How would an Historical JC be Defined?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

[once upon a time]

Excellent example of what is called a "prefab" (prefabricated expression) or more colloquially an idiom but whatever it is called it is a type of construction that makes up about half of speech. We don't say "once upon a day/hour/year", we don't say "once on a time" or "just once upon a time". That's because "once upon a time" is a fixed set of words (it is already as a linguistic unit; it is prefabricated) with a specific meaning that cannot be reduced to the individual words that make it up. The grammar is internal to the phrase such that when we read a line like "once upon a time there were 4 children whose names were..." we do not parse "once", "upon", "a", and "time" as individual units. In fact, it wouldn't make any sense if we tried to, as the expression is nonsensical (upon a time?). Not only that, spreading activation effects or priming effects result from the phrase as single unit, and those render more salient and more readily accessed certain concepts: fairy tales, Disney movies, the brothers Grimm, witches, etc. That is not what the Greek construction here does.

But there are formulaic ways to start mythic stories: a request for inspiration or aid from a deity or muse, as in e.g., both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

That is why it is such a mistake to approach language as just words and the grammatical rules that govern them. Because there is nothing about nouns, prepositions, indefinite articles, or any other grammatical category or property in the English language that holds in general and we can use such that "once upon a time" makes sense in terms of individual word meanings.

That's how all languages work: constructions. Some are inflexible, some (what is taught as grammar) are highly schematic and abstract, some are less schematic but still cover all sorts of variations in which grammar internal to the construction is needed to account for it, some are just collocations such as "blinded by" or "blinded from" vs. "blind to".

It's why, when we look at hundreds of examples of letters written in Hellenistic (or Koine) Greek over several centuries (including the first), we consistently find metaphorical uses of kinship terms. However, the exception is when the kinship term is applied to a 3rd parts, as in Paul's use in Galatians.

Also, kinship constructions in Greek have particular forms, the most common being the genitive kinship construction.

One of the things that is behind prefabs, idioms, collocations, etc,. is frequency effects. "Once upon a time" is a very specific phrase that is used to begin a particular genre of story: a fairy tale. By contrast, "X drives Y [into emotional state] Z" is far more flexible:

"You're driving me mad/crazy/out of my mind/up the wall/insane/etc."

We even have "You're driving me so crazy that..." where the metaphor is used like a mental state predicate:
"I think that...'
"I believe that..."
"It seems to me that..."
etc.

The more used an expression is and the more general it's application, the greater the effect whether variability or reduction: I or I am "gonna/shoulda/coulda/woulda/wanna" etc. "I could not have" becomes "I couldnta".

In Greek, the most frequent genitive kinship construction is a formulaic patronymic-type construction. X of Y. It can include a word like "child", "daughter", etc., but as long as the identifier (the Y) is the father, it need not. This is how the relationship between Jesus and James is expressed by Paul and Josephus: a formulaic method to identify someone (a kinship identification construction). It is one reason that saying "Paul uses the word brother and brothers all the time" couldn't matter less. Because constructions, not words, are what count.

 

[Copernicus]

In Greek, the most frequent genitive kinship construction is a formulaic patronymic-type construction. X of Y. It can include a word like "child", "daughter", etc., but as long as the identifier (the Y) is the father, it need not. This is how the relationship between Jesus and James is expressed by Paul and Josephus: a formulaic method to identify someone (a kinship identification construction). It is one reason that saying "Paul uses the word brother and brothers all the time" couldn't matter less. Because constructions, not words, are what count.

However, not everyone who is a specialist in Greek of that era agrees with you, and, even if your linguistic argument were correct, we do not have Paul's original manuscript. We only have a copy of it--and a copy that was preserved by people who had a doctrinal stake in the historicity of the Christ figure and went to great lengths to suppress alternative points of view. For that small piece of text to be altered (or even inserted) would not actually be something that we have any way to tell. We cannot confirm it or disconfirm it. And this is really the best piece of evidence we have of Jesus's historicity. It is a very weak piece of evidence to base an argument on, yet we have so many scholars not just claiming an opinion that Christ was historical, but a strong conviction. I do think that there is a basis for claiming the historicity of Jesus, but it is far from an argument that goes beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

However, not everyone who is a specialist in Greek of that era agrees with you

I've been dealing for several days with claims about quantum physics by those who aren't physicists, don't trust physicists, and think that physicists are incapable of understanding physics. You've already said much the same about "most scholars" or how particular fields work, but you've given no evidence of anything, or even indicated that your opinion of the state of research is based on something substantial.

Most specialists in the Greek of this language aren't linguists. It's kind of hard to say something about the nature of a construction if one hasn't a clue what construction grammar is (either Construction Grammar or construction grammar). Also, before you tell me what "specialists in Greek of this era" think, you might tell me who these are. Because you simultaneously claim you don't know much about disciplines and then make sweeping judgments about them for which you offer no evidence. That makes me rather cautious about what specialists have written on the Greek genitive of kinship, including by the leading figure on this topic (the ancient Greek address system and kinship terminology, including Hellenistic Greek) whom I wrote to about this very question.

Let's put it this way. Pretty much every textbook, and a great many monographs, journal articles, and volumes dealing with ancient Greek will have my last name somewhere because the standard reference grammar in English for ancient Greek was edited by my grandfather, yet he was merely at a professor of classics and linguistics at Cornell. And you've determined that "classicist" is an insult compared to REAL ancient historians, and that therefore someone whom I knew from before I can remember until he died didn't really know ancient history (despite that being central to much of his work). So how am I supposed to know who counts when it comes to Greek specialists?

we do not have Paul's original manuscript.

That's true. Of course, the texts Doherty relies on, that Carrier relied on for his dissertation, that the new "ancient historians" rely on? The same is true of them, only we have nothing even approaching the textual attestation we do in this case. Of course, no doubt you know this because rather than reading Misquoting Jesus you read most recent edition of The Text of the New Testament which is co-authored by Ehrman along with the plethora of other scholarship you'd find in your edition of A Bibliography of Greek New Testament Manuscripts. So you can compare these to similar bibliographies in the field of "ancient history."

