Was Jesus Eaten By Dogs?

[CynthiaCypher]

Ya know what - I ask for a source because we know almost nothing about the Pharisees. To nail them down with certainty is tough, because the Pharisees weren't around all that long and it would be a stroke of pure luck to find a first century examples. Or even one.

I believe that the Pharisees were in one location - Jerusalem - and they were a lay movement that was not organized into something like a synagogue, which we know women supported. But if they did not regularly meet together like a collegia, there would be no evidence that survived.

I would guess that you're confusing 2nd century synagogues outside of Jerusalem with Pharisees in the first century in Jerusalem.

I want to do a study on the Pharisees, I don't believe they are the mustache twisting villains that popular culture makes them out to be, Any recommendations?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Well I met Ehrman on my own. :angel2:

We exchanged a few emails! Does that count for anything>

Lefkowitz works down the road from where I used to live, and even now Wellesley college is about 15 minutes away or less. But so many of the professors or former professors I really want to meet (Lakoff, Langacker, Aune, Metzger, Croft, Zadeh, and so on) are either not local, retired, or dead. Where I live is not the best place for NT studies (although BC, Harvard, and other places have great programs), and much, much worse for someone interested in cognitive science and linguistics not dominated by Chomskyan paradigms and other models I reject. However, talking to Steven Pinker, Kreeft, and a few other local notables was still pretty cool.

 

[outhouse]

The Pharisees weren't power players, they were just a sect, They were at differences with the Sadducees who did control the temple

yet quoted in the bible as being greedy and bragging about extorting tithes

as I stated they were not as bad as the Sadducees

 

[angellous_evangellous]

OK, I see his source. It's Josephus - perhaps that's why he did not name it.

Josephus says that Herod the Great's sister-in-law rewarded the Pharisees for plotting against him. (Wars 1:571).

Now that wasn't so hard, was it, Ehrman?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I want to do a study on the Pharisees, I don't believe they are the mustache twisting villains that popular culture makes them out to be, Any recommendations?

Jacob Neusner has done some work on them, and from Neusner you can get bibliography.

Also, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: a composition-critical study
By Steve Mason --- is a sourcebook that looks great to me.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

Yes, I see it, page 89. The only evidence that Ehrman gives for this is women in Herod's court AND GIVES NO REFERENCE.... and he notes that no other rabbis had women followers - much less supporters.

Ehrmam said it, I believe it, that settles it.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

Jacob Neusner has done some work on them, and from Neusner you can get bibliography.

Also, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: a composition-critical study
By Steve Mason --- is a sourcebook that looks great to me.

Just looked up Masons book in google books. That's my read for tonight

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Just looked up Masons book in google books. That's my read for tonight

Good. Don't neglect Neusner, though, he's the standard on the Pharisees. He has at least two books on it - very easy to find.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Ehrmam said it, I believe it, that settles it.

haha - if he looks like a frog, everything that he says must be true.

Funny thing is, he sounds like one, too.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

We exchanged a few emails! Does that count for anything>

Lefkowitz works down the road from where I used to live, and even now Wellesley college is about 15 minutes away or less. But so many of the professors or former professors I really want to meet (Lakoff, Langacker, Aune, Metzger, Croft, Zadeh, and so on) are either not local, retired, or dead. Where I live is not the best place for NT studies (although BC, Harvard, and other places have great programs), and much, much worse for someone interested in cognitive science and linguistics not dominated by Chomskyan paradigms and other models I reject. However, talking to Steven Pinker, Kreeft, and a few other local notables was still pretty cool.

Your teachers must really like you. It's not every day that we get students with more than one brain cell to rub together.

You're much, much farther along than I was at your level.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

they were creating

All of literature is creating. History isn't an exception. Leven writes in his paper "Roman Historiography in the Late Republic" that the major model Sallust used "went back more than 100 years to Cato the Censor." Also his "uniqueness in form is allied to a historical slant and writing style which are themselves highly distinctive. The overriding impression is of a pervasive pessimism: his central theme is Roman decline, which appears both dreadful and inevitable." Caesar's political bias was obvious, but even that doesn't explain his discussion of the Druids or talk of things like Unicorns. As Suzanne Said states in her paper "Myth and Historiography": "Historiography was born out of myth..." She goes into some detail on the use of myth and story-telling even in Polybius, let alone Diadorus, Strabo, Dionysius, etc.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Your teachers must really like you. It's not every day that we get students with more than one brain cell to rub together.

You're much, much farther along than I was at your level.

