by Farkel 199 Replies latest watchtower bible
ilikecheese:
If you read some of the previous posts, you will see that basically there are 4 outstanding proofs that all scholars and xians give. Two of them are covered here. If you read the texts they hardly identify the jesus. If you appreciate that there were many Jesus and one of the 2 covered here actually tells us this same jesus previously mentioned had a dad with a diff name, you will realise wtf... its all a big lie. Read the texts yourself, you will not be imrpessed.
Okay, so to pick up from last night, I mentioned Fomenko in order to make a methodological point because he uses a very similar approach as Atwill. Both regard the narrative of Jesus as hoaxed from a later personage and find the parallels as too coincidental to be a product of chance. Atwill regards the model of Jesus to be primarily Titus (although he draws parallels from Vespasian and others) while Fomenko finds the prototype to be an twelfth century AD Byzantine emperor (although he also draws parallels from other personages). Both are highly implausible for the same reasons. Historical reconstruction is not haphazard but is guided by principles of parsimony, internal consistency, and accounting for a preponderance of the evidence. In order for Fomenko to be right, you would have to dismiss an enormous amount of historical sources and facts, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence he provides just doesn't meet the burden of proof, not by a long shot. It is pretty much the same with Atwill. In order for Atwill to be right, you would have to dismiss all historical sources on early Christianity as frauds, and pretty much throw out all of critical scholarship on the NT in order to maintain his ideas on authorship (all the gospels, and indeed all the NT coming from the same small circle), provenance, date, and genre (the whole thing, or least the gospels, being satire). That is a lot of evidence to account for, but it is hand-waved simply in favor of a set of parallels that just do not meet such a high burden of proof. You asked why I found Atwill to be a real stretch, and that's essentially it in a nutshell. His hypothesis has little descriptive or explanatory adequacy, it is inherently unlikely, and it is poorly supported with evidence. It advances a conspiracy theory that is constructed around anomalies and claimed coincidences and sustained through question-begging, which is not valid historical methodology.
For example, there is an enormous amount of conceptual, stylistic, and linguistic diversity in the NT (and indeed across all early Christian writings). The same is the case with writings of Second Temple Judaism, or the Old Testament, or the Greek philosophers, or the early church fathers. Such polyphony normally shows that the different texts comes from many different hands, representing different viewpoints and intellectual backgrounds, coming from a range of different provenances over a stretch of time (with later writers engaging with earlier writings). Not so with Atwill. He ascribes the gospels and Josephus, and indeed the entirety of the NT, as coming from the same author, or small circle of authors. That is inherently implausible, in light of all the research on the diversity in both early Judaism and Christianity, and he either ignores the heterogeneity or asserts that it is manufactured as part of the deception (a good example of question-begging, with the premise being used to dismiss contrary evidence). He claims for instance that the narrative contradictions in the gospels were intentionally placed so that the intelligent reader should read the gospels together as a combined story, but this does not work at all; the differences in the nativity and appearance narratives, for instance, cannot be reconciled harmonistically. They represent different authorial aims, different literary approaches, different source traditions, different theological perceptives. In order for his thesis to "work", you have a presume a whole bunch of ideas that just aren't supported by the evidence. There is a huge body of research on the genre of the gospels and their constituent parts and how they fit together with pre-Christian Jewish/OT literature, and while parables often were satirical (in order to make moral points), there is no basis for classifying the gospels as a whole as satire — much less as a "joke" played on the audience. That isn't established through normal exegesis through the study of the construction of the narrative; it is derived eisegetically by using the premise of Flavian authorship (+ associated conspiracy theory) as the interpretive rubric for uncovering the "hidden meaning". I remember seeing this a lot in the book. He puts a satirical spin on a given pericope, not from its literary construction, but from his imposed premise or proposed parallel with Josephus. You can read pretty much any story as a humorous satire if you took such an approach. When I wrote about the book of Jonah as satire, it was based entirely on its literary features and how the characters behaved contrary to type. Instead Atwill says things like pericope X creates a satire when you combine it with "parallel" Y from Josephus. And similarly, he regarded certain stories in Josephus as fictions lampooning the fictional Jesus on pretty much the same grounds. This is classic eisegesis. The Society for instance doesn't interpret prophetic texts through normal exegetical analysis; it uses its own organizational history (or rather an idealized conception of it), or twentieth-century history, as the rubric for interpreting Revelation or Ezekiel or Daniel, such that it discovers that the biblical prophets were "really" talking about such things as the 1918 crisis in the Watchtower Society, or conventions in the 1920s. Similarly, Atwill uses Josephus' account of the Jewish War as the interpretive rubric for discovering what the gospels are "really" talking about. I don't find such analysis convincing or persuasive.
