Paul was not a Roman Citizen.

[angellous_evangellous]

Okay. To understand Paul's ideology (more Roman than Jewish), it is necessary, besides his own writings, to look at the Gospels. The Gospels were not written by Paul, but they were conceived under the influence of his ideology.

Hence, Jesus is conceived to be a friend to tax-collectors and centurions.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Yes and no. Literacy rates were much lower in 1776, and so my use of the term "general public," to describe Gibbon's audience, is much too broad. But you make the same mistake in the opposite direction, with your phrase, "academic elite," which is much too narrow. As low as the literacy rate may have been in Gibbon's day, it was still higher than in the middle ages.

One has to wonder if you are a salesman or a politician.

It's the way you so casually pull stuff right out of your *** and present it as if it were the plainest truth in the world.

*************************

You can lead a horse to water - you can even make him drink - but you can't change his point of view (song by Caedmon's Call)

You can teach a Pragmatist to read - you can even give him a library card - but you can't make him think.

For god's sake man, think!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

[youtube]rDK9MDklzFo[/youtube]
Apocalypse Now Redux Kurtz Horror - YouTube

 

[Pragmatist]

One has to wonder if you are a salesman or a politician.

It's the way you so casually pull stuff right out of your *** and present it as if it were the plainest truth in the world.

So you disagree that literacy rates were higher in 1776 than in the middle ages? Are you willing to accept anything that you weren't told to believe in by the "scholarly consensus"? What about plain common sense, and the simple facts of history that are known to everyone: the printing press, the increasing predominance of vernacular literature? Do these not indicate a rise in mass literacy? Did I really make a controversial assertion?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

So you disagree that literacy rates were higher in 1776 than in the middle ages? Are you willing to accept anything that you weren't told to believe in by the "scholarly consensus"? What about plain common sense, and the simple facts of history that are known to everyone: the printing press, the increasing predominance of vernacular literature? Do these not indicate a rise in mass literacy? Did I really make a controversial assertion?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

(Excuse me while I go pee into the wind)

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It is an elite class, surely, but not every member of this class could be described as an academic, scholar, or expert, in any sense.

First, these terms are more nebulous and and often related to the capacity to (for example) acquire resources like Gibbon did: "English historians were not professionals, and they were no longer men of affairs, as historians such as Francis Bacon or Clarendon had been; they adopted the personae of studious, reflective gentlemen of letters. Edward Gibbon, and independent gentleman scholar, liked to refer to himself as having assumed the 'name' and 'character' of a 'Historian'. It was a name and character largely inaccessible to women writers, who generally lacked either the personal wealth (Gibbon spent a gread deal of his resources acquiring a working library) or the backing of publishers or patrons necessary to embark on ambitious projects." pp. 108-109.
From:
O'brian, Karen. (2001). "The History Market in Eighteenth-Century England" in Isabel Rivers (Ed.) Books and Their Readers in 18th Century England: New Essays (pp. 105-133). London: Contiuum.

Second, although there were certainly a number of people who could read but did not write, the point is that the "general reading public" of the 18th century is not comparable to that of today. Third, Gibbon was not the only historian of his time to write narrative/novel-like histories.

The key to Gibbon's genius may be that he could write to both audiences at once: the general reading public, and the expert.

Again, he was hardly alone here. In fact, when Gibbon wrote, most already existing histories of Rome were for "the young or the uneducated" (from the same source quoted above, p. 121). And historians in general often wrote in a style similar to Gibbon. What differentiated Gibbon was simply that he was much, much, better with the English language. Similarly, Shakespeare was hardly the only playwright of his day, yet his mastery of the English language towers over his contemporaries, few of whom are remembered much at all, and of those few, none are anywhere nearly so widely read or known.

He paints quite a different picture than that found in the Gospels.

That's a bit like saying a biographer of Abraham Lincoln paints a different picture than a historian of the civil war. Of course he does. He writes about different things for different purposes with a different intended audience.

 

[Pragmatist]

(Excuse me while I go pee into the wind)

This rebuke is not just. Where is my error? I was not aware that it was controversial to assert that literacy rates were higher in 1776 than in 1376. Perhaps my proposition is true, but for the wrong reasons (it is defended by faulty arguments)? Printing and vernacular literature do not lead to more literacy? How is this possible?

It is also somewhat difficult for me to situate myself in this debate over Paul's citizen status. I don't understand this dogged inability to even entertain the possibility that Paul was a citizen. Why this dogmatic certainty?

...The problem is our lack of sources. The Talmud, and even the Mishnah, were passed on orally for generations before being written down. Our sources for first century judaism are mainly limited to Philo, Josephus, and the NT. The Qumran texts are quite helpful in some respects, but again dating is a problem...

