarity with history at times, no doubt simply because he didn't have access to all the subsequent research on these matters. For example, I should mention that I see problems with one of the passing examples that he uses to illustrate the parallels between Stoicism and early church tradition and practice. Specifically, he brings up the virginal maidens of early Pagan folklore, who were threatened and treated much in the way that the early christian martyrs were, and yet nevertheless held onto their virtue and as a result were afterward lionized and even venerated for it. If Bauer were writing today, we could point him to the recent work of people like Candida Moss, and I think he would realize that his seeing martyr self-identification as a parallel to earliest Christianity is a bit of an anachronism. We can no longer infer Claudian or Neronian persecutions from the scriptures with the certitude that we used to; these have been shown to be apologetically-derived inventions of Christian authors. That there are parallels between early Christian practice and Stoicism is undeniable, but we must be careful to not overstate the similarities, we must stay within the province of historical probability. We must avoid glaring anachronisms.
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To the degree that Bauer relies on appeals to analogy and to philosophical/liturgical parallels in his argumentation, a method which is fairly normative in most mythicist works today, Bauer could arguably be considered the first modern mythicist.
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<span style="text-indent: 0.25in;"><b style="color: red;">1 </b>-Though it is still cited by the two notable current-day champions of the Dutch Radical school (Hermann Detering and Robert Price)</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.25in;"><br /></span><b style="color: red;">2 </b><span style="text-indent: 24px;">-A note on this translation: academic 19th century German, with its characteristic prolixity and convoluted grammar, is a bit of a challenge to follow at times for a jíbaro like me, but t</span><span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">he translation is adequate, I'd say, despite the book's linguistic idiosyncrasies</span><span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">. I suspect that whatever convolutedness of style this book has is not necessarily the fault of the translators (Helmut Brunar and Byron Marchant), who are probably only faithfully recreating Bauer's own </span><span style="text-indent: 0.25in;">long and winding sentences and clauses. Bauer belongs to his time. As such, his style takes a little effort to follow today. </span>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.25in;"><b style="color: red;">3 </b>-He didn't risk much by way of refutation from his own people, since it is well documented that the Jews considered Josephus a traitor, and not without reason; that he was a turncoat is undeniable. He could say anything and call it "Judaism," for all Vespasian or Titus knew, without ever being corrected by any rabbi. </span>
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#mythicism #ChristMyth
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-59389877093593094292015-09-27T08:38:00.001-07:002020-07-13T13:33:50.398-07:00Hermann Detering<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hermann Detering is not really a mythicist. That is, his writing, as far as I know, does not explicitly bring into question the historicity of Jesus. He nevertheless merits inclusion in a mythicism-who's-who, however, because his work is essentially a revisiting and a re-formulating of several of the crucial Dutch Radical theses that were influential to the development of modern mythicism, most notably the notion that the provenance, dating, and authorship of the Pauline epistles are essentially unknown—certainly uncertain. </div>
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The Good</h2>
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The Dutch Radical school, notorious and influential in a heyday that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was but a forgotten branch of critical scholarship by the time the "Third Quest" of the historical Jesus was underway. Were it not for Detering's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fabricated-Paul-Early-Christianity-Twilight-ebook/dp/B006XXX04G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443365870&sr=1-1&keywords=the+fabricated+paul" target="_blank"><b>The Fabricated Paul</b></a> and for Robert Price's expositions and endorsements of these ideas online and in <i>his</i> own books, this rich trove of scholarship would still be neglected or relegated to a mere footnote in the field of biblical studies. </div>
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The <sup>(not so)</sup> Bad</h2>
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More than just representing the Dutch Radical skepticism regarding the traditional provenance of the Pauline epistles, Detering (as does Price in his <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Amazing-Colossal-Apostle-Historical/dp/156085216X" target="_blank">The Amazing Colossal Apostle</a></b>) also adds to this the somewhat radical idea that the apostle Paul was really a kind of Doppelgänger of Simon Magus, a shadowy figure who was vilified by the patristic writers as the source of all manner of heresy within the ancient Church. The idea is not a preposterous one. Indeed, it is a very thought-provoking idea, and he (they) argue(s) for it fairly cogently, but, given the piecemeal and ambiguous state of the sources from which such a hypothesis can be woven, it can only be speculative in the end. I can entertain it for the sake of the kind of thought experiments that are part and parcel of the exploration of Christian origins, but only with the requisite proverbial grain of salt. Perhaps the arid sands of the Levant will yield some surprise codexes in the future that would further support this idea, but as it stands, it has little circumstantial evidence and/or indirect support from extant sources to commend it.</div>
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The Bad</h2>
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The worst thing I found in my reading of Detering's <b>The Fabricated Paul</b> is the weird (in my opinion) section in which he recalls a visit to a library wherein he finally got to read a rare book he had been searching for by Edwin Johnson, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Antiqua-Mater-Christian-Origins-Primary/dp/1293553352/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443366455&sr=1-4&keywords=antiqua+mater" target="_blank"><b>Antiqua Mater</b></a> (1887), which argues for a form of quasi-mythicism. I have read the book myself and found it to be very good. My apprehension is not so much about the content of this book itself but the mystical, almost sycophantic way that he treats the subject of his quest for this rare book. The section reads like a travelogue digression in what is otherwise a fairly rigorous and scholarly study. He sounds like a fanboy there. What makes it even weirder is that, although <b>Antiqua Mater</b> is a fine book, Johnson's subsequent work, particularly his <a href="http://www.radikalkritik.de/PaulEpistles.pdf" target="_blank"><b>The Pauline Epistles - Re-Studied and Explained</b></a> (1894), includes the bizarre claim that the historical period that we know as the Middle Ages (700–1400) never really happened, but was instead an invention of Christian writers, which calls to mind the kind of fringe para-historical conspiratorial formulations of someone like Joseph Atwill, and leaves me scratching my head and questioning its author's mental health and motivations. Knowing this about Johnson's work makes this section in Detering's book a bit surreal to me, though it does not detract much from its overall approach and usefulness <i>viz</i> Pauline/Christian origin scholarship. </div>
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<span style="color: white;">#mythicism</span><br />
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<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-65889361546749487172015-09-26T04:29:00.000-07:002015-09-27T20:40:36.977-07:00The Gullota/Fitzgerald Debate: A Review<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Daniel Gullota & David Fitzgerald</td></tr>
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<big><big>D</big></big>aniel Gullota and David Fitzgerald have some things in common. They are both interested in the historicity of Jesus (or lack thereof). They are both also young and relatively new to public discussion of the topic. Neither of them is a demure wallflower; they are both affable, charismatic individuals who seem to be quite comfortable in public speaking situations. Add some personal ambition to the mix, reflected in their respective ubiquitous online presences and corresponding penchants for self-promotion, and what we get are two “budding”* scholars that are evenly matched (more or less) for a probing discussion on mythicism (I prefer the term "New Testament minimalism"—NTM).
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At least one would think this to be the case. <br />
In fact, however, the <u><a href="http://miamivalleyskeptics.com/episode-50-the-historicity-of-jesus-with-david-fitzgerald-daniel-gullotta/" target="outre">“debate” that took place between these two gentlemen on August 24th (hosted by the Miami Valley Skeptics)</a></u> was little more than a hyper-courteous brief casual chat that only peripherally touched on the intended topic. Rather than a focused discussion, it was a desultory non-linear thing.</div>
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The Good</h2>
<big>David</big>
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David Fitzgerald is the author of a couple of books, the most pertinent of which for this topic is <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nailed-Christian-Myths-Jesus-Existed/dp/0557709911" target="_blank">Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All</a></b>, a useful introductory book on general NTM, which fairly encapsulates the Doherty/Carrier approach to the subject in an accessible, unpretentious—and even humorous—format. In the last couple of years, on the strength of this little volume, he has managed to carve out a place for himself in atheist activist forums and events. This is not an easy thing and for this he deserves credit. As someone who bemoans the high visibility of the Zeitgeist/Acharya S approach to NTM, I appreciate David’s being out there in the trenches proactively bringing what I think is a more sober and tenable mythicist approach to a lay audience. Otherwise, the frantic, sensationalist and conspiratorial Zeitgeist version of the story would probably be the only one to reach them, and so he is to be commended for his activism.
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<big>Daniel</big>
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Daniel has a degree in theology and recently began graduate work in New Testament studies at Yale University. I've had interactions with him through social media and in a book discussion club that we both belong to and I find him to be a decent, friendly fellow. </div>
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The “good” of the discussion between these two is mainly that the topic is being discussed at <i>all</i> by people with more than a cursory familiarity with NTM, since the subject seems to be <i>idea-non-grata</i> to so many whose expertise and scholarship overlaps it in some way. Even in the one work which explicitly purports to do exactly that (to engage NTM in detail and in a meaningful way) the best that Bart Ehrman could muster toward that goal was scorn and bluster, for example. So the fact that Gullota is willing to engage in such a debate is therefore notable, as is his willingness to withstand the slings and arrows of online mythicist indignation. He has the advantage of being a relative neophyte in the field, but it's a window that will soon be closing on him. He realizes (I think) that he must stop engaging mythicists soon if he is himself to be taken seriously in the SBL community which he is entering. He will surely be ostracized if he continues to engage them. Though I think it is unfortunate and lamentable that such a limitation could be imposed on "budding" researchers, Gullota's pre-debate proclamation that he will refrain from discussion of NTM, even if only to refute it, after this debate therefore makes some sense to me as a sideline observer. It's probably just as well, though; if this debate is any indication, he's just not very good at it.<br />
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To wit ...</div>
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The <sup>(not so)</sup> Good</h2>
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The first question asked in this debate was about the burden of proof. Who must bear this burden with respect to the question of historicity? Gullota answered (not incorrectly) that anyone who would make a historical claim bears a burden of proof. This would have been a valid answer were it not for the fact that he then goes on to posit that mythicists don't have good evidence for doubting historicity and then leave it at that, completely ignoring the fact that historicists have no good evidence either, neglecting the burden on their side, as if the contrary position, i.e., an affirmation that Jesus indeed historically existed, were a given. Thus, right from the starting gate, Gullota demonstrates that he is laboring under the idea that historicism is the default position to be held to until toppled by mythicist argumentation. This is really a kind of subcategory of the begging-the-question fallacy, though. It reminds me of when someone like Sye Ten Bruggencate, a presuppositionalist apologist, demands that a debater provide a basis for human morality, yet cannot provide a comparable logical basis for morality under his own theistic paradigm, other than to appeal to the authority of special revelation. But at least Bruggencate can point to a literal reading of Holy Writ to support his special pleading, which doesn't solve the problem, but at least it pretends to. In the case of the debate in question, Gullota simply insists that mythicists have no good evidence and cites ("sheer") "explanatory power" for support, a phrase he used several times throughout the rest of the discussion, but which he never defined or expounded upon, and which therefore rings hollow in context. To be fair, "explanatory power" (parsimony, induction, deduction, <i>et al</i>.) is a concept that needs to be unpacked further than this debate allows for, but simply saying that something has more explanatory power is not an argument. </div>
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Prompted by this appeal to "explanatory power," the host then asked Fitzgerald how a mythical Jesus could have resulted in the early Christian literature and the early Church. Fitzgerald didn't really adequately answer this question, which in all fairness, as in the previous example, is necessarily a pretty complicated one that would require some time to unpack (it took Richard Carrier a good portion of a couple of volumes to tackle it). Fitzgerald offers the discontinuity between an actual familiarity with a known historical person and the multifarious variant recollections of this supposed individual by the scattered communities and house churches that comprised early Christianity. In doing so, he refers to Jesus and "all the great things he supposedly did," which inadvertently opens the way for Gullota to respond by making a distinction between a Jesus of history and a Jesus of faith, thus kinda strawmanning Fitzgerald's point. Gullota states that this is a distinction that many mythicists fail to make, and he implies that mythicists can't tell the difference between these two very different things, but I think he should be called on this. In all of my reading of mythicist literature, I do not see this going on, and I would challenge Gullota to demonstrate exactly where mythicists have committed this error. If it is as common as all that, he can surely point to many examples of this practice. In fact, I find it a bit insulting to imply (else why bring it up at this point?) that Fitzgerald had conflated these two Jesuses. He simply hadn't. Fitzgerald is a smart guy. He knows the difference.
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Gullota then cites an analogy involving Michel Foucalt's concept of the archaeology of knowledge. To paraphrase: '<i>In an archaeological investigation, if we keep digging, we may eventually find dinosaur bones, but we're not going to find any dinosaurs</i>.' The point he is trying to make is that any reconstruction is going to be necessarily interpretive. This is true and fascinating, but ultimately it is irrelevant to the topic of the discontinuity that Fitzgerald was addressing. Gullota obviously likes this analogy a lot, and I like it too, but he should have saved it for a time when it would have actually followed from and/or contributed to the discussion. In context it seems forced ... rehearsed.
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In response to the charge that a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith is not being recognized, Fitzgerald starts to intimate that only secular approaches to the scholarship are valid before Gullota cuts him off to suggest that a scholar's religious commitments should not matter to the discussion. He says that all he cares about is "good history." This is belied later in the debate when Gullota bemoans "atheism" as a source of, or cause of, or influence on NTM. If it doesn't matter for scholarship that someone is religious, then it also shouldn't matter that someone is an atheist. You can't have it both ways.
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At this point, Fitzgerald admits he was just being provocative by bringing up the primacy of secular scholars and he explains that he did so just to highlight the fact that even within the narrower scope of secular scholarship, there is a lot of variegation in the portraits of Jesus being offered up. They are all respectively plausible in and of themselves, yet they are mutually exclusive, which prompts Fitzgerald's question: "which Jesus is the real Jesus?" Gullota seizes on this phrasing to revisit his Foucalt point, that is, to remind us that there is no "real" Jesus, that every Jesus is necessarily a <i>reconstruction</i>, and to add that scholars have been refraining from talking this way in the last few decades. That's fine, but it is again superfluous, as it's not really what Fitzgerald was getting at.
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At this point Gullota call into question Fitzgerald's (and Price's) argument from variegation. He says:
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"David comments that [...] '<i><b>Every historical Jesus is plausible until you read the next book</b></i>.' Well, I find that a bit hard to believe because in scholarship, typically, that's not the case because predominantly within America, [the] United Kingdom, France, and Germany, the reconstruction of Jesus that has stood out across the last few decades is Jesus understood as an apocalyptic figure. I know you don't like the word "consensus" [...] I'm not trying to cite it as proof, but I'm citing it that[sic] that is the direction that scholarship overwhelmingly has headed in the last years. These other reconstructions of Jesus-the-magician, Jesus-the-protocommunist, are very popular, very marginal.[sic] You don't see them at SBL. You don't see them being talked about in University published presses. The Jesus that is being discussed these days is Jesus as an apocalyptic figure. The question is: What sort of apocalyptic figure? Every issue with Jesus leads to another, so ... ok, so Jesus was an apocalyptic ... What type of an apocalyptic? And the more we research the milieu, the context that he was in, the more that we can attempt to reconstruct Jesus. And that's not trying to find 'facts' about Jesus; that's trying to reconstruct him to the best of our scholarly ability. </blockquote>
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Now <i>this</i> is a problem. It's a bit of a doozy, in fact. It's a double whammy of error. The apocalyptic take on the historical Jesus is well represented in scholarship, it's true, but what Gullota said there is a gross, partisan exaggeration. Far from there being such a unified field, there is in fact plenty of disagreement regarding this (and most other) aspect(s) of historical Jesus studies. Here's what Marcus Borg, in his <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Contemporary-Scholarship-Marcus-Borg/dp/1563380943" target="_blank">Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship</a></b> (1994) wrote on the topic of the state of the field:
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[...]The question of Jesus and eschatology has risen again in North American scholarship. In the 1980s it became clear that the eschatological consensus that had dominated much of this century's Jesus research, beginning with Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer and continuing through Rudolf Bultmann into the mainstream of scholarship, had seriously eroded. The former consensus saw Jesus as an eschatological prophet and sought to understand his mission and message within the framework of imminent eschatology. Though it affirmed both a present and future dimension to Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom, it typically subordinated the present to the coming kingdom, understood as a dramatic transcendent intervention in the imminent future. Moreover, this expectation was seen as the heart of Jesus' message and the conviction animating his mission.<br />
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More than half of the scholars in two North American samples no longer think that Jesus expected the imminent end of the world in his generation. James M. Robinson described this development as :"the fading of apocalyptic" and as a paradigm shift and "Copernican revolution" in the discipline*** Though the old consensus has not yet been replaced by a new one, non-eschatological understandings of Jesus are emerging, as are non-objective and this-worldly understandings of eschatology. (pp 18–19)</blockquote>
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First of all, Gullota is engaging in a logical fallacy (he knows it, or he wouldn't bring up the caveat) by basically saying, "<i>I don't wanna argue <b>ad populum</b>, but I'm going to argue <b>ad populum</b></i>, anyway." That he can so cavalierly do this is disappointing but not really surprising. It's not uncommon in academia to strut and pad one's stuff (guilds are funny that way). Arguing from consensus is, of course, bad in itself, but it's worse than that in this case. What Gullota asserts about a supposed overwhelming scholarly consensus on Jesus as apocalyptic figure with such confidence and poise is simply <b><i>not true</i></b>. It is misinformation. No such overwhelming consensus exists. The fact is that if we survey the last 25–30 years of scholarship, we find plenty of folks espousing an apocalyptic Jesus, for sure. But we also find folks like Burton Mack and Elisabeth Shüssler Fiorenza and Richard Horsley and James M. Robinson and Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, and many other scholars who have challenged that particular eschatological view of the historical Jesus. Without going into too much detail, the main reasons for doubting the apocalyptic Jesus model is that it is difficult to reconcile it with other material in the Jesus tradition that has as much claim to being "evidence." In other words, the lens of Jesus-as-prophet-of-restoration-eschatology enables us to see too limited a range of data and forces us to set aside too much data (namely, the parables and the "Q" material). In still other words, its explanatory power is inadequate. Now, I'm not here to argue for a non-eschatological Jesus, but it must be stressed that the eschatological view is not unanimous. Not at all. It leads me to ask: Why would Gullota speak falsely like this (and with such academic pretense and feigned authoritativeness, to boot)? Could it be analogous to someone attending an Elvis impersonator convention and noticing that everyone there looks like Elvis? It's just selection bias, plain and simple. Now, I've never been to an SBL meeting, so I can't verify that the apocalyptic Jesus is the only one being discussed there these days, but I believe Daniel if he says that he's only seen the apocalyptic Jesus being represented. If that is his experience, then that is his experience. I don't think he's lying. If it's true, though, I would guess that this narrow experience may be Gullota's own limitation, and is probably not the SBL's fault. Nevertheless, Gullota is just plain wrong on his insistence that there is such a decided consensus. We all make mistakes, of course, and I hope Mr. Gullota reconsiders and abandons this line of argumentation the next time the topic comes up in his studies.
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At any rate, Fitzgerald doesn't realize that Gullota has just spoken falsely and so he moves on, finally touching on what is essentially the crux of the problem of the historical Jesus, namely, the (un)reliability of the primary sources. They don't get into it (I wish they had), but the fact that none of the gospels are reliable historical sources (as a significant—and growing—number of scholars think is the case, including Gullota himself) plus the fact that (if the Tübingen and Dutch Radical schools are correct—I think they are) neither are the Pauline epistles, then we must soberly consider the prospect that <b><big>we have no primary sources regarding earliest Christianity</big></b>. This makes all the certitude and authoritative posturing that is so prevalent in New Testament studies, even on the part of truly brilliant men and women in the field with great insight regarding the texts, seem like silly dog-wagging, like vain pretense.
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Next, Gullota is asked if "Jesus was noticed by any of his contemporaries"? His response is an evasive re-phrasing of the question:
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It's difficult to explain that, because, technically ... no ... but then nobody in the ancient world was. If you're asking, like, if somebody while Jesus was alive was writing down things as they were happening, then, no. </blockquote>
This, of course, is not what he was asked. Anyway, he continues ...
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But then, having said that, if someone like Josephus, for example [...] Josephus was writing about the Jewish War in the year 90, but they took place in the mid 60s and ended in the year 70, so even though Jesus is a contemporary witness to those events [sic— this is another falsehood—or at least a hasty misstatement—if the traditional timeline of Jesus' life, wherein he was killed around the year 30, is remotely accurate], it's not like he was writing it down as they were happened. So I just wanna clarify that (note the irony of calling an ambiguation a "clarification"). But that's not really surprising, that we don't have that many sources for Jesus. </blockquote>
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He then goes on a side tangent about how rare literacy was in the ancient world, citing William Harris, which is true, writing was indeed a rare thing, but this rarity didn't preclude the documentation of Simon of Perea, of Athronges, of Apollonius of Tyana, of John the Baptizer, of Judas the Galilean and his family, ... of literally dozens of other charismatic individuals and leaders of popular movements who supposedly had even smaller followings than Jesus had, many of them in rural "backwaters," and so Gullota's argumentation here is pretty impotent on this point. No one "wrote stuff down as it was happening," and yet these people's names and stories survive. Fitzgerald does rightly raise this point. Gullota counters that these other messianic pretenders were revolutionaries and would have been more above radar than Jesus would have been, citing the comparatively more pacifist stance of Jesus and Paul, but I think Gullota is cherry-picking again, considering that Jesus' demise reportedly came about as a result of a similar rebellious, dissident trajectory (the Hosannah entry and the Temple violence). Gullota also tendentiously trivializes the size of the early Christian community. He says that when Paul went to Jerusalem, there were only two Christians, and when he went to Antioch, there was only a handful. I think this is a very facile (if not disingenuous) interpretation of what the texts say. He's twisting the texts to say things they don't actually say. That Paul only saw James and Peter is irrelevant to the size of the community there. He cites the late Jerome Murphy O'Connor's work estimating the size of the house churches that Paul pastored and endorsed at about 30 people each. I have no pressing reason to doubt his estimate, but I do challenge the notion that these house churches that Paul visited were the only Christian communities around at the time. That line of argument only works if we discount the missionary and pastoral work of all the other apostles, including not only "the twelve" but also peripheral activists like Apollos and Thecla and Timothy and John Mark, <i>etc</i>, <i>etc</i>. Fitzgerald rightly challenges him on this point as well. The house churches may have been small(ish), but they were scattered throughout the Mediterranean Basin. So I'm afraid this is just another instance of Gullota's selection bias at work again. As far as the eschatological content in the epistles go, Gullota is happy to accept the "seven authentic" ones as genuine. I've yet to see a good scholarly refutation of Van Manen & co, or even a good defense of this authenticity. (I'd welcome any good recommendations to this end.) Regardless, I don't see why he brings up Pauline eschatology to support his point re: literacy here.
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I should add here that during this tangent, Gullota does something that always makes me cringe a little whenever I hear a New Testament scholar do it; he refers to "we as historians." It makes me cringe when I hear Ehrman say it. It makes me cringe when I hear Bob Price say it. New Testament studies does overlap the discipline of history in places, but until a thorough familiarity with the methods of historiography are understood and applied across the board, until this is undertaken and mastered (not just on 1st century Near East, and not just a convenient reliance on the "criteriology" of 20th century religious scholarship), people have no right to refer to themselves as "historians." It's vainglorious. That feather is a lot harder to earn than simply being in a religious studies program. It's a pet peeve of mine and a red flag as far as I'm concerned, though I realize that it is not uncommon.
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Conclusion:</h2>
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I've only covered half of the debate, but I won't belabor this any more. The rest of the discussion is just as fumbling and stumbling. Gullota goes on to naïvely defend the possibility that the Testimonium Flavianum might be genuine, for example. I think this is not very tenable. He also goes on to deny that early Christianity had more in common with mystery cults than he's willing (or able) to admit. I think this is also a case of selection bias. The entire debate is dripping with it. If I continue critiquing all he said, this post would be twice as long, so I'll cease now and say that I think I have described the proceedings and the tone of the first half fairly accurately. This was not a good debate. Fitzgerald won hands down, even though he spoke much less than Gullota did. Fitzgerald won simply by giving Gullota enough rope to hang himself, in fact, almost by default. I wonder if Gullota realizes this. <br />
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Let me add that I intentionally avoided reading other reviews of the debate so that they would not influence my opinion in any way, but I think I will go read a few of them now that I have posted my own. I'm curious to see what others thought of it.
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If you made it this far down in this post ... thank you.
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I'll close by saying that the reason I haven't posted anything in a while is because I have had an unexpected bout with illness this year which has knocked me down pretty hard. I'm feeling somewhat better now and hope to do some catching up. I'll try to be a bit more consistent in my posting in the coming months.
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Peace
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<span style="color: white;">#mythicism</span>Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-27978981013053414982015-05-19T07:00:00.002-07:002015-09-26T10:28:18.738-07:00Can History Be a Science? (Bayes' Theorem and Mythicism)<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQgTTk15LU5Bt9ctdbeaYxHEyCuBe2FPoN9An9u-oc0mjLDBKJImRABPIB5xt1mb1LMOOqchHRkHChn9C4nXVipsZVxWOqLdaIr042DSsX0S88S5pDq8hYWpEiF09beyM_MgEYK39ZI4C_/s1600/Bayes_Theorem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQgTTk15LU5Bt9ctdbeaYxHEyCuBe2FPoN9An9u-oc0mjLDBKJImRABPIB5xt1mb1LMOOqchHRkHChn9C4nXVipsZVxWOqLdaIr042DSsX0S88S5pDq8hYWpEiF09beyM_MgEYK39ZI4C_/s1600/Bayes_Theorem.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">simple form of Bayes' theorem</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">1 - Quantifying History?</span><br />
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The most significant mythicist works of the last decade are arguably Richard Carrier's two volumes on the subject: <b>Proving History</b> and <b>On the Historicity of Jesus</b>. Carrier's most significant contribution (so far) to the field of history in general and to mythicism in particular has been his positing of Bayes' theorem as the preferred methodological basis for analysis and argumentation in determining the feasibility/tenability of historical claims. The problem with this is that just one look at even the short simplified form of the theorem (<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">see figure at right</span></i>) almost invariably only brings pained grimaces to the faces of New Testament scholars, and so the novelty of Carrier's approach is lost on those raised on the idea that history and science are apples and oranges, that never the twain shall meet. This may be especially true in New Testament studies. The idea of employing mathematical technique on biblical pericopes to calculate and weigh the comparative probabilities of two or more alternative historical conclusions tends to make most New Testament scholars cross-eyed and silent. At best they are humbled into this silence by an honest appraisal of their mathematical acumen, which is usually not as developed as they would wish it to be. At worst, despite this deficit (perhaps <i>because</i> of it), they are prone to be suspicious of what to them must seem like the sneaking-in of an idea they've always found <i>non sequitur</i>, i.e., historical empiricism. This is only natural to those for whom the fence between history and science is a given. They are wary of that which they don't (yet) understand by default. Carrier may as well have suggested that we divide the square root of –1 by 0, judging by the bluster and/or incoherence of some of the responses that his methodological suggestions inspired in the blogosphere following his last book's release. Math is simply all Greek to them. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
This is not to say that New Testament scholars are inherently handicapped, of course. Their deficiencies in mathematics are pretty much par for course, culturally and academically speaking. It's really just a natural consequence of holding to such a strict separation between history and science. But it's an easily-enough remedied handicap. It's just a bit of atrophy, not an insurmountable disability. People simply get a bit rusty in math when they seldom have to use it. It's understandable. Luckily, it's not rocket surgery that is needed (or even basic differential calculus). Bayesian calculations require fairly simple arithmetic. The math is the least of it, really. Scholars just need to see and appreciate the relevance and appropriateness of the approach in the first place, and once the false dichotomy is dissolved, they will hopefully allow themselves to see the usefulness of these statistical and empirical analyses, and then adjust their methodologies accordingly. Math and statistics are just more tools for their toolbelt. Not scary at all. But before we can learn any given tool (e.g., Bayes' theorem), we must first recognize and conquer this underlying irrational fear of math. </div>
<br />
<h2>
Can history be a science?</h2>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Generally speaking, most people intuitively think of history and science as non-overlapping magisteria (to paraphrase Gould). Why? Well, because history just <i><b>seems</b></i> so random and chaotic <i>prima facie</i>. Doesn't it? It's reflexive. Our immediate reaction to the notion of studying history scientifically is to insist that human societies and their cultural artifacts are far too complex, too arbitrary, with too many variables changing over time to be studied with the kind of rigor and precision that is ordinarily required of the sciences. In fact, I too used to think likewise. I was trained as a chemical engineer, and so although I came to this line in the sand from the other direction, it was with similar reservations that I did so. But a little probing into the history of science shows that the idea is actually not that new at all. We discover that there have been historians and scientists who have approached several of the humanities in a more quantitative way than intuition would suggest. The pioneering work of people like Vito Volterra and Alfred Lotka, who at the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century advanced some very useful mathematical models, (still) serves as a basis for the analysis of population dynamics. More recent scholars like Jared Diamond, Peter Turchin and Victor Lieberman, have sought to find out how these kinds of mathematical models might relate to empirical data, not just in theory, but also more tangibly. Theory is good but actually corresponding to measurable reality is even better. Empirical testing of theories is crucial if a discipline is to rise to the level of science. When these newer scholars began accumulating and testing data, to their surprise, they discovered, first, that there is a <i>lot</i> of data, and secondly (and more importantly), that there are very strong empirical patterns discernible in the data. The presence of strong empirical patterns suggests that there may be some general principles—laws of history, if you will—underlying these patterns. Diamond's <b>Guns, Germs, and Steel</b>, is a great work of scientific writing that utilizes this approach well, but Turchin's <b>Historical Dynamics</b> and his <b>War and Peace and War</b> take it one step further. Whereas Diamond forwards a single hypothesis and then surveys a massive amount of data to bear on it in order to support the explanations he proposes, he doesn't bring quite the whole power of the scientific method to it. His approach is certainly quantitative, but a more thorough scope, such as Turchin's, involves the development of alternative, competing hypotheses of how societies and/or nations operate (not just a single hypothesis), and then examining the data (evidence) that allows us to distinguish between the predictions made by these alternative hypotheses. Though individual hypotheses matter, the true essence of scientific experimentation lies in the thoroughness of this kind of comparative analysis. Turchin has coined the term "<a href="http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Arise_Clio_Nature.pdf" target="_blank">cliodynamics</a>" to describe this more-thorough comparative approach.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
In many (historical) fields such as history, geology, evolutionary biology, paleontology and astro-physics (all legitimate branches of science), though they don't allow for manipulative experiments, they allow for mensurative experiments, in which the researcher measures the data in its natural state, without experimental manipulation. I should pause momentarily to highlight a common misconception about the meaning of "prediction" in the context of scientific research. Prediction is not necessarily about "the future." In science, it can be about events which have already occurred. Predictions can be about the discovery of particular kinds of evidence that are supportive (or not) of a particular hypothesis. Prediction is more of an intermediate step that we use to test alternative hypotheses. We extract predictions from hypotheses that clash from some aspect under examination, and we try to determine which of them conforms best to reality. Prediction thus need not happen "in the future," as the common parlance of the word implies. Instead of "prediction" what is meant here is "retrodiction," really, I guess. Jargon habits are hard to break, though, I suppose, even for geeky scientists who pride themselves on their objectivity and the provisionality of their field, and so I doubt the use of the single word "prediction" to denote both things will be fading any time soon.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Prediction in cliodynamics begins by discerning patterns in the data, such as patterns of political instability in a given society which tend to happen with some regularity (say, every couple of centuries or so), for example. Societies go through these long term oscillations, which can be divided into two phases, an integrative phase and a disintegrative phase. The integrative phase, which lasts about a century (sometimes longer), is characterized by a period of peace and stability, population growth and a generally optimistic outlook. The disintegrative phase is the other side of that coin: political unrest, stagnation, war, a pessimistic ideology, etc. Predictions can be made at several different levels. On one level we may ask whether this same pattern can be found to exist in societies other than the initial one. Because societies are not identical, neither are the patterns. They respectively vary in period and in amplitude. There is of course a difference between quantifying and identifying similarities in patterns, on the one hand, and testing causal hypotheses. The latter requires that we compare and contrast alternative explanations for why these repeating oscillations that may be common to societies occur.
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg0oHc6jVRaGKO5PKd9dBc77tSHOP3_s9GG9dArVOAi9I-uyEqrgEigbEtPaAb5Z-7aNjI0F0ZoT0ucpm_cPyyqsXWGU4tDbqr6eKz9HlHwzSK22m78MdIDojSwONDIRUyoRNcVK4XAHwJ/s1600/Violence+trends.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg0oHc6jVRaGKO5PKd9dBc77tSHOP3_s9GG9dArVOAi9I-uyEqrgEigbEtPaAb5Z-7aNjI0F0ZoT0ucpm_cPyyqsXWGU4tDbqr6eKz9HlHwzSK22m78MdIDojSwONDIRUyoRNcVK4XAHwJ/s320/Violence+trends.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An example of empirical patterns in history</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Let's consider two alternative hypotheses for the causes underlying these cycles: First we have the Malthusian model, which suggests that as a population increases to a point where it starts pressing the limits of its resources, it begins to experience instability and warfare, which in turn decreases population, at which point the cycle just starts again. In this model, the cycle is driven purely by demographic mechanisms. Another hypothesis, called "demographic structural theory," also has demographic growth as a component, but it assigns more importance to what happens to the other two components of the social system, namely, the elites, i.e. the people with power (think French medieval aristocracy), and the state. In this model, waves of instability happen not necessarily because the population is miserable, but because peasants in those agrarian societies didn't have much military power, and so peasant rebellions were easily crushed by the state as long as the elites are unified and the state is strong. What happens is called elite reproduction. Eventually there are too many elites, all fighting for a diminishing slice of the same pie, and the states becomes weaker as a result. When it is weakened to the point where it has difficulty putting down insurrection and keeping order, the elites by this point have split off into rival factions and spark the civil wars that soon follow.
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
So, here we have two alternative theories. How can we test them? Well, we can test them by looking at the actual sequence of events. When we take a look at what happened in the late-middle ages in England or France, what do we find? There was a very strong population growth during most of the 13th century. By the beginning of the 14th century, we were beginning to have a Malthusian situation. Starvation. Popular immiseration. But notice that there was no real breakdown of the state at the time, and there were no civil wars yet. It really took the additional push of the Black Death, to get the population to significantly decrease. As a result, the social pyramid was disrupted because the elites were less affected by the plague than the masses were, so the social pyramid became top-heavy. There were too many elites for the supportive base underneath them. This is when society tipped and the civil wars finally got started. According to the Malthusian model, once the Black Death appeared, we should have seen a reduction in the demographic growth and therefore the beginning of a new cycle again. But that's not what happened. The population did not begin to grow; it remained stagnant after the plague. It wasn't until the pressures on the elite, during the next hundred years, that English and French society experienced a streak of civil wars. The elites and the state had an influence that the Malthusian model does not predict, but which the structuralist model does. This essentially constitutes a quantifiable falsification of the Malthusian hypothesis. The empirical data more closely follows the predictions of the demographic-structuralist hypothesis.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
If we apply the same theoretical predictions to another society, say, the transitional Roman period between the republic and the empire, we find a similar pattern. Again, about a hundred years of civil war. The demographic pressure on resources wasn't very strong but the evidence for elital reproduction is strong. If we continue to further test the theory on a variety of other case studies, it turns out that these patterns are common to many of them. In his two volume <b>Strange Parallels</b>, for example, Victor Lieberman finds many of these patterns in many South-east Asian societies throughout history.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
The stochastic aspect of history requires statistical methods to determine its quantifiability. Statistical significance plays a crucial role. In the above example, because there have been thousands of these cycles of integrative/disintegrative cycles in the recorded history of human societies to cull from and examine, it is possible to use what is called the "frequentist" approach. There must be enough data (and there is) to allow for the quantifying of event dynamics in this method, so that we can compare one instance of such a cycle with another and draw conclusions based on the frequency of their occurrence (hence the name of the method). It can be applied whenever there are enough instances of a given phenomenon to warrant it. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
But what if we are trying to ascertain the parameters of something that has never occurred, though it may well fall within the realm of possibility, such as the accidental detonation of a nuclear bomb, for instance, or of some event that is so rare that we simply have no actual data to examine or to compare it to, such as the birth and development of Christianity (our focus), for instance?
</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">2 - Enter Bayes<br />
</span></div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
In such cases, a methodology regarding conditional probability is available to us that is based on something called Bayes' theorem.
</div>
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<h2>
What is Bayes' theorem?</h2>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
If we want to quantifiably figure out the probability of whether two things are true (i.e. they "happened")—we'll call them "A" and "B"— that's going to equal the probability of A happening multiplied by the probability of B happening. That is:
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">P(A) X P(B)</span></blockquote>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
This simple formula is the case only if both of the events are independent of each other. For example, the probability of rolling a "1" and a "4" on a single throw of a pair of dice, respectively, is 1/6 X 1/6, which is 1/36. Therefore, there is a one in thirty-six chance that a single throw of the dice will result in this particular combination of numbers.
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
However, we are often going to be interested in events that are relevant to each other and related in some significant way. In such cases, this simple formula is inadequate because it does not reflect the relation between the two events. This can be achieved by inserting an additional term:
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<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">P(A) X P(B|A)</span></blockquote>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
This means that while A can be true, we are trying to ascertain whether B is true <b><i>given</i></b> that A happened.