On the matter of parallels, it must be pointed out that there are some real parallels that he discusses. These are the parallels between Josephus and Luke-Acts which are distinctive (i.e. detailed, unusual, involving similar wording), which have been noted by scholars for a very long time, and which indicate a special relationship between Luke-Acts in particular and Josephus. That is usually explained as due to the fact that the author of Luke-Acts, being a historiographer, had read Josephus and drew details for background information. The idea that both had common authorship is implausible on many grounds, including the fact that the author of Luke-Acts bungled quite a few historical details from Josephus. Then there are parallels that are plausible but do not necessarily indicate any relationship between Josephus and the gospels, but rather result from the fact that both draw on similar material. So both refer to the calamity of the war as an unparalled misfortune "since the beginninng of the world", but this is a case of both being dependent on Daniel 12:1, which was the obvious OT prophecy relevant to the events of AD 66-70 (with the then-current interpretation of Daniel identifying the kingdom desolating the Temple as Rome). But the other parallels that he discusses, the ones that only he has ever discovered, are very different from these. They are the kind of arbitrary coincidental similarities one could cherry-pick between any two stories set in the same location, provided one stretches things enough to make things fit. I recall the first example he mentions is the call to discipleship at the Sea of Galilee in order to make fishermen into "fishers of men", and that is likened to a battle Titus fought at the Sea of Galilee pursuing Jews till they drowned and cut off their heads or hands as they swam. Do I really have to explain why that is an incredible stretch to me? The only way to even see that as a parallel is to presume the premise that the parallel is supposed to be evidence of. Fishing was the primary industry of the Sea of Galilee, the call to discipleship was directed to people who fished for a living, there is nothing unusual or distinctive about the Markan pericope, whereas there is nothing in the Josephan story about fishing unless one takes a really strained, particular way of reading the narrative, with no similar wording, no unexpected features in common. Fish was mentioned in an aside in the preceding paragraph, but that was in a general description of the Sea of Galilee, where obviously it is a relevant fact about the region. The kind of fish that Josephus mentions in this geographical description, korakinoi, is then taken to be another parallel to the "fishers of men" story because it supposedly sounds like a town that was near the Sea of Galilee, Khorazin. There is no linguistic connection between the names (yeah I know, any sound similarity no matter now philologically implausible is defacto evidence of relationship for you), there is no conceptual connection beyond the supposed sound similarity (the korakini fish in Josephus do not have any similar role in the narrative as the reference to Chorazin in the gospels), and the biblical reference to Chorazin isn't even in the "fishers of men" pericope, or the Markan narrative at all, it comes from a different gospel. In short, this is all very different from the solid parallels that result from actual intertextual relationships between texts. There isn't any internal consistency; sometimes it is Titus who is paralleled to Jesus, other times its Vespasian, other times it's any number of other "Jesuses" (one of the most popular names of the era) mentioned by Josephus. The vast number of narrative elements or the overall narrative construction isn't paralleled, just the few things that happened to coincidentally match, as they would in any comparison between texts (just as one could find words that sound alike in any two languages randomly compared) provided they are lengthy and detailed enough (and Josephus' account of the Jewish revolt is very detailed and lengthy). Why not compare Jesus to Saladin who also had a big battle in the same area of Galilee? Saladin fought against the Crusaders at the same hill that was the site of the Sermon on the Mount....aha! We have ourselves a parallel....obviously the Sermon on the Mount is a satire of Saladin's routing of the Crusaders, and the Beatitudes when interpreted in light of Saladin's victories is an obvious joke directed at the Crusaders who should have been the "meek" or they would have "inherited the earth" rather than lost the Kingdom of Jerusalem to Titus', er I mean, Saladin's forces (just like Titus, Saladin then besieged and conquered Jerusalem after his campaign in Galilee). It's easy to come up with meaningless "parallels" like these. Joseph of Arimathea being modeled on Josephus rests on only a superficial sound resemblence that isn't convincing (Harimathea < Hebrew Ha-Ramathaim, not bar-Matityahu), not on any substantive narrative connection; Josephus did not offer to bury Titus in his Jerusalem tomb, or anything vaguely resembling the Joseph character of the gospels. Nor was Mary, mother of Jesus, described in the gospels as accompanying Jesus as the Last Supper, eating and drinking of the bread and wine. As parallels go, even if we accept these as parallels at all, they are embarassingly weak. Compare any of this with the intertextual parallels of the gospel narratives with the OT, where we can clearly see direct influence, importation of language and wording, consistency (e.g. the Matthean birth narrative drawing systematically on the story of Moses in its very construction, the Markan temptation narrative drawing on the Torah traditions about Israel in the wilderness, the passion narratives drawing on OT sacrificial imagery, etc.). Anyway, I know we have very different views on what constitutes a valid parallel. I recall last May how you continued to consider "elder" as actually having a religious connection with the deity name "El" despite the fact that there absolutely no historical connection between the two, just a superficial resemblence in English. I don't think we are going to agree on this matter at all so we will have to agree to disagree.