Thank you! But in reality my level in college and my interest in college were mainly because I started late. I started writing to professors like Bart Ehrman, Ronald Hutton, and Michael C. Drout before I started college, but I was 19 or 20 (i.e., of college age). Also, when the standard Greek Grammar in english has your grandfather's name in it as editor and you grow up getting books on philosophy, history, and mathematics for birthdays and christmas, obsessive study is sometimes inevitable (and a problem).

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Thank you! But in reality my level in college and my interest in college were mainly because I started late. I started writing to professors like Bart Ehrman, Ronald Hutton, and Michael C. Drout before I started college, but I was 19 or 20 (i.e., of college age). Also, when the standard Greek Grammar in english has your grandfather's name in it as editor and you grow up getting books on philosophy, history, and mathematics for birthdays and christmas, obsessive study is sometimes inevitable (and a problem).

Wow that's cool. Most of the time I email scholars to discuss the errors in their books that frustrate me.

 

[outhouse]

All of literature is creating. History isn't an exception. Leven writes in his paper "Roman Historiography in the Late Republic" that the major model Sallust used "went back more than 100 years to Cato the Censor." Also his "uniqueness in form is allied to a historical slant and writing style which are themselves highly distinctive. The overriding impression is of a pervasive pessimism: his central theme is Roman decline, which appears both dreadful and inevitable." Caesar's political bias was obvious, but even that doesn't explain his discussion of the Druids or talk of things like Unicorns. As Suzanne Said states in her paper "Myth and Historiography": "Historiography was born out of myth..." She goes into some detail on the use of myth and story-telling even in Polybius, let alone Diadorus, Strabo, Dionysius, etc.

None the less, there is a reason biblical jesus is not historical jesus.

 

[outhouse]

Wow that's cool. Most of the time I email scholars to discuss the errors in their books that frustrate me.

its pretty bad when you find holes in your favorite scholars work lol

your thinking, with all this knowledge they have, why are they missing the obvious here?

 

[CynthiaCypher]

Wow that's cool. Most of the time I email scholars to discuss the errors in their books that frustrate me.

You guys are making me jealous, The only writers that have ever written back to me are Ray Bradbury and Maurice Sendak.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

None the less, there is a reason biblical jesus is not historical jesus.

There are many, including the whole notion of a historical anybody and what that involves. Being lazy, and as I addressed this in a paper (albeit some time ago) I'll just quote myself:
2. The Socratic problem
Sources for any event or person in history are wont to diverge. Even modern biographies and historical writings of living individuals, such as former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, disagree. What makes Socrates, and the disagreement between our sources for information of him, so different? The first part of the answer to this question is simple. It is no coincidence that perhaps the only other individual to have more scholarship devoted to his historical reconstruction is Jesus: “…in the case of both the historical figures whose influence on the life of humanity has been profoundest, Jesus and Socrates, indisputable facts are exceptionally rare…”[v] The more interesting, influential, and relevant to society a person is, the more people will want to know about them. The name “Socrates,” as Joël poetically puts it, is “ein Name…hochgetragen von der Liebe und Ehrfurcht der Jahrtausende…”[vi] Of the three philosophers whose names stand out from all others in the history of Western intellectualism (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), Socrates may have contributed the least to this tradition, but in his capacity as Plato’s teacher he made possible all that came from the other two. In fact, the lack of direct contributions to Western intellectual discourse seems to have made Socrates more interesting, simply because the absence of any copies of Socratic autographs makes Socrates’ character more mysterious. This sense of mystery is only compounded by the long tradition (originating particularly in the works of Plato) [vii] of viewing Socrates’ death as an unjust execution of the most just and noble of men. What emerges is an individual who not only founded the most important philosophical tradition in the West (by teaching Plato), but who gave his life for his beliefs and for his fellow citizens, whom he refused to allow live unexamined lives.
All of the above lays the groundwork for a long and rich history of widespread interest (not simply scholarly) in understanding Socrates’ life. The Socratic problem, however, involves more than just an interesting figure and the typical problems with sources (e.g., scarcity of data, divergent traditions, disagreeing sources, late and/or pseudepigraphical sources, etc.). Actually, compared with many of Socrates’ rough contemporaries of whom we have some knowledge (e.g., Euripides, Antiphon, Aristophanes, etc.), the extant texts which refer to Socrates are unusually numerous. Additionally, several individuals who personally knew Socrates, namely Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Plato, appear to give rather detailed accounts of the man himself in some of their works. Relative to the normal paucity of data available to the ancient historian, a lack of sources for information is clearly not the issue.
This is in fact the heart of the Socratic problem. Given the sources we have, and their nature, it is hard to imagine that anyone who knew of them could conclude “…man mag in dieses Problem sich lange Jahre und immer wieder versenken…und kann doch am Ende von Sokrates sagen, was er von sich selber bekannte: wir wissen, daß wir nichts wissen.”[viii] Yet this conclusion, which other scholars have shared or do share, came to Joël after decades of study and several previous volumes on the subject. ...The figure of Socrates presented by Xenophon is just as different from that of Plato’s and Aristophanes’ as theirs are from one another. Moreover, the very idea that any of these individuals ever intended to represent the historical Socrates is questionable. Dupréel, for example, declared of the Socratic figure that “c’est la creation littéraire…” and that “[a]u moral pas plus qu’au physique, la figure socratique ne constitue un portrait d'après nature; elle est une composition très travaillée.”[ix] Gigon likewise referred to all the sources or works on Socrates (including modern ones) as Dichtung or poetic (literary) compositions.[x] Realizations like these were what caused Joël’s despair in any attempt to find a solution to the Socratic problem.
... One of the first biographers of Socrates provides both a starting point at which we may begin exploring the sources, and also perhaps the earliest historical consciousness of the Socratic problem. Diogenes Laertius, a historian from the third century CE, wrote a number of Lives of various philosophers, including Plato and Socrates. In his Life of Plato, Diogenes reports that Socrates happened to hear someone reading Plato’s Lysis (a dialogue in which the main character is Socrates) and exclaimed “Ἡράκλεις…ὡς πολλά μου καταψεύδεθ' ὁ νεανίσκος.’ οὐκ ὀλίγα γὰρ ὧν οὐκ εἴρηκε Σωκράτης γέγραφεν ἁνήρ.”[xii] The historical accuracy of this account is debatable, but it does indicate that by Diogenes Laertius’ time at least Plato’s depiction of Socrates had been questioned.