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
An example of this principle:
<br />
Say that you don't know much about someone, whether she is married or whether she has children, for example. You could gain partial information. You could learn that she is married. Let's say that that's A. Now, we could ask what the probability is that she is married <i><b>and</b></i> that she has kids. That's where the new term (B|A) comes in, because there is a correlation involved. What are the chances of her having kids given that she is married? That is going to affect the probability. Her chance of having kids is higher given that she's married. It works the other way around as well. That is, given that someone has children, the chances are higher that they are married <br />
{symmetrically expressed as P(B) X P(A|B)}. <br />
<br />
We can thus view these as equivalent probabilities:
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<blockquote style="text-indent: 0;">
<span style="font-size: large;">P(A) X P(B|A) = P(B) X P(A|B)</span></blockquote>
Such is the symmetric equivalency between those two equations that we can solve for one of the variables {in this case for P(A|B)} using just simple algebra, which results in:
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf21QAnrOCuLEWGWkwnj0evXgFukqoLqMO3l7VcxhRBJL9YFBMOzEOP2vUBlB71dM8z62dhJrCllyBFv3YxDU3XByf7HON3UrecVmGamrK1Tt5Ff1ac93nQh_0cXbtFujjc0bsrglSobw3/s1600/bayes-ruleWhite.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf21QAnrOCuLEWGWkwnj0evXgFukqoLqMO3l7VcxhRBJL9YFBMOzEOP2vUBlB71dM8z62dhJrCllyBFv3YxDU3XByf7HON3UrecVmGamrK1Tt5Ff1ac93nQh_0cXbtFujjc0bsrglSobw3/s200/bayes-ruleWhite.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
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Voila! — Behold the simple form of Bayes' theorem.<sup style="color: red;"><b>1</b></sup></div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
If variables such as "A" and "B" should invoke some mental block regarding math in your brain, there is another way to think about Bayes' theorem, which is called the diachronic interpretation. The expression remains the same, but we simply replace A with "H" (for hypothesis) and replace B with "D" (for data or evidence). This better reflects (for some people, at least) the essence of the theorem, which is that with every bit of new evidence we can update your belief in that hypothesis using the term on the right side of the formula as follows: <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCN-pQkbLKyXmfDt5VVZ5C9MrR_TAnhNVmpC9fDbthVlK1rd01kL8fF8gaYSbkDDz40g8GvzZb1RS61NF_FFHTy6ZNzvcDTm174mW7T1ftVNtEwEqxkZF455us58BzyRz_YVjPy6VHo6-t/s1600/eq_0133B.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCN-pQkbLKyXmfDt5VVZ5C9MrR_TAnhNVmpC9fDbthVlK1rd01kL8fF8gaYSbkDDz40g8GvzZb1RS61NF_FFHTy6ZNzvcDTm174mW7T1ftVNtEwEqxkZF455us58BzyRz_YVjPy6VHo6-t/s400/eq_0133B.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The most important thing to keep in mind regarding this equation is that it is iterative. That is, that each time a new piece of evidence arrives, we take our previous level of belief (our prior) and update it by multiplying by the ratio (of the two "likelihoods"). The result (our posterior) then becomes our prior for the <i>next</i> iterative calculation should newer evidence appear. The process continues until all the available evidence has been taken into account. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
An example of how this idea is used to calculate the probability involving two alternatives follows:
</div>
<h2>
The cookie problem</h2>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Suppose there are two bowls of cookies. Bowl 1 contains 30 vanilla cookies and 10 chocolate cookies. Bowl 2 contains 20 of each.<br />
Now suppose you choose one of the bowls at random and, without looking, select a cookie at random. The cookie is vanilla. What is the probability that it came from Bowl 1?
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
First, let's rewrite the equation to reflect the aim of the example:
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisr_OoIuwEZwHWvI0FZGz8EfSO2DLJyLaRCPCQiF3ba0tPhzY4XD0MBpflIFqeDO3Iuvfx0CkOj9enZsRqKAPELWK8Fghrg2TL4spOOlzx-MW-eLHqbTr0dPUzUnwSwtiIVcy2SiX3z9WJ/s1600/BayesBowl1.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisr_OoIuwEZwHWvI0FZGz8EfSO2DLJyLaRCPCQiF3ba0tPhzY4XD0MBpflIFqeDO3Iuvfx0CkOj9enZsRqKAPELWK8Fghrg2TL4spOOlzx-MW-eLHqbTr0dPUzUnwSwtiIVcy2SiX3z9WJ/s320/BayesBowl1.png" /></a><br />
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<ul style="margin-left: 1in; margin-right: .75in;">
<li><b>p(B1)</b>: This is the probability that we chose Bowl 1, unconditioned by what kind of cookie we got. Since the problem says we chose a bowl at random, we can assume p(B1) = 1/2. </li>
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<li><b>p(V|B1)</b>: This is the probability of getting a vanilla cookie from Bowl 1, which is 3/4. <br />(i.e. 30 out of 40 cookies are vanilla)</li>
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<li><b>p(V)</b>: This is the probability of drawing a vanilla cookie from either bowl. Since we had an equal chance of choosing either bowl and the bowls contain the same number of cookies, we had the same chance of choosing any cookie. Between the two bowls there are 50 vanilla and 30 chocolate cookies, so p(V) = 5/8.<br /> (i.e. 50 out of a total of 80 cookies in both bowls are vanilla)</li>
</ul>
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Let's plug the numbers in:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzgk3c2WehFMwMa1TXpgRlJiq_HWVAVuquzqn9NHlddieN5ciU4eQcSFlkLG3svPuLvm1yo0gAxvzzBfSPr2QJKX3PYahiTP4mwXtCjCEetajsZ6pELLqFJP85R6j_nfjr70HEHpEzlm46/s1600/BayesPlugNums.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzgk3c2WehFMwMa1TXpgRlJiq_HWVAVuquzqn9NHlddieN5ciU4eQcSFlkLG3svPuLvm1yo0gAxvzzBfSPr2QJKX3PYahiTP4mwXtCjCEetajsZ6pELLqFJP85R6j_nfjr70HEHpEzlm46/s320/BayesPlugNums.png" /></a><br />
<br />
Doing the arithmetic, the answer to the problem reduces therefore to 3/5, which is equal to 60%. There is a 60% chance that the vanilla cookie came from bowl 1. Pretty straightforward, right?
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
In fact, even when we are not aware that this is the kind of thing we are calculating, this is the kind of thing we are doing whenever we are reasoning correctly in deciding which alternative is the more probable out of two (or more) different ones.
</div>
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<h2>
How does this apply to mythicism?</h2>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Having thus demonstrated the basic use of Bayes' rule, we return to Richard Carrier's work again. Carrier noticed that whenever people dispute the strength of a given historicist or mythicist argument, the dispute boils down to a difference of opinion regarding either the value of the prior probability or else of the probability given some evidence. He proposes that Bayes' theorem removes any arbitrariness involved in the methodology used by anyone hoping to defend either historicity or mythicism by, first, providing a way to quantify the variables, and second, by providing a way to calculate the posterior from these values once they can be agreed upon. This is the basic thrust of the thesis of the first volume of his work on this subject, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595" target="_blank">Proving History</a></b>.
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
In the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/On-Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason/dp/1909697494" target="_blank">second volume</a>, he first narrows both the mythicist case and the historicist case to what he terms "minimal" cases, meaning the easiest versions of both positions that can be argued. In essence this introduces the concept of parsimony, a kind of Occam's razor, so that no extraneous or unnecessarily superfluous argument will bog down the issue. What's more, in order to ensure that he cannot be accused of stacking the deck in his favor (as a mythicist, that is) he even goes as far as granting to minimal historicity the greatest latitude possible in his calculations. That is, at every step, he intentionally argues <b><i>against</i></b> mythicism as far as his method will allow, at times granting things that are not even realistically warranted by any stretch of imagination, so that it can be fairly said that the probability of historicism must be lower than the intentionally conservative range estimate given by this kind of 'devil's advocate' <i>a fortiori</i> calculation. With each respective piece of evidence, he first calculates this <i>a fortiori</i> probability, and then, after that is out of the way, he also calculates where he really thinks the probability actually lies. This more-realistic estimate is considerably closer to a mythicist conclusion than the <i>a fortiori</i> one, obviously. Doubling down on his calculations in this this way precludes any potential accusation that he might be weighing the evidence in his favor in any way, and it also shows a willingness on his part to be fair with historicists while also being honest to his own intellect and method. In addition it also serves to provide a defensible upper and lower limit to the range of probability for any given datum. It seems to me a very clever and useful technique.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
I will close this essay by quoting Carrier himself on the challenge that this quantitative approach poses for the problem of the historicity of Jesus. The most important novelty, the most important function of his work, in my opinion, comes after he has laid out his thesis in On the historicity of Jesus. At the very end of the last chapter of this work, Carrier directs a sober, clear, and very direct challenge at the peanut gallery of complacent "experts" who might find the whole idea an unsophisticated laughing matter:
</div>
<br />
<blockquote>
[...] if readers object even to employing Bayes's Theorem in this case (or in any), then I ask them to propose alternative models for structuring the debate. If, instead, readers accept my Bayesian approach, but object to my method of assigning prior probabilities, then I ask them to argue for an alternative method of assigning prior probabilities (e.g. if my choice of reference class is faulty, then I ask you to argue why it is, and to argue for an alternative). On the other hand, if readers accept my method of assigning prior probabilities, but object to my estimates of consequent probability, then l ask them to argue for alternative consequent probabilities-not just assert some, but actually argue for them. Because the mythicist case hinges on the claim that these things cannot reasonably be done. It is time that claim was properly put to the test. And finally, of course, if readers object to my categories and sub categories of evidence or believe there are others that should be included or distinguished, then I ask them to argue the case.
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<br />
I know many devout Christian scholars will balk and claim to find all manner of bogus or irrelevant or insignificant holes or flaws in my arguments, but they would do that anyway. Witness what many Christian scholars come up with just to reject evolution, or to defend the literal miraculous resurrection of Jesus (which they claim they can do even with the terrible and paltry evidence we have). Consequently, I don't care anymore what Christian apologists think. They are not rational people. I only want to know what rational scholars think. I want to see a helpful critique of this book by objective, qualified experts who could live with the conclusion that Jesus didn't exist, but just don't think the case can be made, or made well enough to credit. And what I want from my critics is not useless hole punching but an alternative proposal: if my method is invalid, then what method is the correct one for resolving questions of historicity? And if you know of none, how can you justify any claim to historicity for any person, if you don't even know how such a claim can be justified or falsified at all? Also correct any facts I get wrong, point out what I missed, and if my method then produces a different conclusion when those emendations are included, we will have progress. Even if the conclusion is the same, it will nevertheless have been improved.
But it is the method I want my fellow historians to correct, replace or perfect above all else. We can't simply rely on intuition or gut instinct when deciding what really did happen or who really did exist, since that simply leans on unexamined assumptions and relies on impressions and instincts that are often not reliable guides to the truth. We need to make explicit why we believe what we do rather than something else, and we need this as much in history as in any other field. And by the method I have deployed here, I have confirmed our intuitions in the study of Jesus are wrong. He did not exist. I have made my case. To all objective and qualified scholars, I appeal to you all as a community: the ball is now in your court.
</blockquote>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Ó
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Further reading:
</div>
<br />
<table cols="5">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL-0CmzpGTCpL3EuuWCblu_Rjc5EZrnyVLVuuBIPwj643UtKEs4zifi_1552dJQrD0g1FQabOMPkO29otIob8iz7QE1pgKY1ju889kd1NuCgkn8Ir0fWAWnYswcarfE6WfgZRSbtUECdVh/s200/ProvingHistory.jpg" width="100" /> </a>
</td>
<td> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/On-Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason/dp/1909697494/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj18G0_GkqUsIErvsDZ1Uj3vLaXf2E5mTwKQz-BndBHDb5QUrkp0ndO-DaDNzBkS24V52l8EgF2ufOaX0Onq67TnY3_KrKrbzgIwOgBVanBKf4vvswciURbYpnZauGulcR9Flw5HQt1I7lk/s200/OHJweb.jpg" width="100" /> </a>
</td>
<td> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Theory-That-Would-Not/dp/0300188226" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEielVC1-rGo_O3aCHeJsi80o2HMdj98DML7-Wxmg8XCzNTCoKEFyHtsWkeitlBzeLu0pAw9wJxnIPwjI_Iw9nb9FGQlTZY_IJ6qYCm1feqN_CrJteamFM8Uf7_T3OA5tY_j7LegJUw86BZK/s200/TheoryWNDie.jpg" width="100" /> </a>
</td>
<td> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Signal-Noise-Predictions-Fail-but/dp/0143125087" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje_Za8GbD0Ewyx2sGN2jotK4D3_bLBoBJZDNQLQPc1HAjyEq3jMZLD63iPLavImquXTit6vFPnIxr9tkKvAzVaAA7MI-PIdrfCtcRHXhHwDu3Q32-I29SgoBgCI1VQsp6sgm-R5wvySfoH/s200/nate-silver-book-web3.jpg" width="100" /> </a>
</td>
<td> .
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
</div>
--------------------------------------
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">1</span> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">I won't go into detail on the longer form of the theorem here, a form which more accurately reflects the fact that these two expressions are not in fact congruent. However, the simple form suffices for the introductory aspect of this essay, and is more than adequate for my purpose here. It should also be noted that although I derived this formula using algebra, the actual Bayesian calculations don't require any algebra at all. It's just a matter of plugging in numbers in the appropriate places and either multiplying or dividing. It's just simple arithmetic. </span>
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<span style="color: white;">#mythicism
</span>Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-1180499793907165862015-03-23T06:02:00.000-07:002017-03-22T04:06:04.935-07:00James McGrath<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjelHTp-Gi9_RSeJJHwi0jsTlk1Y73zueeiUKY6nyyAxt5qlgXTuCpzmjVqgIaYPMMwUXdyPArsbhEFpmIcBLopPKG3KDgslholhJQ5RaDNQ8w5SK3RGwvIiV3YAdQdELoxu4mRKs5cTtrA/s1600/mcgrath_jamesWEB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjelHTp-Gi9_RSeJJHwi0jsTlk1Y73zueeiUKY6nyyAxt5qlgXTuCpzmjVqgIaYPMMwUXdyPArsbhEFpmIcBLopPKG3KDgslholhJQ5RaDNQ8w5SK3RGwvIiV3YAdQdELoxu4mRKs5cTtrA/s1600/mcgrath_jamesWEB.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>ne man's crusade to save the world from misinformation could very well be another man's hobby horse obsession to be derided and mocked at will. The boundary between these two extremes can seem like the thinnest of lines at times. In the Saturday-morning cartoon that the Biblical studies bloggosphere can sometimes be, everyone sees himself as Bugs Bunny; whose wits and charm always wins the day. No one ever sees himself as Yosemite Sam, the bumbling ideologue with an ax to grind. Blogs, because of their inherent editorial limitations, are often fertile ground for looney-tune civil wars (some more civil than others). Because anyone with a heartbeat and a home computer can now keep a personal blog on which to express his own peculiar ideas, some people, who are either academically or professionally invested in a topic, but who would otherwise be mild-mannered citizens going about their daily business, have been emboldened (and worried) by what they see as absurd ideas and by the immediacy and the range of influence of this new technology, and have appointed themselves a kind of paradigm police, to express themselves, at times quite forcefully, on their pet contentious academic topics.<br />
<br />
Some people really <i><b>are</b></i> crazy ...<br />
<br />
<ul style="margin-left: .66in; margin-right: .75in;">
<li>Wanna see proof that evolution is silly? . . . . see <a href="http://theory-of-evolution.net/intelligent-design-blog/" target="_blank">here</a> . . . and <a href="http://www.idthefuture.com/" target="_blank">here</a></li>
<li>Wanna know what is being kept secret at Area 51? . . . see <a href="http://area51looseends.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a> . . . and <a href="http://blog.area51.org/" target="_blank">here</a></li>
<li>Read about what happened to Hitler after he evaded capture in 1945? . . . <a href="http://hitlermystery.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.</li>
<li>Want proof that a secret society of Illuminati is conspiring to control the world? . . . <a href="http://www.davidicke.com/" target="_blank">here</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Now, I don't recommend any of these articles except as simple examples of a fringe-ness that apparently knows no limits. One would hope that people would have enough critical savvy to be able to discern such clearly outlandish and sensationalist crap. The research bears it out. <br />
I get it, and I too find most conspiracist thinking to be annoying as hell. <br />
But I also know that there's very little I can do or say to change these crazy people's minds, and I know that any attempt on my part is unlikely to do any good. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
That said, James McGrath is certain that Jesus existed, so sure, in fact, that he thinks that all mythicist expressions necessarily fall into the same category, that of bunk quackery, same as creationism does, and need to be derided at every opportunity. Not content to merely reject the idea, McGrath is one of its most active online detractors, has been for almost a decade now in his <b>Exploring Our Matrix</b> blog, in fact. Professionally, he holds a phD and teaches the New Testament at a university. I think his specialties are the christology in the Fourth Gospel and the Mandeans. He comes across as a well-spoken intellectual elite who is clearly well-informed and knowledgable about the issues and 'facts' in the field. I don't doubt that he is a fine professor who is liked by students. I only know him from his interactions on his (though I seldom visit it any longer, I used to some years ago) and others' blogs. What follows is what I hope is a fair a fitting description of James McGrath the blogger.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Mythicism is a topic I've been interested in for quite a while. As such, I'm always interested in what its critics have to say. I've been looking into it for so long that no one is likely to tell me something that I'm not aware of about mythicism. However, I highly value critics' perspectives and it helps me check my own critiques and observations of the various mythicist and historicist writers. I love a good discussion. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
I've been thinking of a way to approach the subject of blogger McGrath.
<br />
I think the best way is to directly address the last correspondence I had with him. I had just launched this blog (coming on four months now). Gavin at OTAGosh noticed it and did a <u><a href="http://otagosh.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-sharp-new-voice-in-mythicism.html" target="_blank">nice write-up</a></u>. I thanked him in a comment. Next thing I know, James McGrath appeared with a bit of a denunciatory snipey tone:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="margin-right: .75in;">
The author is anonymous but known to me from a long history of interaction. He isn't a Biblical scholar or grad student in the field but an interested layperson, like most other mythicist bloggers. In fact, we had a falling out, as I recall, over his championing of this stance despite the evidence against it and the fact that its claims are consistently found to be implausible, unsubstantiated, or downright false in many instances, and at best unpersuasive in most others. It is sad to see that there has been no change, and I'm not sure why his decision to devote a whole blog to a subject he has been blogging about for ages is noteworthy.
<br />
<br />
http://leoquix.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-on-historicity-of-jesus.html</blockquote>
<br /></div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
First, we didn't actually interact all that long, maybe a year. At least he remembered me, I guess, which is fine. What I found particularly annoying about his comment, though, was the weird, casually passive aggressive tone he adopted in "remembering" our "falling out." <br />
"As [he] recalls," I stopped visiting because I refused to accept overwhelming evidence against mythicism. In other words, I stopped coming because I am one of them evidence-denier mythicists, basically. In response to that I submit that his memory is a well of verbose creative hyperbole. I mean ... really? ... That's what he "remembers"? Could he be any less <i>specific</i>? I actually <b><i>do</i></b> remember the exchange that convinced me to give up on McGrath. He had published a review of a collection of essays published by Paul Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. Something McGrath said didn't jive with my understanding of Robert Price's arguments (I'm a long-time fan and reader, so I'm very familiar with his ideas). He credited some ridiculous claim about Tammuz (as I recall - the interested reader will have to do his own search of McGrath's blog and either prove me wrong or verify the specificity of <b><i>my</i></b> memory) to Price. It was so ludicrous that I decided to read the book being reviewed for myself. Sure enough, McGrath had facilely misrepresented Price. When I confronted him in a comment, he dismissed me and said he had not. Instead of listening to what I was trying to ask him, he stood his ground and just dismissed the question. It's McGrath's biggest weakness; he has a tendency to strawman every argument he opposes. Regardless, I didn't push the issue. I simply stopped coming. This is why in the recent exchange I responded:
<br />
<blockquote style="margin-right: .75in;">
No, James . . . we didn't have a falling out.
<br />
I merely stopped reading your blog altogether (without any fanfare whatsoever) when it occurred to me that you are willing to be dishonest in service of your agenda.
<br />
The curious thing about this now is ...<br />
Why does what I think make you sad, or glad, or anything at all?
<br />
I think that you taking this condescending and patronizing attitude says more about you than it does about me, but I'm cool with letting whoever is reading along decide that for themselves.
</blockquote>
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
This apparently spurred him on. He found it irresistible to continue his lambasting:
<br />
<blockquote style="margin-right: .75in;">
It is interesting that you think that writing as you do would not involve a falling out. Mythicists, like all purveyors of fringe ideas, have to resort to accusations of dishonesty, as they seem unable to grasp that, in scholarship, when someone wants to revive a long-abandoned view, or offer a new one, the onus is on them to make the case for it and to persuade their peers. If, having failed to do so, you resort to claims of dishonesty or other tactics involving conspiracy of scholars against you, I guess some in the public might actually fall for that claim, but academics won't, because we see it all the time from various cranks and fringe figures who prefer to insist that they are being treated unfairly, rather than consider the hard truth that their claims are unpersuasive.</blockquote>
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
That may be his experience of those nasty mythicists, but in this particular case, my accusation of dishonesty is very clear and specific, and it was the reason for my distancing myself from the Matrix. My accusation is not some general verbose hyperbolic rhetoric a la McGrath for the sake of some ulterior internal need to demonize him or scholarship. Mind you, this was a week after I started this blog, a blog I intend as a hub of brief dossiers on mythicists and their critics, and which therefore doesn't make a case for mythicism, but rather comments on individual scholars' ideas. Also, this was the first encounter we'd had in years. This was his reaction? Does he really see me as a mad-eyed krank just for starting a friggin blog on this topic? Does he really think it's an anti-scholar thing? There's a weird paranoia about it all. I think he needs a vacation from blogging.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
At any rate, when I told him he was repeating himself he added:
<br />
<blockquote>
Biologists often have to repeat themselves when responding to evolution-deniers. The response is often to ignore them, too.</blockquote>
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Although I found this episode annoying and unnecessarily boorish, we were commenting on someone else's blog, and so I felt that to just drop the whole thing was the best course of action. But because he is arguably the most active "historicist" blogger out there currently, and because his number came up, and because this brief exchange is so illustrative of how I generally view McGrath's contributions to the mythicism din, I will use it as my springboard. The thing to realize about McGrath ... is ... he's dead serious. He really thinks that to doubt the historicity of Jesus is necessarily crazy, analogous to "creationism." (**see my recent post on that equivocation <u><a href="http://mythicismfiles.blogspot.com/2015/03/cry-creationism.html">here</a></u>.) He really thinks that there is some clear inviolable line of scholarship that he represents (and is defending in his chivalrous passive aggressive way) somehow. McGrath is a bigot, but not of the kind we are used to associating that word with. He's not a racist or a jingoist or anything like that, but he is, however, a perfect example of an elitist bigot. It's "bigotry from authority."</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
The point to make here is ...<br />
If you have a point, make it.</div>
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
I don't really care much about how one feels about mythicists as much as I'm interested in why one thinks that specific arguments fail.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
McGrath feels that mythicists don't grasp the basic premises involved. Fair enough. Here's the thing, though ... as a layman with no stake in the game (despite the horns McGrath may envisage beneath <i>my</i> cap), I see people like Doherty and Carrier and the folks at Vridar at least <b><i>trying</i></b> to have an intelligent conversation about some of the more problematic and/or dissonant aspects of Christian origins. These people are talking about serious things. At the same time, I see people like McGrath simply wanting to discredit these people in any way, treating these serious people like insolent clowns, even resorting to <a href="http://mythicismfiles.blogspot.com/2015/03/cry-creationism.html" target="_blank">crying "Creationism!"</a> which is a really infantile and disruptive tactic, a way to stop a discussion before it even starts. The kind of antagonistic stance toward any hint of mythicism in McGrath's diatribes suggests that he sees mythicism as getting way too much attention, and, heaven forbid, he can't have dissenting scholars and freethinking laypeople who are ignorant enough to ask all of these really hard questions which are, it would seem, the rightful purview of proper mainstream academics. Lay people should keep their mouths shut on these matters, as should anomalous academic views (I guess). "Don't worry, ma'am, we are scholars. We got this." McGrath tries to hide complexity with facile arguments. He keeps it all <i>reductio</i>-like. The problem with that is that in as convoluted a subject as this is, details are crucial, and having a ready-made eloquently rehearsed general appeal to authority at the ready is all fine and lovely, but it has nothing to do with the critical analysis of the material that is being so earnestly sought by those he dismisses as mere "creationists."</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Now, I don't necessarily object to simplicity <i>per se</i>, and wouldn't necessarily fault McGrath if he wanted to keep the conversation pointed at the most relevant facts. I can certainly see value in that kind of simplicity. But that is not what he is doing. He is merely painting mythicists as irrational contrarians with a broad brush and then declaring the case closed. Despite the limitations of the methodologies involved in examining the issue, mythicists are making claims that can be tested against other, "historicist," models of origins, they can be compared and contrasted. We can question evidence. We can question the validity of contexts. But what we should not do is question someone (scary monsters) for asking these kinds of questions in the first place, or to presuppose that we have some hidden agenda. If you want to attack mythicists by saying that they go against a scholarly consensus, that's a valid enough point to make, but, essentially, what McGrath is trying to say in his smug grandstanding is that I don't have the <i>right</i> or the <i>authority</i> to ask these questions.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
The only advise that can be given to those of us who have to deal with elitist bigotry of this kind is to stay focused. Although this blog post is technically about blogger McGrath, ... this is not about <i><b>him</b></i> ... and it's not about me either; this is about being able to have rational discussions about a problem. When I write a favorable post about Carrier or Brodie or Doherty or whoever, it's not because I necessarily subscribe to all they say or because they are flawless. No, it is because these people, the way I see it, sincerely want and seek reasoned conversation instead of the smarmy partisan elitist bigotry they get from McGrath. <i>Those</i> are the types of conversations I want to be having. Ego-free exchanges of ideas.<br />
To this end, I think that we need to stand up to the arrogant elite and say, <br />
<br />
"No, that '<i>I'm-the-scholar-so-shut-up</i>' bullshit is not the kind of conversation we want to be having."<br />
<br />
"No, you will not be allowed to get away with attempted character-assassination because it suits the impression you have of yourself as elite." <br />
<br />
"You'll either learn to be intellectually honest or be made irrelevant. The evolution of the dissemination of information that the internet is in the process of opening wide open will not look kindly upon your arrogant ass."
</div>
<br />
<br />
I hadn't intended to compose such a long post. But there you have it, my honest assesment of McGrath's contributions to the discussion on historicity.<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Postscript: I guess all I really wanna add is that some of my favorite moments while reading the Vridar blog have been when McGrath has no idea that his "i-am-a-scholar" armor is all bloodied and riddled with arrows and bulletholes, reminiscent of the Black Knight in the famous Monty Python Holy Grail movie, when he has no idea that he's being slapped around (and by laymen at that!). He simply refuses to concede anything a mythicist might say.<br />
It's almost pathological. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
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</div>
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<blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d;">.</span></span><br />
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-34995565466303340452015-03-22T07:00:00.001-07:002021-02-12T02:24:01.670-08:00Cry "Creationism!"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiN1Np9qurPoCafIlR7flrNoa15CMm4oY7BdJCQFHD8HGYgXf3oU2PAiLQZ_Fd5oycqe5R01t1R7_3bpFlAcgVkSjIpH0a2uip0nZm_xgqXuxfXn8Pip9k9qJged3IKOeRG7rRvsPOuHd0/s1600/obama-h-compare.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiN1Np9qurPoCafIlR7flrNoa15CMm4oY7BdJCQFHD8HGYgXf3oU2PAiLQZ_Fd5oycqe5R01t1R7_3bpFlAcgVkSjIpH0a2uip0nZm_xgqXuxfXn8Pip9k9qJged3IKOeRG7rRvsPOuHd0/s1600/obama-h-compare.jpg" width="320" /></a>
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<br />
<h2>
<big>"</big>Whoever mentions Hitler first loses the argument ...<big>"</big>
</h2>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
This is known as Godwin's Law. If you've been involved in online forum or blog discussions on <i>any</i> contentious political topic in recent years, then you've probably heard some variant of this pop dictum. It has become a punchline about how far some people will go to paint an adversary in the worst possible light.<sup style="color: red;"><big>[1] </big></sup> It is usually limited to political discussions. It requires a foil, some politician or political movement in a position of power, for it to make sense. Imagine an online discussion where the name of Rudy Giuliani comes up, for example. Say that one of the participants in the discussion <i><b>despises</b></i> Giuliani so much that he compares him to Hitler. Sure, I'll admit that I think Giuliani is a vainglorious blowhard who was less than hospitable to the poor huddled masses of New York City during his mayoral tenure. Under the name of "cleaning up New York," it's fair to say that he bullied a lot of folks. I'll even confess that I think he's racist, but to call him a <i><b>Nazi</b></i>, even just in passing, as so many were prone to do whenever the mean-spirited aspect of his tactics showed itself in word and policy, would be ... silly ... at best, and defamatory at worst.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
I mean ... the Nazis systematically killed millions of people. Hunted them down. Tore them from their families. Shot them in the back. Shot them in the head. Worked them and starved them until they fell over dead and frozen. Gassed them. Performed all manner of "scientific" experiments on them. Made lampshades from their skins. Nuff said.<br />
And that's to say <i>nothing</i> of the differences between the details of the ideological worldview of Giuliani and that of the Nazis. The word "Nazi" <i>means</i> something. The name "Hitler" <i>means</i> something. And these things mean more than just "demagogue" or "racist" or "strong-arm tactics." Giuliani is no Nazi. He is no Hitler. He <i><b>could</b></i> be if he applied himself, I suppose. But that's true of almost anyone; isn't it? If Rudy had genuinely Hitlerian imperial ambitions, or some noteworthy murderous spree on his resume, then the charge would be a fair one, but as it stands, it is just a ludicrous and brash exaggeration with nothing but imaginative bluster to support it. It's a caricature. Let's face it, Giuliani is no Albert Schweitzer, this is true, but the list of people who ignominiously qualify as "Hitlerian" in any meaningful sense (e.g., Stalin, Torquemada, Idi Amin ... etc...), does <i><b>not</b></i> include Giuliani's name. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Because of his status of iconic arch-villain, wielding the word "Hitler" (or "Nazi") in a discussion or debate is necessarily pejorative and belligerent. It is always intended as an insult. As soon as you refer to any politician using these words in what should be just a casual disagreement, you are abandoning valid argumentation and entering <i>ad hominem</i>-land. Crying Hitler is an appeal to the emotional center of a listener's brain, a covert plea for it to reject what it recognizes as a universally reviled symbol. It tries to evoke a gag reflex through rhetorical effect rather than through dialectic engagement. This is why the "<i>Whoever mentions Hitler first loses the argument ...</i>" one-liner is funny, and why it works as a meme, because crying Hitler only highlights the disdain one debater harbors for another. <i>That's</i> where it puts the spotlight, instead of on the intended subject of the insult—i.e. the politician (or political movement) under discussion. Godwin's Law serves as a way to call out and temper anyone who would demonize an opponent via such inappropriate and/or facile comparisons.<br />
It's just silly. <br />
We all know it.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
So what does this have to do with creationism? Well, lately, some of mythicism's more-vocal detractors have developed a relentless habit of equating mythicism's fringeness with "creationism." It's interesting to note how reminiscent of this sort of Hitler-analogizing this "cry creationism" tactic actually is. It is as ludicrous, as disruptive, and as vapid, and in fact both of these analogies serve similar diversionary functions in their respective contexts. I think Godwin's Law should apply to this as well. The difference is mainly categorical. Crying Hitler is to <i><b>political</b></i> debate what crying creationism is supposed to be to <b><i>scientific</i></b> debate.<br />
<br />
Well, <i><b>sort of</b></i> ... that's partly where the rub is. But to show what I mean by this caveat will require a bit of unpacking of what "creationism" means in the context of this kind of argumentation. </div>
<br />
<h2>
<big>Evolution</big> (How we know it's a real thing)<big>:</big></h2>
<h2>
— Evidence from Embryology</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb6LOTrOYv53IYsp-Jo5V08ogx2Mnjb_p6rESB7zTsghuvEko3EKBZtTcMetbLKTTTWKe_rz4U2qnaI-NZyCnhlxEXAZwNA2rlCdvI3fninWMDrRH7G_vJP0Pu6gPotgg8XWC2V_zPaCwI/s1600/Embryology.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb6LOTrOYv53IYsp-Jo5V08ogx2Mnjb_p6rESB7zTsghuvEko3EKBZtTcMetbLKTTTWKe_rz4U2qnaI-NZyCnhlxEXAZwNA2rlCdvI3fninWMDrRH7G_vJP0Pu6gPotgg8XWC2V_zPaCwI/s1600/Embryology.png" width="183" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig.1 - Phylogenetic tree<br />
derived from embryological evidence</td></tr>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
When scientists began studying the physiological similarities and differences in the gestation periods of the various species, it turned out that the substages (those having to do with cell division and the formation of specialized tissues) that are passed through while an embryo develops follow very predictable patterns and rules. Along every step of the way, embryologists can keep track of minute changes and of how these will affect the later steps. Because of the consistency and predictability of this process, we can learn much about its evolutionary provenance.
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Given a specimen, start with very basic questions and follow up. Is it true tissue? Yes? Then it's not a sponge. <br />
How many germ layers? Three?<br />
OK, so it can't be a jellyfish or a coral. Eliminate that.<br />
Does the organism evince a true body cavity? Yes? OK, so we know it's not a tapeworm. Does its blastopore (an indentation) go on to become the mouth of the organism or does it become its anus? Its mouth?<br />
OK, so we know it's not a vertebrate. It's not a human or a dog. Eliminate that. It could be an earthworm or it could still be an octopus. Whatever it is, it's definitely not a vertebrate.<br />
We can continue this process indefinitely until we finally ascertain the correct animal specimen. It could very easily be falsified by finding a specimen of raccoon, for instance, which developed from a blastopore that eventually became its mouth. This would scrap the whole theory.
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
The point to be gleaned here is that this kind of systematic deduction is made possible only because of the consistency of this "branching" from the less-complex animals to the more complex ones, as reflected in the development of embryos. The branching is so consistent and so precise that we can formulate a phylogenetic "tree" from it which corresponds (miraculously?) to trees derived from other methods. (see fig. 1 ... hold that thought ... )
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<h2>
— Evidence from Comparative Anatomy</h2>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik3TQIs03uKTvfsBOeD3lINr1xnm-OX9RseZlYuGGHx1kujq-WMhSlaJIAg2S0KgGGG-fOHTvDpWMtxG7F9F9bncOG8TnFI10YTB4gV__z1uYZCQAQhj1N4T6rWmWbmt83lMApBqgU1uQU/s1600/Screen+shot+2015-03-14+at+2.13.52+PM.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik3TQIs03uKTvfsBOeD3lINr1xnm-OX9RseZlYuGGHx1kujq-WMhSlaJIAg2S0KgGGG-fOHTvDpWMtxG7F9F9bncOG8TnFI10YTB4gV__z1uYZCQAQhj1N4T6rWmWbmt83lMApBqgU1uQU/s1600/Screen+shot+2015-03-14+at+2.13.52+PM.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 2</td></tr>
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Comparing the physiology and anatomy of organisms reflects their relatedness by tracing certain common diagnostic characteristics or features through time. Consider tetrapod limbs. They are made up of many individual bones and are arranged in a similar fashion in all tetrapods. They are spinoffs on the same basic design: One long bone (the humerus) attached to two other long bones (the ulna and the radius) with a branching series of smaller bones at the ends (carpals and metacarpals and phalanges and whatnots).</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
But it's more than just the superficial or formal similarities that are relevant here, though these are important. There are <i>patterns</i> in the similarities which betrays an undeniable dynamism that attests to a process of slow transformation taking place, patterns which would be quite difficult to explain if evolution is not true. It's not just in the arrangement of limbs; these patterns can be traced in every bone, every organ, every aspect of the anatomy organisms that share a common ancestor, in fact. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtVcxoGdjxgMedYhXxKg1LNIJ3wApoKP_R0k6cBXaYmZBLF4ga-z7VNRAEsUlFPOL3k0Fxdj_yU2EDUE4IszinX_7xOuKMiwgcRSwtHka74h84_dDv9SLYxXVXyJzOHsxrJHEWPzoJ42tu/s1600/Jaw+and+Ear.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="91" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtVcxoGdjxgMedYhXxKg1LNIJ3wApoKP_R0k6cBXaYmZBLF4ga-z7VNRAEsUlFPOL3k0Fxdj_yU2EDUE4IszinX_7xOuKMiwgcRSwtHka74h84_dDv9SLYxXVXyJzOHsxrJHEWPzoJ42tu/s1600/Jaw+and+Ear.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 3 - inner ear bones</td></tr>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
A quick comparison of the jaws and ears of reptiles and mammals will show the vital importance of these discernible patterns. From the science of embryology, we know that, in reptiles, the quadrate and articular bones develop into two bones in the lower jaw. In mammals, however, these develop into two bones in the middle ear of the organism. Where the reptilian middle ear has only one bone, the mammalian one has three. What happened (we can deduce) is that the quadrate and articular bones in the reptilian jaw over time re-adapted to form the two additional bones in the mammalian middle ear. Can we confirm this? Yes, we can. When we look in the fossil record at the fossils in between the starting (reptile) and end (mammal) endpoints, we can see that the gradual, precise changes in fact <b><i>did</i></b> take place. We can see that the quadrate and articular bones in the reptile jaw being pulled back over time and modified for function in a middle ear. Dozens and dozens of fossils confirm not just that the gradual change took place, but that it took place in exactly the correct chronological sequence in the phylogenetic tree, skipping no steps along the way.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnWZzt_T3EGEeYucl_MQlS2NoLpBF3ZbPBxiv7qyCXISFmPTokYlTLR_LZ2gCzCWhy0vDLJdsT7AtefDz0sIfkgWK8i10A-uI15GZ3msLWXKPb67xWBawibby3LmPhkreNkLdOBMb_eQR/s1600/Comp+Anatomy+Phylogenetic.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnWZzt_T3EGEeYucl_MQlS2NoLpBF3ZbPBxiv7qyCXISFmPTokYlTLR_LZ2gCzCWhy0vDLJdsT7AtefDz0sIfkgWK8i10A-uI15GZ3msLWXKPb67xWBawibby3LmPhkreNkLdOBMb_eQR/s1600/Comp+Anatomy+Phylogenetic.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 4 - from comparative anatomy.</td></tr>
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Once again, the consistency, precision and predictability (and falsifiability—all it would take to falsify the relationships between species is finding a single reptile fossil with two additional bones in its middle ear, which find would of course prompt the question: "wtf did those bones come from?") of this line of evidence allows us to construct a phylogenetic tree of the ancestral relation between species based on these anatomical patterns. Something interesting happens when we compare the phylogenetic tree derived from embryology and those derived from comparative anatomy.<br />
They look remarkably similar.<br />
(see fig. 4 ... keep holding that thought ... ) </div>
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<h2>
— Evidence from the Fossil Record</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpkM50I744bFbe-N8R3V_0zLM5ip9RddDKgnrkJeWnGQyX9NscInfTXtF9HMX6mY-akASYUsqlp7I_brxQ7UzAi1fpkxUhcKhHEimVVHWBIpyDxMufIUtbwpbtRQrAjEcRQU2cK8-bUOUk/s1600/Fossil+Record.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpkM50I744bFbe-N8R3V_0zLM5ip9RddDKgnrkJeWnGQyX9NscInfTXtF9HMX6mY-akASYUsqlp7I_brxQ7UzAi1fpkxUhcKhHEimVVHWBIpyDxMufIUtbwpbtRQrAjEcRQU2cK8-bUOUk/s1600/Fossil+Record.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 5</td></tr>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Paleontology studies, among other things, the chronological sequence of the origins of species by accurately noting the age of the strata where they first appear in the fossil record. We need not say too much more. It is enough to note that the evidence from the fossil record allows us to construct yet another phylogenetic tree of species relatedness in the animal kingdom. <br />
Can you guess what <b><i>that</i></b> tree might look like?