Or not. Because there is no such text. There are, however, critical apparati you could check out in your editions of any major classical authors that you could use to compare (among other methods) how pathetically small and late our collection of manuscripts for those like Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, Pliny, Philo, etc., are. So every argument you read in some blog, book, article, etc., about what some author says about Mithras, or what they infer from reading Greco-Roman historians, gnostic texts, and Jewish texts, you can apply the same criticism in spades.

Galatians is better attested to than virtually every single significant work and author from antiquity outside of the NT. So you can apply this "we don't have the original", but it makes even "ancient historians" pretty ******* useless.

We only have a copy of it--and a copy that was preserved by people who had a doctrinal stake in the historicity of the Christ figure and went to great lengths to suppress alternative points of view.

Alternative views like those which denied Mary's perpetual virginity? This is one. Also, regarding "alternative points of view" and the nonsense about suppression: Marcion's stance on Paul's letters in general and Galatians in particular we know only because it was preserved by Tertullian and Irenaeus, the "people who had a doctrinal stake".


We have many copies of Paul's letters. And as for the "great lengths" that the "people" went to "suppress alternative points of view'"? Most of our knowledge of these views comes from those people. We know of people like Celsus and what he wrote only through preserved Christian texts. It's why texts on Gnosticism before the Nag Hammadi find are still cited. The "great lengths" these people went to are exactly what enabled us to know the alternative points of view. In many cases, it's our only source even now.

For that small piece of text to be altered (or even inserted) would not actually be something that we have any way to tell.

If only there were something like textual criticism! The modern version of this discipline was developed by classicists and biblical scholars and although they are now of course obsolete, thanks to the addition in the past 2 decades or so of "ancient historians", even the ancient historians use these methods to be able to say anything about any text. And as this is an off the cuff remark that is hard to make consistent with the perpetual virginity stance the Catholic church still holds, we have no evidence at all to suspect it is an alteration (syntactical, stylistic, textual variations, apologetic, likely reasons for scribal insertions, etc.) and good reasons to think it isn't, then we absolutely do have ways to tell. Carrier uses them.

And this is really the best piece of evidence we have of Jesus's historicity.

Completely wrong. We have a very good idea how religious practices, movements, groups, etc., have worked and still work through the use of everything from sociological, anthropological, and psychological models and the exchanges between these and historians. We have an great understanding of the general context of this period. We have the sudden appearance of texts that resemble Greco-Roman historiography (not Greco-Roman religious texts) all centered around one person, which appear in just a few generations (there are virtually no individuals in or around Jesus' day for which this is true). The best piece of evidence is that without a historical Jesus, we can't explain the evidence we have using logic, or the epistemological tools historians like Carrier (among other philosophers of historiography and epistemology) advocate.

It is a very weak piece of evidence to base an argument on, yet we have so many scholars

So many. When you can say something substantial, and maybe back it up with evidence that you have any idea what "most scholars" say about anything on this subject and how you know, then all your arguments amount to "I read a book by Doherty and some other stuff and this is what they said about scholars I haven't read and about a historical era, cultures, evidence, and methods I don't know about".

 

[oldbadger]

Judea was a Roman province. It was directly ruled by Rome.
I worked for over an hour, replying to to your huge post with the most persuasive suggestions, dashing arguments, and shrewd cut-and-thrust. Sadly the whole lot evaporated into the ether just before transmission. I can't do all that again, so......

Judea was a Roman province. It was directly ruled by Rome.

No it was not. Rome left the Jews to run their own lands with their theocracy, under the control of the priesthood's officers and systems, governed by semi-jewish Kings, and a Roman in Judea.

Not at all. The exchange was to cash in money that was tainted with currency that was acceptable in the Temple.

Yep....
Just think of the 'mark-ups' in the exchange rates, the cost of exchange licences, the price of a temple dove, charges for sacrificial services....... any entry fees? Lovely little earners for the sinecure holders..... yeah. No corruption there, then!

That doesn't equal anger. There is nothing suggesting that he did this out of anger. The fact that he is able to be at the Temple before this event and be perfectly okay with it, as well after the fact, suggests that it wasn't about anger.

So Jesus didn't mind the set up, hypocrisy, corruption, patronage of the working classes, injustices, taxes.....? Ummm, interesting pov. By the way, where in the synoptics do you get the evidence for this?

The priestly and aristocracy also had a place in the Kingdom of God though. All of Israel did. Not to mention, no one had to participate in this exchange of money and buying goods. It wasn't forced on anyone. It was there for their conveyance and so that they could easily participate in the Temple cult. There is no record of people revolting against such.

Yes it was...... their beliefs, superstitions and fears forced the whole business upon them. Not to attend was a kind of sin, and sin lead to illness and bad luck. What have you been studying?

The fact that Matthew has to try to find a way to make sense of this, by taking some obscure "prophecy" and twist it just to justify Jesus from coming from such place is even more evidence that he was in fact from Nazareth. And we can be sure this is a creation from Matthew as he is the only one who mentions it.

So you grasp 'Nazareth' (as I do) but reject the possibility that there was a hurried journey, a hiding, a sanctuary and eventual return? You surely don't need a scholar to tell you that couples (elderly, orphans, grannies, everybody!) near Sepphoris got away, far far away, when an angry Legate, who had lots of fun things to do, got told to sort out a problem a long way from home. I've heard of absent minded professors, but this is chronic myopia.

There is a difference from thinking for yourself though, and ignoring everything that is written. Some of the conclusions you are coming to are not based on ev idence, and fly in the face of what is written.

Written by who? You have been selecting choice cuts from different scholars for too long. You need to realise that your selection is in fact flying in the face of what is written (the bits you don't like).

? Not sure what you're trying to point out? J

What!? You've never heard that before? Jesus could not succeed, surrounded by sceptics who thought he was a quack, and so.....A prophet is not without honour.... except....... in his home land!

Participating in the Temple cult was voluntary, and in fact, most did not do it regularly. They did it when they could, and did so out of love.

Love? Ummm, try superstitious terror....... much better.

I must go now..... will answer the rest later.....

 

[steeltoes]

It is a very weak piece of evidence to base an argument on, yet we have so many scholars not just claiming an opinion that Christ was historical, but a strong conviction.