[v] Taylor, 1932, p. 9.

[vi] “a name…carried high by the love and awe of millennia…” p. 730.

[vii]ἥδε ἡ τελευτή, ὦἘχέκρατες, τοῦἑταίρου ἡμῖν ἐγένετο, ἀνδρός, ὡς ἡμεῖς φαῖμεν ἄν, τῶν τότε ὧν ἐπειράθημεν ἀρίστου καὶἄλλως φρονιμωτάτου καὶ δικαιοτάτου/ “such was the end, Echecrates, of our companion, a man such that we may say of him that of those living then whom we have put to the test, [he was] the best and the wisest and the most just.” Phaedo 118a.

[viii] “ [o]ne can immerse himself in this problem for many years, but can at the end only say of Socrates what he admitted himself: we know that we know nothing.” p. 731.

[ix] “it is a literary creation…” p. 334 “The Socratic figure is not a life-like sketch, mentally anymore than physically; it is a well-wrought composition.” p. 333.

[x] Gigon, 1947.

[xii] “By Hercules, how many times that lad [Plato] has lied about me!” DL 3.35.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

…as within all genres and other conventional frameworks like registers, variation is possible… Such variation is acceptable until the deviation is too great… In communication, the receiver (reader, listener, etc.) possesses a stock of communicative frameworks from which style, lexical choice, textual (oral or written) structure, and so forth, serve as clues to aid understanding. Like the use of a particular language, these clues convey information to facilitate communication. Academic texts rely on conventional use of scholarly prose, erudite lexical usage, and complex linguistic constructions. Poetry, by convention, deviates from typical linguistic usage in order to communicate its artistic nature. Each genre, including oral genres,relies not only on language but on conventional patterns to facilitate information.[ii] Within and across genres, other similar conventions further govern structural and expressive components of texts. Register, which often overlaps with genre, refers both to the context in which communication occurs and the conventional patterns governing allowable structures within that context.[iii] Religious contexts require religious registers, informal discourse requires informal registers, and so forth.
The reason understanding genre and similar conventions is vital to reconstructing the historical Socrates is due to the invalid divide between literature and history and the conclusions drawn from this division. The Gospels are literary and religious documents. They are clearly biased and apologetic, they include much which even ancient historians like Thucydides would deem inappropriate to historical narratives, and are certainly not biographies in the modern sense of the word. Nonetheless.. a series of detailed studies convincingly showed that the Gospels do indeed fit into a historical genre.[iv] In other words, they accord well enough with a particular conventional pattern (in style, structure, focus, etc.) that it is clear the authors desired their creations to be read in a particular way and so wrote according to that (broad) convention. While this does not mean the Gospels immediately become historically accurate, it does mean that, contra Bultmann and the form critics, the authors were interested in the historical Jesus and were also concerned to a certain extent with adhering to history.
If the inclusion of mythical and miraculous accounts, as well as other artistic and literary devices,[v] does not preclude an ancient text from membership in a historiographical genre, then neither should the use of dialogue, stories, and other literary aspects in the writings of Plato and Xenophon. There is no reason to assume, a priori, that just because Plato and Xenophon’s writings were literary and artistic creations, they therefore were never intended to depict the historical Socrates.