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Again, this could easily be falsified. Theories of evolution could be completely devastated by finding a single iguana fossil in a layer of pre-cambrian rock, for instance. </div>
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<h2>
— Evidence from Genetics & Microbiology</h2>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnOfc7d_uIoBvFgQZOl7C1UG2ZdzBt9pIO_88mo9ydxFLoZUbtDwvzrZDsHd6oKBSKbeGfN6Y2Ki5809_GzLg8LD-rVtFmh1jZxj9qr6WICs0NjseKeEnljg_AOTm_RcXXJKsHTcpdhOZ/s1600/DNA+Flies.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnOfc7d_uIoBvFgQZOl7C1UG2ZdzBt9pIO_88mo9ydxFLoZUbtDwvzrZDsHd6oKBSKbeGfN6Y2Ki5809_GzLg8LD-rVtFmh1jZxj9qr6WICs0NjseKeEnljg_AOTm_RcXXJKsHTcpdhOZ/s1600/DNA+Flies.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 6</td></tr>
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From genetics alone, we can look at an organism's DNA and see how it has changed over time. Every gene of every organism on earth can be analyzed and assessed for phylogeny. When we do this we find the same chronological developmental patterns we find in other lines of evidence (see above). We find this through the field of molecular biology as well, where these kinds of analyses enable scientists to trace the evolution of snake venom and other bio-chemical phenomena, for example. The precision with which we can predict these correspondences between species is astounding. Again, the consistency and predictability allow scientists to construct a phylogenetic tree from the data.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPwE4VKCU9LLhFwRUnvcJgScR0GynV1Bo4Vv8OOvFAf7_ZDZC0sclzPWZ4CgH1c6mNmScvciFdkuua3qFOWgdO9jFc7KHf3f5rlwEX3Ol8w_2_VEo9QdDrleMn_llPFdatB8DDqySa5J7q/s1600/EndoRetroVirusesApes.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPwE4VKCU9LLhFwRUnvcJgScR0GynV1Bo4Vv8OOvFAf7_ZDZC0sclzPWZ4CgH1c6mNmScvciFdkuua3qFOWgdO9jFc7KHf3f5rlwEX3Ol8w_2_VEo9QdDrleMn_llPFdatB8DDqySa5J7q/s1600/EndoRetroVirusesApes.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 7</td></tr>
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The discovery of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) provides us with further support for the theory of evolution. Sometimes a virus inserts itself into an egg or a sperm cell which, though it is inactive or benign, still retains its original genetic information, which in turn gets copied along with the host organism's own. This occurs at random, and so the likelihood that these ERVs would appear in the very same place in the same gene of two corresponding organisms would be very low, impossibly low, unless of course these organisms are genetically related. </div>
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We have been gathering data on this for over a hundred-fifty years. It's not that any given method suggests evolution as a viable thing. EVERY method corroborates it! The evidence from embryology yields a branch from the by-now familiar phylogenetic tree image (see fig. 8) The evidence from comparative anatomy corresponds to fig. 9. The evidence from the fossil record corresponds to fig. 10. The evidence from genetics corresponds to fig. 11. The evidence from molecular biology corresponds to fig. 12. The evidence from endogenous retroviruses corresponds to fig. 13. The evidence from histology corresponds to fig. 14. Finally, fig. 15 is the standard basic phylogenetic tree of life.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSYjdrb6ES1NFMtI4sCNCpFquPfF3VL5b6xsG_Nd35R0A69LciCTDeGeQi67mUQj2XtLUuuzw8w5chBjDJAp4pClumoutBRolV0caqu4VptvVNJ6qsVVbFPMMrhcHnBki9yNIWKa-Sm40R/s1600/Screen+shot+2015-03-14+at+1.10.00+AM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSYjdrb6ES1NFMtI4sCNCpFquPfF3VL5b6xsG_Nd35R0A69LciCTDeGeQi67mUQj2XtLUuuzw8w5chBjDJAp4pClumoutBRolV0caqu4VptvVNJ6qsVVbFPMMrhcHnBki9yNIWKa-Sm40R/s1600/Screen+shot+2015-03-14+at+1.10.00+AM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 ... </td></tr>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<b><i>It's the same tree</i></b><big>!</big> That's the point. That this basic evolutionary trajectory is corroborated by independent verification on so many different empirically-derived, precise, rigorous methodological fronts is in itself a form of compounded evidence that one glosses over at one's own risk. This embarrassment of riches is why a creationist expression is so laughable to a scientist (and to rational people generally), why it is worthy of mockery. To deny evolution is to deny what is demonstrable and verifiable. To deny evolution is to be irrational and/or obtuse. It is to deny reality. Any attempt to single out as "specially" true the "six days of creation" story and the Eden story fails right at the starting gate. It's special pleading by definition. It is necessarily an invalid, illogical, transparently and circularly self-serving religious expression. Now, of course, deluding oneself that one's favorite myth is actually "real" by virtue of its being the one in one's favorite book is no mortal sin, but this delusion <i>does</i> bring about certain embarrassing social consequences to those who choose to imbibe from this naïve pacifier nipple at this point in our civilization's intellectual and cultural development. THIS is why scientists can use "creationism" as a humorous metaphor for anything which is deemed an obstinate and ideological denial of what we know bout the natural world. The science is in. The empiricism and detached objectivity (ideally, at least—which is why we need the checks and balances of a peer review process) of the methods applied to the evidence provides us with a degree of epistemological authority (a degree of confidence if you will) which trumps that of ambivalent metaphors within ancient myths. Evidence trumps story, and so using story to argue against evidence is therefore incongruous, irrational, crazy. THIS is why scientists can justifiably make fun of advocates of creationism. </div>
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<h2>
<big>New Testament Studies</big> (¿An Analogue?)<big>:</big></h2>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBw7O-FgkHr9iySbPdpqKN0s8kKezOd-UNVkGLf1c_a92QgnPMVhMN74wOL7MfruS3_q5EuRmYhyo8Wfro2iu59H8mj6GP6YDjTJ3-Kg7VspbBGe8MPU8Hc_HrZT31W_77lYm4sZCXHqH/s1600/creationism-illo-panel-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBw7O-FgkHr9iySbPdpqKN0s8kKezOd-UNVkGLf1c_a92QgnPMVhMN74wOL7MfruS3_q5EuRmYhyo8Wfro2iu59H8mj6GP6YDjTJ3-Kg7VspbBGe8MPU8Hc_HrZT31W_77lYm4sZCXHqH/s1600/creationism-illo-panel-1.jpg" width="320" /></a>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
So the use of the word "creationist" as a pejorative rests on an epistemological authority that is vouchsafed by the methodological rigor intrinsic to the application of the scientific method.<br />
What about the epistemological authority in a field like New Testament studies?<br />
What's the nature of the evidence that informs <i>that</i> field?<br />
What's the nature of <i>its</i> methodology?<br />
Is its corresponding value equivalent to that of the science of biology?<br />
When a New Testament scholar equates a mythicist to a creationist as a way to decry what she perceives as a ludicrous proposition, is she justified in thinking her expertise on par with that of an evolutionary biologist? </div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
I dare say not. This is, however, a rather sensitive topic because that last sentence can too easily be misconstrued as a devaluing of an academic discipline, which is neither my intention nor my point. On the contrary, I think the field, and even just the fact of Christian origins, is a fascinating subject, so fascinating, in fact, that I have spent a good portion of the last couple of decades studying it. As the old adage goes, some of my best friends are New Testament scholars, and I have a great deal of respect and admiration for most of the people who contribute to New Testament scholarship, in fact, at least those for whom it is not just a devotional extension of their personal religious faith (though even there I often find useful bits). And so the purpose of my calling attention to the field's epistemological limitations and problems is <b><i>not</i></b> to devalue it, but only to place it in its proper methodological perspective in the context of the "creationism" equivocation. </div>
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<h2>
— (How we "know" what we know)</h2>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Obviously, what immediately distinguishes these fields is that biology is a science while New Testament studies is, technically, not. Essentially this means that the latter is qualitative, while the former is <i>both</i> qualitative <i>and</i> quantitative. It's a bit like comparing apples and pineapples from the git go. The "evidence" in the former case is almost entirely literary, occasionally archaeological, and usually fragmentary or ambiguous. Every now and then (once or twice a century lately) we are lucky enough to discover some new trove of previously unknown materials, but for the most part the evidence has remained unchanged for two millenia. Compared to austere, glacial biblical studies, science is a comparatively dynamic enterprise, always in a state of self-correction and innovation, in a continual mode of data collection and assimilation. By contrast New Testament scholars serve roles that are more akin to that of "curator." It is almost necessarily stodgy. There not much room for innovation in New Testament scholarship—even its mavericks are treading old texts and hypotheses. Nevertheless, because it IS a legitimate academic pursuit (and an important one, I insist) with actual university departments and curriculums conducting it, some New Testament scholars feel themselves entitled to treat these two as intellectual analogues despite some damning crucial differences.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
While I agree wholeheartedly that one must have a sense of what is a reputable source of information on any given subject, and what is not, if one is to avoid all of the crap that's floating around out there in cyberspace, we would be careful not to relegate (so slyly and dismissively) the mythicist position to that same category of blundering pseudothought. Mythicism is more than the caricature it has been painted to be by its detractors. Fringe the mythicist position may be, yes, but it poses some pointed, very real questions which detractors seem un(willing/able) to answer, and it is as valid as, and in fact has more going for it than many other theories regarding Christian origins that I've come across (Matthean priority, for example, which consensus rightly rejects). I feel that to dismiss it categorically with such a simple cry of "creationism!" is to highlight what is currently ailing New Testament studies, namely, a rather exaggerated value on "expertise" that is more arbitrary than it cares to let on. This is a big problem. Many NT scholars behave as if they were engaging in some empirical enterprise, as if the conjectures, subsequent deductions, and pronouncements of the NT scholars carried the same weight as the more tangible, exhaustively tested and observed discoveries in the sciences. And just as you should always seek the opinion of an expert physicist to properly understand, say, thermal dynamics (the logic goes) one should "similarly" consult a bona fide NT scholar when seeking to understand Christian origins, who will in turn point one to the consensus viewpoint, if there is one. Right? It's the "if you want to know the workings of a car, call a mechanic" argument.
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Consider first the glaring limits presented by the very nature of the pertinent evidence (i.e., the "primary" texts):
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<ol style="margin-left: 0.66in; margin-right: 1.25in;">
<li><b>— The dating and provenance of the gospels:</b> <br />We don't know who wrote them. Scholars vary as to their dates of composition and respective places of origin. While there is an ultra-conservative faction on one end of the spectrum that dates them as early as the late 30s of the first century, there are also those on the other end who date them well into the second century (claiming the theological and christological constructs better fit the <i>sitz im leben</i> of that period). The standing consensus is that GºMk was the first of the bunch and that it was likely penned in Rome during (or shortly after) the sacking of Jerusalem, which is inferred from GºMk13s "little apocalypse," which seems to predict what it <b><i>knows</i></b> to have happened, namely the Temple's destruction. Dating it therefore to the year 70 is a viable educated guess that allows for a rough near-contemporaneousness with the events and ideas they describe, but it is still just a guess, in the end. Certitude that goes beyond an acknowledgment of a consensus view and its reasoning is inadvisable until further manuscript evidence surfaces. <br /><i>We don't <b>know</b></i> when the gospels were written. Scholars should really stop pretending that they do. (N.T. Wright once comically suggested that all NT scholars should recite this every morning before the mirror like a mantra; I seldom agree with anything Wright says, but that gets an "amen" from me.)
</li>
<br />
<li><b>— The dating of the Pauline epistles:</b> <br />Scholars likewise have found Von Harnack's (late 19th century) calculations of seventeen (from a harmonization of Galatians with Acts) years to be a useful guide in their chronological conception of the Pauline corpus. But to insist that we "know" that Thessalonians was written in 49 and Galatians in 50 or 51 (again, the current consensus view) is not only to not realize that one is building on a tenuous foundation, placing more weight on a house of cards than it can support, it also reflects a kind of haughty, misguided confidence that is too common in the academy, in my opinion. Scholars behave as though the "fact" that the epistle to the Galatians was written in 51 is as conclusive and verifiable as the fact that enzymes seem to exhibit specific molecular geometries that enable them to serve as highly precise biological triggering mechanisms. Both of these scholarly opinions may indeed be prevailing views in their respective fields, but that does not mean they are equivalently vouchsafed. They are not equally true just because they are both academic "consensuses." </li>
</ol>
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
So, if we don't know when the texts were composed (or by whom), how much confidence does our ignorance of these crucial details really warrant? </div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Consider the methods that scholars usually apply to these undated texts to tease out their various portraits of a historical Jesus from them. During the twentieth century a number of "criteria" for the verification of historical plausibility were proposed and instituted and used by biblical scholars to determine who the historical Jesus could have been. These criteria include:<br />
<ul style="margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 0.75in; text-indent: 0px;">
<li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Criterion of Embarrassment—
</span> (1899)<sup style="color: red;"><big>[2] </big></sup><br /><b><i>Description</i>:</b> This criterion says that sayings or actions of Jesus that would have embarrassed or created difficulty for the early Church are more likely to be authentic. The Church would not have gone out of its way to create material that would have been embarrassing or that undermined its credibility or status.
<br /><b><i>Example</i>:</b> The supposed inferior John the Baptist--who baptized people for the repentance and forgiveness of sins--baptized the superior and sinless Jesus. Other embarrassing reports include Peter's denial, Judas's betrayal, Jesus' crucifixion, and the suspicion by Jesus' family that he is insane.
</li>
<br />
<li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Criterion of Dissimilarity—</span> (1953)<sup style="color: red;"><big>[3] </big></sup><br /><b><i>Description</i>:</b> This criterion focuses on actions or sayings of Jesus that cannot be derived either from Judaism at the time of Jesus or from the early Church.<br /> <b><i>Example</i>:</b> Jesus' prohibition of all oaths (Mt 5:34, 37), his rejection of voluntary fasting (Mk 2:18-22), and his prohibition of divorce (Mk 10:2-12) are not found in Jewish or early Christian writings.
</li>
<br />
<li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Criterion of Multiple Attestation—</span> (1911)<sup style="color: red;"><big>[4] </big></sup><br /><b>Description:</b> This criterion focuses on those actions and sayings of Jesus that are attested in more than one independent literary source (e.g., Mark, Q, M, L, Paul, John, and extracanonical sources) and/or more than one literary form or genre (e.g., parable, conflict story, miracle story, prophecy, aphorism).<br /> <b><i>Example</i>:</b> We can be certain that Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God (this criteria says) because it is found in several independent traditions (Mark, Q, M, L, John, and Paul) and in a wide variety of genres (parable, beatitude, prayer, aphorism, miracle story). </li>
<br />
<li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The criterion of Aramaisms—</span> (1925)<sup style="color: red;"><big>[5] </big></sup><br /><b>Description:</b> This criterion posits that since Jesus spoke in Aramaic, traces of Aramaic in our Greek gospels argue in favor of a primitive tradition that <i><b>may</b></i> go back to Jesus.
<br /> <b><i>Example</i>:</b> The pun in Matt 23:24, "straining out the gnat (galma) and swallowing a camel (gamla)." The use of Aramaic words such as amen (Mk 8:12), abba (Mk 14:36), bar (Mt 16:17), talitha cumi (Mk 5:41), eloi eloi lama sabachthani (Mk 15:34) all point in the direction of the historical Jesus, so says this criterion.
</li>
</ul>
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUQoqlyD6CX_wN1KfrukfyQ3keoUamvdhYwTLCAQjJ-_VoDKkqxx19AJpBBteii-ELQIG2O060lQv6Mjye9i1BzYowrWXc-rmQPRvByaJIZGxKyiFhUycy3AhM4bC88yQM6f8-vPzqm2iO/s1600/Avalos.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUQoqlyD6CX_wN1KfrukfyQ3keoUamvdhYwTLCAQjJ-_VoDKkqxx19AJpBBteii-ELQIG2O060lQv6Mjye9i1BzYowrWXc-rmQPRvByaJIZGxKyiFhUycy3AhM4bC88yQM6f8-vPzqm2iO/s1600/Avalos.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hector Avalos</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There are other even less-persuasive criteria, but these few will suffice for my purposes. I put dates next to each criterion on the list in order to touch on a couple of related points. First, to show that the criteria are a fairly recent development in the field. Arguably the most important of them, that of dissimilarity, only goes as far back as 1953, for instance. This was the time of Bultmann, of Knox, of Perrin. Some pretty heavy stuff was happening in New Testament scholarship at the time.<br />
Second, to show that these criteria were all proposed and developed within the purview of biblical studies <i><b>specifically</b></i> (and New Testament studies in particular) for use in the "new quests." Too many people (in and outside the field) are too prone to refer to the New Testament scholars that rely on these methods as "historians," which suggests to the unsuspecting that these methods have a more secure and widespread pedigree than they actually do in the bigger picture of historiographical research. I won't belabor this point except to say that in my opinion, any New Testament scholar that has not bothered to acquaint herself with actual proper historiographical methodologies (not just historical Jesus "criteriology" ones) and who still insists on calling herself a "historian" is only puffing up her feathers, padding her resume, so to speak. It's not completely untrue, but it is not completely true either. It's a bit disingenuous. It's hubris. A flag. Let's just say it's a pet peeve. It irks me when I hear Bart Ehrman say it. It irks me when I hear Bob Price say it. It makes me wince. Nuff said. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
That aside, there have been scholars who have done independent critical examinations of the methodologies themselves and published books on the subject, and they all have unanimously found these methodologies flawed on several levels. (<i>see below for a list of pertinent books</i>) All of these writers have concluded that there are inescapable limitations and flaws inherent in all of the criteria in question and that they all have to be reconsidered and reworked. The most influential of these works is perhaps Hector Avalos' 2005 "<b>The End of Biblical Studies</b>," which posits that New Testament studies got lost in a flood of complacency and careerism somewhere along the way. It's a damning yet fair and even handed exposé of the state of things in the nation's (the U.S.) collegiate religious studies departments. I recommend it. Richard Carrier goes as far as attempting to demonstrate these flaws <i>mathematically</i>, using symbolic logic and his own adaptation of statistical methods, pointing with some precision at the places in the equations where each criterion collapses in his "<b>Proving History</b>."</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
So what are these scholars saying is wrong with the criteria?
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
I alluded a moment ago to the criterion of dissimilarity being a kind of keystone, the most important of the criteria to many scholars because it gives them an assured minimum of material to work with, so let's start there. The reason it is so crucial is that, if the early Church didn't follow a saying and was uncomfortable with it, and it didn't come from Judaism, then Jesus is pretty much the only source left. Sounds logical ... right? ... except that it presupposes that we have a complete knowledge of 1st-century Judaism or Christianity. We don't. Far from it. This criterion is also unrealistic because it divorces Jesus from the Judaism that would have influenced him and from the Church that he would have in turn presumably influenced. If Jesus was so discontinuous from 1st-century Judaism and Christianity, he would have been unintelligible to them. Hence, E.P. Sanders, in his landmark "<b>Jesus and Judaism</b>," stands this criterion on its head and says that if an alleged saying or story of Jesus is discontinuous from 1st-century Judaism, it <i><b>cannot</b></i> be from Jesus. What's more, the more we learn about the Judaism of the time, the less and less discontinuity we tend to find. The criterion of dissimilarity can dance one from here to there. Not very far. Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter's "<b>Quest for the Plausible Jesus</b>" examines the flaws and limitations of this specific criterion and suggests some alterations. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
The criterion of embarrassment is also problematic. It presupposes that what we deem embarrassing would have also been embarrassing to the authors of the New Testament or to the early Church. It also ignores the possibility that what could be classed as embarrassing could also be a tendentiously created account designed to provoke a reaction.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
The criterion of multiple attestation is flawed in that it is possible that a saying created by the early community or prophet met the needs of the Church so well that it was attributed to Jesus and spread to a number of different strands of tradition. This criterion partially depends on the four-source theory as the solution to the synoptic problem, which, if Mark Goodacre is right about the unnecessariness of the theoretical Q document, is moot. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Finally, the criterion of Aramaism traces is particularly laughable to me. I remember the first time I heard of it. I remarked, "You're kidding, right?" Aramaic was spoken by millions of people in the Near East for centuries before and after the time in question. Aramaic (alongside Greek) was also spoken by many early Christians, who could have created these sayings. I mean, are we to take seriously the claim that a saying showing traces of Aramaic is necessarily from Jesus? This has always been a real head-scratcher for me.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Mind you, I'm not saying that the criteria are completely worthless. Not at all. They have their use in the discernment of the texts' relation to one another and to certain relevant aspects of the surrounding culture. What I <b><i>am</i></b> saying is that the criteria are not worth quite what the sticker price says they are, however. Their inherent problems are real and are many. Now, as I've already said, I don't intend this as a categorical condemnation of all such criteria or as a devaluing of New Testament studies. The methods in question, though not worthless, are definitely flawed in very serious ways. That all of the attempted reconstructions of a historical Jesus rely on these demonstrably faulty methods to some degree should at the very least give us pause. There's a methodological crisis in the field of New Testament studies that needs fixing. For his part, Carrier has proposed a new way to approach the question, a replacement methodology. Needless to say, he's encountering resistance from the field. Surprising, isn't it?
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQtw-vxs1jA6zgZTaTOQa31wncMymmoSr20qyxD5BtqhF-se_zwDREAcsSKBmAzXydJ3a2UUGeYY6O5Q3UdQfYrqjX3omvw4xng2gSBBDfYzXfabAqYochLQ_4bzsaIl8uirymaQSpcF6p/s1600/PurityGif.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQtw-vxs1jA6zgZTaTOQa31wncMymmoSr20qyxD5BtqhF-se_zwDREAcsSKBmAzXydJ3a2UUGeYY6O5Q3UdQfYrqjX3omvw4xng2gSBBDfYzXfabAqYochLQ_4bzsaIl8uirymaQSpcF6p/s1600/PurityGif.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<h2>
Not an Analogue</h2>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
It's little wonder then that the conclusions reached by those who have relied on these methods can vary so widely from one another. Ask an evolutionary scientist to predict an intermediary form between two species with the specific characteristics, and, using the tools of the fossil record and comparative anatomy, he can go to a precise location in the world where an exposed layer of rock is just the right age and the desired transitional fossil will be found there with remarkable accuracy. Or ask him to pinpoint the place in a gene where a specific ERV has been "baked in," and the results will be consistent across the board. By comparison, ask New Testament scholars a simple question like, "Who was Jesus?" and you wind up with as many variegated answers as there are scholars. Jesus was a revolutionary (Brandon), a magician (Smith), a cynic Jewish peasant (Crossan), a zealot (Aslan), a wisdom sage (Borg), a failed apocalyptic prophet (Ehrman). It is because the methods are flawed and arbitrary and subjective compared to the rigorous and empirical ones employed in science. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
So the fact that the idea that Jesus actually existed as a unique and discernible flesh and blood person in history is a <i><b>given</b></i> in the field of New Testament studies is not in the same epistemological league as the fact, say, that there are more than the expected number of telomeres in human chromosome #2. They are both "consensus" views, but one is the result of default acceptance of an unexplored axiom, while the other is arrived at through meticulous laboratory experimentation. As long as there's some prevailing majority view on any given matter there will be appeals to the authority of a consensus, but in subjects as historiographically thin as Christian origins, however, it is not advisable to elevate the worth of a viewpoint above a certain level. To do so is to pretend that the discipline is more quantifiable and vouchsafed than it actually is. We don't actually know some of the things that we think we know.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
While there are some semi-quantifiable, empirical cognate disciplines on which New Testament studies relies (archaeology, sociology, and even historico-critical method qualifies here) we have to admit that the principal purveyors of New Testament scholarship are the religious studies departments of our universities, both private and secular. This is an inescapable truth. A question immediately raises itself. What is to prevent the field from being a religionist enterprise from the git go? It's a good question.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
When the relevance of an academic field becomes contingent on any matter of faith (even if only peripherally or indirectly), that field necessarily abandons the realm of objectivity and ceases to aspire to be scientific. The urgency of this should not be taken lightly. Scholars meanwhile pretend they know more than the limited nature of the available evidence will allow us to know.
Phillip Davies summed it up well when he wrote:
<br />
<blockquote>
"Can biblical scholars persuade others that they conduct a legitimate academic discipline? Until they do, can they convince anyone that they have something to offer to the intellectual life of the modern world? Indeed, I think many of us have to convince ourselves first."<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br />
- - - - <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"</span><a href="http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Davies_Biblical_Scholars.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Do We Need Biblical Scholars?</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">" (2005)</span></div>
</blockquote>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
This wouldn't be so bad, except that biblical scholars don't take kindly to people telling them they are irrelevant or misinformed. Some of them get real mad, and then feel justified in letting their certitude spill over into open ridicule or vindictive denouncement.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
"Expertise" in NT studies essentially consists of having read and digested a great deal of the positions outlined in detail in the vast literature written by those "experts" which came before. These positions are catalogued and then weighed against each other by scholars, who then may write their elaborations or critiques of some previous scholar or another, and so on. Being thus so well-read, a New Testament scholar can rightly point to the differences and similarities between, say, the Matthean Moses parallels and the Lukan Elijah ones. He can perhaps raise Karl Barth's objections to Rudolf Bultmann's mythologizing if he's so inclined (or he may defend Bultmann's genius). A scholar can pit N. T. Wright against Dom Crossan if she wishes. An NT scholar may even speak about more empirically demonstrable things, such as the relative chronological order of texts, or even, with some limited authority, about more problematic things such as the nature, function and practice of the Pharisees in the period preceding the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, if he's bold enough and well-read enough in the pertinent materials. But a New Testament scholar <b><i>cannot</i></b> (not using the texts we have, anyway) claim any kind of real certainty regarding MOST of what little we know (or think we know) about Christian origins or a historical figure of Jesus, and this includes something as fundamental as his very existence.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
Crying "creationism!" is doubly erroneous. First, it sets up a relatively arbitrary discipline as more empirically vouchsafed than it actually is, and, second, it makes a ludicrous forced analogy of what are really quite incongruent things.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
It's as silly as crying "Hitler!" is.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
</div>
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</div>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: red;">1</span>- <span style="font-size: x-small;">Named after Mike Godwin, who first formulated the phrase as a collegiate experiment in memetics in 1990. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stated more formally: </span><br />
<big style="font-size: small;">"</big><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches </span>1<span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></i><big style="font-size: small;">"</big>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">2</span> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel, in <b>Encyclopaedia Biblica</b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">3</span> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">Ernst Käsemann's lecture in Oct of that year titled "<b>The Problem of the Historical Jesus</b>".</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">4</span> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">F.C. Burkitt, "<b>The Gospel History and Its Transmission</b>".</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">5</span> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">C. F. Burney, "<b>The Poetry of Our Lord</b>".</span><br />
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<br />
<h2>
Further reading:</h2>
<table cols="5">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Biblical-Studies-Hector-Avalos/dp/1591025362" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE2cNYFNXJLvt8lonadvccS8ZwR0lmDnt-_LZma0xKNASd8wUokZdyRwQiItnqy34CeswaacHGcxBRmnFP0bDVpsdwsq6YhfwZfyOLWIyt5HACTgSmwDmYAv4jSaW2FB8qdnwgcE-AHlFL/s1600/Avalos+book.jpg" width="100" /></a>
</td><td><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Criteria-Authenticity-Historical-Jesus-Research-Testament/dp/184127089X" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhui2bieQ-dz1QCADFK73JSxbQ2WSNpl992Kd65BwKMvOUvoIbr3tjyoNVDYzHWGfnKh5Xh6v4IpWeQdjk7nL9vAq5kz_v7sFYoe-ncar3_4k2fHaO3Zzok_9f3ix-IVhQ_MfQ1Nfj2SU93/s1600/PorterCover.jpg" width="100" /></a>
</td><td><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Quest_for_the_Plausible_Jesus.html?id=qB5ulgKx4OUC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcHnrN7oe2n2JmSeCIo-m2HoJvCpeTIaVnzjNpnAJiwpV5Vms10lXJz5dsD5Yb8LA8eKS0P1zDZFoHLr4TFxKzQG6MDurtyrSo0vO-_rDJthqig9nC5L4sljWaC2JVDN0VCaUXbsx8NEm/s320/Plausible+Jesus+Cover.jpg" width="100" /></a>
</td><td><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Criteria-Demise-Authenticity-Chris/dp/0567377237" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKq3jpl7RTH2XFeyR9rQtEPB1xHJTl2t9dMAd_lq3eI0w5TAuEtTZ4qQI17G9XjAYvl-bzn_n_ynp6lXHtGEgNgdvxOCTmGRoZEYkZPYRjsHFnC7elLtYamhhlQmL5nSuJ8adTBCg9chq/s1600/Criteria.jpg" width="100" /></a>
</td><td><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Jesus-Down-Size-Christianity/dp/0812696565" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy73lJk0LFJB8GOq8x1wyeuv4ZpDR7VjQx7x0-jzBOWlYGJ0ijZcM62_xR8RXx6S_HZ4Q15dyoES2ENlONcPd-n7Dz28GpydbNEdPycVog4RO7_WWWhvkVwb665_5nRFLsh3zvsy4mJymB/s1600/GAWellsSize.jpg" width="100" /></a>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<ul style="margin-left: 0.33in;">
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Biblical-Studies-Hector-Avalos/dp/1591025362"><span style="font-size: large;">The End of Biblical Studies</span></a> by Hector Avalos (2007)<br />—A must-read critique of the problems with the methods and the motives in New Testament studies.<br />
</li>
<br /><br />
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Criteria-Demise-Authenticity-Chris/dp/0567377237">Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity</a></span> by Chris Keith & Anthony LeDonne (editors) (2012) </li>
<br /><br />
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Jesus-Down-Size-Christianity/dp/0812696565" target="_blank">Cutting Jesus Down to Size</a></span> by G.A. Wells (2009) — <br /> ... Wells traces the discipline’s German beginnings, exploring the problems in the New Testament that prompted scholars to revise traditional theories of the scriptures’ origins. Wells then traces the development and reception of these views from the 18th century to today. </li>
<br /><br />
<li><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Quest_for_the_Plausible_Jesus.html?id=qB5ulgKx4OUC"><span style="font-size: large;">The Quest for the Plausible Jesus</span></a> by Gerd Theissen & Dagmar Winter (2002)<br />—A critique of the criteria used in historical Jesus scholarship, focusing especially on that of dissimilarity.<br />
</li>
<br /><br />
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Criteria-Authenticity-Historical-Jesus-Research-Testament/dp/184127089X">Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research</a></span> by Stanley E. Porter (2004) </li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="color: white;">#mythicism</span><br />
<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-73189265226942559982015-02-13T13:29:00.001-08:002015-02-13T21:58:01.284-08:00Neil Godfrey — Vridar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii_OHWHLxMgr0Q0OHHSLCziB4pxxzuMyGJ5huJW3ILI0Y2ogDLhklYx_kNR4Z6XGY-k0UhcXK-u6TvWXFzMcDQWjvY1lV64jUOVLHHHx0wgT4FbWlK9hxE4uPqqedPKi5_2lzCDomxwdhN/s1600/NeilGodfreyWEB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii_OHWHLxMgr0Q0OHHSLCziB4pxxzuMyGJ5huJW3ILI0Y2ogDLhklYx_kNR4Z6XGY-k0UhcXK-u6TvWXFzMcDQWjvY1lV64jUOVLHHHx0wgT4FbWlK9hxE4uPqqedPKi5_2lzCDomxwdhN/s1600/NeilGodfreyWEB.jpg" height="253" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<h2>
The Good</h2>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span>eil Godfrey runs and maintains the <a href="http://vridar.org/" target="_blank">Vridar</a> website (along with Tim Widowfield).[<sup style="color: red; font-weight: bold;"><big>1</big></sup>] Active for nearly a decade now, Vridar is one of the best available resources for the elucidation and purveyance of mythicist thought. The only other source that is arguably as influential as Vridar in this respect is Robert Price's <a href="http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/biblegeek.php" target="_blank">Bible Geek podcast</a>, I think. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the style of discourse that is always evident in Vridar is its even-handedness. Neil in fact seems to go out of his way to make sure that the kind of reactionary, rancorous knee-jerking that is the mainstay of most discussions of this sensitive topic is kept to a minimum. That goes for everyone, as he is wont to disapprove of and to censure <b><i>both</i></b> the haughty or hostile historicist <b><i>and</i></b> the overly derisive or dismissive mythicist. Simply confessing to being a mythicist won't win one special privilege on Vridar; the topic/argument in question is always the focus. That a bad mythicist argument is no better than a bad historicist argument is implicit. The historicity/ahistoricity of Jesus is not some sports event or political campaign to be "won" by partisan solidarity. It is a conceptual and theoretical complex of ideas which, because of the paucity of evidence (both textual and archaeological) make it a necessarily abstract enterprise from the git go. For both sides of the question. Neil's judicious manner as moderator is commendable. </div>
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Another of the blog's strengths is its breadth <i>viz</i> mythicism. It spans the gamut from Acharya S. to Frank Zindler ... from docetism to Drews to Doherty. This site seems to leave no stone unturned in its search for a historical Jesus. I highly recommend <a href="http://vridar.org/" target="_blank">Vridar</a> to anyone interested in New Testament minimalism specifically (or New Testament studies in general). Its analyses and discussions are fair, informed, and rather erudite. </div>
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The <sup><small>(Not-so)</small></sup> Bad</h2>
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Like Robert Price, Godfrey and Widowfield don't venture to propose a definitive Christ-myth theory. Though this could be seen as a kind of indecisiveness, it is quite clear from the scope of the posts on <b>Vridar</b> that this is far from the case. On the contrary, if anything, it is a tacit affirmation of the provisional nature of the subject. Many of the cocksure and/or partisan bloggers out there who are busy making a woeful noise resound re: mythicism would benefit from the kind of sober reflective restraint evinced in Neil and Tim's approach to the subject.
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<sup>1</sup> — Tim's contributions are as insightful and as incisive as Neil's, but I will focus on Neil here, as he seems to be the most vocal and prolific and invested of the two, and also just to avoid having to review them separately, since I see their blog as a fairly consistently-framed and concerted effort.
Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-22777523227739480882015-01-28T18:24:00.001-08:002020-07-13T15:02:00.846-07:00Continuity — The Acts Puzzle<span style="color: black;">.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdn9PHbdjW29e9KTS9M0XlXPN6njiaPNk1SFFaS-nGzGdqexMP52b_W4b36VQVzLPFOlvgSoWgMRUai7apSoKHRuSId0VMJwtZodJAbcsGgGjdlilEwnfECc-RucJVC5u5UhAA07dSRs3D/s1600/godzillaLeo.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602964244722059074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdn9PHbdjW29e9KTS9M0XlXPN6njiaPNk1SFFaS-nGzGdqexMP52b_W4b36VQVzLPFOlvgSoWgMRUai7apSoKHRuSId0VMJwtZodJAbcsGgGjdlilEwnfECc-RucJVC5u5UhAA07dSRs3D/s320/godzillaLeo.jpg" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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Robert Price has used an analogy for years to illustrate the principle of analogy as it relates to these ancient Christian texts. Imagine that you get home from work, get yourself some iced tea, and sit down on the couch and click on the remote control; the first image you see on the TV screen is that of a giant reptilian creature wreacking havoc in what seems to be Tokyo Harbor, tearing high tension cables down, scaring the bejeezuz out of helpless people on subway trains, who scream bug eyed as the creature looks in on them. What would your first reaction to these images be? It certainly would not be, "Oh! Look! CNN is on!!" No. Of course not. You are familiar with the genre of Toho Studio movies and make the right connection. "<b><i>Aha!</i></b> A Godzilla movie! My daughter must have left the TV on the Sci-Fi channel." Right. This is the principle of analogy expressed very simply.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
But what if, instead of the Sci-Fi channel, it turns out that this footage is being shown on a news network? What if at the bottom of the screen you see the CNN logo being displayed, with an accompanying right-to-left flowing ticker-tape below the main image—updating you about fatalities and damage caused by this terrible creature etc.? This, in a sense, is what we have in the case of the book we know as The Acts of the Apostles. It is a tendentious, religious patchwork of different genres and styles trying to pass itself off specifically as a historical document that describes actual, real events accurately, though we know the events are fictional.</div>
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Most telling in all of this recent brainstorming I've been engaging in, ironically, is the fact that the <i>one </i>source which explicitly claims to be a history of the apostolic tradition, is virtually silent on the very matter it purports to illuminate. Regarding the earliest period of Christianity, the narrative is meager. The “Twelve” are there at the beginning of Acts but they seem more like paper dolls meant to validate the story than authentic people. They are obviously there to "testify" to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, only to then disappear from the story altogether. Except for Cephas and James, nothing is known about either the teaching or of the eventual fate[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>1</b></big></sup>] of any of the supposed earliest witnesses of the life of Jesus. </div>
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Yet apologist appeals to the “martyrdom” of this seminal group of founders are still forwarded as 'evidence' of the verisimilitude of the claims of the religion. This is yet another example of consensus-based-on-conjecture that needs to be corrected if any progress is going to be made in the field of study. The book of Acts, traditionally seen as a sequel to the third gospel, seems more like the third book of a trilogy to my eyes, a trilogy from which the second book is missing(!). Acts’ sequence of the formation of Christianity leaves much to be desired. Jesus died. His companions, a school of Galilean peasant fishermen, ran and hid. Then, all of a sudden, the spirit descended upon them and, behold, they were transformed into the mighty apostolic Jerusalem community, the authority that every other church looked to as a model. But I have a problem with this all-too-brief cursory glossing. </div>
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How did the Jerusalem community achieve its pivotal focal status? Was their authority <i><b>really</b></i> just magically bestowed on them one midsummer day? Why doesn‘t the Acts provide more detail? There is a step missing in its logic. How the threadbare account of such a continuity in the Acts went unquestioned through the centuries is hard to understand, given this nether-grey zone in the record. The author and/or editor(s) of the Acts succeeded in reconciling a Pauline variety of Christianity with its rival Petrine form. This done, it simply became second nature to make the inference. Voilà! Another case of consensus-by-inertia, consensus-by-default, that I have already pointed to previously. One of the ways that the author manages this merger of ideologies is by attributing a Jewish piety to Paul that is inconsistent with that of the author of the epistles. Another way of suggesting a continuity is by putting speeches in the mouth of Peter that are essentially Pauline in content. Accurately recalling speeches, needless to say, is too much to ask from a historical record from the days before tape recorders or instant replay. Such documentation of what was said on a given occasion is therefore necessarily a composition of the author's own design, paraphrased according to the needs of his purpose for writing.<br />
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Writing speeches for historical characters that fit the desired sectarian/didactic function is a convention of ancient historiography. Here’s Thucydides on his technique for this:</div>
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<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">“</span>In this history I’ve made set speeches, some of which were delivered just before and others during the war [the Peloponnesian—Thucydides had been an eyewitness and participant]. I found it difficult to remember the precise words which were used in the speeches, which I listened to myself, and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty. So my method has been, while keeping closely to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what in my opinion was called for by each situation<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">”</span>[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>2</b></big></sup>]</blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Some Facts about Acts</i></span><br />
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<ol>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>We don’t know <span style="font-weight: bold;">who</span> wrote it.</i></span><br />
Hypotheses have been raised, certainly, the first being Irenaeus of Lyons near the end of the second century. He based his attribution on the famous “we" passages. But even if you accept those “we”s as indication that the author was some kind of seafaring companion of the historical Paul, the question must be asked: By what criteria are we justified in pinpointing Luke, <i>specifically</i>, among Paul’s many friends, as the author? The process likely went something like this:<br />
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—“<i>Hmm …</i><span style="font-style: italic;">Let’s see, which one of Paul’s homeys was likely educated and kinda smart?……Why … <b>LUKE </b>!!! … Yes! …He has greek name … He was a doctor… Of course!!</span>”<br />
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Irenaeus' methodology in linking them, though slightly better than that which he used in his mystical musing on why there <i>must </i>four gospels, is still just a conjecture in the end.<br />
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We simply don’t know who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Insisting that we do is no more than apologetic posturing.<br />
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>We don’t know <span style="font-weight: bold;">when</span> it was written.</i></span><br />
Some people use those eyewitness-friendly “we”s to show that it was written in the late 80s (though I’ve seen apologists even date it as early as the 40s!) , as this would really be the latest that anyone could really believe that a companion of Paul could have been alive to write it. Whoever wrote it (presumably, this nameless old friend of Paul’s) would have been quite an old man by then. But this line of reasoning assumes without argument that in those passages the author was recounting <i>his own</i> experience, in the first person, and that he consciously is claiming to be Paul’s companion. The other, just-as-plausible possibility, namely that the author might have instead been quoting from one of his “many” sources (c.f. Luk 1:1), is simply ignored in its favor.<br />
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Other internal arguments for the dating of Acts are even <i>less </i>secure than the ones involving “we“ passages; they rely on the (just-as-tentative) dating of the third gospel in the 80s, which is somewhat uncritically accepted in another paper-doll consensus. However, I don’t think that this is quite as secure as people believe.<br />
For some detailed explorations on this particular sub-topic, I recommend the following books<b>:</b><br />
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<ul style="margin-left: .67in; margin-right: .75in;">
<li>David Trobisch - <span style="font-weight: bold;">The First Edition of the New Testament</span> </li>
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<li>Mikeal Carl Parsons & Richard I. Pervo - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Rethinking the unity of Luke and Acts</span></li>
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<li>Richard Pervo - <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling its Story</span></li>
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<li>John Knox - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Marcion and the New Testament</span></li>
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<li>Joseph Tyson - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle </span>[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>3</b></big></sup>] </li>
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A crucial point: if those arguments that are advanced to date the third gospel to post-70 are accepted, it is not altogether clear why we must keep this “Luke-Acts” to pre-100, unless an argument from the “we” passages is introduced (which we've already seen is historically useless).<br />
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The fact is that there is no evidence from external sources for the reception of the third gospel until the second half of the second century at the earliest, and no evidence for the Acts until slightly later. This does not <i>require</i> a second century dating of Luke-Acts, but it does make it difficult to rule it out. Once we accept a post-70 C.E. dating to the synoptics, it's not clear to me why we should limit provenance to the first century. </li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>There are in the Acts some verifiable historical errors.</i></span> By this I don’t mean the inconsistencies and contradictions with the Pauline epistles, although there are those, too.<br />
For example, the words put into Gamaliel’s mouth (<i>in Acts 5:36–37</i>) and into the tribune’s mouth (<i>in 21:38</i>, which seems to be a conflation of three different events, as detailed by Josephus in <i>Antiquities 20:8:5-6,10</i> and in <i>War 2:13:3-5</i>) are problematic in this regard (the Gamaliel one is especially so, on a couple of different levels—he gets both the sequence and the time frame of the events he relates wrong).</li>
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The Westar Institute, notorious for its Jesus Seminar, which caused an inconspicuous ripple in the ordinarily insular pond of New Testament studies in the 80s and 90s of the twentieth century, recently reported the findings of its newer <i><b>Acts Seminar</b></i>, a continuation of their earlier work done on the gospels. </div>
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Among the conclusions reached by these scholars (these will come as a shock to the pious, orthodox "believer"—cover your ears if this is you) are:</div>
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<ol>
<li>The use of Acts as a source for history needs serious critical reassessment.</li>
<li>Acts was written in the early decades of the second century at the earliest.</li>
<li>The author of Acts used the letters of Paul as one of his sources.</li>
<li>Except for the letters of Paul, no other historical source can be definitively identified for Acts.</li>
<li>Acts can no longer be considered an independent source for the life and mission of Paul.</li>
<li>Contrary to Acts 1-7, Jerusalem was not the birthplace of Christianity. (I'd like to meditate on this some more.)</li>
<li>Acts constructed its story on the model of epic and related literature.</li>
<li>The author of Acts created names for characters as a storytelling device.</li>
<li>Acts constructed its story to fit ideological goals.</li>
<li>As a product of the second century, Acts is a historical resource for understanding second century Christianity.</li>
</ol>
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Richard Pervo says—and it's hard to disagree:—“Acts is a beautiful house that readers may happily admire, but it is not a home in which the historian can responsibly live.” Luke did not even aspire to write a real history (overt vouching in the opening verses notwithstanding) but rather told his story to defend the gentile communities of his day (the early 2nd century) as the legitimate heirs of Israelite religion. It's the same question that keeps popping up in this exploration; namely, Why is a group of gentile god-fearers so intent on claiming the Israelite/Judean God and the Israelite/Judean scriptures as its own? </div>
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<i><b>That </b></i>is the kernel in the puzzle.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_</span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>1</sup> - The one exception is the mention of at least the death of James the son of Zebedee in Acts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>2</sup> - <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">History of the Peloponnesian War</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>3</sup> - Stephan Huller has written a series of blog posts (he intended once to publish it as a monograph called Against Polycarp) that goes into this same late-dating of Acts territory. I enjoyed it. It's spread out within his blog. Just go there and do a search for "Against Polycarp." His theory is a more assertive and muscular version of Trobisch's. - Sort of. <a href="http://www.stephanhuller.blogspot.com/">http://www.stephanhuller.blogspot.com/</a></span><br />
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Further Reading:</h2>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Edition-New-Testament/dp/0195112407" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji1EOnFFGLki7dm1NwC7w93CEdJDQvY9juuumrmutO7fqsL0FkhU8ed-3uNuxGLqMnrb62R_GpIsn5KWdRfjQqegugaVvB-ft7PhSO68inlCBN7Oddzo7OYTrShUwlex4wOfRoDtLMRTcJ/s1600/TrobischCover.jpg" width="100" /></a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Unity-Luke-Mikeal-Parsons/dp/0800627504" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV8KZuauRNC8bh0ptUoQZrQ0xNt2XuxZhtFvubZIkwOrqlXWiB3Da9iSstlCZjxVjiz0KqvcosSIrp-Ze2FqJDTGZYrvbmwgnd-Sk4CXHKEl9JdwDwhl7DfpmyyQlsYHEi5zjhUXJhHN0h/s1600/MikealParsonsPervo.jpg" width="100" /></a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Mystery-Acts-Unraveling-Story/dp/159815012X" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZz8wL7u8u_R-FYE2updyr7Nrz5mzN3tiH9xKxsKilTOUOyBtUWZk4qodp659ZTgFQB4JVhSO9wZ7wOx9m9V4iAy7MvfauN73ZOk5RxxO8k6bd_OJxTxmHntPfK1k1Hz0ysbRE3IhOwSNk/s1600/PervoCover.jpg" width="100" /></a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marcion-New-Testament-John-Knox/dp/0404161839" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf4rVhKIV0QbAocwj5x66XMrngEIy7XA5X0Po1EZxx-VPbiJ5yaVVbSvLXsFbfKLsFnyTFGWp0YvnwS8QCNGAnnwQxoHr1WJGQpJtasL5yNkZDYjPU69CXovde7757MhVKC0g5m_-jVVsU/s1600/KnoxMarcionCover.jpg" width="100" /></a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marcion-Luke-Acts-A-Defining-Struggle/dp/1570036500" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3_cEubCQHc_6AvUa0zqM8f8b_nUAq64o4UmFkn4dAPw83n4zTHu9F2Jr-PmCVqq4ZlHMiLD2NyGAn226uXi336a01OVWBlc2q6atj2_hf1yVoKuxDm51UpcqOsx1Bbd0NI00eQIGFBcI/s1600/TysonMarcionCover.jpg" width="100" /></a>
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<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-1095673913393377992015-01-26T08:18:00.001-08:002015-01-26T08:18:45.455-08:00Continuity — The Artist Formally Known as John <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPyTS4E6eI_Cdof48gU3HhhyoM5XiG6auGlonIe8qNckq_Hjrpry3_qVITIktgh-KmMfgAz9kfxQYG1Xq4ukhlQZlrSFSmskJeRkiUrFIwxwfTFQGxmJeCOl3nR_awFnKqtd4DmIwnHRAj/s1600/cropped-jesus_mosaic2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b></b></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ND0Ml8LL6J4N1kWgCzKtsLCNKoY1NQOifVArWT0OitWJvw0Vj55IAJCL1p9aSKRmTBw6vryl4KpDfKlzYOztwhRK3m2M0BcVo5Kkxu5f0k4fJtOAWyJ8i-rvs-n5sNt4L_a_tDJI5SLU/s1600/gnostic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ND0Ml8LL6J4N1kWgCzKtsLCNKoY1NQOifVArWT0OitWJvw0Vj55IAJCL1p9aSKRmTBw6vryl4KpDfKlzYOztwhRK3m2M0BcVo5Kkxu5f0k4fJtOAWyJ8i-rvs-n5sNt4L_a_tDJI5SLU/s200/gnostic.jpg" height="170" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>W</b></span>here the synoptics purport to be a kind of biography, the fourth gospel is foremost a work of art. Like most great works of art, its aim is not a representational one. Art, though often achieving a remarkable resemblance with what it seeks to represent, is not primarily about representation; it is about hyperbole, about using symbols and metaphors to evoke psychical and/or emotional responses in an audient. The Gospel of John is the most poetic and symbolical gospel, having by far the highest christology. Here, Jesus goes full superhero. He is not just some guy who heals and impresses folks with his prophetic acumen, he is the very <b>S</b>on, <i>sent </i>by the Father, who is simultaneously in mystical <i>union </i>with this Father. For a clear example of this hyper-exaltation, consider that whereas Mark’s gospel pictures Jesus as having received his messianic vocation at his baptism, and the Pauline epistles think it came at the moment of resurrection (Philippians 2), and Matthew’s gospel pictures it happening at his conception. John’s gospel raises the bar. Its author pictures Jesus as the <i><b>Logos</b></i>, that is, as a manifestation of the pre-existing, eternal logic of God. In John, Jesus is timeless and universal. The use of this term, <i>Logos</i>, in the book's opening hymn recalls Philo of Alexandria’s early (he was a contemporary of Jesus) attempts to systematize the Hebrew faith into a Hellenized form. But <i>logos</i> is in fact a <i><b>Greek</b></i> concept which informed Philo's philosophical understanding of God and transcendence. What Philo postulated as an attribute of God, John fleshed out and made axiomatic. John creates a poetic incarnation of this facet of God, intending to convince the early Christian communities in the eastern provinces of the empire of the divinity of Jesus. John thereby emphasizes Jesus’ “son-of-god”-ship more than the other evangelists. While the other gospels certainly use this term, Son of God, for Jesus, John’s gospel elaborates on this concept, and even goes as far as to subtly <i>equate </i>the Son with the Father. To see the son <i>is </i>to see the father. To accept the son <i>is </i>to accept the father. This identity is one of the central motifs in the book. </div>
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While in Mark and the synoptics Jesus refuses to perform signs, the structure of John centers on the performance of these signs. These signs serve to reveal Jesus’ true identity as God himself. Through these signs, Jesus is revealed as the fulfillment of certain Jewish ideals or festivals. The previous gospels also emphasize that Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism, but John ratchets it up a few notches. </div>
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The vast majority of John is NOT paralleled in the synoptic gospels. There are no exorcisms in John. There are also no parables in John. Parables, of great importance to the synoptics as representing Jesus’ idiomatic didactic style, are completely absent in John. But perhaps the most striking dissimilarity between John and the synoptic gospels is the fact that in John’s gospel Jesus dies on the day of preparation for the Passover festival, that is, on the day that the lambs are slaughtered. In the synoptics, the last supper IS the Passover meal. This is an irreconcilable contradiction.</div>
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Despite apologist claims to the contrary, the gospel never actually claims to be authored by the beloved disciple. The author claims to have the eyewitness testimony of the beloved disciple (John 19:35), which is quite a different thing.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who was his audience?</span><br />
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The primacy which this gospel had in the eastern provinces suggests that it came either from Asia Minor or possibly Alexandria. Valentinus and his disciples knew this gospel in 160 or 170 or so (see Irenaeus).</div>
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Three times in John characters are thrown “out of the synagogue.” This repetitive motif might reflect the friction around the turn of the first century, when the authorities in the synagogues distinguish themselves from the “Nazarenes,” who were attending the synagogues up until this point (as Jews or as god-fearers? —the New Testament suggests the latter ...) One of the prayers read at synagogue services was even changed at this point to reject these Nazarenes.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">“</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">F</span>or the apostates, let there be no hope. Let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our day. Let the Nazarenes and the heretics be destroyed in a moment … <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span><br />
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It distinguishes between the Nazarenes and the heretics, perhaps indicating that the Christians were never regarded as part of the “in-crowd” in the first place, which again suggests their god-fearer status. It calls them “arrogant.” Commentators have suggested that these stories about getting thrown out of the synagogue are references to an emerging rabbinical antagonism. </div>
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John’s teachings about Jesus are laid out in long philosophical discourses. The synoptic emphasis on the “kingdom of God” is missing from John, though, as in Luke, the “spirit” plays a role. But in John, this role is magnified. One distinctive feature of John‘s gospel is the emphasis on loving one another. The synoptics touch on this love when they refer to the Law (love the Lord your god, etc), but an emphasis on love, (in the sense of <i>caritas</i> or <i>agape</i>) however, is not characteristic of Matthew or Luke. (It <i>is </i>in Paul - 1st Cor 13, however.)</div>
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The opening prologue in the Gospel of John contains many of the recurring themes that appear later throughout the gospel. Jesus is the Logos, the “word” of god, the logic of god, the self-expression of god, the wisdom of god, the utterance of god, an emanation from god. Though not so much thematically, the prologue recalls the <i>framing </i>of the creation story in Genesis (“In the beginning…” . . . in Genesis, god creates by uttering words). This Jesus can thus be identified with the utterance of god that was active in the creation of the world. To the Jew . . . God’s utterance IS the Torah. Thus, this is amazingly high christology compared to that of Mark‘s gospel. This prologue reflects a Hellenistic background to the gospel. The use of the Logos metaphor would have been familiar to anyone who was educated and familiar with stoic philosophy. (e.g. the god-fearers, who seem to be stoics in need of the Jewish god—again, the great mystery of Christian origins) Logos is the organizing principle of the universe. Logos is reason - rationality. Already in this prologue the themes of “life”, “light” are being unpacked. Jesus is an emissary sent from god, coexisting with him. Are these Gnostic allusions? I think so.</div>
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The interaction between John the Baptizer and Jesus is unique in John as well. “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” he has the Baptizer say. This introduces the concept of Jesus as redeemer for human sin. We saw previously this idea in the Pauline corpus. In John, this is a key interpretation. It corresponds with John’s interpretation of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Passover festival (at least in his chronology of the last supper incident- thematically, or traditionally, the celebration of Passover is not about redemption. <i><b>That</b></i> is more the purview of the Atonement feast - which is perhaps why the scapegoat theme is also introduced - that is, as a way to bridge the gap between Atonement and Passover). The lamb did, after all, denoted the emancipation of the Jews from captivity . . . and so a hybridization of these two festival would make sense to one who sought such a bridge. More later. This merger also extends to the concept of the Eucharist in a way . . . For the lamb gets eaten as part of the ritual. </div>
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In the first chapter of john, you can find pretty much every single title of Jesus given in individual gospels: Son of god, son of man, the light, the messiah, the Logos. There is NO messianic secret in John. Far from it, John boasts his divine status. The structure of the gospel revolves around the “signs” which prove his divinity, and which he performs openly. Jesus just loves showing off his superpowers in GºJohn.</div>
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The festival of Tabernacles (tents —booths) takes place in the fall. This festival features drawing of water on each of the seven days during the feast. Also, there is a use of Lamps and of light interfused into the celebration. On one of Jesus’ visits to Jerusalem during this festival, on the last day, Jesus proclaims, “let anyone who is thirsty come to me.” He’s not just the light, he the water of life too. These are proto-gnostic terms as well, which is not hard to see.</div>
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At (8:39) . . . . Jesus is accused of having a demon. He replies:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">“</span>I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks it and he is the judge. Very truly I tell you that whoever keeps my word will never see death.# The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say, ‘whoever keeps my word will never taste death; are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be? If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me. He of who you say, ‘He is our god,’ though you do not know him. But I know him. If I would say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep His word. Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he might see my day. He saw it and was glad.’ Then the Judeans said to him, ‘you are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am!’ … <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span></blockquote>
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“I Am” was the name of God as told to Moses by the burning bush on Mt Sinai. Jesus’ little paroxysm is a poetic alliteration on this same theme. This is the christological high water mark in the Gospel of John. If the prologue wasn't enough to convince the reader of Jesus' divine element, here’s an explicit self-proclamation of Jesus as God Himself! The entire gospel seems like a succession of Jesus’ christological proclamations. After one of these, the Judean took up stones to stone him. Why didn’t they? What stops them? I mean . . . . If talking this way is what made them crucify him, . . . Why couldn't they just stone him like they stoned any other blasphemer? Right then and there, like they did for Stephen. Is there a hole in the plot here?</div>
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His last discourse at the last supper: “Truly I tell you that whoever receives one who I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives He who sent me.” He seems to like to remind them of his emissary status. This last discourse establishes a chain of command from God through Jesus through the disciples. They are now heirs to Jesus’ majesty by proxy. (does it not follow that the disciples are also equivalent to God in the same way viz the audience of gospel? It's an interesting question)<br />
In the GºJohn, Jesus keeps repeating this self-identification with the father—ad nauseum … (Something’s wrong with this guy, anyone would say) But then . . . suddenly . . . some humility to lessen the smugness a bit: 'Those who believe will do greater things than me.'</div>
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Then comes the paraclete bit. In the gospel of John, Jesus descends from the father, then ascends to him but pledges to send the paraclete (helper, comforter, spirit) on his behalf (to help with what? - it seems like the mission would be the message, to borrow a phrase from Marshall McLuhan ... no?) — Chap 17 verse 18 . . .<br />
As you have sent me to the world, so I have sent them . . . . This is preemptively adding credibility to the apostles (the "sent-out" ones). </div>
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Next comes the arrest and execution of Jesus.<br />
Like we already saw, Jesus dies on the day of preparation. </div>
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Question: if Jesus is the Passover lamb, which is the implication in John, what does painting the door lintel with his blood protect Israel from? If the answer is “sin” then there are mixed metaphors at work, as I hinted at earlier. The lamb doesn’t die (in other words) to make up for the sins of the people. The lamb dies to limit the angel of death’s killing spree to the Egyptians. This is a little confusing. Why mix these metaphors without explanation? Might it be just the result of misunderstood Judaism on the part of god-fearers? </div>
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The pattern that the fourth evangelist uses throughout his gospel is this: Jesus does a sign, and then he discourses on the significance of it. The elders get pissed because he’s healing on the Sabbath (this was already allowed by Torah . . . thus this charge of unlawfulness from the authorities is highly unlikely to have been historically based). The Judean authorities were seeking to kill him, so the author of this gospel asserts, for healing people on the Sabbath and for calling god his own father. This, I think, is ridiculous, reflecting an inadequate hyper-legalistic understanding of the Pharisees, who were used to this kind of thing and had never (not in any surviving contemporaneous record we have at least) sought the execution of a man for these things. One could imagine that they thought he was making himself equal to god, I guess, but the way it is expressed so casually and without any exposition, it seems an unlikely reaction, especially in light of Jesus saying, “I can do nothing on my own.”<br />
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I'll end for now by pointing out that there is no mention of James in the Gospel According to John.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who?</span></b><br />
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At face value, The Gospel According to Luke purports to be a long letter to a friend of the author, Theophilus, who is presumably unsure (or indecisive) about the details in Christianity's foundational story. The author aims to set the record straight for Theophilus once and for all. Viewed in its epistolary function, this gospel is unlike the others in that it is explicitly addressed to a single individual in this way, and in that it also purports to describe the author's methods and purpose. The author of this gospel presents himself as an anthologist, an historian. This is no myth that he's relating; these things he describes are actual historical happenings, verified by "eyewitnesses," he says. One wonders how many people were questioning the veracity of the accounts in Mark and "<b>Q<i>"</i></b>[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>4*</b></big></sup>] at the time that Luke wrote. Apparently, there were enough to inspire him to write his "definitive" version, lest Theophilus fall prey to these detractors' doubts.</div>
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With this apologetic aim in mind, Luke explicitly claims to be using eyewitness material in order that Theophilus, “may know the truth concerning these things.” He decided to write "an orderly account," implying that the versions of the story written before his own were somehow deficient or disarrayed. He doesn't specify what texts were in front of him as he wrote, but Mark and Q are surely among these sources he feels are less-than-adequate, in need of revision, of 'tidying up.' </div>
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What do we know about this author? An examination of internal evidence reveals a few things: First, his Greek is excellent, even elegant. Of all the gospels, in fact, Luke has the richest vocabulary. [<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>1</b></big></sup>] He is versed in political terminology and uses it accurately. He is obviously well educated and very familiar with the writing norms and conventions of his time. </div>
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In weaving his tale, whereas Matthew follows the form of Mark closely, Luke strays from this order, favoring instead that of the hypothetical <b>Q</b> in the flow of his narrative. Some of the central organizational themes in Luke include<b>:</b> a concern with outcasts<b>;</b> the “Spirit” as a "character" in the gospel; the centrality of Jerusalem, and, ironically, the simultaneous centrality of gentiles as co-inheritors in God’s salvation scheme. While he does seem to have some knowledge of Judean ideas, especially regarding the soteriological messianism mentioned previously, his repeated insistent championing of the gentiles as co-inheritors of God's salvation makes it very likely that he is of the gentile variety of Christian. Even when some apologists attribute the other three gospels to Judean writers, as is the norm, that of Luke is often recognized as being the work of a Greek for this reason.</div>
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<b>Where does Judaism factor in?</b></div>
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Luke’s genealogy, instead of going all the way back to Abraham as Matthew‘s does, goes all the way back to Adam, that is, to humanity‘s very beginning. Whereas Matthew’s birth narrative is a midrash on the Story of Moses, the birth narrative in Luke is less regal, less extravagant, more down to earth and humble. An angel announces to shepherds (not to kings or exotic Persian astrologers, as in Matthew) that the savior has come. For Luke Jesus is an Elijah-type all-inclusive savior who will save the world—the <i><b>whole</b> </i>world, gentiles included. This stress on radical inclusivism is there from the beginning, always supporting the notion that Jesus has come not just for Jews but for all people. Old man Simeon (a Jew) recognized Jesus as “<i>a light for revelation to the <b>Gentiles</b></i>”[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>2</b></big></sup>]when Mary and Joseph had brought him to the Temple to be circumcised.</div>
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Had there been a significant Jewish population in the community that Luke represented, I doubt that he would have stressed the gentile role in salvation as much as he does, especially at a time (consensus says 85–90 CE) when Christians were reportedly being kicked out of the synagogues and even ritually cursed.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>3</b></big></sup>]</div>
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Typology is as important a hermeneutic tool to Luke as it is to Matthew. But in Luke’s case the chosen typology is that of Jesus as the new Elijah, the super prophet. That character also appears and figures in the stories told in Mark and Matthew, but in those two gospels, the Elijah/Elisha cycle type is sometimes applied more to John the Baptizer, as a kind of <i>herald </i>of Jesus. In Luke the type is always imposed on Jesus <i>himself</i>.</div>
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Some of the titles that the author of Luke applies to Jesus reflect some of the other Hellenistic elements he associates with him. For example, of the synoptic gospels, only Luke’s applies the title <i>soter</i> (savior) to Jesus. This was a common designation on many of the surviving inscriptions of ancient Rome. As part of the honor/benefactor culture of the Mediterranean region, the title would be bestowed on benefactors and sponsors. In its first century context, the word was often used literally. A savior would “save” one, from disease, from foreign invasion, from hardship, from slavery, <i>etc.</i> This was certainly not a new concept in the Greco-Roman world. It’s a down-to-earth salvation the word implies in the Greco Roman context, not the sophisticated, convoluted other-worldly salvation that the word implies in the Christianity we grew up with. The Jews had these savior types as well (Moses, Joshua). The title was in fact conferred on a bunch of ancient figures. Gods and leaders especially would receive it often (Pompey, Asclepius). Augustus, in fact, was regarded as a savior and as “son of god.” What’s more, the period of peace and prosperity that he was credited with ushering in was regarded by many as “<i>evangelion</i>,” that is, as “good news.” It may come as a surprise to many Christians, but these titles and words were demonstrably inherited from a Hellenic matrix, not a Judean one.. </div>
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The first time that Jesus speaks publicly after his baptism, he is given the scroll of Isaiah at the synagogue in Nazareth.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span><i>he Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. </i><br />
<i>And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. </i><br />
<i>And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son</i>? <span style="font-size: x-large;">"</span> (Luke 4:18–22)</blockquote>
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In his interpretation, Jesus seems to be staking a claim for this exalted position as the abstract savior messiah that I profiled previously, the anointed one of God. Everyone is impressed by his announcement and they start to wonder at his authority. “<i>No prophet is accepted in his home town</i>,” he says. He thus refers to himself as a prophet in Luke, and immediately mentions Elijah (4:25). </div>
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One of the texts relevant to the Elijah typology is in Malachi:</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">B</span>ehold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD</i> — (Malachi 4:5)<span style="font-size: x-large;">"</span><br />
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Luke stresses the Elijah connection in another way by paralleling a story from 1st Kings in which Elijah visits a widow, whose son has died. Elijah raises the son from the dead. Likewise, Jesus revives a dead man upon entering the town of Nain with his disciples (7:11–16). Fear seized all those who witnessed it and they glorified God, saying, “<i>A great prophet has arisen among us, and god has looked favorably on his people.</i>”</div>
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Luke is a highly educated gentile Christian writing to a gentile Christian conscript. The central theme in Luke is the legitimization and inclusion of the gentiles. He keeps harping on it. Once again, we run into the puzzling phenomenon of someone using Jewish symbols and citations to demonstrate to <i><b>gentiles </b></i>that Judaism has been superseded by radical universalism (shhh . . . don't tell the rabbis!).</div>
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There is no mention of James in the Gospel of Luke, despite the gospel's emphasis on the centrality of Jerusalem in the ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus. This is not as problematic as it is in Matthew, but it is still cause for pause.<br />
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<sup>1 </sup>- <span style="font-size: x-small;">Luke uses 2055 words, of which 957 (nearly half!) are <i>hapax legomena</i>.— <i>i.e.</i> a fancy way to say that a word only appears once in a text. This is over 800 more than Matthew.</span><br />
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<sup>2 </sup>- <span style="font-size: x-small;">Luke 2:21–38 — Simeon recognizes Jesus, who has been brought to the Temple to get circumcised. Ironically, he here proclaims Jesus the savior of the uncircumcised gentiles.</span><br />
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<sup>3 </sup> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">The addition of the "benediction against the minim," included in the Amidah, a Liturgical cycle, as the twelfth benediction. This prayer dates to around this period that consensus places the composition of this gospel, as does the hypothetical "Council of Jamnia," which was conjectured to explain this overt expulsion and open condemnation of the Christians that occurred at the time. I will have more to say about this in a future post.</span><br />
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<sup>4 </sup>- <span style="font-size: x-small;">Addendum: If Mark Goodacre and Burton Mack are correct about Q being an unnecessary theory, all that changes here is that Luke's deviation from Mark was his own invention. They may be right. </span><br />
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-91052301995592517132015-01-23T19:53:00.002-08:002015-11-18T22:27:57.655-08:00Continuity — Matthew & His Former-Day Jews For Jesus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>M</b></span>ost New Testament scholars feel that Matthew was likely authored by a "Jewish-Christian." I challenge that notion, though it is true that this author <i>does </i>intentionally use biblical citations and symbols throughout the work to evoke a Judean ‘feel’ to his story. No doubt about that. More than any other evangelist, the author of Matthew relies on matching even the most trivial aspects of Jesus’ life and deeds to what he thinks are prophetic proclamations from the Hebrew Bible, with the aim of painting Jesus as their “fulfillment.” But apart from these superficial Jewish affectations, he is not advocating an outlook that’s particularly Judean in any standout way. Matthew’s continual quoting scripture in this "fulfillment" motif has conditioned generations of Christians to see Matthew as an especially “Jewish-messianic” gospel. He imparts Jewish symbolism into every nook and cranny he can. And yet, though the symbols he uses may be those of the Hebrew Bible; the teaching ain't necessarily so. </div>
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There <i>are </i>undoubtedly times when the narrator of this gospel engages in some truly brilliant rhetoric (the Sermon on the Mount, for example, contains some real gems). However, there are other times in the narrative when he seems to use Torah cavalierly, ambiguously—even erroneously—stretching, allowing any and all plausible interpretations that will advance his typological message about Jesus, the new Moses, the son of David. At these times his understanding of contemporaneous Judaism can be shown to be deficient. We will explore some of these instances shortly.</div>
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I deduced previously that Mark’s gospel was likely written <b><i>by</i></b> a gentile <b><i>for</i></b> a gentile audience. An overwhelming consensus says that the Gospel of Mark not only preceded, but was used by, the two other synoptics in the composition of their respective gospels. I'm down with that. Question: Would Matthew, supposedly the most Jewish of evangelists, who supposedly lived in or near Judea (Antioch?), choose to base the version of the Jesus story that he is composing for his own community on the work of a gentile who wrote for other gentiles in the west (probably in or near Rome)? Knowing how resistant to religious assimilation the Jews were,[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>1</b></big></sup>] I find it hard to believe that a pious Palestinian Jew would have chosen a flawed gentile text (flawed or at least inadequate—else why amend it?) to be the foundation of his own recruiting manual for this purportedly Jewish sect. In fact, it could be said that Matthew composed his own version of the story precisely as a <i><b>corrective </b></i>to Mark’s noble attempt. He used the earlier story as a springboard for his own composition. Mark’s Jesus is not godlike enough for Matthew, however. Mark’s Jesus is not “Jewish” enough for Matthew’s particular didactic needs. Mark needed an update, the author of Matthew concluded. The fact that Mark was used as the model makes any of the allusions to Hebraic scripture in Matthew, however copious, feel like pretense, not just due to the author's appropriation of Mark’s gentile gospel, but especially by its inherent affront to the strict monotheism that was the prime requisite to a Judean faith. In this gospel, unlike in Mark, people actually bow down before, and even worship, Jesus.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>2</b></big></sup>] Jews of that time would have immediately found the christology in the Gospel of Matthew abhorrent, I would argue.</div>
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Peter (Cephas—are they the same person?) is a favorite subject of Matthew. There are more stories about Peter in this gospel than in any other. The fact that so much lip service is given to the apostle of the circumcised in this book has led many to suggest that the author was Jewish-Christian, else why put so much emphasis on this character? We gather from Acts and from the epistles of Paul that Peter was the apostle championed by the early Judean varieties of Christianity. It makes sense of Matthew as Judean. But, then I have to ask, why is James never mentioned in this gospel except to repeat Mark’s characterization of Jesus’ family as antagonistic? Is this not a kind of double standard? Was James not the head of the Jerusalem community?</div>
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I think that the Gospel of Matthew, instead of supporting Jewish Christian provenance, is the product of a group of well-intentioned god-fearers who had taken to posing as the rightful gentile heirs of the Judean tradition after the Galilee and Jerusalem and its environs had been destroyed and their inhabitants (the few who survived) had dispersed.</div>
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I realize the magnitude of the glacier that I am boxing here (i.e. saying that Matthew’s gospel is not really all that Judean a work to my eyes) but I find it impossibly hard to reconcile Matthew’s contents to a traditional Judean authorship. If we make a distinction betweem the form and the content of the gospel, its dissimulating aspect can be more easily seen. This difficulty was in fact the spark that initially set my skepticism in motion and that led me to question the validity of the traditional view of the New Testament as being the work of "Jews." </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Discerning the Judaism ...</i></b></span></div>
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The Gospel we know as Matthew’s is a great introduction to the Jewish exegetical method known as typology. Typology is a kind of portentous symbolism, where a ‘type’ is a person or thing in the Hebrew scriptures which foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament. Noah’s flood, for example, has been interpreted as a ‘type’ of baptism in this sense. David is the perfect king. Elijah the perfect prophet. Moses the liberator. These are ‘types’, all relevant to the Jesus legend. Typology is in fact one of the most common hermeneutic lenses through which the gospels are composed and interpreted. Each evangelist had his own favorite typological setting of the Jesus story. Mark liked the book of Isaiah and saw Jesus is the suffering Son. He also drew from the Elijah/Elisha cycle. Matthew uses Jesus-as-Moses as his favored type. Luke also likes Elijah.</div>
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Matthew's sketch is highly idealized. An important thing to bear in mind in our analysis of the New Testament is that the typology that an author chooses as her compositional model will affect what her characters must do in order to fit that type. Historical verisimilitude is not the evangelist’s main compositional intention. Following the author's chosen types, everything that Jesus is portrayed as having said and done in the Gospel of Matthew will fit his particular typological mix of Jesus as the new Moses and as the New David— Jesus as liberator and as king.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>3</b></big></sup>] In other words, the concept we've come to know as "Messiah" (Christ).</div>
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The 'presence' of God is one of the important concepts for the author of Matthew. In the opening section he talks about “God with us” and he also closes the gospel with a similar bookend, having Jesus say, “I am with you always.” So we see that Matthew reflects a considerably higher christology than the one we previously saw operating in Mark. The author of Matthew understands Jesus to be the "incarnation" more explicitly than does Mark. For Mark, Jesus became Messiah at the moment of his baptism. In Matthew, Jesus was, as Lady Gaga would say, "born that way."</div>
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A central theme in the Gospel of Matthew is “fulfillment.” At least twelve times in this gospel the author says ‘<i>this was done to fulfill a scripture</i>.’ Jesus is portrayed as the divine fulfillment of god’s plan for the salvation of Israel, as a christological incarnation fulfilling two very clear types: Moses and David. These two types were (and are) indeed integral to Judean practice and way of thinking. The “prophet unto Moses” image of Jesus in Matthew allows us a glimpse into yet another Jewish method of exegesis at work in the thinking of the early Christians, that of <i>pesher</i>. Pesher is a kind of esoteric, charismatic exegesis. Through pesher one seeks to find not just a deeper meaning, as in midrash, but also the <i><b>secret</b></i> meaning of a biblical passage. This approach assumes that the bible is imbued with layers of meaning beyond the literal that are applicable to future times. Pesher can be said to be a kind of “decoding” of scripture. Deuteronomy’s “prophet unto Moses” became a favorite theme in early Christian rhetoric. Jesus is believed to be the fulfillment of this supposed prophecy of the coming of a prophet. But, notwithstanding apologists' tendency to see Jesus in between every line of scripture, I fail to see how this brief verse predicts Jesus specifically. This may be valid "pesher," I suppose, but it is just a vague arbitrary assertion to me, a stretch of fervent Christian imagination, a result of ad hoc quote mining, really, and not much more. It is based on nothing but a wish for scriptures to match a chosen type. </div>
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Matthew closely follows the same order (or chronology) in which the story is told in Mark’s gospel. Interspersed throughout are five chunks of additional material that Matthew added, but the general structure and internal timeline is basically the same as Mark's.</div>
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The gospel opens with a genealogy of Jesus that goes back to David, and, by extension, to Abraham. The author posits three sets of fourteen generations between these figures. It turns out that the number 14 spells “David” in the Hebrew alpha/numerical scheme.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>4</b></big></sup>] Coinquidink? — (<i>answer</i>: No. Typology.)</div>