Not to mention the utter contempt and disdain for those that are not thoroughly convinced that Christ was historical. "No serious scholar" as Ehrman would say.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Not to mention the utter contempt and disdain for those that are not thoroughly convinced that Christ was historical. "No serious scholar" as Ehrman would say.

You have it wrong. The disdain isn't for those who are not "thoroughly convinced that Christ was historical". There are plenty of people who aren't convinced because they haven't done the research and it isn't important enough to them to bother. That's not something to be disdainful of. There are plenty of people who are convinced Jesus is historical for bad reasons, and that is something problematic. Plenty of people who think they agree with the scientific consensus on climate change (that global warming is real and serious) actually don't agree with the scientific consensus because they don't understand what global warming is. They agree that it is a problem and is serious, but do not understand why.

So it isn't that people who don't think Jesus is historical are disdained or dismissed outright. Rather, it is those who make sweeping statements about scholarship, scholars, and research they aren't familiar with yet have no problem characterizing in disdainful and dismissive ways because they had some minimal exposure to sensationalist bunk and refuse to bother themselves with reading the actual research they are dismissing. And when anybody, even someone who is an academic in another field, dismisses centuries of scholarship and scholars with not even a basic understanding of ancient historical research in general, that kind of disdain should be met with disdain. It's prejudiced ignorant crap hiding behind fallacies about scholarship, historians, and this topic which are gleaned from websites, popular books, and other similar sources.

And when academics display this kind of ignorant bias, it's even worse.

Whenever uninformed people make sweeping claims about some area of research that they don't know much about, their disdain should be met with disdain. This isn't unique to historical Jesus studies.

 

[oldbadger]

Not just Jews

This was one hell of a festival, it was like going to the largest most popular Rock concert with a feast.

Remember this was one of the few times these peasants even were able to eat meat.

Id be pushing people out of the way for my slice

Question: When you say 'Not just Jews', are you talking about Samaritans? I believe that they did come to the Temple, even though they had their own sacred mount and temple....? How much do you know about the Samaritans? I have read that they considered themselves to be the proper followers of Yahweh...? Why would gentiles come to these feasts?

Question: The working Galileans would have hunted, netted, caught wild game etc for their own tables. Further, they would have had some great scams for providence........ or...... What do you think?

 

[oldbadger]

The one with hollowed out pages containing an emergency kit and a satphone with worldwide coverage.

Cheat!
This was such a good post. You are a teacher, because you can communicate to levels other than your own.

The problem with this question (or rather, the real question behind it: what book what I choose for you if I had to pick one) is that I would need to know several things:

OK..........

1) Are you interested more in the state of research, in which case something like Jesus Remembered might be the best, because it is covers both the history of the historical Jesus "quest" but also goes into great detail on the historical Jesus and the state of research? The issue here is that Dunn devotes one page on the question "did Jesus exist", as would any such book, because at least since Bauer's 19th century work, there have been continual arguments against what are now almost entirely rehashes of older and already addressed mythicist theories. Dunn's 1985 book was on this question and was what changed Wells' opinion from mythicist to almost mythicist.

I don't think I would want to read this, (EDIT: the rest of the post changed my mind!) because I really want to see and read the available evidence and valued proposals existing at this time. It's the difference between watching a film, and watching a documentary about how that film was made.

2) Are you more interested in a book which focuses on why historians are virtually unanimous that Jesus existed, but which do not go much beyond this./That is, they are concerned with the historical process and the evidence and why this gives us as much certainty about Jesus' existence as one can have when it comes to history before the early modern period. They do not spend much time nor are the really concerned with the details about this historical Jesus.

Again, not really...... I already accept that HJ existed, and can understand why there is virtual agreement amongst scholars about HJ's existence. I am more interested in valued suggestions and proposals about what he did, how he lived, what he ate and drank. What were his clothes made of. Did he make his own sandals? et al..... and on....... Reasonable ideas that could help to add some greater outline about him, even though such books could not be classed as definitions.

3) Granted that you aren't looking for a book which is intended to be read only by scholars (e.g., a book that may expect you to know other languages and assumes you are familiar with a great deal of research on this topic), you still have a range of books for the general reader going from the very short and simplistic to the very long and not exactly the most gripping of works. The more you opt for simplicity, the less information you'll get and what you do get will often be somewhat inaccurate or even downright distortions.

There's a point in one's life where self-deception is pointless and worthless. I've reached that point. I don't want to read (hopeless) distortion and innaccuracy, but some of the scholars are credited, credible and have the ability to teach, using English that most can read fluently, without having to hold a dictionary as well! Gexa Vermes and E.P.Sanders can both teach. I seek others like these scholars.

Sensationalism isn't merely a term applied to historical works which are poor, but to those which trade accuracy for excitement. Dunn's book, not counting the preface, indices, etc., is almost 900 pages. Even Doherty's revised book is almost that length (I definitely would not recommend it). One the other hand, Ehrman's original book on the historical Jesus (or perhaps I should say only, as his latest book is not really about the historical Jesus) can't be much over 100 pages and the pages are small.

I don't seek sensationalism. In fact, I don't think that many 'lay' HJ seekers do. All the miracles have become evangelistic tradition or hyperbole. There are no angels in the sky. No doves descend. Equally, I don't cope well with intense study. Crosson's 'The HJ' was 505 pages including refs and index, and I struggled.

So if you are looking for the one book on the historical Jesus which would give you the most information and as close to accuracy as is possible given that every single book on the historical Jesus is wrong (and what I believe is clearly the only correct understanding), then Dunn's book is the most comprehensive single volume I know of which includes not only a great amount of detail about Jesus, but a great deal on the "quest" itself, and is self-contained.

I'm going to search for and acquire this book.

That is, unlike the volumes of Meier and Wright, the second volume Dunn wrote as a continuation of Jesus Remembered is not on Jesus but the earliest "Christians". Also, unlike the scores of books out there (those by e.g,. Horsely, Crossan, Stanton, Morton Smith, Casey, Freyne, D. C. Allison, Gowler, Akenson, etc.) it is among those which are closer, in my view, to what is accurate and more importantly provides much more information such that having read it, you'd gain a greater understanding of historical Jesus research (past and present) than you would reading any of the others.