Let us return, then, to a part of Dorion’s conclusion quoted earlier: “If the logoi Sōkratikoi are works of fictions, allowing their authors considerable scope for invention…then it seems hopeless to try to reconstruct the thought of the historical Socrates on the basis of the logoi Sōkratikoi.” First, even taking for granted the categorization of this genre as “fiction,” the conclusion does not follow from this premise. Dorion’s use of logoi Sōkratikoi implies genre: certain conventions dictate and govern patterns within these text which make it possible to call them logoi Sōkratikoi. This is also not a “modern” categorization. Aristotle, who opens his discussion of poetry with the issue of genre,[vi] mentions the lack classification when it comes to writings “μόνον τοῖς λόγοις ψιλοῖς…χρωμένη.”[vii] Among these and other mixed types which have no named genre, Aristotle includes τούς Σωκρατικούς λόγους. Ancient and modern commentators agree, then, that the logoi Sōkratikoi belong at least in many ways to a specific genre.
There is no reason to conclude that the conventions required by this genre do not restrict or limit the “invention” of the authors in ways which allow historical reconstruction of the type Dorion states is impossible. Perhaps, for example, while this genre allows the character “Socrates” to do and say things the historical Socrates did not, there may be limits to these. In other words, it may be that the character of Socrates could not deviate from the historical Socrates in ways which completely hid his philosophy, thought, and customary manner. The fact that Plato did not use Socrates as a character all the time may indicate not that in all other instances he intended his character to “be” Socrates, but that at these times the deviation was too great. Support for this interpretation can be found in Diogenes Laertius. In his short “biography” of Simon the shoe-maker, whom Diogenes credits with the invention of the logoi Sōkratikoi genre, he states that “…ἐρχομένου Σωκράτους ἐπὶ τὸ ἐργαστήριον καὶ διαλεγομένου τινά, ὧν ἐμνημόνευεν ὑποσημειώσεις ἐποιεῖτο.”[viii] Whether the story itself is accurate is hard to determine. However, what is important is that to an ancient historian like Diogenes Laertius, these dialogues appeared to be a historical genre, in that they sought in some sense to record actual conversations and sayings. We should remember that it was Diogenes Laertius who recounted a story of Socrates calling Plato a liar, and thus was clearly capable of understanding that these dialogues could contain fiction, yet he describes them as historical nonetheless.
Therefore, before concluding that these dialogues are pure fiction and nothing in them is intended (or required) to represent the historical Socrates, a better understanding of this genre in these terms (i.e. to what extent, given that ancient history does not preclude fictional components, are these dialogues designed to represent the historical Socrates) is required… As with the Gospels, literary and fantastical elements do not, a priori, preclude historiographical intent.
[iii] Biber, 1988; Biber & Finegan, 1994; Ferguson, 1994.

[iv] Talbert, 1977; Aune, 1987, Burridge, 1992; Frickenschmidt, 1997.

[v] A famous example of such a device is Wrede’s (1901) arguments for the “messianic secret” in Mark, a literary device with theological designs.

[vi] περὶ ποιητικῆς αὐτῆς τε καὶ τῶν εἰδῶν αὐτῆς/”concerning poetry both itself and the many forms it has…” Poetics 1447a.

[vii] “Using bare words alone” (i.e. prose without meter). Poetics 1447a-b.

[viii] “Whenever Socrates came into his workshop and they discussed something, he would remember these talks and would take notes.” DL 2.122.

 

[outhouse]

nice information

but im not sure philosophy is the answer to everything

while having good strong points and understanding the philosophy behind the literature goes a long way, one should not discount archeology and cultural anthropology when they are the best evidence we have as a foundation to build from with philosophy.

 

[outhouse]

I understand the above

I often have a hard time explaining to literalist, these methods above for pulling historicity from works not really interested in following history through allegorical methods as well as how historicity can be found in mythical content.

Im not sure it will help me to much in my endeavors as its in a language I can comprehend but not retain easily, my fault. not yours.

but i do appriciate the education you have put forth