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Though Matthew loves to quote the bible, sometimes he just gets it wrong. One famous blunder from this introductory section is his citation of Isaiah, “a virgin shall conceive.”[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>5</b></big></sup>] The translators of the Septuagint (LXX) had mistranslated the Hebrew word “<i>almah</i>” (young maiden) into the Greek “<i>parthenos</i>” (virgin). The early Christians latched on to this oversight and exploited it in their zeal to portray Jesus as an incarnation of the divine. The mistranslation is the least of their problems, though, for <b><i>the cited passage is not even a messianic prophecy</i>!</b> It describes the Syro-Ephraimite invasion of Judah and the siege of Jerusalem by the combined armies of the Northern Kingdom and Syria (circa 735 B.C.E.). The <i>child</i> that was born to the young maiden here was a sign from God that the siege would be lifted and that Jerusalem would continue to flourish. The “prophecy” was therefore completely fulfilled about 730 years before the birth of Jesus.</div>
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It’s a double whammy— it’s both irrelevant <i><b>and </b></i>a mistranslation. I believe that the reason this particular citation became so pervasive in early Christianity is simply because the Christian exegetes, gentiles Greeks who saw nothing unusual about virgin births,[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>6</b></big></sup>] just didn't catch on to the incongruity, as there were no Jews around to correct them (again, I think this absence is crucial for the big picture of Christian origins). </div>
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As the story start to take shape, we see that the whole birth narrative is essentially a parallel of the story of Moses in Matthew. The astrologers, the slaughter of the male infants, the Egyptian connection— the correlation is inescapable. </div>
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Moreover, Jesus’ first extended speaking role in Matthew further confirms that the Moses typology is deliberate. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, Jesus speaks on “the mountain” which recalls the giving of the Law to Moses (Ch 5). Curiously, he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law …”. Was someone accusing Jesus of doing this? A Jew? Abolishing the Torah? Jesus' point in this discourse, is, of course, that not only do we need to adhere to the law, we need to <i>exceed </i>the Pharisees in this! It’s not an opposition to Law, it is a gratuitous surpassing of its strictures. This elaborate and lengthy discourse on compassion is an exhortation to righteousness. The so-called ‘antitheses’ that follow, instead of opposing Torah, are a series of allusions to Torah in which Jesus stresses the need to go even deeper in one’s commitment to the Law than merely following its letter. This is to be done by not only eliminating the sins in question, but also eliminating their sources, greed, lust, rage, etc. I get it. This discourse, I would argue, <i><b>does</b></i> have the feel of a genuinely Judean midrashic thinking. Some deep thought was given to its composition. It’s the closest that the Gospel of Matthew comes to actual Judaic practice, insofar as it elucidates Torah instead of elucidating Jesus‘ messianic significance. Jesus’ inaugural address in this gospel is beautifully written. It is the pearl of great price. But it's fleeting. It is the exception rather than the rule. More usually, as when a midrash in this gospel involves a prediction of the coming of Jesus instead of illuminating some point of the law, it feels like Christian exultation of Jesus more than it does genuine midrash. To my eyes, that "midrash" looks like little more than an affectation. </div>
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Chapter 12 introduces for a moment yet another brief but left-field typological comparison. Matthew has Jesus portray himself as Jonah this time. He is asked for signs. He refuses to give signs. OK ... three days in the belly of a fish ... I get that.</div>
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There is one thing in Matthew that has no parallel in the other synoptics, however. This gospel highlights an <i>extreme</i> and pervasive animosity between the Jews and the early Christians. Matthew has Jesus say that people should listen to what the Pharisees teach, but not to <i>behave</i> like them, for they do not practice what they preach. </div>
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So, what do the Pharisees do that is so terrible? Well ... They tithe. They are lazy elitists. (“<i>Woe to you scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites</i>!” is repeated a bunch of times). They prevent people from entering the kingdom of heaven without wanting to go in themselves. (This recalls Paul’s characterization of his Galatian opponents.) They ‘<i>cross sea and land to make a single convert and then make that convert a child of Gehenna</i>.’ I find that last one to be particularly problematic. Did the Jews <i>really</i> cross sea and land to convert people? This is new to me. Have the Jews ever been known to be missionaries? Given the dearth of textual evidence, we can only conclude that Matthew's Jews are but the butt of vindictive name-calling on the part of the author, reflecting the practice of a later, more developed institutional church, which is definitely post-"split."</div>
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At the time of composition of the Gospel of Matthew—after the destruction of the Temple—the great variegation that once was Judaism had ceased to exist. By this time it was down to just two choices, each claiming to be the ‘real’ inheritors of the Judean tradition. These two groups had different ways of filling the spiritual/emotional void left behind by the Temple’s destruction. The Christians (if continuity is granted) “spiritualized“ the temple. The remnants of what once was the Phariree party instead devoted itself to the study of Torah once the Temple was conquered, which was what had worked for their forefathers before them, the last time they had been deprived of Temple worship (<i>i.e.</i> during the Babylonian exile). This is, of course, an overly simplistic encapsulation of the differences between these claimants to the tradition, but it is not altogether inaccurate.<br />
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One noteworthy misunderstanding of Judaic traditions in the Gospel of Matthew comes from the trial scene before the Sanhedrin. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A</span>nd the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee? But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death. Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, prophesy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee? <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span> — (Matthew 26: 63– 68 cf. Mark 14: 60–65)</blockquote>
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In this episode, the high priest is seen tearing his garments as a sign of righteous indignation at the audacity of Jesus’ response. What’s wrong with this picture? Well, to start with, the rending of his garments in this way was <i>expressly </i>forbidden to the high priest under the Levitical Laws.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>7</b></big></sup>] Besides this explicit prohibition in the Torah, this supposed biblical allusion is out of context. In every case in the Hebrew scriptures in which this practice of rending one's garments is referenced, it is invariably a display of deep anguish and sorrow.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>8</b></big></sup>] Nowhere in the Bible is rending of one’s garments an expression of the kind of rage or indignation portrayed in Mark and in Matthew (Luke omits this detail altogether, perhaps he realized the <i>faux pas</i>?). One might expect a decidedly gentile evangelist like Mark to overlook that dissonant bit—we're used to Mark getting it wrong on the Hebrew Bible, so a deliberate co-opting of a misunderstood Judean symbol to add drama to his narrative (incorrectly though it may be) to add injury to insult, so to speak, it to be expected—but Matthew is supposed to be the most Jewish of gospels. Surely <i><b>he</b></i> knows better. Right?</div>
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Apparently not.</div>
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Another uniquely Matthean feature is the infamous “his blood be on us and our children” nastiness. Some have tried to explain away the apparent anti-Semitism in this passage by appealing to its “Judean” context. The sting of this slur is supposedly lessened if we "realize" and accept that Matthew was a Jew writing for other Jews. The notorious phrase then becomes just an internal Judean spat according to this view. I don’t buy that at all, though. The fact that no one group was being singled out against a competing one in the passage is reflected in the exact phrasing the author has chosen:</div>
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<b>και αποκριθεις πας ο λαος ειπε το αιμα αυτου εφ ημας και τα τεκνα ημων</b><br />
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Then <b><i>the people as a whole</i></b> answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children.’</div>
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One can argue that “all of the people” consisted of just Pharisees, but this would just be a case of special pleading. The passage is not one sect of Judeans blaming another. This is obviously a <i>Christian </i>blaming Jews categorically. It’s an unavoidable fact. Given the animosity between these two groups, it’s little wonder that the Jews rejected the early Christians at every turn like they did, despite the latter's claims that they followed the Torah even more closely than the Pharisees did. The conflict that was only hinted at in Mark is intensified to become a full throated hatred by the time Matthew was writing, repeatedly emphasizing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Chapter 23 has a whole collection of sayings of Jesus about how the Pharisees are all hypocrites. </div>
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Interstingly, Matthew commits more clumsy scriptural-citation errors than Mark does. Chapter 27:9 is one example, referencing a Jeremiah verse that doesn’t exist.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>9</b></big></sup>]<br />
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Another example is one of the biggest New Testament blunders, as I see it. I highlighted its Markan variant, in a previous post, but it merits repeating, so unconvincing a piece of exegesis do I find it to be: </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">“</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">W</span>hile the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, ‘What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?’ They say unto him, the Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">”</span> — (Matthew 22:41–46)</blockquote>
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This, as I showed before, is another double whammy. First of all, this is another example of a mistranslation gone wild. The gist of it is that the two Hebrew words translated into the same word “Lord” in Psalm 110 are two entirely different words in the original Hebrew. Therefore, this is an equivocation that could only be made by someone familiar only with the Septuagint. Jesus, reported to have been a highly devout Jew who was versed in the Hebrew language and scriptures (with <b>great "authority")</b>, would have known better than to equate “Yahveh” with “L’adoni” in this way, especially when all the exegesis does is reinforce that Jesus is "the one." But that’s the least of it. This episode not only betrays this mistranslation, it also portrays the Pharisees that were listening as dumbstruck by Jesus’ amazing midrashic skills. This is where the real whopper lies, in my opinion. In truth, had he said such a thing, the Pharisees whom he said it to— fanatical in their study of the scriptures, and prone to long midrashic exposition on this and all other Psalms— would have immediately corrected Jesus' semantic mistake on the spot. Anyone with a even a perfunctory understanding of Hebrew could have done so. Yet, in this gospel narrative, his mere citing of this Psalm is enough to make them all speechless and mute in astonishment. This simply never could have happened in reality, as I have already argued in the post on Mark.</div>
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Here I am reminded of an old Jesus film that I once saw, in which the scene of the woman caught in adultery is depicted in a similarly unfeasible, similarly untenable way. The mob, about to stone the woman, become suddenly submissive and awestruck and drops their stones at once at Jesus' calm "cast the first stone" statement. Jesus speaks and the whole universe falls on its knees, like he's E.F. Hutton or something. Only a naive and pious need to "believe" could convince one to think that people's all-too-human psychological tendency to correct religious error (have you looked at the forums lately?) could be suspended so easily by the rabbis that Jesus addresses. Jesus could certainly have won an argument with his detractors, for all we know, but <i>an argument <b>must have ensued</b>. </i><b>That’s</b> the point. This simplistic depiction of instant pharisaic submission is completely unrealistic. It's a cartoon. Not only did it never happen as described, it paints the Jews in a polemic light as ineffectual dullards.</div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What about James? . . . . . . . . . . </span></i></b></div>
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As in Mark, so in Matthew. </div>
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In this gospel, James is only mentioned once in relation to Jesus’ family’s thinking him mad. That's it. If Cephas’ ubiquity in this gospel is evidence of a Jerusalem-church origin of these traditions, as some have argued, then what does the almost complete silence regarding James evidence of, considering his importance in the pauline epistles? I mean, James was (according to Acts too, and to Thomas), the <i><b>leader</b></i> at Jerusalem. Why is he mentioned only once in Matthew, merely in passing in this "most Jewish of gospels"? Seeing Cephas’ importance in this work as evidence somehow for a continuity between James and Paul could only be specious.</div>
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In closing, in reflection of all this, my own view of Mathew, I think, is that it is the record of someone who adopted a gentile (!) story about a Jewish hero as the undergirding basis of his own reconstruction of the same story, for the purpose of making it seem more Jewish than Mark had left it. The additions he added vary from the beautifully sublime (the beatitudes) to the clueless (he apparently never met a prophecy he didn't like). But "sounding Jewish" and "being Jewish" are not the same thing. As I've tried to show while surveying Paul's letters, it's one thing to point to the use of Jewish symbols and biblical citations in a work in question to appraise its Jewish pedigree, but the didactic function of the gospel as a whole betrays the superficial quality of this copious referencing of those symbols. In this regard this gospel reminds me of the contemporary evangelical movement we know as the "Jews for Jesus." Like Matthew, they have coopted the symbolism of the Judaic scripture and tradition to promote their own brand of evangelical Christianity. They incorporate these symbols into their services as well as their rhetoric, going as far as even celebrating Passover Seders(!!) in which the homiletical portion of the ceremony is devoted to the re-interpretation of the various elements in the ritual through a definite Christian lens. By now, everyone knows that the Jews for Jesus started out and remain a Christian evangelical enterprise. The unwary might not see the ruse at play—<i>caveat emptor</i> and all that jazz, but that's on them. At any rate, it was after having a discussion with one of these Jews for Jesus that I started to think about the possibility that Matthew's affectations might be an analogous misappropriation of Judaism. It's not just possible to misappropriate Judaism, here was an example right before my very eyes. And there are <i>others</i> who claim to be the <b><i>true</i></b> expression of the Abrahamic faith: Islam, Black Zionism, Mormonism, Rastafarianism, but I think the Jews for Jesus surpass them in their overt cooption of the symbolism involved. But, once again, it is one thing to include Jewish symbols in a narrative, and quite another to use such Jewish allusions to argue that Judaism has been superseded by the appearance of a godman. No amount of scriptural citation was going to convince a Jew to follow a godman. The evidence that Jews generally rejected Christian theological innovations at every turn is strong. Matthew may be more rich in Hebrew symbolism than its predecessor, but the godman doctrine it pitches gives it away as the gentile construct that it ultimately, undeniably, is. How can it <i>not</i> be, with Mark as its undergirding wireframe skeleton? Think about it. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>1</sup> - They would have rather died than let Caligula’s standards stand in the Temple, for example.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>2</sup> - Matt 8:2, 9:18, 14:33, 15:25, 28:9, 28:17</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>3</sup> - see Dale Allison's <b>The New Moses</b>.for a thorough exploration of the Moses typology in Matthew. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>4</sup> - This seems to me a kind of reverse-pesher at work as well. This kind of mystical numerology is very prevalent in later esoteric, mystical Kabbalah traditions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>5</sup> - Matt 1:23 —cf. Isaiah 7:14</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>6</sup> - Divine conception was a common attribute of innumerable hero legends. Every divine savior worth his salt had a virgin birth.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>7</sup> - See Leviticus 10: 6 and Leviticus 21:10</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>8</sup> - 1 Samuel 15:22–23, and 1 Kings 11:29–35 are a couple of examples. It is sometimes accompanied by sackcloth and ashes, which are also expressions or symbols of mourning.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>9</sup> - The closest parallel to this citation is Zechariah 11:12–13, but even this is not quite a match.</span>
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<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-57469218437286910562015-01-23T08:41:00.000-08:002015-01-23T08:41:32.519-08:00Continuity — (Digression) — The Would-be Pillar <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Having looked at Mark, the concept of "Messiah" should be highlighted for a moment before continuing on in this survey, as it seems to be a guiding idea on the minds of the evangelists who followed GMark in telling the story of Jesus. Ambiguous though it is, it's one of the most repeated motifs. <i>Messiah</i>, the Hebrew word for ‘anointed’ (<i>Mashiach</i>), was a title usually reserved for priests and kings in the Jewish Scriptures; it denoted one who was favored by God in some special way. The word was an adjective. The High Priest is anointed. David is God's anointed. Even Cyrus the Great, a Persian king, is deemed God's anointed at one point in the Bible's narrative.</div>
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Paul's epistles regularly refer to Jesus as "Christ," the Greek equivalent of this term, but, given the incongruousness of his Jewish affectations, this title (indeed, for him it is part of Jesus' very name) reflect a different, more-Hellenistic conception there.
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The common view is that by the time of the Roman occupation of Judea this concept of God's anointed had acquired a soteriological aspect. We are told that the Jews would come to expect an imminent 'Messiah' (it became by this time a personal noun) who would free God's people from the shameful bondage of foreign rule and who would restore the glory of the old kingdom. There is only a small problem with this common image of messianic expectation in the first century<b>:</b> The Hebrew Scriptures never use the word "messiah" in that noun sense, it is always attached to specific individuals in the adjective sense. Of course, that there should have been a collective yearning for God to come fix things would be no huge surprise. Collective expectation of an ideal future ‘liberator’ could certainly have evolved alongside the evolving scriptures to keep pace with the handicaps that the Judean people kept encountering in their history, so that by the Hellenistic period "Messiah" came to signify a coming agent of salvation who would mark or initiate the end of history and bring about a new era.</div>
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Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) in 1947 we had almost no way to gauge this abstract cultural projection of a messianic savior from the standpoint of Second Temple Judaism. The dearth of textual evidence disallowed it. But the DSS <i>were </i>discovered, and they include many examples of at least one near-contemporary sectarian group's thinking about messianism. </div>
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There seem to be two general views of messianism represented in the DSS:<br />
<ol style="margin-left: .67in; margin-right: .75in;">
<li>One is that the messianic era could be brought about by a slow improvement of the world, at which time God will send his redeemer.</li>
<li>The other is that there would be a catastrophe. God would intervene in history violently (<i>Deus ex machina</i>) and thus redeem his people.</li>
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This latter kind of messianism, illustrated in the <b>Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness</b>, is also illustrated in the later Christian canonical book of <b>Revelation</b>. In the DSS text the sectarians imagined their role in a war which would pit them, first against other Jews, and then against all the other nations. It's the whole Gog/Magog thing. The Armageddon thing. After they have finally destroyed everyone everyone else, they will come up to Jerusalem, presumably to share in the messianic era in eternal Utopian bliss. There <b><i>is </i></b>some parallel with early Christian thought there, at least with that early eschatological variant of Christianity which bequeathed the <b>Book of Revelation </b>to us. Therefore the DSS <i>do </i>support the fact that this early Christian eschatology demonstrably jibes at least in quality with that of a known, contemporaneous, tributary form of Judaism (albeit a marginal and sectarian one). Some of the ideas that some scholars previously had thought to be un-Jewish elements in some of the Christian texts thus <i>did </i>in fact have precedents and parallels in the ascetic Judaism of the Khirbet Qumran community. The DSS are invaluable to us in this respect.<br />
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But then, <b>Revelation </b>has always been a kind of anomaly within the biblical canon. Eusebius, Luther, Spong<b>:</b> all have challenged the canonicity of the ideas in this text —albeit for different reasons. It's safe to say, though, that its messianic apocalypticism is very far removed from the restrained messianism of the Gospel According to Mark, where every mention of Jesus' favored status immediately meets with a shooshing rebuke. </div>
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Mark introduces us to a different messianic metaphor, namely the suffering son of God. Here for the first time we have definitive allusions to passages in Isaiah and in Daniel which are interpreted as predictions of a fiture-coming messianic figure. The messianic connotation of the phrase "son of God" is corroborated and paralleled in Pseudo-Daniel (aka Aramaic Apocalypse), one of the DSS. Taking off on Daniel, in this apocryphal text, there is a messianic figure, a "son of God" (<i>bar Elohim</i> in the original Aramaic) highlighted. This would indicate that there were some Jews in the era who clothed their messiannic figure with this familiar designation. </div>
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But it is a far cry from Messiah as coming redeemer figure to Messiah as eternal Logos. <b><i>That</i></b> was a Christian innovation, not a Judean one. Eventually Christianity would grow to such an extent that its messianic constructs would inform even Talmudic formulations (more a reaction to the evangelical aspect of Christianity than it is a vision arrived at independently of them). As eschatological as the DSS can be in points, nowhere are the messianic figures alluded to there exalted as divine in nature.</div>
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I isolated four basic Jewish identifiers back in <a href="http://mythicismfiles.blogspot.com/2015/01/continuity-jewish-in-first-century.html">a previous post</a> in this series. One commenter has called them the "four pillars of Judaism." There are some people that present messianism as another such pillar. But the truth is that we know less than we think we do about this rich cultural metaphor for a general yearning for God's justice. </div>
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We do know there was some modicum of apocalypticism in the air.<br />
As an aside: We also know that donning the title of Messiah was not enough to get you killed; plenty of people had been called that before and after Jesus. The difference in his story would have probably entailed his deification—but that's for another post.<br />
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Anyway, I think it is wise to highlight the dearth of available evidence and to thus be careful not to overplay the magnitude of this imagined messianic yearning in normative Judaism at the time in question. It's important to keep this in mind as we survey the New Testament looking for implicit and explicit "Judaisms."<br />
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-46021779180827419552015-01-23T07:33:00.002-08:002015-02-03T08:13:55.496-08:00D.M. Murdock — Acharya S<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>ince the publication of her first book in 1999, D.M. Murdock, the artist formerly known as <b>Acharya S</b>, has garnered a sizable following of devoted acolytes who are always eager to bring her into any and all discussions on the subject of mythicism. No conversation about it can ensue for long without her name(s) popping up, along with an accompanying avalanche of links to videos on her website. That she has so many followers has baffled me for a long time, ever since I read her first book, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Christ-Conspiracy-Greatest-Story/dp/0932813747">The Christ Conspiracy</a></b> (the only one of her books that I've read). Full disclosure: I straight-up did not think much of that book, either of its rancorous, dramatic, alarmist tone, or its quasi-mystical clearing-house mashup style of comparative religions speculation, where everything is filtered and catalogued to fit a prescribed astrotheological conclusion. The credit for the fact that the term "astrotheology" is in the mythicist parlance at all belongs to Ms. Murdock, and this is a feather in her cap. It reflects the tenacity of her vision to show Christianity as '<i>just another sun cult</i>.' Such a notion is a good example of what Daniel Dennett calls a "deepity", an expression that is trivially and superficially true, yet which is spoken with an inflated air of enigmatic profundity and importance. "Love is just a word," is another example of a deepity. </div>
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The Good</h2>
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Here's the thing. She's not really "wrong" about that, <i>per se</i>. In fact, I think that she is more or less correct in highlighting the role that the sun and moon (etc) archetypes have had in the long progressive history of world religions in general. Some of the things she says about the many parallels that clearly exist between the symbolisms used by the countless religious traditions of the world (including Christianity) are genuinely fascinating. At its best her work is not entirely unlike that done by Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell in pointing to the similarities between world traditions. Such parallels <i>can</i> indeed be shown to exist. In fact they form a kind of symbolic/archetypal matrix from which all religious trajectories spring and take root and grow out of over the course of millenia.
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The <b><sup><small><small>not-so</small></small></sup></b> Bad</h2>
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Let's go way back.
Long ago we started watching the skies at night. Years and decades and aeons of observations made it possible for us to theorize about the movement of celestial bodies in the firmament. Beside the obvious fact that the moon was our monthly dancing partner, we began noticing that the stars don't ever change positions relative to each other and that they go around and around the earth at a set regular rate of movement that corresponds to the yearly seasonal cycles. This observation made people realize that the firmament is in fact in constant revolution around our little planet.
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Next we noticed a different kind of celestial body in motion. Planets. Planets, however, seem to display a somewhat different pattern of movement through the sky, one with much variation. They are all over the place compared to the stars, further observation and cataloguing revealed that even these seemingly chaotic bodies are also in constant regular revolutions around the Earth. Always around the Earth. This was the only conclusion that the early philosophers could come to in a pre-scientific world, based on the observational criteria they had. All heavenly bodies revolve around the earth. It's obvious, no? That people would make the solipsistic leap of seeing a connection between the trajectories of constellations and their own spiritual lives is not hard to see. Cyclic, the seasonal symbols worked their way into the rhythm of liturgical dances and songs and texts. Yes. To deny that all religions started out as hymns to the rhythm of the sun and the moon and the stars would be silly, but, on the other hand, to stop there, that is, to not see that the skeletal understructure of any given individual religion needs fleshing out beyond this basic thumbnail sketch astrotheological reduction, would be way too simplistic. It's a matter of the scale of the problem. The origin of Christianity (the focus of my mythicist musings) just cannot be explained away by such simple generalities. It would be sort of analogous to saying, not incorrectly, that human beings are "vertebrates." It may be true, but this would do nothing to demonstrate an understanding of the detailed physiology of people, much less to demonstrate what makes them tick, what makes their lives lives.
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Imagine the problem of the historical Jesus as a whodunnit scenario. Countless detectives (mythicist and historicist and agnostic) are there on the scene sleuthing around, diggin' up all the evidence they can, trying to figure out what's going on. There is a body on the ground. Some people are discussing a possible murder weapon. Some the possible motives. Some people are whispering and pointing fingers. Along comes Acharya S, who walks by and takes a look at the chalk outline on the ground and proclaims, 'Aha! It's elementary, my dear Watson ... what we have here is clearly a vertebrate creature of some kind ... a pretty large one ... possibly a simian or an anthropod,' as if this were at all relevant to the case at hand. </div>
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"No, duh!"</div>
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The Bad</h2>
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Scholarly disagreement nontwithstanding, it can get weird in the bloggosphere. At this point in this surreal whodunnit scenario, further imagine you are then suddenly handed a glossy flyer by a complete stranger that features Acharya's comely face. You deduce from his singleminded dedication (he hands them to everyone) that he is from her entourage. He's got a glazed look in his eye, and he stands way too close to you and says, "You know, I heard you say '<i><b>Duh!</b></i>' to Ms. <b>S</b>, mister. That wasn't very nice. That was rude. " Under his arm he holds a whole stack of similar flyers and pamphlets. You can see that he already has another one ready to hand to you, in case you put down the one he's already put in your hand, even though you haven't even looked at it yet.<br />
You finally look at it and notice the caption, "Great Minds of Our Time," it reads.
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"Oy vey!" (facepalm and fade out ... at least that's <i>my</i> reaction ... you can have your own)
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If I found Ms. Murdock's astrotheological speculations convincing or even relevant to the discussion in some significant way, then the surreal phenomenon of her acolytes always coming to her defense whenever they perceive violations to her honor wouldn't be such an awkward thing to encounter in my surfing. Of course, merely taking her to task for <i><b>any</b></i> little thing is often enough to be deemed such a violaton, I've noticed, so I could really be opening up a can of red wigglers here, I realize. Its too bad. She's a bright person. She's also obviously a good-hearted person, as we witnessed when she voluntarily rallied help for Bob Price when he fell on hard times and ill health. That was very kind and selfless, and deserves acknowledgement. But, regardless, the fact is that I find her peripherally relevant at best regarding mythicism. Whatever mojo charms her fans into thinking that she is the pinnacle of mythicist thought just doesn't seem to work on me, and so her vociferous sycophants are just a weird curiosity to me. She reminds me a lot of Ron Paul (congressman from the state of Texas and underdog U.S. presidential candidate) in this respect. Paul himself is a smart enough guy who just happens to hold big weird political opinions which are easy enough to dismiss as irrelevant and then to just theretofore ignore, but his followers are frigging everywhere and they like to make themselves known and heard, at times intrusively and combatively. It's kind of a drag, actually.
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I don't ordinarily ever speak about Ms. Murdock. I think an ideal anthology of mythicism would probably not contain anything she's written, and that would be okay with me, but if I'm going to keep building a '<i>who's who</i>' blog about mythicism, then in the interest of keeping it real I guess I have no choice but to break my reticent silence and to finally give my honest assessment of D. M. Murdock's value <i>viz a viz</i> mythicism.
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There you have it.
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Christ-Conspiracy-Greatest-Story/dp/0932813747"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4asYkqBihYn9yYdXTI1sZDCqAhg72rwukkgCjTUvL1vFCNVI8q4vbOCiDyCX7kkmHSbgboKsdGpeWSZbtyAhK3c4ByF3PYFSQ3IJNjw5hlvNOHl5Fdfk6nCVk_Av6xbIAN7bXTTdoIU9R/s1600/Acharyabook.jpg" height="150" width="100" /></a></div>
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<h2>
Selected Bibliography:</h2>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Christ-Conspiracy-Greatest-Story/dp/0932813747">The Christ Conspiracy</a></span></b> — (1999)<br />— The truth is that she lost me at "conspiracy" in the title.<br />
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Rating: <span style="color: #cc0000;">★</span>☆☆☆☆
</li>
</ul>
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-10157065047020420222015-01-22T07:20:00.002-08:002015-01-22T07:20:14.023-08:00Continuity — The Gospel of Mark <br />
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We looked into the Pauline epistles to try to get a glimpse of who these <i>death-and-resurrection</i> Christ cultists were and saw that they were explicitly and implicitly gentile. What can we learn from a similar <i>prima facie</i> reading of the gospel material?<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><b>The Markan Community</b></i></span></div>
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An overwhelming majority of scholars agree that Mark was likely the earliest of the synoptic gospels. Marcan priority is one of those rare topics in biblical scholarship on which there is in fact a remarkable agreement. It’s as close to an actual consensus in historical Jesus/Christian origins scholarship as it gets. This view of gospel chronology posits that the gospel we know as Mark very probably existed before— and was used as a primary source by— the other two synoptic evangelists who later constructed their own versions of the Jesus story around Mark's basic prototype. </div>
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<b>Who was his audience?</b><br />
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I have heard it remarked that all of the evangelists were Jews with the possible exception of Luke. I challenge this notion. To my eyes, Mark reveals the least Judean perspective of the four canonical gospels. Its Greek may be crude, but it’s the crude Greek of a Hellenic individual, <i>not </i>a Judean. Are there reasons to doubt the Judean background of the author of this work?</div>
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Yes.</div>
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The very opening verses of this gospel already contain a scriptural blunder, to start with<b>:</b></div>
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"<i>The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’ He is a voice calling out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord! Make his paths straight!’</i>"<br />
(GMark 1:1–3)<br />
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The author is referring here not to Jesus, but to John the Baptizer, a precursor to Jesus who figures prominently in all four tellings of the Jesus story, as we all know. The author of Mark has conflated two separate biblical quotations from two separate books and has credited Isaiah as the source of both, when in fact the first half is clearly a reference to Malachi 3:1 and not to Isaiah at all. If this author was a thorough Judean, he sure was sloppy with his Torah. This could, of course, be nothing more than a simple honest mistake, but it is just one among many indications that he in fact is very probably not a very literate Jew. </div>
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Another example reflects the author’s lack of knowledge of the geography of the Judean region, for instance:</div>
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"<i>Then Jesus returned from the region of Tyre and went by way of Sidon towards the sea of Galilee …</i>"<br />
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This would add thirty miles to the trip. Jesus would have rather ended up in Antioch had he gone by that route. It’s just plainly wrong, as any informed consultation of a biblical map will show. This does not necessarily disprove the author's "Jewishness," but it does bring us pause.</div>
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Another example of Mark’s sloppy exegesis: In chapter 2 (25–27), he anachronistically names the wrong High Priest (Abiathar) in relating a story about David.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>1</b></big></sup>] If he is a Jew, Mark’s scriptural acumen seems to be consistently rusty.</div>
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Another pericope that I find problematic: In chapter 10 (6–8), Jesus quotes from both creation stories as though they are a single one. Mark has harmonized Genesis 1:27 with Genesis 2:24. Not only that, he has further placed the harmonization on Jesus very lips as a corrective to Moses' pragmatic leniency. This is not just going an extra mile on Jesus' part, as in the beatitudes, it is not just an exceeding of expectations; this is a direct abrogation of mosaic law. The author makes Jesus <i>oppose </i>Moses openly. This reflects, in my opinion, a post-"break" provenance of the text. Furthermore: Why do the Pharisees who confront Jesus with this question of divorce just disappear from view after the episode is related? Surely, this kind of affront would have met with pharisaic zeal. No? Pharisees <i>loved </i>to argue. It was their <i>raison d'etre.</i> This story in GMark shows a merely cursory understanding of contemporaneous Judaism, which is allowed a pass for the simple reason that the author's audience is no better informed about the Jews' idiosyncrasies than the author himself. As with E.F. Hutton: Jesus speaks and the Pharisees shup up, apparently shamed into silence by Jesus' unassailable rapier wit. However, in any realistic <i>Sitz im Leben</i>, Jesus would not have expressed himself in this way without some kind of repercussion. This story is a cartoon cell in the life of a mythic comic book hero. </div>
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Yet another episode that reflects this hypo-understanding of the <i>Sitz im Leben</i> in contemporaneous Judaism even more clearly is in chapter 12 (35), where Jesus is depicted as silencing the Pharisees with a single quotation from Psalm 110.</div>
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"<i>The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.</i>"<br />
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Such a theologically charged exegesis as Jesus' would only be truly possible if we posit that Jesus' Bible was the Septuagint, which uses the same word—"Lord"—to represent <i><b>both</b></i> the original "Lord" (YHVH, the god of Abraham and Moses) and "lord" (L'adonai, an honorific analogous to the still-current royal "my lord"). As an Aramaic speaker from the Galilee, Jesus' reading of the verse would have been that it is God speaking to David (the Levites narrating). This is the natural reading, but the author of this gospel is weaving christological connotations into a scripture that previously did not have them, and moreover, he is placing these connotations on the lips of Jesus' himself.<br />
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More relevant to our focus than this inadequate translation is the detailed fact that the Pharisees are said to be silenced by this one-liner self-referencing answer from Jesus. Jesus speaks and they are are struck dumb. Whoever wrote this episode down had little knowledge of Pharisaism. That Jesus might have held his own against the Pharisees is certainly <i><b>possible</b></i>, but … …complete submissive <i><b>silence? </b></i> What little we know about the Pharisees all but precludes the possibility that they would have responded with silence to this theological/exegetical quantum leap on the part of Jesus. This episode simply could not have happened as described. <b><i>Some</i></b> argument would have ensued (in fact, I think Jesus didn't stand a chance there). It is another cell in the life of a mythic super hero, whose opponents are ideal, not real threats at all. </div>
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Another example (it is an embarrassment of riches) of bad exegesis placed on the lips of Jesus is when he quotes Exodus 3:6 (Mk 12:26) to assert the resurrection of the dead. There is simply no reference to "the living" in the story he cites. It is an over-reaching midrash that could have—and would have— been engaged heatedly by a literate Jew. That it would have seemed like a great response to anyone but a Christian initiate (much less a Jewish scribe) is unlikely. </div>
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Not only is <i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">he</span> </b></i>probably not Judean, in chapter 7:2–4, the author seems to assume that <i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">his listeners</span></b></i> are primarily gentiles as well, else why the need to explain to them the Jewish custom of washing their hands, etc? This is a man writing about the customs of another people. He is clearly a gentile writing for other gentiles.</div>
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GºMark has a relatively low christology for a gospel; his Jesus is painfully human. This gospel is constructed in such a way that the reader is privy to some information that the characters in the narrative don’t have. Not even Jesus' closest companions, his disciples, have a clue. It is likely an intentional technique that creates a literary tension which is used to great effect in this deceptively crude gospel.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>2</b></big></sup>] There’s irony in the central question of this work: Who is Jesus? (“Who do people say that I am?”) It’s the $64,000 question. On the one hand, in this gospel the true identity of Jesus is “Son of God” or alternately (a phrase introduced and used frequently in the second half of the gospel), the “son of man“, but no one knows this secret identity, except the reader (and some demons). All that everyone else in the story, including his disciples, seems to know is that Jesus is a confusing teacher and a healer. It’s not just that they don’t know his identity; when demons proclaim his messianic status, they are told repeatedly by Jesus to tell no one what or who he is. This is known as the “Messianic secret” motif in Mark. Jesus finally admits that he is the holy one of God at his trial before the Sanhedrin, and later hints at it once more during his hearing with Pilate. His disciples are, of course, not present for this revelation.</div>
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While this gospel does contain a series of stories which depict the Jewish authorities rejecting Jesus, there’s a relatively positive portrayal of gentiles in Mark. This work contains several stories in which the faith of gentiles surpasses that of Jesus' own disciples. The Syro-Phoenician woman's humorous comeback to his insult (he equates gentiles with dogs) endears her to him. Also, the Roman centurion at the site of the crucifixion is the first character in the story to declare Jesus’ “sonship” with such force and clarity. The first Christian could therefore be said to be this gentile in Mark’s gospel. Of course, the audience has known all along too that Jesus is the Messiah, which helps them to identify as fellow Christians with this <i><b>gentile</b></i> centurion's confession. </div>
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Although relating a story that is explicitly set in Judea, the Gospel According to Mark seems to be a gentile hagiographic expression about who Jesus was, told for the purpose of compelling the early Christians into seeing Jesus as a specifically Jewish messianic figure. This aligns to some degree with the Pauline urgency to include the gentiles in the salvation scheme of Judaic history. Why pagans would be so compelled to co-opt the Jewish God specifically is <b><i>the</i></b> crucial question of Christian origins and I will eventually take it up.</div>
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The central theme in this work is discipleship despite the fact that it portrays all of the disciples of Jesus as blundering idiots. Dunderheads. There seems to be a veiled challenge beneath this less-than-flattering portrayal of Jesus’ inner circle. It’s as though Mark was inviting his readers to do better than the disciples had in their own lives and in their own faith.</div>
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Mark is a fascinating document full of Jewish affectations, but it is nevertheless written by a gentile ... and more importantly, <b><i>for</i></b> gentiles. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><sup style="color: #3d85c6;">1</sup> — cf. 1 Sam 21:1–7</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><sup style="color: #3d85c6;">2</sup> — Some point to this crudity as proof of the author's unsophistication and of the piecemeal and oral aspect of this work, but the forms and techniques he uses betrays a rather advanced knowledge of composition, which in turn highlights the crudity of the written Greek as intentional and tendentious. It's sort of like Mark Twain's intentional use of bad English in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. </span>Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-47740049857697206762015-01-21T17:44:00.000-08:002015-01-21T21:47:00.895-08:00Thomas Brodie <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Good</h2>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>homas L. Brodie is that rarest of creatures, a believing Christian who happens to also be a New Testament minimalist. As such, he gives the lie to the claim (often repeated by some historicists) that to doubt the historicity of Jesus is just an expression of atheist rancor. He is not just Christian; he is a Dominican priest, has a doctorate in theology, has taught advanced Hebrew scriptures and New Testament studies, and was even the founder of the Dominican Biblical institute in Limerick, Ireland, an academic department devoted to historico-critical study of the Bible. By his own admission, he has been a closet mythicist since the mid-1970s, but didn't make it explicit until his most recent book, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Quest-Historical-Jesus-Discovery/dp/190753458X" target="_blank">Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus</a></b>, a work that compelled his ecclesiatical "superiors" to censure him immediately after its publication and to ultimately forbid him from teaching any longer. In this respect he brings to mind Alfred Loisy, who was similarly repressed by the Church for the radical nature of <b><i>his</i></b> scholarship around the turn of the twentieth century. Neither Loisy nor Brodie recanted their views, which is a testament to their academic integrity, given that doing so would have averted the harsh treatment they each received (Loisy would eventually even be excommunicated outright). As in Galileo's case, no one would have blamed them for deferring to the authority of the Church for the sake of their comfort and well-being. But back in those days a heretic's very life was at stake when the full weight of the magisterium decided to come down upon one. This is not the case in the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, when the Church is relatively innocuous, and a scholar like Brodie could at least stand by his scholarship without mortal fear, and could thus afford such a "here I stand" moment. Meister Eckhart once said, "Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go." Brodie's courage (and Loisy's) reflects a profound understanding of this seemingly irreverent sentiment. Far from irreverent, Eckhart never strayed from his religious commitment, even in the face of the threat of excommunication (I recommend reading his responses to those who charged him with heresy. It's in archaic theological language, but it is a rewarding —and even humorous—read). Brodie's coming out as a mythicist serves as a riposte to those who would say, "Even atheists believe that Jesus existed." One could now say, "So? even Christians believe he didn't. How about constructing an actual argument now instead of appealing to authority or consensus?" </div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Selected Bibliography:</span></h2>
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<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Quest-Historical-Jesus-Discovery/dp/190753458X"><span style="font-size: large;">Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus</span></a> (2012) <br />— A book I highly recommend, part scholarly treatment/ part biographical memoir. His analysis of the New Testament <i>viz</i> mythicism chiefly consists of arguments from mimesis (imitation) of Old Testament narratives, particularly the parallels involving the Elijah/Elisha cycle and Deutoronomy. A must-read for anyone interested in New Testament minimalism.<br />Rating: <span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.25px;">★★★★★</span></span></li>