OK.....

Even for those "less interested" in details, a ~900 page book means a lot of reading. ......................................................Basically, it's not light reading.

I understand. One thing I've noticed this week, is that on opening and reading parts of Crosson's 'HJ' I found that the paragraphs were flowing by me more easily. So I have adapted to Crosson's language to some extent. I'll read it again, so as to cement the useful parts, and to prepare me for something a bit more challenging (and rewarding?) still.


Thankyou for the time you put into this.

 

[steeltoes]

You have it wrong. The disdain isn't for those who are not "thoroughly convinced that Christ was historical". There are plenty of people who aren't convinced because they haven't done the research and it isn't important enough to them to bother. That's not something to be disdainful of. There are plenty of people who are convinced Jesus is historical for bad reasons, and that is something problematic. Plenty of people who think they agree with the scientific consensus on climate change (that global warming is real and serious) actually don't agree with the scientific consensus because they don't understand what global warming is. They agree that it is a problem and is serious, but do not understand why.

So it isn't that people who don't think Jesus is historical are disdained or dismissed outright. Rather, it is those who make sweeping statements about scholarship, scholars, and research they aren't familiar with yet have no problem characterizing in disdainful and dismissive ways because they had some minimal exposure to sensationalist bunk and refuse to bother themselves with reading the actual research they are dismissing. And when anybody, even someone who is an academic in another field, dismisses centuries of scholarship and scholars with not even a basic understanding of ancient historical research in general, that kind of disdain should be met with disdain. It's prejudiced ignorant crap hiding behind fallacies about scholarship, historians, and this topic which are gleaned from websites, popular books, and other similar sources.

And when academics display this kind of ignorant bias, it's even worse.

Whenever uninformed people make sweeping claims about some area of research that they don't know much about, their disdain should be met with disdain. This isn't unique to historical Jesus studies.

No, I don't have it wrong.

One does not have to read volumes to learn that Jesus' historicity is questionable. Like Copernicus says, some scholars have strong convictions that go well beyond the mere opinion of an historical Christ. For example, relying on one short line yanked out of context to establish James' historicity in order to verify Jesus' historicity is no just sad, but pathetic considering how convinced most scholars are by their own interpretation of metaphors.

 

[outhouse]

Question: When you say 'Not just Jews', are you talking about Samaritans? I believe that they did come to the Temple, even though they had their own sacred mount and temple....? How much do you know about the Samaritans? I have read that they considered themselves to be the proper followers of Yahweh...? Why would gentiles come to these feasts?

Question: The working Galileans would have hunted, netted, caught wild game etc for their own tables. Further, they would have had some great scams for providence........ or...... What do you think?

Galileans did not eat a lot of meat according to scholars.

There was a wide variety of proselytes to Gentiles that came to the celibration of Passover. Foriegn royalty would send in canel trains of gifts in honor of the celibration for the Jewish Governement. Judaism was multicultural and many different peoples would attend this event.

 

[outhouse]

Question: When you say 'Not just Jews', are you talking about Samaritans?

Im am not.

Stephan Huller is pretty good with Samaritans.

I dont know anything other then this.

Passover


Ant. 18.2.2 29
A Samaritan Disturbance (9 CE) During the governorship of Judaea by Coponius, who, as I have said, had been sent with Quirinius, the following incident occurred. As the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which we call Passover, was being celebrated, it was customary for the priests to open the Temple gates just after midnight. This time, when the gates were first opened, some Samaritans who had secretly entered Jerusalem threw human bones about in the porticoes and the entire Temple. On this account, the priests excluded everyone from the Temple, which they had not customarily done, and took other measures to watch the Temple more carefully.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

No, I don't have it wrong.

Right. Because you know how people who don't know anything about this topic and don't care are treated. Only you couldn't, because they don't go around the internet posting about it.

One does not have to read volumes to learn that Jesus' historicity is questionable.

Of course not. It is questionable and no one should simply assume Jesus' historicity. It's a historical question. The difference is that we don't have hundreds or thousands of people trolling the internet and a market in which amateurs write sensationalist books for other amateurs about whether Socrates existed, or whether Josephus did, or whether Marcion did, or whether anybody did except for Jesus. Because when someone picks up a book on Caesar, Socrates, Philo, etc., they don't start from the position that every claim has to be put under a microscope while simultaneously denying that they should have to "read volumes" in order to see how these claims actually have been addressed. There are two figures from ancient history who have been put under the microscope to such an extent that the study of one them (Jesus) was essential in the development of the modern historical-critical approach, comparative linguistics, lexicography, etc. One is Jesus, and the other is Socrates. Where are all the websites on how Socrates never existed?

Like Copernicus says, some scholars have strong convictions that go well beyond the mere opinion of an historical Christ.

Copernicus has had firsthand experience (at least in observing) how strong convictions scholars have can not only characterize a field but inspire a book like The Linguistics Wars. And he is a scholar who doesn't know this topic, doesn't know the relevant fields, and has admitted his unfamiliarity with the relevant fields. And as he is basing his opinion of what "most scholars" here think, believe, and do without actually having any idea who they are or what they've written (but rather, what some popular authors have said about these "most scholars"), he's shown that some scholars whose field has nothing to do with the historical Jesus have "strong convictions" here. That's why Wells strayed from his field only for this question. And it appears to be why a linguist who has recently retired from working for Boeing is suddenly so capable of understanding a foreign topic and scholarship in fields so completely unrelated to his own.

For example, relying on one short line yanked out of context to establish James' historicity

If you are so concerned about the biases of biblical scholars compared to "historians", read Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus. It's written by a person with a doctorate in history. Yet somehow, even though we aren't dealing with those biased biblical scholars or classicists that don't understand history until someone with a degree with the word "history" in it explains it to them, we find...wait for it...James' historicity confirmed. Amazing.