I want to move on to another aspect of the book that is indicative of the author's unscholarly approach.....his highly simplified incorrect view of Second Temple Judaism. This is what caused him to develop his hypothesis because he could not fit the Jesus of the gospels into his understanding of Judaism and messianism as it existed in first century Judea. He could not imagine how Judaism could have developed both the Sicarii and a peace-loving Jesus, and he found Jesus' stance towards the Roman empire as implausible for a prophet and messianic claimant (as the concept of the messiah was necessarily of a waring, military figure). He is sorely wrong on both counts. There were a plethora of different messianic concepts in the first century, from a Davidic kingly messiah, to an Aaronid priestly messiah, to a messiah who would proclaim good news to the poor and heal the wounded (4QMessianic Apocalypse), to a messiah who would judge the living and the dead, etc. And Jesus' ethic of non-retaliation ("turn the other cheek", "love your enemies"), as a halakhic interpretation of OT laws on lex talionis, is NOT foreign at all to the Judaism that spans from the OT to the second century AD:
Leviticus 19:18: " Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself".
Proverbs 20:22, 24:17, 29, 25:21: "Do not say, 'I'll pay you back for this wrong,' instead wait for Yahweh and he will avenge you.... Do not gloat when your enemy falls.... Do not say, 'I'll do to them as they have done to me; I’ll pay them back for what they did' .... If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. ".
Isaiah 50:6: " I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard".
Lamentations 3:30: " Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him".
Sirach 28:1-5: "The Lord is taking note of your sins, and if you take vengeance on someone, the Lord will take vengeance on you. But if you forgive someone who has wronged you, your sins will be forgiven when you pray. You yourself are a sinner, and if you won't forgive another person, you have no right to pray that the Lord will forgive your sins. If you cannot get rid of your anger, you have no hope of forgiveness".
1QS 10:18-19: "I shall not repay anyone the reward of evil, I will pursue him with goodness, for to God belongs the judgment of every living thing".
Epistle of Aristeas, 227-232: "It is a man's duty to be generous toward those who are amicably disposed to us. My belief is that we must also show liberal charity to our opponents....You do well if you bring all men into friendship with yourself....One can be free from sorrow by pursuing righteousness, doing no harm to anyone, and helping everyone".
Philo, De Virtutibus 116: "Even if any beasts of burden belonging to the enemy while bearing burdens are oppressed by the weight, and fall down beneath them, he commands that the people should not pass them by, but that they should lighten their burdens and raise them up, teaching them thus by remote examples not to be delighted at the unexpected misfortunes even of those who hate them, knowing that to rejoice in the disasters of others is a malignant and odious passion .... because the one feeling causes grief at the good fortune of another, and the other excites joy at the misfortunes of one's neighbour".
Testament of Gad 6:3-7: "Love one another from the heart, and if a man sins against you, speak to him in peace, after having cast away the poison of hatred .... keep silent lest you provoke him, for the one who denies may repent so as to not offend you again and he may even honor you and fear and be at peace with you, but if he is shameless and persists in his wrongdoing, even so forgive him from the heart, and leave to God the avenging".
Testament of Benjamin 4:2-3: "The good man has not a dark eye, for he shows mercy to all men, even though they are sinners, even though they devise to do him harm, by doing good he overcomes the evil, because he is shielded by the good".