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-56177853973438569092015-01-21T17:42:00.003-08:002015-01-22T05:14:26.195-08:00Continuity — Jewish in the First Century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>e've seen that the audiences that the character of Paul is addressing in the epistles that bear his name are decidedly gentile. Before continuing, it might be a good idea to riff for a bit on what we mean when we speak of a "mere Judaism" (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) in the New Testament period. Have the Dead Sea Scrolls added to our understanding of this ancient undergirding structure that Christianity sprang from and ostentatiously tried to emulate? What did it mean to be a “Jew” in the first century? What were the distinguishing hallmarks of Jewish self-identification? </div>
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Even at this preliminary level, these questions don't have easy answers. There are problems involving definition and scope that have to be faced. A whole book could be devoted to this subject alone.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>1</b></big></sup>] One huge problem is the fact that the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. pretty much ensured that very little of the contemporaneous historical record of the once-thriving socio-religious phenomenon that we can for the moment label simply as “Second Temple Judaism” survived. It wasn’t until after rabbinic exiles began to affirm their status as the rightful heirs and continuers of the Pharisaic tradition (they would eventually inform the Talmud) that any near-contemporary indication of what the pre-fall setting might have looked like could be recorded. Meanwhile, there’s a huge lacuna in the record right exactly where our eyes want to look.</div>
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Another major problem is that the Christian scriptures are in essence polemics <i>against</i>, and therefore not the best, source of information <i>about</i>, the Judaism of Jesus’ (and Cepha’s and Paul’s) day. When the gospels do mention the Jews, it’s the Pharisees that they single out more often than not, and even then it’s a hyper-legalistic caricature of the Pharisees that is depicted, rather than any useful information about them. Once a very dignified tradition, now become the favorite whipping boy of the evangelists, Pharisaism is categorically equated with hypocrisy and guile, getting the brunt of much scorn and derision. But I think that taking the theologically motivated, myopic mischaracterization of the Pharisees that is found in these scriptural discourses at face value would not only be intellectually naïve, it would also do a huge disservice to the memory of a once highly influential religious order that was beloved in its day for its emphasis on scholarship-in-service-of-compassion. One could say that these Pharisees were the stoics of the far-East, in a way. Their moral resolve was admired by their Pagan neighbors (cf. "god-fearers").[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>2</b></big></sup>]</div>
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Josephus and Philo show three major forms: this Parisaism, Sadduceeism, and Esseneism. If there are ways to distinguish between different <i>kinds </i>within this general umbrella heading of Judaism, what was it exactly that marked these people as Jewish in their own eyes, whatever their partisan inclination might have been? What was the common denominator? The textual silence disallows for certitude, but while it is true that we must be cautious in assessing the <i>Sitz im Leben</i> in question (lest we place too much value on our conjectures), to the limits that our sources and our abilities permit, we must try to delineate some basic commonalities if we are to understand the curious origins of Christianity in any meaningful way.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Monotheism</i></span><br />
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The closest thing to a creedal statement in Jewish tradition is what is known as the Shema,[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>3</b></big></sup>] a kind of Jewish pledge of allegiance directed at the people of Israel to acknowledge and to affirm that the God of Israel is One and one only. Recited daily, it is a promise to implement this faith of the ancient fathers in their daily living. This insistence on the essential unity of God is one of the most defining aspects of being Jewish in the first century (and even now). Granted, the Jews have not always been so fiercely monotheistic. It has been shown that the road to the strict monotheism that we are so used to ascribing to the Jews was in fact a fairly long hard-fought one. They got there incrementally. Not until later prophets like Jeremiah did this rigorous monotheism finally stick, but it did stick eventually. Obviously, the history of Jewish monotheism is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that an inviolable monotheism had long been in place in the socio-religious self-identity of the Judean people by the time of the Roman occupation. Indeed, the Romans were so perplexed by the obstinacy of Jewish monotheism, apparently so respectful of their devotion to it, that they sometimes made exceptions and allowances for the religious sovereignty of the Jews in their imperial mandates. Once the Jews finally had attained a full-force universal monotheism, they became famous for it among the nations.</div>
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If monotheism was so central to Judaism, we may ask: What were the attributes of this singular Jewish God? We can form a few fundamental ground rules regarding the theology of the first century. </div>
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They are reducible to the following:<br />
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<li>First, Yahveh is the sole creator of the universe and of this world and of everything therein.</li>
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<li>Second, that he (this god is male) is the Lord and ruler of said creation and that, to this end, he exercises a protean relationship with it in which he interacts with, oversees, and affects it. Mankind in general has dominion over creation, but Yahveh’s people, specifically, are a kind of ‘fortunate son’ that was endowed with the Word (Torah) with which to navigate Yahveh’s plan for human history.</li>
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<li>Third, that he has a right to exclusive worship from his people. This third attribute of the Jewish god is crucial to the collective understanding of the gentile nations concerning the Jewish people. So well known did this fastidious refusal to entertain any other gods become that the Jews were able (in time) to command exemption from participation in certain compulsory empire-cultic rituals. It became clear to the Romans that most Jews would sooner die en masse than to succumb to any demands that they either abandon their god or succumb to the rule of another. The Romans—experienced pragmatic statesmen that they were— knew that killing every fanatic in a an unruly hyper-zealous conquered province was no way to run an empire or to raise revenue or tribute, and so the conquerors soon learned to allow the Jews some semblance of religious sovereignty in the interest of imperial efficacy and smooth sailing.</li>
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That fact that their god is One and sovereign was the most vital component, the definitive determinant of Jewish self-identity at the turn of the era. It’s safe to say that the Jews were deeply committed to this idea of the unity and exclusivity of their god during that time. We have no reason to doubt this strict monotheism, despite its disappearance from the textual radar for a moment. </div>
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The Dead Sea Scrolls in fact reinforce this extreme monotheistic tendency and fervor. The Targum of Job (from Cave 4), for example, makes numerous changes to the traditional story for theological reasons. In chapter 38, where a whirlwind asks a number of rhetorical questions intended to portray God as sovereign over all:</div>
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Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? [<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>4</b></big></sup>]<br />
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The scene is dependent on a depiction of a kind of heavenly court (a common enough motif in Near-Eastern and biblical mythology), with the stars personified as singing and sons of god rejoicing. The Qumran targumist however is troubled by the personification. To avoid the anthropomorphism, he renders the phrase as "they shone all at once." The mention of "sons of god" in verse 7 is further problematic as it may lead to a mistaken polytheism. The targumist substitutes the word "angels" instead, making them unambiguosuly subordinate to God. </div>
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The evidence is strong. We may thus grant this much: The Jews of Palestine would not have accepted the worship of a crucified god-man in their midst. This would have been a blasphemy of the highest order, probably even punishable by death.</div>
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But, can Boyd show that Jews in fact <i><b>did </b></i>accept this new form of Christ worship anywhere? It would be fantastically wonderful if we had the writings of any other famous Chrtistians of the day: Cephas, Barnabas, Apollos, Yacob, Thecla ... <i><b>anyone</b></i>. They’d give us some perspective on what each of these factions theologically espoused about Jesus. But we <i><b>don’t</b></i> have these writings. Only the Pauline viewpoint survived. And in <b><i>that</i></b> perspective Jesus is already referred to as <b>κυριος </b>(<i>kyrios</i>=Lord=Yahveh). To equate a human being with the god of Israel is definitely not a very Jewish thing to do. On this we can all hopefully agree. It's important to keep in mind that when the details within the Torah were being parsed and exposited in the usual Jewish ways in compiling the Talmud (midrash, allegory, pesher), there would be majority and minority opinions and conclusions that rabbis would come to, but there were limits to how far they could stretch the scriptures. One could not conclude after a given midrash, for example, that the seventh commandment of the Decalogue reads "<i>Thou <b>shalt </b>commit adultery.</i>" All interpretations must fit within a consistent domain of meaning. Likewise, a Judaism that espouses the adoration and exaltation of a god-man as the ultimate superseding of Judaism looks awful suspect to me as a tenable form of "Judaism." Furthermore, as I have been stressing all along, we have no reason to think that this holy bi-nity that Paul had taken to preaching to the gentiles was subscribed to by the Jerusalem Jesusist conclave. We do, on the other hand, have many reasons to think that Jews actually rejected the Paulinists at every turn (<i>e.g.</i> the author[s] of Paul's epistles' own words, the surviving textual evidence of opposition from Marcion and Epiphanius, . . . the Ebionites, etc—Paul was even considered the apostle of the heretics by some). For now, though, let us simply mark fierce monotheism as one of the characteristic traits of a Jew in the 1st century.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i>People of the Book</i></span><br />
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The Torah (“law”, “instruction”), the Hebrew Bible, is essentially a self-contained library which deals with one people’s wrestling with their concept of the divine. It is a tendentious, epic tale of creation, a history of a god among his people, forever experiencing growing pains together along the way, all set in a wondrously poetic language worthy of the mysteries contained within it.</div>
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The Jews not only were the first monotheists of influence in the world; they were also the first people to vouchsafe their religious identity by means of this “book” in which they kept a record of their god’s interactions with them into the distant past and on which they staked their faith into the distant future. Sent down to God’s esteemed messengers, the prophets (seers), Torah was the portal through which God’s will was revealed to the people and, as such, it was held in a correspondingly revered position. </div>
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The Hebrew Bible lends a certain ‘concreteness’ to Judean history. It lends a physicality, a permanence to its divine mandate. Then as now, people were enthralled with the written word. Important things have always been written down. Then as now, few things sound as authoritative as:</div>
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<b>'It is written.'</b></div>
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Everything that has had any kind of legal worth is written down. Oaths, for example are still commemorated in this manner. The written word is powerful because it doesn‘t allow us to forget or to overlook. The Jews could boldly back up their cultural inheritance by appealing to these ancient records. This impressed their pagan neighbors immensely, who for the most part took them seriously, even when occasionally critical of them. The Torah was the medium on which the covenant (treaty, deal) between the Hebrew god and the people was signed and sealed. The chosen people had a written receipt to back up their legitimacy. It became a very important feature of Jewish life. Methods were devised to explore its depths, mostly borrowed from the stoic philosophers, but these methods took on a brilliance of their own in the new lyrical Jewish context. Torah’s perennial mysteries were available to all those who sought to understand them. The more conservative priestly aristocracy (the counterpart Sadducees) reportedly preferred to stick to the five ‘lawful’ books of the Pentateuch, but the Pharisee school of thought, who accepted the prophets and writings, appear to have prospered. They eventually became the most influential Judaic sect both in Jerusalem and in the hinterland. The Pharisees were the people’s party at the time in question (<i>so Josephus</i>).</div>
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While the Sadducees still took care of maintaining the esoteric ritual aspects of the Judaic tradition, a duty bestowed to them through heredity, it was the Pharisees that took care of introducing the people into the endless cultural repository which is Torah. They did this in an open way. So open, in fact that they even tolerated the presence of gentiles in their midst. The god-fearers, these peripheral gentile hangers-on, seemed to greatly admire the ‘solidity’ of the Hebrew scriptures, the strictures of its highly refined moral codes. Gentiles, they sought to emulate the Jewish faith. They, I think, are the key to understanding the proliferation of the early Christian movement.</div>
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A crucial distinction must be made here which will become more relevant later. Unlike their proto-Christian brethren, the motives of Judeans don’t seem to have been missionary in nature. The Jews didn’t recruit people. They never had before, they had no need to as long as Judaism was a nationality, a tribal recognition, a bloodline inheritance. They saw no harm in tolerating gentiles, and in fact by the time leading up to the Revolt god-fearers, were a common sight around the synagogues, but that’s different than setting off on a mission to convert the nations to a Jewish god. The orbiting god-fearer came to Yahveh of his own accord. Jews are not missionaries.</div>
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Why would gentile god-fearers feel entitled to appeal to Jewish scriptures to defend their universalist religious innovations against the stability of traditional Judaism? I think that having <b><i>a book</i></b> was realized to be necessary early on in this new movement. I'll have some opinions on these questions as they appear again in our discussion. for now, let's continue our essentials-of-Judaism laundry-list.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Covenant</i></span><br />
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The attributes of the Jewish god, that he is Lord over his creation, and that he requires exclusive tribute from it, are the basis of the idea of a divine covenant which distinguishes the Jews as their god’s unique <b><i>chosen </i></b>people. The idea of an exclusive covenant between a god and a people was a peculiarity that had enormous significance for the self-understanding of the people of Judea (and of surrounding areas of Samaria and the Galilee and into the Diaspora) in the first century. The concept of “covenant” has a long history parallel to that of monotheism which has also evolved over time into its present day form. </div>
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The nature of this covenant can best be seen in some of the metaphors and analogies that are used to describe it in the Bible. Israel is Yahweh’s ‘bride.’ (Jeremiah 2:2) Yahveh is lord of the manor. Yahveh is a mother-bear (Hosea 13:8). Israel is a “holy thing belonging to Yahveh, the first of his produce.” (Jer 2:3) These and other verses indicate that God is joined to Israel by some kind of exclusive pact.[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>6</b></big></sup>] </div>
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Though Yahveh had definitely taken the initiative in these dealings, he had not forced himself on an unwilling people. There is a symbiosis at work here. People were not shanghaied into the deal. They entered willingly, sacrificing, observing the appointed feasts, living lives of religious contemplation. Their cultural inheritance was a badge of honor and distinction to them. </div>
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This covenant was expressed outwardly in various ways: in the observance of feasts and of fasts, in the undertaking of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, in strict dietary discipline, and in the observance of the weekly Sabbath day. One very important way that this unique covenant was expressed was in the ritual act of circumcision (at least for boys). In the Diaspora, circumcision, kosher diets, and all of these other expressions were ways in which the community of Jews could remain tethered to the divine covenant outwardly, even zealously so, while allowing for the malleability of moral tolerance which their daily interactions with gentiles necessitated in their lives. </div>
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Of course, the downside of all of this is that all of this explicit exclusivity would necessarily breed a sense of “election” and a sense of “purity” in the people, and that would inevitably give them an air of haughtiness and superstitious rigidity in a world otherwise dominated by a pervasive Hellenistic liberalism. As a result Jews were stereotyped as aloof, bookish, pompous, cavalier, prudish.</div>
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The mere suggestion that there was a new covenant needed in order to reconcile god to man would have seemed preposterous to a Judean. The soteriological constructs contained in the Christian scriptures would have caused (and did!) much controversy. Boyd is, again, right to assert that the Jews would never have fallen for these weird teachings. But, like I have been stressing in this series, he must first demonstrate that the first Christians in Jerusalem in fact accepted these teachings if his reasoning is to have any relevance.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i>The Temple</i></span><br />
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During the post-exilic years leading up the First Jewish Revolt, the Temple at Jerusalem, rebuilt during Herod the Great’s industrious building streak,# was both the liturgical mother-ship and the prestigious and ornate jeweled crown of the once-mighty kingdom of Judea. For Jews of that time, all formal worship, all tribute, was directed toward this cultural centerpoint. Yearly pilgrimages to the Jerusalem Temple on appointed holy days of the Jewish calendar were prescribed by the prophets, whose adherence to Torah was the binding guideline for Jewish thought and conduct. Arriving in Jerusalem, pilgrims would set about ritually purifying themselves in preparation for the sacrifices they came to offer at the altar of Yahveh (sometimes from hundreds and hundreds of miles away). The sacrifices were the purview of an elite aristocratic priestly class who saw to the proper administration of this gargantuan religio-cultural-economic mechanism.</div>
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The Temple was such a central part of the religious practice and self-identity of the people of Judea in the years leading up to the war, in fact, that once the Romans razed it in the year 70 C.E. and the sacrificial aspect of this ancient tradition came to a screeching halt, the grim possibility that Judaism might be extinguished along with it became a very serious concern for Jews, both at home and abroad. What was once the single most defining outward symbol of a proud people’s cultic relationship to their god, the Temple, was now gone forever. A deep feeling of desolation must have pervaded the lives and prayers of not only the survivors of the long siege (there weren‘t many), but also of the large population of Jews that were dispersed throughout the empire. (If God is supposed to reside in the “Holy of Holies” in the inner recesses of the Temple—and the Temple is no more—then they were forced to ask the poignant question: "Where the hell is God now?!" ) </div>
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This is one instance where the Dead Sea Scrolls come in handy. The community that compiled this impressive library in the middle of nowhere explicitly detests the contemporaneous temple authority (presumably the Hasmonean dynasty) and have established a more ascetic ("pure") theology and liturgy that bypassed the temple expression we know as normative for the period. Among all the invective thrown at the Jerusalem temple authority that is evident on most of the sectarian documents found at the Khirbet Qumran site, there is the peaceful, sedate Temple Scroll, which lays out detailed plans for the construction and running of an <b>ideal </b>temple, with corresponding rules of behavior … and suchlike. Without going into too much detail, the point to bear in mind is that it wasn't the <i><b>insitution </b></i>the Qumran sectarians objected to, obviously, but what they saw as an usurpation of the institution. This is what apparently made them pack up and split from Jerusalem's liberalisms to live in the salt and heat of the desert. </div>
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This is supported also by what is known as the MMT Document,[<sup style="color: red;"><big><b>7</b></big></sup>] a letter from a group of people addressed to the high-priestly establishment at Jerusalem (circa 152 BCE). The authors of this letter assert that this Jerusalem core are following a bunch of wrong rulings on Jewish law, and they say that they have left the temple because of this, and that they will only come back if a number of these things are reversed. Again, leaving the details aside, what's important to my focus here is that, even though these ascetic sectarians abhorred Jerusalem's influence, they still saw value and a cultural ideal in the concept of a temple, albeit from a reformist point of view. </div>
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Of course, this had not been the only time that Jerusalem had fallen under siege and that sacrificial practice had ceased. The exile in Babylon showed the Jews that it was possible to ‘sing one’s song of Zion in a strange land’, so to speak, without a Temple in sight. A man deprived of his eyes learns to sharpen the senses he’s got left to somewhat compensate for the loss. With the temple gone, the unity of God, the importance of Torah, and strict adherence to traditional forms of expression became that much more valued as identifiers of the faith. This is where Pharisaim was forged before the temple was rebuilt by Herod. This is why I placed the temple last on this short list of essentials, because some forms of Judaism were obviously possible in contrast to this concept. It is safe to say, however, that the concept of temple was a monolithic and normative aspect of being Jewish at the time. One could oppose the temple, but it remained a focal point, if only as an ideal. </div>
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To sum up:</div>
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We know that there was a wide variety of ways to be Jewish before the destruction of Jerusalem. There were the educated types: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes. There were also undoubtedly more folksy provincial varieties and popular, more political ones such as the Zealots. This presents us with a wide range of possible ways that people expressed their Judaism. But the threads that bound all Jews of the time as kin seem to be:</div>
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<li>The first commandment. Or, to borrow a phrase from another of Judaism’s offshoots, the insistence that “There is no God but god.”</li>
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<li>This god has made a covenant with his people.</li>
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<li>This covenant entails adherence to the Torah.</li>
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<li>The temple is central, at least symbolically. (Its destruction threw everything into a tailspin.)</li>
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Those are common denominators of the variegation of Judeans in the first century up until the razing of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Sure, they may have argued with each other, sometimes vehemently, Sadducees about the function of Torah, Pharisees about the possibility and nature of a resurrection, but these commonalities remained.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">1</sup> - There are quite a few. <b>The Beginnings of Judaism: <i>Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties</i></b>, by Shaye Cohen is a pretty good one.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">2</sup> - There were exceptions to this near-universal admiration. Tacitus, for example, was less than friendly toward the Jews and their monotheistic obstinance. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">3</sup> - Deuteronomy 6:7</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">4</sup></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">-</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> I'd like to note, however, that there is some evidence that, even in the f</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">irst century, Palestinian Judaism may not have been as monotheistic as the surviving propagandist literature portrays it. The Second God heresy involving Metatron shows that a man transformed into a divine being was not without judaic believers at the time. Somewhat later Judaic magical texts also showed that the average Jew-on-the-street might not have been strictly monotheistic (it seems that many Jews accepted that there was reason that the commandment was "You shall hold no other gods before me!" rather than "You shall hold no other gods!"). Whether this was a grecian influence, a continuation of native Judaism, or some combination of the two is impossible to know. -- For more on this reasoning, I recommend the work of Margaret Barker. (HT to Dr. Barton for pointing me toward this concept.) <br />However, I do think that this thinking was esoteric and marginal and that strict monotheism was fairly normative by the time in question.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">5</sup> - Job 38:4–8 (KJV)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">6</sup> - An excellent survey of the idea of covenant in the Hebrew Bible is found in <b>Covenant:</b> <b><i>The History of a Biblical Idea</i></b> by Delbert Hillers</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">7</sup> - Elisha Qimron gave a lecture on this document at the Biblical Archeology Society's conference in 1984 which sparked the academic surge that would eventually allow for the publication of the scrolls in their entirety. Even Lawsuits ensued. People are funny. </span></div>
Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-77292900540505064672015-01-18T00:11:00.001-08:002015-01-18T00:13:36.047-08:00Continuity — The Myth of Jewish Christianity <br />
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As I've already intimated, throughout the preceding posts in this ongoing discussion, I have been suspending my disbelief just enough to allow for the authenticity of at least some core of the Pauline corpus, just as F.C. Baur had, when in fact I have come to view the ideas of the Dutch Radical school as generally correct. While some representatives of this proto-mythicist group would eventually muster the temerity to suggest that the Jesus story is probably almost entirely mythical in both form and function, the bulk of their fame (or, rather, their infamy) came from their expositions on and critiques of the nature of the pauline epistles, which they (rightly) saw as a product of turn-of-the-century tensions between the emerging ecclesiastical institution and a rather more esoteric "paulinism" that resisted its authority. I am especially persuaded by what I've read from W.C. Van Manen to at least take seriously the probability that these documents that have served as the very cornerstone of such an ancient tradition which makes claims to the historicity of not a few crucial events having taken place at a certain time at a certain place, are essentially just as spurious as those that are similarly attributed to Peter, to James, or to Jude.<br />
(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">No impartial scholar thinks <b><i>these </i></b>letters are authentic</span>.)</div>
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So we have two sources of information regarding Christianity's birth and early formative period: the Acts of the Apostles and the pauline epistles. The historical reliability of the Acts has been the focus of much scholarship in the last century, especially as contrasted with the epistles, which at times contradict its outlined narrative. My own opinion is that Acts is likely a very deliberate attempt to synthesize the two hitherto irreconcilable rival camps into a resultant unified faith. I follow David Trobisch on this. Moreover, I follow John Knox and Joseph Tyson in their suggestion that the Acts was penned essentially an an anti-marcionite reaction. I will return to this idea later. For now, suffice to say that if this is so, and if we add to this mix the Dutch radical idea that the entire Pauline corpus is spurious, then we have to face the sobering possibility that we have no primary sources regarding pre-Jewish-Revolt Christianity. This is so significant a paradigm-shift that it merits repetition and highlighting<b>:</b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>We have no primary sources regarding pre-Jewish-Revolt Christianity.</i></span><br />
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Gloss that over at your own risk (or at your own benefit, as the case might be).</div>
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At any rate, for the sake of engaging Greg Boyd on his own playing field, I have been allowing for their authenticity because even if we downplay the many discrepancies and contradictions between the letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, even if we just read them at face value, bracketing our higher-critical mind momentarily, it is pretty hard to elude the fact that Paul's intended audiences are markedly gentile.</div>
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The obviousness of this observation troubles me. I must confess that the fact that the Boyd objections, based as they are on such a demonstrably false premise, in retrospect, could have seemed like a compelling argument to me when I first heard him, now embarrasses me somewhat. There's something to be learned from every experience, though, and this one led me to a further profound realization. That I fell for it <i>at all</i>, even for a moment, is indicative of a strange kind of cultural inertia that apparently no one is immune to. </div>
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Why is it that people tend to hold on to certain prescribed ideas about a thing even when evidence to the contrary is right in front of them? If a skeptic like me can sometimes fall prey to this kind of rehearsed irrelevant sidetracking, it's no wonder that the business of apologetics prospers like it does, sustained as it is by the general population's lack of familiarity with the texts. All our lives we in the west have heard the story of Jesus, even those of us whose parents weren't particularly religious. Just as it's not an axiom of faith to "<b><i>know</i></b>" that Jesus existed, it is not an axiom of faith to "<b><i>know</i></b>" that the early Christians were Jews. It is a part of the background noise in our civilization, which, because we have no use for thinking about it outside of churchly settings, we don't pay any mind to. It's simply part of the social matrix that resulted from our peculiar historical inheritance, even though our culture is now primarily secular (functionally, at least). It seldom occurs to anyone, even skeptics, to question details such as a Bethlehem birth of Jesus, some kind of Galilean healing streak, the essential Jewishness of the authors and their readers, or his execution by Roman authorities at the instigation of the Jewish authorities. We take all these things for granted without too much consideration. </div>
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An illustrative example: I gave up the habit of watching television in 1991. Despite this fact, I can name and describe to some degree all of the four main characters in the Seinfeld television program (and probably a few of the supporting characters too) even though I spent the nineties completely television-free. When something is so pervasive, so ubiquitous in the cultural landscape, it tends to seep peripherally into your consciousness whether we care about that thing or not. Likewise, the basic outline of the Jesus legend is burned into our cultural retina, so to speak, even if we are not Christian. It is part of the cultural identity of even those who are not initiates into the religion. Being able to readily recall certain generalities about the Jesus story should not be mistaken for "knowing" they are true, however, particularly when the "remembered" bits don't match what the texts actually <b><i>say</i></b>. </div>
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So why is it so ingrained in us that the early Christians, Paul's communities of converts, were essentially Jews, when the epistles themselves are so obviously written to gentile audiences? Actually, it's not that hard to see why. It is because these epistles contain within them so many references and citations from the Hebrew scriptures, that we fail to see the forest for these trees being in the way. Yes, the character of Paul is infatuated with the Jewish Bible. Whatever incarnation he imagines for Jesus (it's notoriously hard to tell what he means), for him, it is all "according to the scriptures." We therefore make the mistake of interpreting this use of Jewish symbolism as though these addressed communities were Jewish, but we've already seen that this is not so. Clearly, it is "Paul" who uses the symbols and the rhetoric, <i>despite </i>the fact that communities he addresses are not Jewish.</div>
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Moreover, the symbolism and the rhetoric are problematic in themselves. As I have already mentioned[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">1</span></sup>], some scholars have argued against the authenticity of Paul's self-proclaimed pharisaism. This view was encapsulated concisely by C. G. Montefiore when he wrote :<br />
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"Either this man was never a Rabbinic Jew at all, or he has quite forgotten what Rabbinic Judaism was and is. … [on the other hand] … The Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels was a critic and pathologist of Judaism. His criticisms are real: they are flesh and blood.... But the author of the Epistle to the Romans fights, for the most part, in the air." [<sup style="color: red;">2</sup>]</blockquote>
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It is not enough to proclaim oneself a pharisee and to quote from the Hebrew Bible and engage in midrashic affectations. If it <i>was</i>, then many of the modern fringe religious groups (Jews for Jesus, Rastafarians, Mormons, Black Zionists) that lay claim to being the genuine inheritors of the tradition would have more of a legitimate basis to claim such a title than they actually do. Historical research, the science of genetics, and plain common sense all give the lie to such claims. To one who would ask why Paul would "lie" about such a thing, I would respond by asking them why Joseph Smith would "lie" about such a thing. Delusional people aren't necessarily "lying," they are simply delusional. I'm sure that in his own mind Paul was quite the experienced Jew of Jews. However, his rhetoric just doesn't match his claim to such a pedigree. </div>
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Those who would make use of any argument resembling the Boyd objections against mythicism that I outlined in the first essay of this series are holding on to an outmoded and demonstrably false premise. This includes Boyd, James White, William Craig, and many others. I have learned to understand a bit of why they do—conditioned habits are a real bitch to break—but such a stance is ultimately, demonstrably, indefensible. One simply cannot appeal to Paul when asserting the "thorough" Jewishness of the early Christians. </div>
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I think this is also the case with the rest of the New Testament writings, as I hope to show in future posts.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">1</sup> — Hyam Maccoby's <b>The Mythmaker</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">2</sup> — <i><b>Jewish Quarterly Review</b></i> 13 [1901], pp. 167, 205-6 </span><br />
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-38698881130212732512015-01-17T21:12:00.000-08:002015-01-23T07:06:27.189-08:00Continuity — Paul's Audiences — The Romans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Roman Christians</b></span><br />
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Here for the first time in this series of essays we have a community that Paul didn't have some hand in founding himself. The church at Rome presumably existed before Paul ever preached his peculiar brand of 'Christism' <i>cum</i> Judaism to them.[<sup style="color: red;"><b>1</b></sup>] </div>
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The Epistle to the Romans is a general statement of faith, a tractate in epistolary form. Like 1st Corinthians and Galatians, it mainly focuses on the concept of division among Christians. This time, however, the ethnic divisions seem to have been reversed. While in Galatia it was the Jewish outsiders who took a patronizing stance toward the gentile Christians, it appears that in Rome it was the Hellenists who felt that they were somehow self-evidently superior to the Jews. A curious feature of this "letter" is that the opponents it at times purports to assail seem more ideal (<i>i.e.</i> theoretical) than mundane (<i>i.e</i> real). More than in any other epistle, 'Paul' is deep inside his mind on this one, trying to formulate a systematic theology of Christ as redeemer and as "fulfillment." Like Jacob, one gets the feeling that Paul is wrestling with his own inner angel here. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who were they?</span><br />
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There is plenty of textual and archaeological evidence of Jews having had a presence in Rome in the first centuries of the common era. Inscriptions allows us to locate where they lived and gathered, where they were buried, and also some of the ways that they interacted with the Greeks and Romans in this, the biggest city in the empire. While the presence of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Jews</span> at Rome allows for the possibility of converts from this population, we have no reason to assume so, particularly in light of Paul's reports of the hostility he encountered when he preached at synagogues. If Roman Jews represented a significant segment of the Jesus cult, little in this document can tell us about them. </div>
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Romans does mention at least one pair of Jews in the Roman Christian community. Paul is apparently intimate with Aquila and Priscilla, a married couple that had converted before he had met them. Acts (Ch 18) explicitly calls them Jews (Romans does not) and adds that they had migrated first to Pontus, and then eventually to Rome. Claudius had ordered all Judeans to leave Rome, though—at least according to Acts—and so Paul met them in Corinth, where Acts says that they worked as tent makers like Paul. This would certainly provide an opportunity for their acquaintance. However, the Claudian exodus mentioned in Acts is a bit problematic because, though we aware of a handful of similar episodes in Roman history, none of them appear to refer to this specific 'expulsion'[<sup style="color: red;"><b>2</b></sup>]: <br />
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In 139 BCE the Jews were reportedly expulsed (along with the other “Chaldeans”).[<sup style="color: red;"><b>3</b></sup>] <br />
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In 19 CE, there’s another exodus written of, but this one doesn't just pick on the Judeans<b>:</b> <i><b>all </b></i>immigrant troublemakers are to be expelled.[<sup style="color: red;"><b>4</b></sup>]</div>
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The closest we come to an expulsion of the Jews as described in Acts is in Suetonius, writing in the early second century CE: </div>
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“<i>Since the Judeans constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, Claudius expelled them from Rome.</i>”[<sup style="color: red;"><b>5</b></sup>]</blockquote>
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This of course is a citation familiar to both historicists (who sometimes uphold it as extra-biblical evidence of Jesus) <b><i>and </i></b>mythicists (who rightly point out that this <i>could not</i> possibly be a reference to Jesus, <i>ergo</i> much less to his historicity). Could this be the same event that Acts is referring to? Forget what Suetonius says about Chrestus for a moment. This citation is useful to us in another way. Obviously not a reference to a historical Jesus, it still attests to some civic disturbances involving some Judeans which resulted in at least <i>some </i>Jews being expelled from Rome. Dio Cassius, however, explains that expulsions would have been unpragmatic. He says that Claudius imposed restrictions on Jewish gatherings, but he explicitly says the Jews were <i><b>not</b></i> expelled at this time.[<sup style="color: red;"><b>6</b></sup>] So … Were Aquila and Prisca expelled from Rome by Claudius (as Acts plainly states)?<br />
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Two possibilities exist:</div>
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<li>Dio Cassius is right, in which case I wonder where the author of Acts got his information on this episode. Could he have gotten it from his knowledge of Suetonius? If Dio Cassius is right ... could the author of Acts, in his diligent quest for confirmation of his story, have irresistibly gravitated toward the “Chrestus” reference and made use of one of its details? The problem with this, of course, is that Suetonius wrote in the early second century, and everybody knows that Acts was written well before that. (wink, wink)</li>
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<li>Suetonius is right, in which case I wonder why Dio Cassius is so adamant that there was no expulsion. Was he reacting to this Suetonian tradition (possibly through Christian use)? </li>
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Both possibilities are intriguing, though admittedly speculative —heavy food for thought.<br />
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Let’s assume for the sake of the Boyd objections (he doesn't like it when Acts is not taken seriously as history) that the second choice is the correct one, that the Jews <i><b>had</b></i> been expelled. This potentially would have left behind only the gentile variety of Christian converts at Rome, who would have proceeded to entrench <i><b>their</b> </i>brand of Law-less Christianity as the preferable paradigm to catechize neophytes into. When Claudius later died (54 CE), and the expulsion was presumably rescinded, what the formerly influential Jewish-Christians came back to was a muscular gentile variety that was resistant to Judaizing (if this Romans "letter" is any indication).. The re-integration of the Jews into church structures would then become unattainable due to the haughtiness that the Greeks adopted with their newly gained positions of power and authority (so Weifel - see footnote 2).This would be an obstacle they would have found hard to surmount, especially after Paulinism had taken over in Rome.</div>
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But then, Acts is the only place that pinpoints Prisca and Aquila as Jews. David Trobisch has proposed a compelling theory[<sup style="color: red;"><b>7</b></sup>] wherein Acts’s whole compositional <i>modus operandus</i> is to be a kind of cleanup crew that ties-it-all-together in a 'final authoritative edition' to finally determine orthodox authority contra Marcion (he thinks Polycarp is the best candidate for this task). According to this view Acts was written to corroborate apostolic succession and to synthesize the Pauline material with the gospels so that a homogenous orthodoxy could be arrived at between these two contrasting “styles“ of Christianity. A kind of merger. Might the mention of this couple be a linking editorial device to this end? It's just a speculation, but it is a compelling one to me.</div>
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In the closing “<i>say-hi-to-…</i>” section of Romans, we have a list of twenty six people that the author sends personal greetings to. He mentions "my kinsmen."[<sup style="color: red;"><b>8</b></sup>] If one were to presume at face value that Paul was indeed a “Pharisee of Pharisees” (in Acts), as many are wont to do, it would be plausible that a familial greeting could be a reference to more "Jews" in Rome. But this does not necessitate them having been baptized into the new faith yet (one <i>could </i>imagine relatives of Paul following his lead, but this would require harmonizing this epistle with Acts, which is the central problem in the analysis of the Pauline corpus). Moreover, I can't but wonder (again) if <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">Hyam</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">Maccoby</span> might be right in his conclusion that Paul was only feigning to be a Pharisee. But, for the sake of argument, let's acknowledge it as exhibit B— i.e. evidence of "Jewish-Christians" in Rome.</div>
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What we are left with, then, as far as the Jewishness of Paul's audience goes, as we survey this epistle, are a reference to a couple of known (from 1st Cor) companions of Paul (corroborated in Acts), and a possible “say hello to my cousins” reference in the closing of the letter. Given these, and adding the fact that the epistle reflects a community that eschews Judaizing in general, the emphasis sometimes given by apologists to the influence of Jewish Christians at Rome therefore seems like an ambitious stretch in light of the meager evidence supporting this appeal. So why the undue certainty on the part of Boyd and his colleagues? Even if there <i><b>were</b></i> Jews there in the community of Christians in Rome (an allowable speculation, to be sure), we cannot escape the fact that this letter is intended for a <i><b>gentile</b></i> audience. Paul is castigating them for feeling superior, for “judging” over those who might still choose to observe the Jewish Law. In the parlance of today's undergrad scene, for hatin' on 'em. The audience of this epistle definitely ain't Jewish.</div>
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Still, a big point of contention and animosity in this epistle is the Jewish system of food laws. Paul comes up with terms for those who keep kosher and for those who don’t. He calls those who keep the kosher laws “the weak” (contrasted with the “strong”, i.e. those who don’t observe any such restrictions). Paul is urging the strong not to judge the weak. To my mind, however, the terminology he uses seems contradictory, the logic is reversed. One would think that those who can refrain from forbidden foods would be the strong ones and those who indulge to be the weak, but Paul’s estimation is nevertheless turned inside-out like this. It’s a fascinating twist. One possible explanation for why the kosher are considered weak is because they may be abstaining from meat in general just so they won’t chance encountering idol meat. In other words, Paul implies that the "weak" ones adhere to Torah merely out of a sense of superstitious loyalty and habit. I find the irony interesting. At any rate, Paul assures the Romans that all Israel will see salvation, so that judging Jews for such things as their keeping kosher is therefore just a silly distraction.</div>
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Stylistically, the letter to the Romans once again shows that Paul’s rhetoric has deliberative elements to it. It introduces a diatribe technique which is prevalent in Romans in a way that it isn’t in the other Pauline works. Like I intimated earlier, rather than revealing a <i>real</i> opponent, Paul here seems to set up imaginary, theoretical objections to his dialectic, telling us more about <i>himself</i> than about any supposed <i>real</i> detractors he may have encountered. In Romans, he seems to be trying to clarify the distinction between Jew and gentile in his own thinking. Consequently, his main arguments center around the concept of equality for gentiles and Judeans.</div>
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The bottom line: Salvation goes to the Jews but also to the gentile. God shows no partiality. Greeks are as condemnable as the Jews are and they equally have access to God’s salvation. Greeks may be idolatrous and perverse (a common Jewish stereotype of their gentile neighbors) but Jews are no better off if they don’t submit to the “spiritual circumcision” he prescribes for these imaginary judaizers. There is no significant distinction for him. These themes are all in Romans.</div>
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As he previously had in Galatians, Paul here argues again that Abraham is the father of all, both of those who have faith in god and of those who are circumcised. He cites Genesis 15 once more. He <i><b>really</b></i> likes this verse, it seems. He seems fixated on this call to faith as the gentile way in to Yahveh’s salvation. It’s basically the same argument as in Galatians. The <i><b>chronology</b></i> of the story becomes the loophole. </div>
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Circumcision being thus obsolete, Baptism is now the new replacement initiation rite, the entrance requirement, for Christians. The ritual’s description in Chapter 6 once again calls to mind a Gnostic kind of symbolism which revolves around the idea of a kind of death and resurrection which the initiate willingly undergoes. But it also reveals the essential gentile character of his audience, as baptism was already being practiced among virtuous Jews (there are plenty of baptismal pools in Jerusalem, Masada, and Qumran to attest to this). It would therefore be as unnecessary (and as stupid) to try to persuade Jews to be baptized as to be circumcised. They already are. Again, his readers are not Jews.</div>
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Chapters 9–11 show Paul desultorily citing biblical passages to argue for this essential equality of Jew and gentile. This raises the inevitable question: If we all have access to the Hebrew god in this way, why was Israel chosen Israel at all? The true Israel for Paul transcends cultural and geographic boundaries. All Israel will be saved. If everyone gets to be saved, why insist on Israel at all? Might this not be an anti-marcionite nod? I think it might.</div>