In other words, we know nothing. Josephus says nothing about Paul. Would we even know there was a Paul, if not for the NT? The only reliable document we have than can provide even halfway credible facts about Paul is Paul's own letters, right? That's about as reliable as Mein Kampf. Even honest people can find it hard to tell the truth, when they are talking about themselves.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

In other words, we know nothing. Josephus says nothing about Paul. Would we even know there was a Paul, if not for the NT?

That's like saying "would we even know about Josephus, if not for his writings?" The NT is a collection of writings of different types put together long after Paul wrote.

From something I wrote elsewhere:

Of course we have evidence to support a historical NT Paul. we have his letters and we have acts. Both are problematic sources (opinions as to how problematic they are vary in the academic literature, from quite "radical" skepticism to overly uncritical acceptance, but even in the sensationalist literature I haven't come across the view that Paul didn't exist). We have a series of letters written by an author claiming to be named Paul. It's true that (for various reasons) authors would write works (like letters) using another's name (e.g., some or all of Plato's letters). What do these pseudepigraphical texts have in common? There is a great deal of literature on the subject, ranging from works which deal with the topic on a general level (e.g., the edited volume Der griechische Briefroman: Gattungstypologie und Textanalyse) to those which deal with specific letters (e.g., Foucart's "La VI[SUP]e[/SUP] lettre attribuée à Démosthène"). There are also nice collections of these letters (e.g., Costa's Greek Fictional Letters which includes the original greek and translations as well as commentary). Searching through this literature we find a few interesting things:
1) Pseudepigraphical letters were almost always attributed to well-known historical individuals like Socrates, Plato, Euripides, etc. In other words, nobody would bother to write under Paul's name unless he was a well-known figure (at least in early "christian" circles).
2) Those which are not are part of a literary tradition (e.g., the work of Aelian) which dates not just after Paul, but after our earliest actual papyri of Paul's letters (e.g., p46), and are not seperate creations but parts of novels.
3) Unlike with, say, the letters of Cicero, where our manuscripts date (as is typical) from the 9th or 10th centuries CE, we have extant textual attestation for Paul's letters a mere ~150 years after they were written. We also have an incredibly large number of copies to compare. Thus we are in an excellent position from a textual critical point of view, and this allows us to determine which letters are almost certainly those of Paul, which are questionable, and which are almost certainly not written by Paul.

That's without getting into the references to Paul in early christian literature outside the NT.

 

[Pragmatist]

First, these terms...

academic, scholar, expert

...are more nebulous and and often related to the capacity to (for example) acquire resources like Gibbon did: "English historians were not professionals, and they were no longer men of affairs, as historians such as Francis Bacon or Clarendon had been; they adopted the personae of studious, reflective gentlemen of letters. Edward Gibbon, and independent gentleman scholar, liked to refer to himself as having assumed the 'name' and 'character' of a 'Historian'. It was a name and character largely inaccessible to women writers, who generally lacked either the personal wealth (Gibbon spent a gread deal of his resources acquiring a working library) or the backing of publishers or patrons necessary to embark on ambitious projects." pp. 108-109.
From:
O'brian, Karen. (2001). "The History Market in Eighteenth-Century England" in Isabel Rivers (Ed.) Books and Their Readers in 18th Century England: New Essays (pp. 105-133). London: Contiuum.

Thank you for these quotes, sir. I sense there is a criticism of my own position implied, but I can not draw it out explicitly. In fact, the quote seems to support my position more. Most bourgeoisie did not have access to the "personal wealth" necessary to acquire a "working library." Especially bourgeoisie women, I would imagine. Gibbon made this kind of specialized, historical thought available to the masses (the literate bourgeoisie masses): women, petty bourgeoisie, basically anybody who could read.

I wonder if Gibbon wasn't made a permanent fixture of the popular consciousness by his success among the female audience. This book was popular and has been continually in print from its original date of publication, I would be willing to bet. We know that the publishing industry of this time was heavily influenced by the female readership, or else why would novels like Pamela and Clarissa have been such big hits?

 

[Pragmatist]

Of course we have evidence to support a historical NT Paul...

Hold on here (nice shooting, Tex). I'm not doubting that there was a historical Paul. There was definitely a Paul. All I'm saying is that we wouldn't know hardly a single biographical detail about him, if not for his own letters, and Acts. And we can all agree that these are highly tendentious sources, and are thus supremely unreliable. So basically, we know next to nothing.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

historical thought available to the masses (the literate bourgeoisie masses)

This is a contradiction in terms. The whole point of the term "the masses" is to distinguish a class of people from the elite/bourgeoisie/nobility/aristrocacy/whatever. "The masses" (to the extent the term has meaning) couldn't appreciate Gibbon at all.