Can you tell me how historians establish the historicity of ancient persons in general, with specific examples? Because all of our manuscripts are copies of copies that pale in comparison to the textual attestation of the NT, For every inscription or statue showing that even emperors existed, we the same evidence that Zeus and Hercules did. For every author who isn't anonymous, we have many more who claim to be someone they aren't. For every historical work from antiquity we have myth, rumor, legend, hearsay, bias, religion, etc.

But I'm betting you've never actually read a single book on a historical figure other than Jesus from antiquity or that, if you have, you didn't apply anything like the level of skepticism you do here. The Socratic problem is at least as old as the "quest" for the historical Jesus, yet the same mythicists who castigate scholars they haven't read for things that these scholars don't do never seem to be aware of the Socratic problem. Why? Because historians care about things like that, and so they do research and write historical works while few among the public are interested enough to read one book, let alone judge entire fields because of what they read online or in some popular book.

 

[Copernicus]

Legion, I hope I can cut down on the verbiage. You sometimes use a lot of words to make relatively few points.

I've been dealing for several days with claims about quantum physics by those who aren't physicists...

People who work in the humanities can achieve brilliant analyses and insights, but the reliability of their work often lacks the precision of scientists. We are not talking about quantum physics here. We are talking about the merits of the historicist case. That in no way is meant to denigrate the work of people in the humanities, which I identify with and respect very much.

Most specialists in the Greek of this language aren't linguists...

Nor are most linguists specialists in Greek. Nor am I claiming to be one. However, I have also seen a few differing opinions on what "brother of the Lord" can mean. Carrier argues that all Christians could be called "brother of the Lord", because they were adopted sons of God and that rubric was in usage. I don't know enough about the construction to know how much credit to give his argument, but I don't reject it out of hand. I'm not questioning your judgment, but I only know what I know. I don't have your experiences to draw on, nor the experiences of the scholars you disagree with.

It's kind of hard to say something about the nature of a construction if one hasn't a clue what construction grammar is (either Construction Grammar or construction grammar)...

And let's please stop with the false analogies. We aren't really having an argument over grammatical theory. The evidence for the historicity of Christ is less than we wish were there, and its authenticity is very much a subject of debate.

...you simultaneously claim you don't know much about disciplines and then make sweeping judgments about them for which you offer no evidence. That makes me rather cautious about what specialists have written on the Greek genitive of kinship, including by the leading figure on this topic (the ancient Greek address system and kinship terminology, including Hellenistic Greek) whom I wrote to about this very question.

You totally misrepresent what I said and what I think. It may be that there is an ironclad linguistic argument here, but I have not seen it. Besides ambiguity, there is the real possibility that Paul was misled or that small phrase was inserted during the copying process. After all, why is there so much interpolation going on in the historical record? Why would anyone forge things that Paul wrote? Not everything that was declared canonical historically is now accepted by scholars as authentic. Why does Josephus have that big obvious interpolation in it? It is quite obvious that Christians were anxious to prove that Jesus was a real historical person. So some of them faked the evidence. Others merely reinterpreted the record to make "facts" clearer.

...And you've determined that "classicist" is an insult compared to REAL ancient historians, and that therefore someone whom I knew from before I can remember until he died didn't really know ancient history (despite that being central to much of his work). So how am I supposed to know who counts when it comes to Greek specialists?

It really does put me off when you put words in my mouth and build straw men that I would not defend. I merely said that a degree in classics was not equivalent to a degree in history and that Carrier, although well-trained as a classicist, was qualified as a historian by credentials. What surprises me is that Ehrman admitted his error in characterizing Carrier as a classicist, but you went on bashing him for it because of your opinion that Columbia's Department of Ancient History was packed with classicists, not bona fide "historians". And now you accuse me of somehow insulting classicists, because I don't consider them equivalent to historians. Can we please get back on topic?

Galatians is better attested to than virtually every single significant work and author from antiquity outside of the NT. So you can apply this "we don't have the original", but it makes even "ancient historians" pretty ******* useless.

I believe that the oldest manuscript of Galations is Papyrus 46, which is dated at 175 and 225 CE. That gives plenty of time for a phrase like "brother of the Lord" to be inserted, especially if manuscripts with other wording were either deliberately destroyed or just not copied. Carrier's argument relied on other attested references to the usage "brother of the Lord", which were applied to Christians. Maybe he was wrong, but I have no strong reason to believe that. You may, but I don't. If you want to call me ignorant, then I may be guilty. I don't feel guilty, because we are all guilty of that sin at some point. That includes you.

Completely wrong. We have a very good idea how religious practices, movements, groups, etc., have worked and still work through the use of everything from sociological, anthropological, and psychological models and the exchanges between these and historians...

I was talking about the "strongest evidence" that historicists present. This was one of two that Ehrman listed. The other was his somewhat questionable claim that Paul believed in Christ's historicity just a handful of years after he converted. Yet all of Paul's writings date to decades after his conversion. We know today that false memories are not uncommon in people. And we also know that not everyone is truthful in reporting what they remember. That's the problem with this entire debate over historicity. It often comes down to how willing people are to trust the truthfulness of the fragmented record that we have available. In my mind, the historicity of Jesus is not even the most interesting question. The most interesting question is why Roman Catholic doctrine ended up following Pauline views, but the RCC holds Peter out as the founder of the church, Paul's objections to Peter notwithstanding. If Peter really founded the church, then why is it that Christian males don't have to be circumcized, and Christians don't keep kosher? That's a real puzzle to me. Whether or not a real person called Jesus got crucified by Pontius Pilate--not so much.

We have an great understanding of the general context of this period. We have the sudden appearance of texts that resemble Greco-Roman historiography (not Greco-Roman religious texts) all centered around one person, which appear in just a few generations (there are virtually no individuals in or around Jesus' day for which this is true). The best piece of evidence is that without a historical Jesus, we can't explain the evidence we have using logic, or the epistemological tools historians like Carrier (among other philosophers of historiography and epistemology) advocate.

So, are you saying that the method by which the historical record was preserved had no inherent bias towards historicity? I'm curious as to how you respond to that question.

 

[Shermana]

Speaking of Papyrus 46, I was reading that it's likely it did not include the Pastoral Epistles, and those just happen to be widely considered to be spuriously attributed to Paul.