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If not, then how do we explain Paul's obsession with the Hebrew scriptures, an obsession which reportedly failed at <i>every</i> encounter with <b><i>real</i></b> Jews? Why did Paul "settle" for gathering gentiles who accepted his marginally Jewish-<i>ish</i> theology right before the coming of the end of days instead of <b><i>actual</i></b> Jews?. It bugs Paul that Jews aren't buying his 'gospel', but his main concern (as in Galatians) is that the <i><b>gentiles </b></i>buy it. From this perspective Israel is remiss, is fumbling the obvious, is in a state of defiant denial. Ironically, it is this stumbling that has allowed salvation to finally come to the gentiles. What’s more, Paul seems to believe that all Israel will eventually come to believe in Jesus Christ some fine day. ('<b><i>They'll see!</i></b>')<br />
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Here's the thing, though: there's just something unjewishy about the author's "Jewish" affectations, something that makes my spidey-sense tingle:<br />
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"Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin." (3:20)<br />
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"The Law brings wrath; where there is no Law, there is no trangression." (4:15)<br />
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"The Law came in so that trangression might abound." (5:20)<br />
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See what I mean?<br />
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A Pharisee putting down the Torah.<br />
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Right.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Relation to James? . . . </span>.</div>
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Can we know what relationship, if any, there was between these “weak ones” and the James party? Once again, that the James Christians is inferred to share a similar predilection for Torah observance is not enough to project Paul’s cosmic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">christological</span> constructs onto James. We've already seen from our look at Galatians that it is possible to be a Law-observing Christian independent of that particular group's influence.</div>
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Finally, chapter 15 recalls the collection for the Jerusalem poor once again. This act of charity is the thing he hopes will legitimize his mission. That his collection should not be rejected by the Jerusalem church is crucially important to Paul. Why would they reject it, though? If the traditional chronology of the letters is correct, we note that he seems to grow progressively more and more stressed about being rejected by the Jerusalem Jacobites with each epistle. It’s as if he <i><b>knows</b></i> it is going to be rejected. Why? What reason could they have to reject it? He then lists some of the Christian communities that have graciously contributed to the collection for Jerusalem’s poor. (Galatia’s contribution is not mentioned, however. What happened? This is a particularly interesting oversight considering how important this collection was in <b>that </b>letter [chapter 2]. ) </div>
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At any rate, we can conclude that the epistle to the Romans, instead of revealing the early church in that city as "thorough Jews" like Boyd asserts, is … once again … overwhelmingly gentile.<br />
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What does this mean?<br />
Stay tuned to the same bat-channel for the exciting answer . . . </div>
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<small><sup style="color: #0b5394;">1</sup> - Let me stress, lest someone think that I believe the books are reliable in any way, that I am allowing for the authenticity of at least the<i> Hauptebriefe </i>in the ongoing discussion of the Pauline corpus only for the sake of argument. I am just reading it at face value to show that Boyd's objections fail even if one attributes authenticity to these documents. In actual fact, I follow Van Manen and Loman and the other radicals in thinking the whole corpus spurious.<br />
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<sup style="color: #0b5394;">2</sup> - Wolgang Weifel built a neat theory around this Claudius reference in a Chapter entitled : “<i><u>The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome</u></i>” in a collection of essays: <b>The Romans Debate—Continued</b> (pp 100–119) (Donfried — ed.)<br />
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<sup style="color: #0b5394;">3</sup> - Valerius Maximus - <b>Factorum et Dictorum</b>, 1.3.3 (A contemporary of Tiberius Caesar, Valerius attributes the expulsion to a crackdown on Jewish proselytizing. Some scholars [Martin Goodman - <b>Mission and Conversion]</b>, however, argues that Valerius has likely projected the activity of his own day onto the remote episode).<br />
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<sup style="color: #0b5394;">4</sup> - Josephus, <b>Antiquities</b>, 81 — Tacitus, <b>Annals</b>, II.85 — Suetonius, <b>Tiberius</b>, XXXVI — Dio Cassius, <b>Roman History</b>, LVII.18.5a (Josephus says that it was as punishment for a handful of scoundrels, Tacitus implies that Rome needed to be protected from pernicious influences. If these 'outsiders' were prepared to acknowledge themselves as 'Roman', then they would have been allowed to stay. Suetonius agrees. Dio says that it was for excessive proselytizing, but, again, this is likely a projection of the conflicts in his own day onto his historical narrative [see Goodman in the preceding endnote] ).<br />
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<sup style="color: #0b5394;">5</sup> - Suetonius, <b>Claudius</b>, 25.4<br />
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<sup style="color: #0b5394;">6</sup> - Dio Cassius<br />
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<sup style="color: #0b5394;">7</sup> - <b>The First Edition of the New Testament</b></small>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: #0b5394;">8</sup> - It should be noted that many scholars doubt whether chapter 16 was part of the original, shorter Romans, whether this section was originally part of another letter meant for Ephesus. I won’t digress into that dispute as it has no real value to the discussion at hand except to note that the dispute <b><i>is </i></b>ongoing, which may make point of Paul's having mentioned "kinsmen" moot..</span><br />
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<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-53964772948377644632015-01-16T20:30:00.002-08:002015-01-16T20:30:27.950-08:00Continuity — Paul's Audiences — The Corinthians<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Corinthians</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who were they?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>ncient Corinth was a Roman colony, a place where soldiers and proud Roman citizens, drunk with the glory days of Rome, went to retire. It became quite a little bustling city. Latin culture seems to have had an elevated status there, as Latin is somewhat more prominent in the inscriptions of Corinth than Greek is.</div>
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Philo mentions Corinth as one of the colonies in which Jews had established a presence[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>1</b></span> </sup>], but, except for a single fragmentary Hebrew inscription, a partial reference to a “synagogue of the Hebrews” [<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>2</b></span></sup>], there is no other archeological evidence of any significant Jewish presence at Corinth. Correspondingly, we have little evidence of a Jewish presence in the community being addressed in 1st Corinthians. [<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>3</b></span></sup>] As in Thessalonika, so in Corinth; the Christian population is <b>gentile</b> (at least the Christians that are involved in the issues that are troubling Paul in the "letter" are; if there are Jews among them, we have no way of knowing from this epistle). </div>
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1st Corinthians purports to be Paul's response to a letter he received from Corinthian Christians that he refers to as <b>πνευματικοι</b> (<i>pneumatikoi </i>— spiritual ones). By examining the nature of their explicit complaints to the traveling apostle, we get a glimpse into some of the forms that their worship took. Chapters 7–15 of 1st Corinthians are basically Paul running down their concerns, and then responding to them. For the purpose of this essay, I will bracket Paul’s responses. I am more interested in glimpsing what these spiritually superior Christians ‘believed’ than I am in Paul (for now).<br />
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The highlights:</div>
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They seem to eschew sexual activity. They practice abstinence as a means of becoming more spiritual. They resent the licentiousness that they ascribe to some of their Corinthian brethren. This again (<i>c.f.</i> Thess) calls to mind a Qumran-like or Gnostic-like asceticism.</div>
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They think that they “possess knowledge.” Does this refer to their educated status or is there a Gnostic influence in Corinth? Or both? Some of the Corinthian Christians feel free to indulge in food that has previously been sacrificed to idols without thinking twice, believing it to be no harm. They’re deemed as cavalier, elitist. There is an air of superiority at play there.</div>
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Paul has a problem with the way these Corinthians have been worshipping the Judean God. He exhorts them to come up with a better system. He describes disorder in the meetings. He then lists some ostentatious activities that frequently take place during Christian worship in Corinth. He calls them ‘spiritual gifts.’ The Corinthian <i>pneumatikoi </i>are into a charismatic, showy variety of worship, one in which spirits are actively involved in making things happen during their services. No soporific cadences for them! No sir. They speak in tongues. They whoop and holler. They are on fire with the spirit. There’s nothing that Paul could do to stop it, even if he wanted to, I think. Paul can be shown tolerating heathen practice in exchange for fidelity to his specific kerygma. We each have our own talents, Paul says, meaning to devalue these mannerisms, but he must be cautious in his critique because he knows how important such outward displays of ecstatic reveries are to their practitioners. He doesn’t forbid them to indulge in them. He instead tries to make the converts see how trivial such concerns actually are in the big picture. </div>
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Here we get to watch syncretism in the process of happening. Speaking in tongues can be traced back to the worship of the ancient Asia Minor fertility deity Kybele. Pharisaism, resistant to all forms of syncretism, was especially repelled by these corybantic and orgiastic Kybelene displays of ecstasy. The Corinthian gentile Christian group that Paul is writing to, however, is likely composed of many of these former charismatic fertility cultists. Indeed, we find quite a few allusions to their licentiousness in this epistle (chapter 5, Ch 6:9–11, 7:1–6, 10:7–9). They have apparently transferred some of their enthusiastic Kybelene practices onto their new Yahveh context. (This is particularly ironic in light of their new-found celibacy.)</div>
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Finally, in Chapter 15 Paul seems to be saying that these <i>pneumatikoi </i>think that there’s no such thing as a bodily resurrection. Acts says that, as a Pharisee, Paul believes in bodily resurrection. Doesn't he? — If he does, why don‘t <i>they</i>? Wasn't he their founder?</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kybele</td></tr>
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All of these points of contention show us that these Corinthian Christians curiously don’t seem to be too familiar with anything we can generally recognize as Paul’s teaching. Yet these are the very people who took the time to actually write to Paul, <i>specifically</i>, to see what <i>he </i>could do to help fix their troubles. And Paul <i>writes back</i> to these guys<b>!</b> There is a tremendous dissonance here. What's going on? Why are they espousing things that are contrary to what we are accustomed to think is Paul’s preaching? Are they familiar with Paul’s <i>actual</i> preaching or merely with his <i>reputation </i>as an apostle? These people are fanatical any way you look at it. They look sort of Gnostic to my eyes, maybe even a tad docetic. The body seems disagreeable to them; they seem to want to reject it in favor of some theomaniacal Platonic ideal. They are too radically ascetic even for the likes of Paul, but he writes to them anyway. Ironically, though, he paints himself as a ‘ringer’ apostle who will straighten them out, but then in this epistle he walks on eggshells around their ‘pentecostalistic’ tendencies. It’s rather weird.</div>
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It’s no wonder the Tubingen scholars found so many problems with the genuineness of the Pauline material. It is full of inconsistencies.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Where does Judaism factor in?</span></div>
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The Epistle to the Corinthians reveals a mixed bag of problems of varying urgency, most of which fall neatly into one general motif<b>: <i>division</i></b>. The author(s) of this epistle has a problem with people who think themselves socially superior to others. According to this epistle, the wealthier Christians who host congregations in their households have apparently been lately exploiting the shame/honor system that was part of the Mediterranean social landscape, to the detriment of group morale. They flaunt their wealth, engendering a sense of rivalry within congregations (and between them). This kind of thing was apparently common. One is supposed to shame one's peers in order to increase one's own prestige and standing in society.[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">4</span></sup>] In Paul’s view, this is not just to passively look down on someone, this is to actively mistreat them. Chapter 6 reveals that some of the Christians have even been going to court against other followers of Jesus. These were no casual spats. There is some serious antagonism going on. </div>
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Paul indicates that there are also those who think themselves <i><b>religiously</b></i> (spiritually) superior to others, but Jewish perspectives are not being espoused or in question here. Rather, the Corinthians seem to have more of a Gnostic tinge to them. There's nothing particularly "Jewish" in view.</div>
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If anything, 1st Corinthians gives us insight into Paul’s familiarity with advanced <i><b>Greek</b></i> civil rhetoric and oratory. This epistle is replete with a kind of deliberative rhetoric that was common in civic speeches of the day. Paul seems to be trained in a popular Greco-Roman style of rhetoric. This letter, an argument <i>against </i>discord and <b><i>for </i></b>concord and unity, uses a popular style of discourse from Greco-Roman literature. Dio Chrysostom in his <b><i>Discourse To the Nicomedians on Concord with the Nicaeans</i></b>, for example, uses similar themes and techniques to deal with this same kind of honor/shame rivalry going on between one city and the next. Against discord, for unity. The similarities are self evident. Paul is definitely showing us some of his Greek schooling in this epistle. </div>
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As an example of Paul’s familiarity with the discursive methods popular in his day, compare Paul’s use of the body metaphor to plead for unity to the language used in Livy’s rhetoric:<br />
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“They certainly considered there was no hope left, save in the concord of the citizens: that this must be restored to the state at any price. Under these circumstances it was resolved that Agrippa Menenius, an eloquent man, and a favourite with the people, because he was sprung from them, should be sent to negotiate with them. Being admitted into the camp, he is said to have simply related to them the following story in an old-fashioned and unpolished style: <b>‘At the time when the parts of the human body did not, as now, all agree together, but the several members had each their own counsel, and their own language, the other parts were indignant that, while everything was provided for the gratification of the belly by their labour and service, the belly, resting calmly in their midst, did nothing but enjoy the pleasures afforded it. They accordingly entered into a conspiracy, that neither should the hands convey food to the mouth, nor the mouth receive it when presented, nor the teeth have anything to chew: while desiring, under the influence of this indignation, to starve out the belly, the individual members themselves and the entire body were reduced to the last degree of emaciation. Thence it became apparent that the office of the belly as well was no idle one, that it did not receive more nourishment than it supplied, sending, as it did, to all parts of the body that blood from which we derive life and vigour, distributed equally through the veins when perfected by the digestion of the food.’</b> By drawing a comparison from this, how like was the internal sedition of the body to the resentment of the people against the senators, he succeeded in persuading the minds of the multitude.[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>5</b></span> </sup>] </blockquote>
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The body as a unity is a metaphor common to both authors.[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">6</span> </sup>] Paul’s rhetoric was right in tune with the Greco-Roman sensibilities of the gentile proselytes under his tutelage, particularly those of more refined tastes and means. </div>
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There's a point to be highlighted here: There might be a few Torah citations interspersed throughout this Hellenistic epistle, no doubt, but they seem like affectations, forced accretions. The matrix itself is Hellenistic. There is little particularly <b><i>Jewish</i></b> teaching going on there, certainly no Pharisaism as we understand it. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Hyam Maccoby may have been right about Paul. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Relation to James? . . . . </span></div>
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We can infer almost nothing regarding the James faction from Corinthians. James is listed, to be sure, among the recipients of a postmortem apparition from Jesus, but there’s nothing there that can tell us anything pertinent to our focus. The apparition of Jesus to James in Chapter 15 is often credited as describing the moment of conversion for James by Christian apologists. This verse is often used to reconcile Mark’s (Ch. 3) depiction of Jesus’ familial circumstances (i.e. hostile) on the one hand, with the importance placed on James as a key figure in the nascent movement after Jesus’ crucifixion on the other. How else can we explain the discontinuity between these two portraits? James <i><b>must have been</b></i> converted by this postmortem appearance of Jesus that the author of 1st Corinthians describes (or so the usual apologist arguments go). This event is what finally made James a ‘believer’ according to this view. However, harmonizing Galatians with Corinthians with Acts in this way is pretty naïve, and unwarranted, I think, not just because the two epistles actually contradict each other and Acts at several key points, but also because all of those books are basically partisan orthodox didactic works from the same publisher (so to speak), meant to reinforce each other’s kerygma, and are rendered therefore almost useless historiographically because of this inherent circularity.[<sup><b><span style="color: red;">7</span></b></sup>] </div>
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So, once again, I ask: <b>What do we know about the Corinthians <i>viz</i> Judaism?</b></div>
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We <b>know</b> that there were class divisions within the communities that were engendering animosity among Corinthian Christians. </div>
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We <b>know</b> that the leadership of these communities is minimal and ad hoc. </div>
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We <b>know </b>there were openly charismatic <i>pneumatikoi </i>there who were tongue-speaking, fire-breathing, spirit-filled and celibate (at least tryin‘ like heck to be). </div>
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We <b><span style="font-size: large;">think we know</span></b> that the notorious fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians preserves a primitive proto-creed of presumably apostolic origin. But a good case can be made that, if anything, what this list of apparitions reveals is actually a sectarian contest for ecclesiastic supremacy between those who claimed Peter (& disciples) and those who claimed James (& apostles) as their pedigree.[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>8</b></span></sup>] I think the gospels and the Acts will further corroborate this. But first we will look at Romans . . . .</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">1</span> </sup>- <b>Legatio ad Gaium</b> 281-2</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">2</span> </sup>- A crudely inscribed lintel found near the Peirene fountain (probably 4th century in origin). "At the marble steps of the Propylaeum the excavators found a heavy stone lintel on which they were able to decipher the words "Hebrew Synagogue", clearly cut out in Greek letters. The house in which Paul proclaimed the new doctrine must have stood beyond the colonnade in the region of Lechaeum street."– W. Keller, <b>The Bible as History</b>, p368. It was being used as a stepping stone before the inscription was discovered. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">3</span> </sup>- Acts 18 reports that Crispus was the leader of the synagogue. Paul mentions interacting with a Corinthian by this name. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">4</span> </sup>- Andrew D. Clarke elaborates on this system of status and honor and the influence on early Christianity at Corinth in <b>Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth</b> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">5</span> </sup>- <b>Ab Urbe condita</b> II. 16, 32, 33 </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">6</span> </sup>- The metaphor was also previously used by Xenophon in <b>Memorabilia</b> (2.iii.18) and by Cicero in <b>De Officiis</b> (III.v.22) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>7</sup>— The only other early attestation of this supposed event comes from the apocryphal <b>Gospel of the Hebrews</b>, a late second century work known to Origen and partially quoted by Jerome. It not only singles James out as the very first person that Jesus appeared to after his resurrection, it also explicitly states that James had been a believer and follower of Jesus prior to his death. He had even been there at the last supper according to this work (“had drank from the Lord’s cup”—which directly contradicts the gospel stories). </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">8</span> </sup>- Robert Price wrote a good piece enumerating all the redactional issues with this chapter. <a href="http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html">Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation</a></span><br />
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<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-69977809039116437492015-01-16T01:13:00.000-08:002015-01-23T07:08:47.034-08:00Continuity — Paul's Audiences — The Galatians<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Galatians</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who were they?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he author’s reason for writing to the churches of Galatia (presumably founded by him —*4:13–15) is clear: He has just received news about certain outsiders who have been telling his converts that they must endure circumcision first if they are to be considered followers of Jesus. The opponents (“Some who trouble you.”) seem to be saying to Paul’s converts, who are undeniably gentile: </div>
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<b><i>‘What ?! </i></b></div>
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<b><i>You guys want to be Christians but you haven’t been initiated into Judaism yet?! </i></b></div>
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<b><i>Are you nuts?!’</i></b></div>
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The Galatian Christian community that Paul is addressing consisted of gentiles.[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">1</span></sup>] The emphasis that the author places in this epistle on the rejection of circumcision is a dead giveaway. Not only would it simply have been futile for Paul to argue against circumcision to Jews, it would have been stupid, as they would have already been circumcised. Chap 4 verse 8 leaves little doubt that they were former Pagans who had been initiated recently into the Jesus mysteries. There may or may not have been “Jewish” Christians in these groups, but we have no way of ascertaining this from this epistle. Even if there <i><b>were</b></i> some, we can safely say that these were not the people who were on the author’s mind when writing this epistle. In Galatians the figure of Paul is stressed out because some of his recent converts are being sold straight-up Judaism by some unknown outsiders. He doesn’t want his darlings to be exposed to this straight-up Judaism, lest they fall away from his “true gospel.” He wants them to remain gentile. At some point in the recent past, apparently, Paul had inspired these gentiles to abandon their former Pagan ways in order to adopt his particular version of the Jewish god, a vision that did not require such extreme measures as circumcision from them.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What was Paul selling at Galatia?</span></div>
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The gentile god fearers of Galatia seem to have been in the market for a specifically Jewish monotheistic expression (else, what’s a god-fearer for?). The Epistle to the Galatians suggests that they were still ambivalent about which path to commit to. What’s more, they were responsive enough to these Judaizers to make Paul freak out about it. Perhaps Paul’s audients weren’t as committed to a Pauline Judaism as he’d have liked to believe. Perhaps they were eager to hear any and all Jewish viewpoints which would bring them closer to this god whose mysteries they sought to enter. Unfortunately, the Pauline rhetoric is the only viewpoint that survived. </div>
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A major advantage that the author(s) of the Pauline epistles possibly had over the Judaizer sects, what set him apart, was the Greek training that he seems to have had. “Paul” knew how to talk to these gentiles about the god they had recently chosen to fear in a way that the “circumcision party” could not. Whether their newly chosen god strictly resembled the Biblical Yahveh or not (one of Marcion’s focii) seems of little concern to Paul’s god-fearers. Would a neophyte know the difference, anyway? After all, an ancient mystical tradition like Judaism is intangibly sublime, virtually unfathomable without a knowledgeable guide to help one navigate it. Enter Paul and his glass-darkly. Paulinism offered gentile aficionados like the Galatian community a way inside the mystery of the living god of Israel, in plain Greek, that didn’t require self-mutilation. The way of entrance into the covenant through baptism was understandably more appealing to these Pagan proselytes than was the requisite knife. This was a no-brainer. A win-win situation, in efect.</div>
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Still, these Galatian <i>protégés</i> of Paul apparently seem to be laboring under the impression that their Jesus worship was still somehow a fundamentally Jewish expression. Their wish to be adopted into the Abrahamic fold was apparently genuine. When Paul showed up around the Diaspora synagogues preaching the new paradigm of a Judaic god, the texts say that the Jews turned him away at every synagogue. (Hell, the texts say that they damn near killed him at a few of them!) Yet Paul was somehow still able to found a smattering of churches across a good swath of territory using this much maligned and spurned theology of his. How did he manage to build an ‘alternate’ Judaism without any Jews? If the Jews threw stones at him, who was it then that bought into it and sustained his mission? The answer has never been hidden from view. It was very likely these god-fearers, whose understanding of Judaic monotheism (and/or covenant, Torah, et al) could only be an ambitious Platonic or Stoic approximation of Judaism. These spiritual gentiles found in Paul’s all-inclusive message an attractive alternative to the Jewish god they sought. In lieu of having traditional Hebrew credentials (i.e. the right pedigree/bloodline), Paulinism became the loophole through which the god-fearers could at last sneak past the surgeon’s gate into Abraham’s bosom. But why did they wish to adopt Yahveh so badly? We’ll explore that crucial question in time. </div>
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At any rate, the educated Greek style that Paul exhibits throughout the corpus was obviously attractive to the gentile god-fearers. It plays a significant role in the form of the epistles. For instance, the author employs a kind of judicial rhetoric in the first couple of chapters of Galatians, where he defends his message over against his opponents by first defending the legitimacy of his apostleship. It’s a defense as well as an attack, showing a clean rhetorical style and a familiarity with contemporary Hellenistic methods of discourse.</div>
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But Paul takes a bold step beyond this classical Greek one. He mixes biblical midrash into his Hellenistic rhetoric. In arguing against his opponents, he uses the authority of Torah to support his arguments for why it is unnecessary to circumcise the gentiles. This is so weird and ironic that it warrants repetition, rephrased: <b>Paul uses Torah to explain to gentile god-fearers why <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>gentiles</i> </span>need not be bound to Torah to legitimately follow the Jewish god. </b>(Mind you, his audience is gentile, so he can pretty much say whatever he wants, really, and they’d be none the wiser.) This, I think, is one of the vital puzzles of Christian origins.<br />
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Midrash is a method of biblical interpretation whereby one searches for deeper meaning by applying a kind of logical extrapolation to a given passage, projecting from the lesser case to the greater or vise versa. This method allows for a fairly wide scope of interpretation of scripture. Through it, the rabbis would openly discuss the intricacies of the law and resolve any discrepancies resulting from the peculiar, sometimes very difficult phrasing of biblical passages.</div>
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The specific midrash that Paul attempts to apply to this question in this case involves the very first covenant that the Hebrew god ever made with Abraham in the book of Genesis. Paul focuses on two different details in the story, both referring to this covenant, to defend his position that Torah is superceded. To wit: In Genesis 15 God promises prosperity to Abraham because of the constant faith that Abraham has displayed since his calling. Later, in chapter 17, he demands the ritual of circumcision from male members as a sign of this special covenant with the people. Paul argues that the promise was made before the ritual had been instituted by god in order that the gentiles can be endeared to god through faith alone, without relying on external signs like circumcision. In other words, the <i>chronology</i> of the two parts of the contract makes a world of difference for Paul, who reasons that the one must be prior to the other not just chronologically, but also in terms of their significance for human history. If the epistle to the Galatians is anything, it is a loud cry to allow the whole world into the Jewish tent. </div>
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One aspect of the midrash process was that it is an interactive method. A midrash doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not enough to unpack and to posit a possible explanation for any given passage. Torah is a living thing. It needs to be engaged and discussed among one’s peers. Something might be a valid midrash, but it might not necessarily be a compelling one. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one. [<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">2</span></sup>]</div>
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I stress this aspect of midrashic argumentation because I find it hard to believe that a moderately learned Pharisee could not have demolished Paul’s premise that the gentile has access to Yahveh prior to the Jew just because of this particular sequence in Genesis (by simply pointing out the fact that there‘s no such thing as ‘half-a-contract’, for example). Was there no one nearby who could engage and challenge Paul’s lame midrash? I bet those Judaizer opponents that he’s complaining about could have, had they stuck around. These Judaizers were apparently compelling enough to rattle the Galatians, who were shook up enough to inspire Paul to call them “foolish” (“who has bewitched you?”). Paul’s letter gives the impression that these Galatian Christians were “of Paul”, but how committed to Paul they actually were is questionable, given their evident capriciousness. There would have been no need for Paul to scold them so severely for listening to an old-hat argument for circumcision if their faith in his message had been secure. No?</div>
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Interestingly, to the naked eye, the offenders’ rationale seems to be simply the standard within Judaism. Nothing more. If Paul saw these guys as fellow followers of Jesus, it would seem that they had an understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus that differed radically from Paul’s, an understanding which he characterizes as “another gospel” (and which he double-curses). But this “other gospel” seems to have been nothing but good old normative Judaism, as far as I can tell, with, perhaps (it's hard to tell from the text) some added importance imparted to Jesus (which can be inferred from the texts). But it is far from clear. Was he a Messiah to them? Was he a beloved, well-remembered Rabbi to them? We could venture guesses, of course, but we ultimately can’t know because all that Paul says in this epistle is that these opponents wanted his gentiles to be circumcised. We have no idea what christology or soteriology they adhered to. The epistle cannot help us there.</div>
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Another further example of Paul’s use of biblical exegesis in Galatians (4:24) is his allegory involving Abraham’s two seeds, that of Sarah and of Hagar, respectively. Allegory is simply the figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another one. In this case, the author identifies the Jews with Ishmael, the son of Hagar, Abraham’s slave concubine, while he equates his own acolytes with Isaac, the son of Sarah, a freewoman. These two alternatives are cast as two separate covenants, of the flesh, and one of spirit. Without delving too deep into Paul’s reasoning here, it should be noted how repulsive this would have sounded to a Jew. If one thinks that Jesus was ballsy for calling the Pharisees vipers, imagine how well Jews would have reacted to Paul saying they were sons of a slave concubine girl. Had there been any schooled Jews around to riposte, Paul would have gotten quite an earful, if not a stoning, I’m sure! The interpretation that Paul advances in this allegory could only occur to a Christian superssesionist—certainly not to a Pharisee, who have always stressed the Abraham–Isaac–Jacob–Joseph lineage in Genesis.</div>
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Hyam Maccoby wrote a whole book[<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">3</span></sup>] in which he questions Paul’s Pharisaic credentials by pointing to many of the discrepancies in Paul’s supposedly Pharisaic thought, such as the one I just outlined. He concludes that the apostle’s attempts at displaying rabbinic proficiency were but an idiosyncratic affectation at best. I won’t belabor the point, but I think that Mr.Maccoby may have been right. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What is the relation to James? . . . . .</span></div>
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Early in the epistle, in his exasperation over having to defend the validity of his apostleship, Paul relates an earlier episode in Antioch (Chapter 2), where some of James’ party, including Cephas, apparently were not keen on sharing their meals with the gentiles. He refers to these people as the circumcision party. But in telling that anecdote, he is not referring to these new Judaizing offenders. He’s merely recollecting a recent episode in his mission. While some kind of kinship is usually assumed between these Judaizers intruders in this epistle and the James group from Chapter 2, the letter never actually explicitly equates these two groups. In fact they seem to be two distinct groups upon close inspection. In light of the author’s explicit and boastful description of his “meeting” with James and the pillars in Jerusalem, for example, I find it hard to believe that anyone from the James’ party would so openly and defiantly contradict a direct ruling from James if he was truly the man in charge. If James’ authority was as far reaching as is implied in the Pauline corpus, then surely these “troublemakers” had heard of the recent “merger” (the so-called Council of Jerusalem) between the two giants (Paul and James). It turns out that the Judaizers in Galatia, however, either don’t know about the decisions taken during the council or else they simply don’t care. They preach a Torah-first faith to these Galatians, sans any arbitration or intervention or influence from James, apparently (or from Paul for that matter). </div>
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It should also be stressed that Paul is not speaking <b><i>to</i></b> these opponents in the epistle; he’s not trying to convince <b><i>them</i></b> to change their ways. He is trying to convince the <i><b>Galatian Christians</b></i> (who are decidedly gentile) to not listen to these outsiders who insist that following Jesus demands a parallel adherence to Torah first. </div>
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Is this group’s insistence on an imperative observance of Torah sufficient reason to pinpoint them to Jerusalem or to James? No— it only recognizes them as Jews (Judeans), and no more. </div>
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Another possibility exists. Is it not just as plausible that there could have been more than one “circumcision party” in Palestine at the time? This Galatian letter inadvertently reveals that it was apparently possible to be a Torah observant Jesus fan which did not look to James for authority, but who eat only kosher food and honor all other Jewish religious observances like circumcision. It would be just one more possible way of being proto-Christian in this formative gestation period from which the new religion would eventually emerge. </div>
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Before moving on from the James connection to Galatians, we should mention the collection of money for the poor in Jerusalem. It is not a very central concern (he devotes a few words to it) in this epistle but it is notable because for Paul this collection brings with it a perception of legitimacy in the eyes of the Jerusalem church. Throughout these epistles, he seems to need a more positive relationship with that group for some reason. Why does he need this legitimacy so badly? </div>
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So . . .: <b>What do we know </b>about the Galatians <i>viz</i> Judaism<b>?</b></div>
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We know that some outsiders tried to convince some of Paul’s follower’s that circumcision was a necessary component of keeping the faith. </div>
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What do <b>we think we know</b><b>?</b></div>
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We think we know that these outsiders were somehow affiliated with James’ party, with whom Paul shared an awkward meal in a story that he relates. Paul does call them the ‘circumcision party’, but it’s important to note that in Chapter 2 Paul is not identifying the <i><b>Jacobians</b></i> with this new threat. He is merely venting his frustrations in dealing with Judaizers by sharing one anecdote from his past experiences.<br />
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At any rate, we see that, so far, neither the Thessalonian nor the Galatian audiences of the epistles are necessarily the "thorough Jews" that Boyd vehemently insists they are in his objections.<br />
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In the next installment, we will look at the Corinthian community that Paul addressed.<br />
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<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">1</span></sup> - This was the conclusion reached by J. Munck in <b>Paul and the Salvation of Mankind</b>, and by numerous other scholars.<br />
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<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">2</span></sup> - This important subject is dealt with at length in <b>Validity in Interpretation</b> (1973) by Hirsch, E.D. Jr<br />
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<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">3</span></sup> - <b>The Mythmaker:</b> <b>Paul and the Invention of Christianity</b> (1987)<br />
<br />Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-39533378962987328672015-01-15T08:17:00.000-08:002015-01-19T10:16:32.515-08:00Continuity — Paul's Audiences —The Thessalonians<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>n <a href="http://mythicismfiles.blogspot.com/2015/01/continuity-problem.html">the previous post</a> we saw that for 'historicists' like Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy the earliest Christians were Jews who, despite the vehement revulsion they would have felt toward the idea of a “god-man” under normal circumstances (it was against their very grain and fiber to accept such sacrilege—so Boyd & co.), were somehow convinced and compelled by the ‘evidence’ (<i>i.e.</i>, reports of Jesus’ supernatural ‘extras’ —healings, raisings, self-proclamations, et al.) to now choose to abandon the strictures of their former fanatical monotheism in favor of one that allowed for this “god-man.” This is in fact the standard traditional (orthodox) view.</div>
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If we, for the sake of argument, bracket the question of their authenticity[<sup style="color: red;"><b>1</b></sup>] and their dating, and place them in the sixth and seventh decades of the first century, as current consensus does, the Pauline epistles would be the earliest record that we have of the phenomenon of Christianity. Under this scenario, just twenty years after Jesus supposedly was killed, perhaps a few dozen thriving communities of Christians were already festooning Canaan, Asia Minor, and the northern Mediterranean—even across into Alexandria in Egypt—all proclaiming the peculiar christologies and soteriologies and creeds of an emerging orthodoxy. Paul knew of these communities and endeavored to travel to many of them to preach his particular gospel. His tireless labor made him a valued mentor and authority to these communities, who received his correspondences with either joy and gladness or fear and trembling, depending on whether or not they had been upholding the teachings he had previously given them. In addition to asking what the spiritual/theological indebtedness or relation to the original Jerusalem group was (the wellspring of it all), we would like to know who these people were that Paul was exhorting to follow this new fulfilled religion that in his eyes transcended the Torah. As we survey the epistles it is very important to keep in mind who Paul’s respective audiences were.</div>
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Boyd is absolutely certain that Paul is “<b>thoroughly Jewish. He thinks Jewish. He talks Jewish. His letters are filled with references to the Old Testament. He presupposes a Jewish framework in all of his epistles and the congregation he’s writing to</b>.”</div>
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Questions queue up: Do Paul’s letters bear this out? Is there some way to determine the Jewishness of Paul’s proto-Christian communities?<br />
What about Paul’s own Judaism? Is there a way to gauge <i><b>it</b></i>?</div>
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Commentaries that underscore Paul’s thorough Judaism usually do so by comparing the rhetoric of the epistles to some of the popular exegetical methods available and known to be in vogue in Jewish discourse at the time. These include midrash, typology, allegory and pesher. I’ll stop to remark on some of those occasions when I discuss the pauline epistles, as this might reveal not just the extent of his “Pharisaim”, but it might also tell us what his readers were prone to accept as normative from an authority of Paul’s stature. </div>
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The New Testament is a richly variegated text with many subtexts. I’m limiting my focus to a few questions relevant to the topic of "Jewishness" as I survey the epistles:<br />
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<ul style="margin-left: .6in; margin-right: .5in; text-indent: 0;">
<li><b>Who were the intended readers of the epistle to each respective community? </b></li>
<li><b>Were they Pagans? </b></li>
<li><b>Were they Jews? </b></li>
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The answer to this question will affect the way we judge their understanding of the material that Paul is presenting to them as a form of "Judaism."
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Some further questions:<br />
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<li><b>How does the preaching contained in the Pauline epistles compare/contrast with the normative Judaism of the day as we understand it? </b></li>
<li><b>What can we glean about the James faction from these epistles?</b></li>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Thessalonians</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br /></b></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who were they?</span></div>
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The audience of the first letter to the Thessalonians consisted of gentile pagans. Of this there can be little doubt (1:9). A plain reading suggests they were working class gentile people that Paul likely preached to at their places of work and in public.</div>
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This short epistle praises the community for holding fast to the gospel that Paul had previously handed down to them. When the Jews are mentioned in it, they sort of have a “Blue Meanies” (from the Beatles' <b>Yellow Submarine</b>) feel to them, i.e. they have a malevolent aspect; they are an enemy to run and hide from, lest they inflict harm to the apostle and his entourage. (see end of Chapter 2)</div>
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Question: <br />
Who was it that persecuted Paul, as late (presumably) as 51 C.E. or so? <br />
Who chased him from Judea to Athens? <br />
If his only crime was holding to a radical Jewish messianic belief in the face of an antagonistic and muscular orthodox Jewish opposition, then why wasn’t James (or Cephas for that matter) who was supposedly espousing this same messianism, also chased out of town along with Paul? <br />
The anti-Paul faction must have been some group who either didn’t know of the truce reached at the "council of Jerusalem," or who otherwise were a rogue group that just didn’t care about this truce. Perhaps the James gang was persecuted as well, and we just don’t know about it, that's certainly one possibility. Or perhaps James wasn't preaching the same stuff that Paul was at all, after all, and was therefore left in peace by those who opposed Paul. The problem with the first option, though, is that the only pertinent near-contemporary extra-canonical textual reference that alludes to this James sect is that of Josephus (in the Antiquities.) Though it is dubious, to be sure (and likely an interpolation[<sup style="color: red;"><b>2</b></sup>]), this Josephan passage portrays James as a respected and righteous leader of the community, not as an outcast, so I seriously doubt he could have been preaching “Jesus the resurrected god-man” in Jerusalem and yet was still left in peace by these Über-judaizer bad guys.</div>
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What traces of Judaic symbolism we find in 1st Thessalonians immediately call to mind the Qumran variety of Judaism (current consensus calls them “Essenes”) — consider the “sons of light/darkness” [<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>3</b></span></sup>] motif (5:5), for instance. It could reflect this kind of exilic "Judaism" but they could just as easily be a traces of emergent Gnosticism or of Zoroastrian dualism, which was already part of the cultural milieu at the time. One of the telling things that I have learned about “Paul” as I re-read these epistles is that it is hard to peg all that he says down to one single individual person’s mind. Paul seems to be as much a composite talking head as Jesus is. (But that’s for another essay.)</div>
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So: <br />
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<b>What do we know about the Thessolonians <i>viz</i> Paul's epistle and/or Judaism?</b> </div>
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We know that Paul was pleased with the Thessalonian Christians for remaining loyal to the Pauline brand. We know that some people were starting to die off before the parousia and that the surviving members were beginning to worry about their salvation. We know that Paul felt persecuted by "Jews" which seem to be more caricature than real people. </div>
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What do <b>we think we know?</b></div>
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We tend to subconsciously automatically (uncritically, retrojecting into this epistle what is found in Acts) equate “Jew” or “Jerusalem” with “James party” which leads to a whole parade of misunderstanding. We’ll return to that after we take a look at some meatier Pauline letters.<br />
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<sup>1</sup> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">I tend to agree with W.C. Van Manen, G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga, and Bruno Bauer that it is unlikely that any of the pauline epistles are authentic. However, for the purpose of this series of essays, I will presume that Baur's <i>Hauptebriefe</i> is genuine. I include Thessalonians in this series as well just because it is thought to be the earliest of the pauline epistles by some scholars.</span><br />
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<sup>2</sup> <span style="font-size: x-small;">— James Carleton Paget, <b>Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity</b>, the <b>Journal of Theological Studies</b>, (2001), pp. 553-554; Ken Olson, <b>A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum</b>, in <b>Eusebius of Caesaria: Tradition and Innovations</b> (2013), pp. 314-319); Richard Carrier, in a couple of works, most recently in <b>On the Historicity of Jesus</b> (2014), pp. 337-340 ... {and also scholars who accept the (partial) authenticity of the TF itself} ...<i> c.f.</i> Robert E. Van Voorst, <b>Jesus Outside the New Testament </b>(2000), pp 91-92.