However, the point is that
1) one could make the argument that Gibbon wasn't a scholar at all (in the sense of a professional and university educated member of academia) and hence was not a scholar writing a history meant for other scholars and the interested literate "public."
2) He wasn't even remotely alone in providing historical works which were not intended for the specialist. Actually, that was the norm, and his success was made possible by others who had done the same on other topics before him, creating a market for his work. His work remains a literary classic. This has nothing to do with the fact that his history could be read by literate individuals who lacked a university education (or, to use your terms, it has nothing to do with the fact that he wrote something accessible to the "general reading public".

I wonder if Gibbon wasn't made a permanent fixture of the popular consciousness by his success among the female audience.

No. Again, it's almost entirely his literary skill.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Hold on here (nice shooting, Tex). I'm not doubting that there was a historical Paul. There was definitely a Paul. All I'm saying is that we wouldn't know hardly a single biographical detail about him, if not for his own letters, and Acts. And we can all agree that these are highly tendentious sources, and are thus supremely unreliable. So basically, we know next to nothing.

As I said, I was quoting myself from something I wrote elsewhere. That first line had to do with what I was responding to at the time.

The point is that we can know quite a bit about Paul from his letters and even Acts. We have a good idea which letters are actually Paul's, although for some the jury is still out. We also have Acts which can be used to some extent to inform us about Paul. We have other sources which help us understand what it meant to be a member of the Jesus movement during Paul's day. Careful analyses of all this and more yield a number of biographical details we can know (keeping in mind that historical facts are always in reality closer to true beyond a reasonable doubt), a number of things we can be pretty sure of, and a number of things that are likely but there is reason to doubt.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Hold on here (nice shooting, Tex). I'm not doubting that there was a historical Paul. There was definitely a Paul. All I'm saying is that we wouldn't know hardly a single biographical detail about him, if not for his own letters, and Acts. And we can all agree that these are highly tendentious sources, and are thus supremely unreliable. So basically, we know next to nothing.

Correction: YOU know next to nothing.

We know better.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

academic, scholar, expert



Thank you for these quotes, sir. I sense there is a criticism of my own position implied, but I can not draw it out explicitly. In fact, the quote seems to support my position more. Most bourgeoisie did not have access to the "personal wealth" necessary to acquire a "working library." Especially bourgeoisie women, I would imagine. Gibbon made this kind of specialized, historical thought available to the masses (the literate bourgeoisie masses): women, petty bourgeoisie, basically anybody who could read.

I wonder if Gibbon wasn't made a permanent fixture of the popular consciousness by his success among the female audience. This book was popular and has been continually in print from its original date of publication, I would be willing to bet. We know that the publishing industry of this time was heavily influenced by the female readership, or else why would novels like Pamela and Clarissa have been such big hits?

Obviously, the quotes that he provided were useless to you.

Might I suggest the following bumper stickers:

"I brake for Gibbon"

"We (heart) Gibbon"

"Gibbon is God" (have little G's all over the car)

"Gibbon/Pragmatist 1776"

"Got Gibbon?"

"Gibbon is Rome"

"Roman History Sucks"

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Obviously, the quotes that he provided were useless to you.

Might I suggest the following bumper stickers:

"I brake for Gibbon"

"We (heart) Gibbon"

"Gibbon is God" (have little G's all over the car)

"Gibbon/Pragmatist 1776"

"Got Gibbon?"

"Gibbon is Rome"

"Roman History Sucks"

Let's not over do it. I think three of the above somewhere on a single line (left to right) on the back of the car in the following order would be sufficient:
"Gibbon is God" "Gibbon is Rome" "Roman History Sucks"
and maybe beneath: "God is Dead."

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Let's not over do it. I think three of the above somewhere on a single line (left to right) on the back of the car in the following order would be sufficient:
"Gibbon is God" "Gibbon is Rome" "Roman History Sucks"
and maybe beneath: "God is Dead."

That's the spirit.

"Roman History Sucks" is my personal favorite.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

This rebuke is not just. Where is my error? I was not aware that it was controversial to assert that literacy rates were higher in 1776 than in 1376. Perhaps my proposition is true, but for the wrong reasons (it is defended by faulty arguments)? Printing and vernacular literature do not lead to more literacy? How is this possible?

Your error is in your inability to demonstrate any kind of relevance between the importance of Gibbon and literacy during the dark / middle ages of Europe.

Especially irrelevant is comparing 1776 with 1376, and it seems like you're only considering white Europeans and not Arabs or other peoples that enjoyed much higher literacy.

So the pattern emerges again and confirms itself: you are only concerned with the literacy of rich white men like Gibbon who produced and circulated his literature to other white men.