Carry on.

 

[oldbadger]

There was a wide variety of proselytes to Gentiles that came to the celibration of Passover. Foriegn royalty would send in canel trains of gifts in honor of the celibration for the Jewish Governement. Judaism was multicultural and many different peoples would attend this event.

OK......thanks for this.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

And now you accuse me of somehow insulting classicists, because I don't consider them equivalent to historians.

This is what I have been accusing you of the ENTIRE TIME.

It doesn't because classicists are historians. That's it.

I went through lists of the most respected authorities of ancient history in the world, top research centers, etc., all showing how research on ancient history is produced by classicists and you think this was because I was trying to show that classicists weren't qualified?

We are talking about the merits of the historicist case.

You should really take a look at what kind of evidence is typically available and as you have this idiotic baseless demarcation between degrees in "ancient history" and the vast majority of actual historians of the ancient world, Carrier seems like I good candidate to demonstrate how the standards change when he's not talking about Jesus.
He writes about the “biological works of Aristotle and his student Theophrastus”. Who is Theophrastus? As the editors of Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for His Life, Writings Thought and Influence (Philosophia Antiqua) put it, “for the most part, Theophrastus survives only in quotations and reports scattered throughout writers of later antiquity and the Middle Ages”. Even better is Sostratus, whom Carrier states “wrote on surgery, gynecology, and animal physiology”. That’s quite a lot of detail for a guy we don’t know existed. Carrier has decided that the Sostratus mentioned in a fragmentary text by Sonarus is the Sostratos of Alexandria whom we also know only from fragments and seems to have been interested in animals particularly poisonous ones. Or not. It’s all fragmentary copies of copies. But apparently if it doesn’t relate to Christianity, Carrier’s standards change drastically.

He talks about Hypatia, whom we know only through the Historia Ecclesiastica.

He uses a Roman epitaph that "honors an otherwise-unknown Claudius Menecrates as the founder of his own medical sect and the author of 156 books in medical science, which earned him public honors from several major cities." He does mention in a footnote that Galen complains about "medical quacks" who "wrote 'hundred volume works'" and thus "we cannot be sure of the scientific quality of the medical books by Claudius Menecrates".

Actually we can. Because we know how "scientific" the best of the best were, and Carrier is full of ****:
"Though there is some important epigraphic evidence in regard to medicine and engineering, and ample modern discussion of the social status of doctors, including studies of doctors and medicine in ancient art, actual 'science' or natural philosophy (hence medical research as distinguished from practice) gets little or no mention in inscriptions or any physical medium, possibly because it was practiced by so few or subordinated to a career as a doctor, philosopher, or engineer."

His entire dissertation is built on using art and inscriptions along with fragments to argue that we basically had the science of Newton's day back in antiquity.

However, I have also seen a few differing opinions on what "brother of the Lord" can mean.

And I described already the research by the expert on Greek kinship terminology and her study on several hundred years worth of letters (including the first century), in which the one exception to metaphorical usage was a reference to a third party, where this doesn't happen. Why? Because the addressee isn't going to be confused by being called "brothers" or "sister" or whatever, but in a world with such limited name variability, identification was extremely important.

For the basic construction, see Dancygier's "XYZ constructions and the Genitive" in her paper "Genitives and proper names in constructional blends" (New Direction in Cognitive Linguistics).


So we know the genitive construction can be used for kinship identification, and Dickey's study on kinship terms in letters gives us the rest. Unless you go with Doherty's crap "lord" being relevant:
"The main features of the Roman-period address system, which persisted until around the fourth century CE, were a set of titles indicating conventionalized affection and respect. The most common of these titles was κύριε “lord”

from Dickey's contribution to A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language

I don't now if you can read Greek, but note vocative. Also, as "lord" could "be applied both to inferiors and to addressees with whom the writer had no personal relationship", Paul's use of "lord" for someone he believes is the risen messiah isn't surprising. And it wouldn't be unusual even is this was the only place he used "lord" rather than "Jesus".

Carrier argues that all Christians could be called "brother of the Lord", because they were adopted sons of God and that rubric was in usage.

This is the guy whose "rubric" takes usages of a few words and suddenly we have applied sciences and gynecology before algebra existed.

The evidence for the historicity of Christ is less than we wish were there, and its authenticity is very much a subject of debate.

One wonders what your basis for comparison is. Maybe you should try reading what kind of evidence Carrier uses, and why Schweitzer said our sources for Jesus were pretty much unparalleled and compared them to those for Socrates: “Für Sokrates liegt die Sache viel ungünstiger: er ist uns von Schriftstellern geschildert, wobei der Schriftsteller selbst schöpferisch war.”

Besides ambiguity, there is the real possibility that Paul was misled or that small phrase was inserted during the copying process.

What "ambibuity"? And the use of ei me, a particle collocation that isn't simple and which works at the level of the sentence (not that aside), and in a way that is typical of Paul (see e.g., Walker's "Translation and Interpretation of ἐὰν μή in Galatians 2:16" JBL 116(3): pp. 515-520). It is tied to the structure of the narrative but much more so to the remark about not seeing other apostles, and it is similar to 2 other uses of the same conditional particle doublet in Galatians.

After all, why is there so much interpolation going on in the historical record?

There isn't.

Not everything that was declared canonical historically is now accepted by scholars as authentic.

That's true. Because classicists and biblical scholars created textual criticism as a modern discipline. The most common mistakes across the board are simple spelling mistakes or mistaking one word for another.

Why does Josephus have that big obvious interpolation in it?

I am not sure it does. It is clearly not original, but one of the most thorough defenses of an original passage about Jesus there is that by Vermes (who's Jewish, in case you are worried about doctrinal bias). However, the reason we know that that passage is at least altered is because it sounds very Christian and Josephus wasn't. Why is that the only example of an insertion like that? Why, in the masses of quotations we have preserved by those who sought to destroy alternate views, do we have lots and lots of criticisms from Celsus to Julian preserved, instead of lots of interpolations in Jewish and pagan texts about how great Jesus is?

It is quite obvious that Christians were anxious to prove that Jesus was a real historical person.