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<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">3</span></sup> - <span style="font-size: x-small;">Compare with the Dead Sea Scrolls “Rule of the Community” which elaborates on this theme.</span></div>
Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-91089666955814955552015-01-12T06:46:00.004-08:002015-01-17T05:29:48.182-08:00Miguel Conner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyrY85CLFUQODMv8XimuHv6c-Y0RveyKhANFNEtKqiyYYjugARJ6XkKtvaxDRs__ui3PMpYqF_38aksJAQG_632QkooCHkGfh36lQDRGE4DV5tYKh8jZa2dkqACUbIeIpw5zQ07Kk2odr_/s1600/MiguelConner02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyrY85CLFUQODMv8XimuHv6c-Y0RveyKhANFNEtKqiyYYjugARJ6XkKtvaxDRs__ui3PMpYqF_38aksJAQG_632QkooCHkGfh36lQDRGE4DV5tYKh8jZa2dkqACUbIeIpw5zQ07Kk2odr_/s1600/MiguelConner02.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span>iguel Conner is a writer of science-fiction novels. He is peripherally relevant to a discussion of mythicism, not because he is a scholar exploring the issue <i>per çe</i>, but because he is an active online broadcaster whose <a href="http://thegodabovegod.com/" target="_blank"><b>Aeon Byte Radio</b></a> podcast, which has been going on for more than a decade now, often features in-depth interviews of many of the pertinent personalities in the discussion of Christian origins and the historicity of Jesus. </div>
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<h2>
The Good</h2>
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With one caveat (see below), the <a href="http://thegodabovegod.com/" target="_blank"><b>Aeon Byte</b></a> podcast is usually pretty good. The strength of the show rests on the quality of its guests, a veritable "who's who" of New Testament and/or mythicist scholarship (both good and not-so-good): Bart Ehrman, Joe Atwill, Elaine Pagels, Robert Price, Karen King, Bruce Chilton, D.M. Murdock, Richard Carrier, <i>etc</i>. In addition to featuring such an impressive roster of guests, the show also displays a production standard that is on par with many professionally produced programs. As a media broadcaster, Conner obviously works hard. He is diligent and resourceful. His interview style may not be particularly incisive, but this limitation is made up for by the quality and variegation of his guests, who don't need much prompting in order to be interesting and informative. I have been a semi-regular listener for some years and recommend this podcast to anyone interested in some of the more esoteric and/or contentious aspects of Christian origins.
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The Bad</h2>
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Conner begins each episode of his podcast with a stylized segment which is a kind of audio mosaic or collage. It consists of a mashup of desultory audio clips from popular films and television programs (mostly films) interwoven with his own cryptic "gnostic" musings (which at times venture into diatribe territory). These introductory collages range from fifteen to twenty-five minutes in length. Although I honestly enjoy the interviews that follow them, I invariably find myself skipping right over these dreadful intros. They are excessive, irrelevant, incoherent, self-serving, narcissistic, at times paranoid ... they are simply bad. Mixed metaphors and non-sequiturs abound, as well as facile citations of pop songs offered up as wisdom sayings.
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By way of example, consider the opening paragraph of his Amazon bio page:
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Miguel Conner is a garage philosopher, hedge theologian, and general madman across the waters. His life quest is to take his audience from ancient connections to modern meaning. As a wise meme once said-- Don't be the change you want to see in the world, be the strange you want to see in the world.</blockquote>
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This kind of post-modern pop mysticism leaves me cold. It doesn't help that he seems to think that there is some kind of conspiracy to trivialize or silence the "gnosticism" that he sees everywhere around him, especially in pop culture, which is of course oxymoronic, considering how much of it he tacitly admits is <b><i>not</i></b> being repressed (else it would not be so pervasive in pop culture).
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Despite this strange idiosyncrasy, once one skips over each opening babble-fest (cutting off the bruised unappetizing part of the apple), the show is usually rather enjoyable.</div>
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-90567202181891393632015-01-10T07:15:00.000-08:002015-09-28T04:20:46.176-07:00A Laughing Matter: Parahistory & the Historical Jesus<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJz8F9nstlgSPSyloBu2YvNmUtt_z89LNz56TlIylqwNvqprRTzLTHh3YNy4zrWpadLEuabrYvaHlZ74hCHM-zBIz36vGpUl5ulQjxNy7oJ-jn6J7qVYh2xMT8upOTEawFMOoxweWhRyu-/s1600/ShingoAomoriTomb01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJz8F9nstlgSPSyloBu2YvNmUtt_z89LNz56TlIylqwNvqprRTzLTHh3YNy4zrWpadLEuabrYvaHlZ74hCHM-zBIz36vGpUl5ulQjxNy7oJ-jn6J7qVYh2xMT8upOTEawFMOoxweWhRyu-/s320/ShingoAomoriTomb01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shingo, Aomori</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span>eep in the mountainous northern countryside of Japan’s main island of Honshu, in the agricultural prefecture of Aomori, a good day’s travel from the metropolis of Tokyo (some 300 miles), one will find the village of Shingo (called Herai in former times) nestled in the landscape. A few farmhouses unobtrusively scattered among terraced rice paddies and apple orchards, no big thing, Shingo is your typical rural Japanese village. There’s nothing that's obviously out of place about this place, really—nothing, that is, until you begin noticing the sign of the Christian cross (<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;">✞</span>) everywhere. Crosses lead a kind of yellow brick road path into the center of town, becoming more and more numerous as you approach: on street signs, on the façade of the general store, on the uniforms of its few municipal employees. They finally converge on a building of modest size that serves as the town’s official museum. Boasting over 10,000 visitors annually, this museum was erected to commemorate one specific piece of local mythology, a legend that is quite extraordinary for such a small rural Japanese village.
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Now, here comes the laughing matter. Ready?
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Shingo, Aomori, according to local tradition, is the final resting place of …
[<i>wait for it</i> … ] … Jesus. Yes, Jesus. <b><i>The</i></b> Jesus— Jesus of Nazareth, Christ himself— the world-famous healer, magician and teacher from first-century Judea, the cornerstone figure in the religious development of Western civilization of the last two thousand years. <i>That</i> Jesus. His body is said to lie in a burial mound on a charming nearby hill just down the road from the museum a click.
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A large white cross marks the spot.
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Let me pause here to ask the reader: Is this your first time hearing about this? If it is, and if you’re like me, you probably shook your head and maybe giggled a bit. It’s obviously a joke. Right? Obviously. But no; people really do claim that Jesus is buried in Shingo, Aomori. There’s an entire tourist industry devoted to the perpetuation of this peculiar legend, in fact. Officially sanctioned by the town and celebrated annually with a festival that features music, poetry, and dance, the Christ Festival (<i>Kirisuto Matsuri</i>), as it is known, is a significant yearly source of revenue for the town. The locals therefore take it pretty seriously. They get into it. They look forward to participating in it every first Sunday in June.[<sup><span style="color: red;">1</span></sup>]
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But if you have never heard of Shingo, the notion of Jesus having been in Japan is such a bizarre concept, so far removed from the traditional Jesus legend’s cultural and historical context in first-century Judea, that we can’t help but raise an eyebrow upon first hearing this weird take on a familiar story. We find it weird, humorous. We're liable to reflexively and impulsively dismiss the whole thing out of hand as a frivolous proposition. A one-liner or a pun is all it seems to elicit.<br />
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Why on earth would someone think that Jesus is buried in the land of the rising sun? <br />
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A tourist brochure from the museum provides the curious visitor with a brief introduction to this strange tale:
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-kShO1okxr44XFpYJ93oRJEkL29k1UxddpfOlb_t8hpZNl7QLNle9qQxttvZRGskCZh-xoAsy6CvZuXs0N4W9Zo7frpvThj65yf7toyvh51-XUZUSP6mAOMLpYFuWqFmyJ0werhB9ZLQ-/s1600/JapaneseScript.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-kShO1okxr44XFpYJ93oRJEkL29k1UxddpfOlb_t8hpZNl7QLNle9qQxttvZRGskCZh-xoAsy6CvZuXs0N4W9Zo7frpvThj65yf7toyvh51-XUZUSP6mAOMLpYFuWqFmyJ0werhB9ZLQ-/s200/JapaneseScript.jpg" width="156" /></a></div>
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<i>“When Jesus Christ </i><b>(イエスキリスト) </b><i>was 21 years old, he came to Japan and pursued knowledge of divinity for 12 years. He went back to Judea at the age of 33 and engaged in his mission. However, at that time, people in Judea would not accept Christ’s preaching. Instead, they arrested him and tried to crucify him on a cross. His younger brother Isukiri </i><b>(イスキリ) </b><i> </i>[<sup><span style="color: red;">2</span></sup>] <i>casually took Christ’s place and ended his life on the cross.
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<i>Christ, who escaped the crucifixion, went through the ups and downs of travel, and again came to Japan. He settled right here in what is now called Herai village, and died at the age of 106.
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<i>In this holy ground, there is dedicated a burial mound on the right to deify Christ, and a grave on the left to deify Isukiri.
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<i>The above description was given in a testament by Jesus Christ.”
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So Jesus went to Japan and then wrote about it. How about that? Who knew? (It’s hard to restrain sarcasm, I know.)</div>
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Although I do not subscribe to Christianity (or indeed to any other religion), I did grow up here in the West, where the story of Jesus is foundational, pervasive, deeply ingrained into the culture, so I find this notion of Jesus having escaped the crucifixion and then running away to Japan to be surreal, absurd, non sequitur, ludicrous. A joke.</div>
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But why? This is the question I begin with. Why is it so easy to resort to sarcasm and derision in this case? Is there some threshold of ludicrousness beyond which a proposition becomes absurd enough to be considered laughable? How is this threshold to be delineated? Is mockery justified beyond this threshold? Ever? Is vitriol? What are the social or mythological parameters at play in making these determinations?
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Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.” It’s an easy enough maxim to accept and to exercise in cases where little attempt (if any) has been made to produce evidence in support of a given proposition. Were someone to claim, for instance, that Elvis is now living as a homeless vagabond under the Santa Monica boardwalk, or to claim to have regular discourses with angelic beings from another dimension, beings who compel a select few to make their message from the great beyond known to the rest of humanity, it would probably be safe to laugh on first listen. But what about when someone has actually taken the time to compile a body of evidence in defense of the intelligibility of an idea? At what point can one let one’s derision flow freely?
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The answer ultimately lies, as it does for all truth claims, in analyzing the evidence as objectively as one can, and then following it wherever it leads. Is the evidence fraudulent or real? Is it valid? Is it tenable? Is it relevant? Is it precise? Is it corroborated? One can of course opt to exercise one’s prerogative to simply dismiss a proposition altogether as folly without further ado, of course. That’s certainly one option. But that kind of dismissive mockery would be based more on social pressures than it would on any discernable rationale. Outright dismissal without analysis would be an emotional response. A distinction needs to be made. To offer any kind of informed objection about such a radical claim, one should at least be willing to look at the evidence, and then go from there. If no good evidence is offered, then it is probably safe to laugh. Likewise if plausibilities are all that are offered as evidence. Either way, if there is any verisimilitude at all to a story, evidence will bear it out.
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In the case of Jesus having traveled to Shingo, Aomori, Japan, there are some people who in fact do cite a body of evidence. And as I explore the claim, in fact, it turns out that the evolution of this legend is as convoluted and as full of moxie, fantasy, and intrigue as a Dan Brown novel.</div>
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In 1935, while researching his family’s library in the prefecture of Ibaraki (about 60 miles northeast of Tokyo), a man named Kyomaro Takeuchi claimed to have discovered some very ancient documents which turn out to be the source of this peculiar, lesser-known variant of the Jesus legend. These documents included the <b>Legend of Daitenku Taro Jurai</b> (the Japanese name that Jesus reportedly took on for himself). The legend revealed that Jesus first came to Japan during the reign of the eleventh emperor Suinin, landing at the port of Hashidate (on the western coast of Honshu), and that he eventually settled in the Etchu province, where he studied Japanese language, literature, and philosophy under a Shinto priest.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqICtl2k9eanaIgURVVn8BxqX0EnsKcLEPnRGFwKWoLgIcp9X4sw1dKvE8Qg-qJRARX_PY7ca2GvHmjnAb_yNsdMm_G8gxhPchYKPeFEYiy9HDr-ZsqLkq0FIa3u-3ny7mrCv6WjVt-DDR/s1600/CathayIesous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqICtl2k9eanaIgURVVn8BxqX0EnsKcLEPnRGFwKWoLgIcp9X4sw1dKvE8Qg-qJRARX_PY7ca2GvHmjnAb_yNsdMm_G8gxhPchYKPeFEYiy9HDr-ZsqLkq0FIa3u-3ny7mrCv6WjVt-DDR/s320/CathayIesous.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
After this formative period of immersion into pre-classical Japanese culture, it is reported that Jesus then returned to Judea. The New Testament tells us what happened next. The part where Jesus less-than-triumphantly marches into Jerusalem one Passover weekend to usher in the new Davidic age, only to botch it all up and end up getting himself crucified in the process for all his trouble, ... this story is deeply ingrained into our collective cultural frontal lobe. There’s no need to revisit here the details of that familiar passion play. The Takeuchi documents, on the other hand, have a different, happier ending than the New Testament does. They tell us that Jesus was in fact spared the undignified death outlined in the gospels. Cancel the passion. Cancel the resurrection. Cancel Pentecost. These presumably ancient texts tell us that Isukiri, Jesus’ baby brother, voluntarily took his place and died instead. Having thus escaped death by the hand of Rome, Jesus hurried eastward, carrying with him his martyred brother’s ear and a lock of hair from their mother. After much hardship along the long way from Judea to Japan (via Siberia and Alaska—!!—, we are told), Jesus eventually made it home to Japan. The legend then tells us that during this second visit, Jesus finally settled down in Herai. He married a woman named Miyuko, worked as a simple rice farmer, raised a couple of daughters, and later died there at an extremely advanced age. The Takeuchi documents further reveal the Sawaguchi family to be the direct descendants of Jesus of Nazareth.[<sup><span style="color: red;">3</span></sup>] <br />
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It is worth mentioning that at the time of their “discovery” these documents caused very little stir (and most of what little stir there was was negative) in the Japanese press, who would have been understandably highly skeptical and hostile toward such a disparate interpolation of <i>gaijin</i> (alien/outsider) religious symbolism into pre-axis Imperial Japanese culture. Therefore, Takeuchi wasn’t taken very seriously. But, still, there are those who even now perpetuate this extraordinary legend, or else there would be no yearly festival. Right?
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In addition to the Takeuchi documents, those who take the authenticity of the story seriously offer a few lines of ‘evidence’ in support of their belief. First, we are asked to notice the similarity between the Sawaguchi family emblem and the familiar star of David, symbol of the Hebrews since ancient times.</div>
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<tr><td><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 45pt;">¿</span></td><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-a_xcdLq4FJImOgkOBfDXAQp1oWzGmni9wKy10ZkTI9usyxQuczakhRBYh0qAidl1TGLE0bwALRWBpWLbRaNPZfqoqKp9MkQ15I8GijETTk63Xi4k0es_q5UcNZt6OlXHWrNoeBxsAX9v/s1600/embleme_sawaguchi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-a_xcdLq4FJImOgkOBfDXAQp1oWzGmni9wKy10ZkTI9usyxQuczakhRBYh0qAidl1TGLE0bwALRWBpWLbRaNPZfqoqKp9MkQ15I8GijETTk63Xi4k0es_q5UcNZt6OlXHWrNoeBxsAX9v/s200/embleme_sawaguchi.jpg" width="196" /></a></td><td><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 40pt;"><b>→</b></span></span></td><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBty83vT2XaIxUMj0kDzWN6KpqatA92HVy__0_YnL0wn5KdkhrqoIYqO-mbiUV9RGf7XU2pU9jDHyYEpEc5F8iB66wanjlRuPPwTfXFQ4CwWqA4mmVJqMYDh4T4eP3GuSo4idluYl0rheY/s1600/604_250.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBty83vT2XaIxUMj0kDzWN6KpqatA92HVy__0_YnL0wn5KdkhrqoIYqO-mbiUV9RGf7XU2pU9jDHyYEpEc5F8iB66wanjlRuPPwTfXFQ4CwWqA4mmVJqMYDh4T4eP3GuSo4idluYl0rheY/s200/604_250.gif" width="174" /></a></td><td><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 40pt;">?</span></td></tr>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Seeing this comparison, I can't help but think to myself, ‘Wait … That's evidence?, You have got to be kidding me!’
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Well, that's not all; there is also some evidence from a certain body of ancient songs of the region which have survived through the ages and that are traditionally sung at the yearly festival. This corpus of music, of special interest to ethno-musicologists, has been exclusively performed in this region for ages and ages. The songs and chants are all in what is essentially a long forgotten language. They go further back than the Japanese language itself, in fact. These songs are so ancient that they were sung eons before anyone ever heard of Jesus in Shingo. Their syllables have been faithfully handed down from generation to generation, taught phonetically, even though no one remembers what they mean any longer.[<sup><span style="color: red;">4</span></sup>] “Jesus-in-Shingo” proponents will often cite one scholar in particular, Eiji Kawamorita, who has suggested that the lyrics of one such song <i>could have come from</i> [my emphasis] some Hebraic source that has been babble-ized over time. In his ethnography of the songs of the region in 1935, he stated, "This is a military song of ancient Judea and it means to give glory to God in Hebrew." An approximate pronunciation of this particular festival chant is:<br />
<blockquote style="margin-left: .39in; margin-right: .6in; text-indent: 0;">
Naniyaa dorayayo ................... (ナニヤアドラヤヨ)<br />
Naniyaa donasare inokie..........(ナニヤアドナサレイノキエ) <br />
Naniyaa dorayayo ................... (ナニヤアドラヤヨ)<br />
<br /></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Offered up as evidence of its Hebraic origin is the suggestion that, in the middle of the song is a string of syllables (“nasare”) which closely resembles the name "Nazareth."[<sup><span style="color: red;">5</span></sup>] Moreover, the old name of the town, Herai, can be said to derive from the word for "Hebrew." My spidey sense is tingling like crazy at this point and I am tempted to respond facetiously: (‘Yes, and the "<i>inokie</i>" part clearly is a reference to Enoch. … Oh, yes. I see it now. And obviously the "<i>yayo</i>" is a theophoric allusion to the tetragrammaton. Of course! It’s obvious!’)[<sup><span style="color: red;">6</span></sup>]</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
As you can see, I find this kind of thing mildly hilarious. It really is hard to not resort to sarcasm, presented with such flimsy scraps of circumstantial 'evidence.' It's hard to imagine that anyone could be drawn in by it at all. The bit about the similarity between the Sawaguchi family emblem and the star of David, for example, is clearly just ad-hoc and forced from the git-go. It’s downright silly. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Still, some people really do buy into this. Professor Kawamorita, cited as having supported the hypothesis that the songs are Hebraic in origin, was not the only scholar to have examined these ancient songs, however. On the other side of the fence is Dr. Kunyo Yanagida, for example, a premier Japanese ethnologist who has interpreted the words of that same song (Naniyaa Dorayayo - see above) to translate as, "You must have nerve to express your heart." He thinks it was a love song in the local proto-Japanese dialect of the region. So is it a Hebrew battle cry or is it an aboriginal love song? How would Occam cut this knot? </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Digging a bit deeper still we learn that Professor Kawamorita, despite his Hebrew-song theory, wound up in fact later rejecting and detesting the whole Christ-burial business. He resented the fact that his work was being used to support the ideas of the hyper-nationalistic Takeuchi. So annoyed was he at Takeuchi that he would (in his work “Research on the Hebrew Song Words in Japan”) eventually write about the matter:
<br />
<blockquote>
<br />
“<i>During the summer of 1935, when I set foot in Herai, the tomb of Christ did not exist yet </i>[...] <i>I have nothing in common with Kyomaro Takeuchi, who posed as an oracle and a remote descendant of Sukune Takeuchi</i> <b>(武内宿禰)</b>, <i>and his group, Katsutoki Sakai, Banzan Toya, history researcher Kikue Yamakawa etc. who created that "Christ's grave" fantasy in Herai, and I refuse to bear that responsibility.</i>”<br />
<br /></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
If this weren't damning enough, after a few inquiries into the region’s tourist attractions, one soon discovers that the tomb of Jesus is not Shingo’s only popular spot; there are some ancient (older than Giza, or so the brochure claims) pyramids nearby, as well. You can also find, just a few kilometers from Jesus’ grave, the actual location of the Garden of Eden. How about that? Talk about harmonic convergence! Apparently, Shingo, Aomori is the Sedona, Arizona of Japan, i.e., a groovy place to titillate all manner of gullible and credulous mystic visionaries in their quest for is-ness and otherness and what-not-ness. Whatever one may think of the <i>kirisuto matsuri </i>(it seems like a fun party-- I’d love to attend it sometime), it is not looking so good for the historical veracity of the legend it purports to celebrate, I’m afraid.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
But since the legend doesn’t seem to be fading away any time soon, and though there doesn’t seem to be any validity to the parallels presented as evidence thus far, we can have a little fun and at least ask to see the original Takeuchi documents. Maybe they can lend some insight on this matter. Instantly we run into a caveat, though. You see, the originals were so precious that they were transferred from Ibaraki to Tokyo, where’d they were thought to be safer. However, they did not survive the subsequent bombing of the capital city during the war. They were destroyed. But, lucky for us, copies had been made by the Takeuchi family and these are on display at the museum in Shingo.
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
‘I see,’ I think at this point. 'So… the originals no longer exist; only copies do. What’s more, the people claiming to have "discovered" the documents are the very people who did the copying.' [<i>My spidey sense is tingling.</i>]
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Okay. Suspending my suspicions for the moment … <br />
What about these copies? What, if anything, can we glean from them? On close inspection, not surprisingly, we find that if the circumstantial evidence above seems thin, the textual evidence is even thinner. In fact, the textual evidence is blatantly fraudulent. To begin to illustrate just how blatantly, first consider that the copies of the various Takeuchi documents on display at the Shingo museum are written in what are legible kanji, hiragana, and katakana characters — all of which are standard in the written Japanese language. Though this won't attract the suspicion right away with most people, it is actually a <i><b>huge</b></i> problem, so big a problem in fact that it is enough by itself to conclusively betray the Takeuchi documents as a forgery. Why? Well, in short, this sort of combination of hiragana, katakana and kanji is a convention within a Japanese writing system that did not exist until the ninth century. What's more, the Japanese didn’t even have <i><b>any</b></i> writing system at all until the sixth century or so. The following excerpt is from Japan: A Short Cultural History[<sup><span style="color: red;"><b>7</b></span></sup>]:
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<blockquote>
<br />
<i>Apart from Chinese chronicles, our chief sources of information about early Japanese history are two official records, the <b>Kojiki</b> ('Record of Ancient Things') and the <b>Nihongi</b>, or more correctly <b>Nihon-shoki</b> ('Chronicles of Japan'), compiled in 712 and 720 respectively, […] It must be repeated that both these records were compiled at a date when Japan had been for centuries under the influence of Chinese culture, and that they are both written in Chinese script—<b>since the Japanese had no writing of their own.<span style="color: teal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></span></b></i>(my emphasis)
</blockquote>
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
It is my understanding (indeed, it is explicit in the museum literature) that the Takeuchi family claims to have "copied" —not "translated"— the documents before the originals were destroyed in the war. If this is so, then it follows that the originals must also have been written in this modern Japanese script. No? Thus, whoever "copied" these documents has to explain why Jesus of Nazareth (the supposed author of this scroll) was expressing himself using modern Japanese script near the turn of the second century C.E.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Let's give the Takeuchi family the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument. Let's allow for the possibility that the original documents were actually written in ancient Chinese characters and that there were members of the family who were qualified to translate them from this archaic form of Chinese script to the more modern Japanese one. But even then there would still be major problems within the text itself which would be very hard to explain or to reconcile with what we know. These are insurmountable hurdles.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
A single glaring example should suffice to conclusively make this point. One of the pages of the documents is signed: <br />
<br />
<b>イスキリスクリスマス神</b>, <br />
<br />
"Isukirisu, Christmas God."</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPMsgWZJczabeQLWAuys5aOAh7V9cFwPMWFwfr21mtoRSn7BXu7oOvu-qX4hyphenhyphenA-dgMhkXz-ME-14_zlkpy_e2xdzYkY6CDypLmFn91PMcbHh5_WXnN-zZUD3tNVob_wvfLFnGFrId02X66/s1600/testament_christ_signature.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPMsgWZJczabeQLWAuys5aOAh7V9cFwPMWFwfr21mtoRSn7BXu7oOvu-qX4hyphenhyphenA-dgMhkXz-ME-14_zlkpy_e2xdzYkY6CDypLmFn91PMcbHh5_WXnN-zZUD3tNVob_wvfLFnGFrId02X66/s200/testament_christ_signature.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a copy of Jesus' signature</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
So, not only is this supposedly a testament written by Jesus himself, it is written by a Jesus who apparently thinks that he’s Santa Claus. Clearly, this could only have been written by a modern Japanese person with a very limited understanding of Christian belief and ritual, circa 1935. Thus, it doesn’t take a genius to declare the Takeuchi documents a forgery. </div>
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We have enough to make our own informed estimate of the historical viability of the legend of Jesus in Shingo. </div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Let's see:<br />
<ol style="margin-left: .6in; margin-right: .6in; text-indent: 0;">
<li>—The legend originates with the discovery of an “ancient text” whose blatant anachronisms and absurdities betray its spuriousness at every turn. </li>
<li>—The legend’s plausibility is appealed to from the point of view of semantic speculation based on what is essentially an unknown (and arguably unknowable, lost as it is to the fog of time) source of ancient song. </li>
</ol>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
I’d say that there’s very little chance (I'd say "zero") of the legend being factual. Forged documents and tepid ‘could be’s can only dance one from here to there. Not very far. I think that it is safe to say that Takeuchi invented the story from whole cloth, just as I think that Joseph Smith’s having “discovered” his Book of Mormon means that he is its sole source and author. Having sufficient evidentiary warrant to deem the legend of Jesus in Japan to be completely made up, then, I now return to the question with which I began: namely, I’m curious about how to determine the threshold of tolerance for a given historiographical claim. What is the burden of evidence that is called for in establishing such a claim laughable or ridiculous (or even merely impossible)? For the purpose of illustration, any one of a few other easily refutable legends could have served as examples. There are several funny Jesus legends out there to choose from:</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .7in;">
Ever hear the one about Jesus going to Kashmir as a teenager to become a yogi?
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Ever hear the one about Jesus teleporting to the Americas during the three days he was reportedly dead?
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Ever hear the one about Jesus sailing to England with his uncle Joseph in tow?
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
We are dealing in each of these cases with either mere hearsay, or else with fabricated evidence and pious fraud, as in the Jesus of Shingo phenomenon. Just as Jesus’ Kashmir sojourn is attested to by Nicolas Notovitch’s infamously ‘discovered’ Issa document, the Takeuchi documents “support” the Shingo legend, but in both cases the documents forwarded as evidence are demonstrably fakes. Jesus’ English sojourn is based on folk tales going back through the fog of time. That legend was beautifully immortalized in William Blake’s verse:</div>
<blockquote style="margin-left: .7in;">
“And did those feet in ancient time<br />
Walk upon England's mountains green?<br />
And was the holy Lamb of God<br />
On England's pleasant pastures seen?”</blockquote>
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Poetic as the notion may be, the answer to these questions posed by the poet is a resounding ‘no’ on both counts. It is just as unlikely that Jesus (if he ever existed) went to England as it is unlikely that he went to hang out with the swamis in the Himalayas or that he settled down to farm rice in middle-of-nowhere Japan or that he appeared to fictional meso-Americans during his alleged three-day sojourn to the netherworld. It is unlikely, not simply because the stories seem absurd, <i>prima facie</i>, but because close examination of the ‘evidence’ bears the absurdity out. This is a very crucial point that needs to be stressed. No matter how much one’s spidey sense may tingle, we can’t just rely on an intangible gut feeling as our sole aid in orienting ourselves to a fanciful proposition. It is the <i>evidence</i> which must have the last laugh.
</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
I think Jefferson was right. Some claims can be dismissed as laughable due to their heavy reliance on bogus fanciful speculation, and deserve to be so deemed, but a gut-feeling is not sufficient for this purpose. Some minimum of a triage process is necessary in order to make this determination: —1) Is there textual or evidentiary support for the claim?… 2) Is this supporting evidence spurious or valid? This simple two-step check list should suffice in this particular case, regardless of one’s orientation toward current scholarship on Christian origins or the historical Jesus. In other words, one need be neither mythicist nor historicist to be able to call 'bullshit' on claims that have either fabricated texts or folktales as their only supporting evidence. There is simply no reason to take a text seriously once its fraudulent nature is discovered. The legends of Jesus in Kashmir and of Jesus in Shingo are nothing more than <i>ad hoc</i> solutions to the “problem” of Jesus' “missing years,” for which only anecdotal and/or discredited evidence can be forwarded. More than just being wrong, anyone who would believe in any of these supposed epic travels of Jesus (or Issa, or Iesukirisuto) does so at the peril of the credibility of their own rational faculty, given the available evidence. They are simply taking a logical leap without warrant and will likely wind up paying a high social price should they choose to continue to defend such unsubstantiated absurd views as true. You are free to believe that Elvis did not die but is instead living in exile in Santa Monica (or in Paraguay, or wherever) if you want to, by all means, but you will inevitably get funny quizzical looks or facepalms from your less-eccentric neighbors if you insist on promoting this belief. That’s just the way life is. And so I would hazard to say that, yes, there may sometimes in fact be good valid reasons to react with mockery when encountering certain types of bizarre ideas.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
This Jesus-in-Shingo scenario is, historiographically speaking, laughable.
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
But what about mythicism?</div>
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Is mythicism one of these crazy, completely fraudulent and unsupported ideas like these others? Do its proponents display the same sort of disregard for evidentiary standards?
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
Mythicism’s most vocal detractors invariably reflexively answer “yes” on both counts. It’s hard to blame them sometimes, I confess. On the one hand, there is a lot of self-serving quackery out there, especially online and, to be quite honest, there is a type of adolescent, reactionary hipster-like mythicism out there that deserves a lot of the mockery that it gets. But there nevertheless are formulations of the Christ myth theory which are valid and tenable, historically speaking, and which cannot be simply glossed over or grouped together with those more-absurd or facile formulations. Doing so would be premature and reactionary in itself, and an ultimately lazy cop-out for any scholar who would take that route.</div>
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<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
<br />
I don't intend to lay out a case for mythicsm here.<span style="text-indent: 0.2in;"> It is enough to say that, whether or not one accepts the arguments for it, it is obvious that in the case of the best formulations of the theory, they are not the same kind of arguments as the ludicrous one outlined above. Therefore I find the invective directed at the mere mentioning of the idea that I witness in print and on the bloggosphere to be undeserved at best and intentionally malicious at worst. </span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-indent: .2in;">
The Christ myth theory (as formulated by Doherty, Carrier, and Price) is at the very least viable precisely because it does not rely on the kind of whole-cloth fabrication and fraud or misguided analogues that are the hallmark of fanciful parahistory like the examples above. <span style="text-indent: 0.2in;">Given that the evidences outlined in defense of the Christ myth theory by these scholars are based on demonstrably solid scholarship (whether one agrees with the mythicist interpretations or not is not the point now) it is troubling to see scholars behaving so badly toward fellow scholars (or even interested laypersons). </span><span style="text-indent: 0.2in;">This is something that I say as someone who has spent much time poring over the materials that call historicity into question, it’s not a call I make in haste. In fact, I confess that when I first encountered the idea of mythicism, I argued against it forcefully. But the various formulations of the Christ myth of </span><span style="text-indent: 0.2in;">these men are defensible and cogently expressed, and so the kneejerk tendency to dismiss them out of hand like I had previously done eventually diminished. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.2in;"> Given the valid, defensible scholarship, it won’t be so easy to swat the theory away with the derision that it has been dismissed by those who detest it once the historical problem has been properly defined and inductively and deductively outlined . I'm sure that the self-appointed silverback guardian academics will keep hurling shit and sticks and stones up in the air, trying to dissuade others from entertaining the possibility. Mythicism is so reviled by these people, their hatred is so irrationally out of proportion to the implications resulting from the theory that I can't help but paraphrase the line from Hamlet: "Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much." </span><span style="text-indent: 19.1999988555908px;">Let them. They're easy enough to ignore.</span><span style="text-indent: 19.1999988555908px;"> </span><br />
<br />
We'll have to grin and bear it for a while, I suppose. It's not easy to overturn the weight of two thousand years of enculturation, after all. However, Jesus' aphorism concerning the futility of trying to keep a light hidden is a beautiful truth, no matter who said it. Whether Jesus was a historical person or not, this is something in which I have faith.<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<hr width="67%" />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;"><br /></sup><span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;">1</sup>It is a summer festival. It has to be. Shingo, a
village of about 6,000 people, is actually in a remote region that is virtually
inaccessible in winter.</span></span>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;">2</sup> The phonetic quality of written Japanese katakana highlights a curious relation between the names of the two brothers. The name of Jesus, <br /><b>イエスキリスト</b> (= Iesukirisuto) contains the name of his brother <b>イスキリ</b> (=Isukiri). It’s really a condensation of the first five characters of the former name to four (just omit the ‘e’=エ). Compositionally, this link between the names sets up a potential doppelganger motif to the tale. Note that the name Isukiri is a far cry from Jacob, Judas, Simon, or Joses, the names of Jesus’ brothers as listed in the Gospel of Mark. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;">3</sup> The Sawaguchi family curiously parallels the St. Clairs in the Dan Brown novel <i><b>The DaVinci Code</b></i> in this regard, except that they are not fictional characters, but actually existed in history (and still exist to this day).
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;">4</sup> This reminds me of the various Lucumí chants that are sung to the Orishas (in the Yoruba-derived syncretic religions of the Americas). No one really knows the meaning of the phrases, they are taught phonetically by a priest(ess) to a catecumen.
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>5</sup> This is doubly ironic in light of the recent work of Frank Zindler and René Salm, who have cogently argued that Nazareth didn’t really exist <i>per se</i> as an inhabited town during the time in which Jesus presumably lived, that it only became so during the time of the composition of the New Testament books, which would be the late first century at the earliest. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>6</sup> The tetragrammaton is the Hebrew theonym ( <b>יהוה</b> ), commonly transliterated into Latin letters as YHWH (Yahweh - common variants include Yaveh and Jehova). </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;">7</sup> <b>Japan: A Short Cultural History</b> by G.B.Sansom, Stanford University Press, 1931 (1988 edition) pp. 20–21</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="color: teal;"><br /></sup></span>
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: xx-small;">.</span><br />
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4753305954289256652.post-6231620674773206952015-01-09T10:54:00.001-08:002015-01-16T20:51:21.560-08:00Alvar Ellegård<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW3zjr9WxXP_UW_fzIttr_J-R7yM3_deaw_rSo2ut3-9wXf-wZpPUdrYboDJUCUSOkc06rbvYCA_paeJsuuFs43cjvhraegzBrhS_dGEWznvftsL4reRPPJ_4eBB1xKXwoZ-oPbPZ6g8ye/s1600/AlvarSubstitute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW3zjr9WxXP_UW_fzIttr_J-R7yM3_deaw_rSo2ut3-9wXf-wZpPUdrYboDJUCUSOkc06rbvYCA_paeJsuuFs43cjvhraegzBrhS_dGEWznvftsL4reRPPJ_4eBB1xKXwoZ-oPbPZ6g8ye/s1600/AlvarSubstitute.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>ne of the first "mythicist" books I ever read was <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Hundred-Years-Before-Christ/dp/B008SMFB0G">Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ</a></b> by Alvar Ellegård, a Swedish scholar, professor of English language and linguistics. </div>
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The thrust of his book's thesis is an exploration of the Jewish Talmud and the Toledoh Jeshu, which seem to evince a different Jesus than the one that developed into the Christian faith, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this scenario Jesus "lived" about a hundred years earlier than he is traditionally dated. Specifically, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103 – 76 BCE). He doesn't quite posit an entirely cogent theory, at least for my taste. His Jesus is a mythical representation and elaboration of an Essene "teacher of righteousness" like the one featured in the Qumran library, a legendary man from an indefinite past. </div>
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At the time, I still had one foot in the historicist camp, and though his arguments are tenable, I found this book to be too reliant on speculative interpretations of the Dead Sea Scroll documents which inform them. Regardless, he made an impression on me in that, if the only record that Jews had of Jesus said that he was born a hundred years earlier, this by itself, if not enough to formulate a theory, is nevertheless a good reason for skepticism re: historicity.
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Hundred-Years-Before-Christ/dp/B008SMFB0G" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiUP1DJbDMAanueWY1xwZ33m7HGfOCB5XS1hnzZCU_NfxZ1BNsmXzi798kKQXi5DQEH4xHrgbmbJ4blTgBSluHJQZJHMiGF3_gxqsY70Sb3mUUTzVGOLYZ1S-SVj4qIvm3QjTMIYZ244vo/s1600/EllegardJesusBook.jpg" height="150" width="100" /></a>
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Selected reading:</h2>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ</span> (1999)— <br />
<br />Rating: <span style="color: #990000;">★★½</span>☆☆</li>
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Quixiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126711689901268060noreply@blogger.com0