Your fantasy that literate women (I guess rich, white Europeans) were widely impressed by Gibbon is completely useless as well.

 

[Pragmatist]

The point is that we can know quite a bit about Paul from his letters and even Acts. We have a good idea which letters are actually Paul's, although for some the jury is still out. We also have Acts which can be used to some extent to inform us about Paul. We have other sources which help us understand what it meant to be a member of the Jesus movement during Paul's day. Careful analyses of all this and more yield a number of biographical details we can know (keeping in mind that historical facts are always in reality closer to true beyond a reasonable doubt), a number of things we can be pretty sure of, and a number of things that are likely but there is reason to doubt.

The problem with Paul's biography is that it comes from Paul. This is the definition of a tendentiousness source. The interpretation of Acts seems even more difficult: how are you going to pick out the little deposits of fact from that confusing mass of mythical and polemical fantasy, without going mad? It must be difficult; minute and painstaking work that strains the psychic resources.

The Jesus cult took off in the 40's right? It started in the Galilee region, right? Well, why doesn't Josephus mention it in the Jewish Wars? He must have known about this movement; his knowledge of the region during this specific period seems authoritative. Why the silence? Were his comments about early Christianity too unorthodox to survive the distortions and omission of pious copyists? I'd like to know what the scholarly consensus is on this problem (I already know Eisenman's position).

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

These arguments are fairly detailed, are they not?

Yes and no (the logic is fairly straightforward). But they do require, among other things, a knowledge of Greek to evaluate.

Whenever one studies a certain problem in great depth, there is danger that you will get so sucked into the minutia of the details, that you lose sight of the big picture.

That does and can happen. But when it does there are always plenty of others to point it out. I wasn't a big fan of N.T. Wright's three-volume work on the historical Jesus (particularly as the third leaves the realm of historicity), but I did like his comments in the second volume about some work of those who have so intensely studied Q: "to treat Q as a document at all is controversial. To treat it as a gospel…is more so; to postulate two or three stages in its development is to build castles in the air; to insist that the document was ‘composed in the fifties, and possibly at Tiberias in Galileee,’ is to let imagination run riot" (p. 48).

I think it is certain that intense scholarly study can drive some people insane: staring for hours at all those texts.

Typically, those who do stare "for hours at all those texts" are of the type for whom such study will not drive them insane. Some people practice a given sport or musical instrument for hours. Iaido is entirely devoted just to prefecting drawing one's sword, and practitioners spend hours and hours repeating their draw. I spend hours and hours "staring" at texts and I spend hours and hours training (combatives/CQB/edged weapons/stick/etc). Neither has driven me insane. When it comes to psychotic disorders, I think you will find more of these among mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and similar academics than those whose work involves intense study of texts.

I wouldn't say that Eisenman shows signs of insanity, exactly,

And I wouldn't use him as a yardstick to judge even NT scholars, let alone the entire community of scholars of ancient history.

I can almost see him slowly going insane as he minutely picks through all of those tiny fragments, can't you?

I've done it.

It seems that a scientific one can; just look at superstrings

We can't (not yet anyway, and we may not ever be able to even if, for example, M-theory is accurate). Lots of things within mathematics and physics seem counter-intuitive or even insane. But unless you have good reason not just to reject string theory but call it insane (which means you must have a grasp of QM and GTR physicists lack), why do so?

The violent attacks on Gibbon trouble me.

It's hard to violently attack someone who is dead. Also, the "attacks" aren't on Gibbon. They are an expression of incredulity at your religious devotion to him.

It is good enough for people outside of the scholarly community

It isn't. In fact, it's a pretty bad source for anybody, scholarly or no, to use to acquaint themselves with roman history. Not only are there far more reliable works which are far shorter and more readable for the non-specialist, those who do read Gibbon don't do so to understand roman history (anymore than one reads Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to understand the historical events surrounding Caesar's death).

it acquaints the nonspecialist with all of the most important facts

Such as?

and the fact that it is from 1776 actually works to its advantage for this purpose, because it is written at a higher literary level than the pop literature of today

Making it less accessible to most.

The problem with Paul's biography is that it comes from Paul.

And Acts.

This is the definition of a tendentiousness source. The interpretation of Acts seems even more difficult: how are you going to pick out the little deposits of fact from that confusing mass of mythical and polemical fantasy, without going mad?

Why not read some scholarship on the subject and see?

Why the silence?

Any number of reasons. For example, John the Baptist continued to have followers after his death. Yet Josephus doesn't mention him or his followers in De Bello Iudaico. He does, however, in Antiquitates Judaicae. This is also where he mentions Jesus.

I'd like to know what the scholarly consensus is on this problem.

That it isn't a problem.