REALLY!? To whom? And why? We have no evidence they ever tried to do this.

Paul himself says that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the whole movement is pointless ("your faith is in vain"). The Christians cared if Jesus rose from the dead and was the son of God, not whether he was historical.

Carrier's argument relied on other attested references to the usage "brother of the Lord", which were applied to Christians.

Paul uses brothers in Christ.

I was talking about the "strongest evidence" that historicists present. This was one of two that Ehrman listed.

There are no historicists. You are living in a world of imaginary demarcations because you've gone out and picked books and sources that are inaccurate in ways you can't judge but then you apply to research you haven't read. For an academic, your descriptions of what "all scholars" whom you've never read is pretty outrageous.

 

[Copernicus]

Legion, you continue to go off on irrelevant tangents about people's credentials, which you seem obsessed with. I have explained to you why I don't find that game as impressive or interesting as you seem to. Why do you do it? I don't know. Maybe you like to impress people with your command of the literature. Maybe you just don't really get what is wrong with arguments based mainly on authority and popularity. I find scholarly citations in papers useful only when I've read and understood the works of the people cited, because then I can fit their work in with the line of argument under discussion. For me to be convinced of something, I have to understand and believe the arguments that support it. You aren't really helping me to do that.

I have nothing whatsoever against classicists or historians, but it is just a subroutine in the credentials nonsense. As I've said many times, I respect both Ehrman and Carrier far more than those gentlemen respect each other. I have no interest in trashing either man, nor do I support either man's personal attacks on the other. I've seen enough petty academic disputes in my life to have become thoroughly jaded and uninterested by them. If I were younger, I'm sure that I could bring my blood to a boil more quickly.

I have seen nothing from you to help me resolve the "brother in/of the Lord" dispute other than references to works on the subject that you find impressive. I've read Carrier's argument at length on the subject and some of those made by his critics. I still feel that the Greek expression is a weak reed to rest an argument for historicity on for non-linguistic reasons that I cited and which you did not bother to refute: that it could have been an interpolation, a false memory, or even a conscious fabrication. We don't know. And the manuscript copy that we have is roughly a century older than the autograph.

You did not answer my last question, and you seem to be taking some pretty absurd positions to keep the dispute going--e.g. that Josephus might actually not have been altered from the original, even when we both know that the weight of scholarly opinion--something that you seem very fond of--is against that conclusion. You even explain why it is an unlikely conclusion. I think I've made my point about the bias and flaws inherent in the historic process that produced the evidence for historicity. If you want to dismiss it as a reasonable point to make, I won't lose any sleep over it.

 

[Jonathan Hoffman]

The country was a theocracy, ruled by the priesthood,which fulfilled all the governmental positions, and left (more or less) alone by the Client Rulers and Romans. It was centred...... at the temple, and the entire priesthood was on duty during that festival.



No. The whole point of the exchange was a massive flow of funds into the priesthood and government. What a cracking way to fleece the common people.


OT? Jesus was extremely enraged about what the aristo-classes (mostly priesthood?) were doing to his own common folks. He had few good words (if any) for them. What corruption!



Not all....... but in this case, Jesus used force and voice! = anger!

His whole ministry, Jesus wanted his own people, the common workers of Galilee (mostly) to live in the 'Kingdom of God', the true theocracy as laid down by the forefathers. It was God's Kingdom, God's people, and they were God's children, the sons (and daughters?) of God. And look what was happening to them!

Did Josephus write about the money-changing in the Temple or was this purely a gospel story?

 

[steeltoes]

We don't actually know how the relationship went from there. What we do know is that the Vatican sees Peter as the first leader of the church, but it was Paul's vision of Christianity that seems to have survived, not Peter's. That is, despite this early drama in which Peter is portrayed as insisting that Gentile converts adhere to Jewish law, the "new covenant" allows a break with OT traditions. And the widely-circulated gospel with Peter's name on it (although we do not know if it had anything to do with him) was suppressed because of its association with docetism. Indeed, we have no record of any kind of what Peter or James taught, but docetism seems to lend itself more to a mythicist interpretation of Jesus than the canonical gospels do. That is, it entailed a doctrine that the body of Jesus was not actually physical. So the name of Peter remained revered as the founder of Roman Catholicism, but nobody actually preserved anything he said. Instead, they preserved some letters from his rival, Paul. Very strange, IMO.

It is very strange. Perhaps Paul's teachings were useful for recruiting gentiles while the usefulness of Peter was for establishing an apostolic procession.

Something else along the same lines that is very strange, this is from Robert G. Price:

"It would not make sense for the writer of Mark to spend so much effort building up the character of James son of Zebedee if this person were not a pillar of the Christian community. In all of the synoptic Gospels, James, John, and Peter are the three main disciples, and Paul tells us that the three main people considered to be pillars of the Christian community during his time were James, John, and Peter as well, but Christian tradition holds that the James that Paul was talking about was the literal brother of Jesus. Given that the Gospels were all written after the works of Paul, and that the Gospels serve as a backdrop for the Christian movement, and that the Gospels establish the positions of the major Christian leaders, it would not make any sense for the Gospels to totally ignore James the literal brother of Jesus while playing up this other James son of Zebedee who is an apostle, if James the brother of Jesus is who became a leader of the Christian community."


In modern times James, the brother of Jesus, is recognized as a religious leader in order to verify Jesus' historicity. In ancient times the bait and switch may have been due to James, son of Zebedees' requirement of strict adherence to Jewish dietary customs and circumcision for would be Christians. James, son of Zebedee had to go so that the tradition of a pliable James more alined with Jesus' could receive new converts.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Legion, you continue to go off on irrelevant tangents about people's credentials, which you seem obsessed with.

He was particularly incensed that Ehrman, obviously not a trained historian, had denied his earned credentials as a historian and used the label "Classicist" to impugn them

Why do you do it?

Clearly because I haven't made my point, so I'll try someone else's: "Biblical Studies and Classical Studies: Simple Reflections about Historical Method"
You would like to discuss historical methods and the above is on this:
"Principles of historical research need not be different from criteria of common sense, and common sense teaches that outsiders must not tell insiders what they should do. I shall therefore not discuss directly what biblical scholars are doing; they are the insiders...
Whether biblical or classical historians, we have also learned that archaeology and epigraphy cannot take the place of the living tradition of a nation as transmitted by its literary texts. At the same time we have been cured of early delusions that the reliability of historical traditions can be easily demonstrated by the spade of archaeologists."

I have tried to select from that text as little as possible to be brief, yet to address your question. It is a paper written by an eminent historian. He's a classicist. He understands that biblical scholars are historians. His concern here historiography.
It is a potential starting point to address how one might approach the historical Jesus, but for your opinion of classicists and biblical scholars compared to "historians":

The reality is that Ehrman himself is a biblical scholar, not really a historian, yet he accuses mythicists of lacking the proper credentials to evaluate the historical facts.

I don't defend Carrier's pettiness in his attacks on Ehrman, but I do understand why he went a little ballistic at Ehrman's utter misrepresentation of his expertise. Ehrman himself has admitted that he got the facts wrong.

Ehrman did admit this:

"Contrary to what Carrier suggests, this mistake was not some kind of plot on my part, in his words: “a deliberate attempt to diminish my qualifications by misrepresentation.” I frankly don’t know why a classicist is less competent to talk about the ancient world of Rome than an ancient historian is, since most Romanists I know are in fact Classicists; and it seems odd that Carrier wants to insist that he is not “just a classicist.” My classicist friends would probably not appreciate knowing that they were “just” that." (emphasis added)


You can continue to claim you don't care about credentials, but when you make statements in which you talk about credentials and who is an expert and who is not, then I am limited by your insidious bias against most people who study the ancient world. That is, when you deny that Ehrman's credentials (despite the rhetoric about how little you care about credentials), you have dismissed most historical research as the work of non-historians on (among other topics) the Roman empire in and around the 1st century.


The point of describing Carrier's dissertation was because you have recognized him as a credentialed historian and this was pretty much the only non-Jesus related historical work he has published so far. Most importantly, as you use Carrier to inform your opinion as to how a critical historian of antiquity would approach evidence, I thought it would be an effective way to demonstrate that what you have learned from Carrier is not what he himself practices.

You talked potential alterations to Galatians because our earliest copy certainly allows the time for that. I tried to demonstrate the manner in which Carrier treats evidence when he isn't dealing with Jesus or Christianity. Not because Carrier is a bad historian, but because in his approach to Jesus he has portrayed himself inaccurately. He has touted his expertise because of a word in his degree, yet a project begun to investigate Jesus' existence ran into problems in part because of his inadequate background in Jewish history, literatures, and Semitic languages (a non-technical source). His critique on the inabilities of "classicists" or others who basically have his training or better is belied by his only real work in his field and the incredible credulity he displays.

He will use a Christian text of the type he has described as unreliable in order to create a scientist out of Hypatia. He will use a few lines from the only source we have (a Roman epitaph) to describe a "founder of his own medical sect and author of 156 books in medical science". And he will assume that a two different names are the same person based on some scraps we have from the middle ages, and then declare that person to be a gynecologist among other scientific specialties.


It is useful to contrast that evidence, which is typical for any historical research of antiquity outside of NT studies and a few other fields. We have a great deal of evidence, that vastly outstrips any Carrier had available to him for his dissertation.


But I am unsure how to show this to you, in part because I am overly wordy and in part because I do not know how to approach a historical subject with someone who does not regard most of the research on it as written by historians. And your view, succinctly stated simply by noting your use of "historicists", is extremely skewed.

You seem to think that we lack the means to understand how or why or when a text might be altered, and in order to begin to address textual criticism of the NT I need to rely on the works and methods of both classicists and biblical scholars you've disqualified as historians.

Do I refer you to sources like Corpus Linguistics and Textual History: A Computer-Assisted Interdisciplinary Approach to the Pe****ta (Studia Semitica Neerlandica) to give you and idea on how much interdisciplinary research there is on just ONE textual traditions that isn't even Greek? Do I try to put Misquoting Jesus in context by quoting Ehrman: "For the vast majority of these textual differences are easily recognized as simple scribal mistakes, errors caused by carelessness, ineptitude, or fatigue. The single largest category of mistake is orthographic; an examination of almost any of our oldest Greek manuscripts will show that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can today. Scribes can at least be excused on this score: they lived, after all, in a world that was for the most part without dictionaries, let alone spell check."?

You aren't really helping me to do that.

Perhaps because you don't appear to be looking for help:

Most scholars just try to build a case for extracting a plausible core of truth from the stories, based on what we believe to be true of those times. Mythicists try to build a case that none of the story is plausible enough to sustain belief in any single real person.

If you know what "most scholars" do, then why are you asking question?

I have no interest in trashing either man

But you have anyway. You've trashed Ehrman. You've claim he "impugned" Carrier despite what he said (and I'd say that calling Ehrman a liar is trashing him, but perhaps you missed that part of his response). You've claimed he isn't a historian.

If I were younger, I'm sure that I could bring my blood to a boil more quickly.

"yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward". I have done nothing for the past few years but try, in various ways, to improve the state or research and research methods in various fields, now as a consultant to a company producing research software. I try to make available sources to others I have access to as all I see around me is a world of misinformation, half-truths, lies that spread like wildfire. There are only two people who haven't just been researched for centuries, but have motivated the creation of research fields that made yours possible, and yet you, someone with years of experience in academia, can so thoroughly describe entire disciplines, claim you don't care about credentials after stating who is and isn't credentialed, and making statements about the entire subject and "most scholars" that I know isn't accurate at all and is based on not being familiar with these fields, yet you do this.

I have considered this forum to be one of the few places where, despite biases and ideologies everyone has, people exchange information through discussion, debates, even heated arguments. It has for me served as a kind of lighthouse of hope when all that I see is inaccurate reports, blogs, and (in academia) a handful of people trying to fix increasing problems with research, all for nothing.

When I read your posts here, I lost that (pathetic though this be).

I've read Carrier's argument at length on the subject and some of those made by his critics.

Can you name his critics? And you objected to my length. I've hastily pieced together a reply on this and related issues where I address at length the issue of James.