2 Baruch 52:6: "Enjoy yourselves in the suffering which you suffer now. For why do you look for the decline of your enemies?"
2 Enoch 50:2-4: "Live in patience and meekness for the number of your days, so that you may inherit the endless age that is coming. And every assault and every wound and burn and every evil word, if they happen to you on account of the Lord, endure them. Being able to pay them back, do not pay them back, do not repay them to your neighbor, because it is the Lord who repays".
Yoma 23a: "Has it not been taught: Concerning those who are insulted but do not insult others [in revenge], who hear themselves reproached without replying, who [perform good] work out of love of the Lord and rejoice in their sufferings, Scripture says: But they that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might? — [That means,] indeed, that he keeps it in his heart [though without taking action].
b. Gittin 36b: "They who suffer insults but do not inflict them, who hear themselves reviled and do not answer back, who perform [religious precepts] from love and rejoice in chastisement, of such the Scripture says, And they that love him are like the sun when he goes forth in his might".
b. Shabbat 88b: "Those who are insulted but do not insult, hear themselves reviled without answering, act through love and rejoice in suffering, of them the scripture says, But they who love him are as the sun when he goes forth in his might".
m. 'Abot 1:12, 2:15: "Hillel said: Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and bringing them close to the Torah....Rabbi Eliezer said: Let the honor of your fellow be as dear to you as your own. Be not easily moved to anger".
Jesus' orientation towards the Roman Empire in the synoptic gospels follows a very strong prophetic tradition from the OT; it is hardly foreign to genuine Jewish thought. The situation in the early sixth century BC was very similar to that of first century Judea: Judah was in the grip of an aggressive military empire and the government was pursuing a course of rebellion against Babylonian hegemony. Jeremiah felt this was suicidal and urged the people to accept the Babylonian yoke: "Yahweh declares, 'If any nation will bow its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let that nation remain in its own land to till it and live there.' I gave the same message to Zedekiah king of Judah. I said, 'Bow your neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon; serve him and his people and you will live. Why will you and your people die by the sword, famine and plague with which Yahweh has threatened any nation that will not serve the king of Babylon?' " (Jeremiah 27:11-13). And like Jesus, Jeremiah was sharply critical of the religious elites of his day and he called on the people to repent. Nor was he pro-Babylonian; his political stance was aimed at the survival of the nation under hegemony and he prophesized that God will punish Babylon eventually for its deeds. Another even more pertinent model can be found in Daniel. In the Seleucid period, Judea was oppressed by Syria and Egypt alternatively during the Syrian Wars, and by the 160s BC the king of Syria invaded Jerusalem, robbed the Temple and razed part of Jerusalem, assassinated the high priest, and later had his mysarch defile the Temple by installing the abomination of desolation and banning sacrifice and Torah observance. This sparked the armed military resistance movement by Judas Maccabeus which fought, ultimately successfully, against Syrian hegemony. But this was not the only response to the persecution. The authors of Daniel took a rather negative view toward armed resistance. The Hebrew author viewed the Maccabeans as only "a little help" (Daniel 11:34) and referred negatively to a similar armed resistance during the wars of Antiochus III: " Those who are violent among your own people will rebel in order to fulfill the vision, but without success" (v. 14). But the authors of Daniel were not simply pacifist; they subscribed to political quietism. They believed that the people should let God bring about the needed change in affairs. The Aramaic author wrote in ch. 2 that "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, which will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end" (v. 44), but it will come "not by human hands" (v. 34, 45). Similarly, in ch. 7, the hegemony of the Seleucid empire would continue until God himself convenes a court and takes away power from the kingdom and destroys it completely forever (v. 26), handing over "the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven to the holy people of the Most High" (v. 27). This is a direct model to the poltical orientation of the Jesus of the synoptics, who is similarly quietist. As one can readily see in other examples of the Jewish ethic of non-relatiation, it came with the implied expectation that vengeance would be left to God. " Wait for Yahweh and he will avenge you" (Proverbs 20:22), " to God belongs the judgment of every living thing" (1QS 10:18), "leave to God the avenging" (Testament of Gad 6:7), "it is the Lord himself who repays" (2 Enoch 50:4). Jesus taught in the synoptics that God would repay according to one's deeds; "everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment" (Matthew 12:36), "He will reward each person according to what they have done" (16:27). In Luke 20:41-43, he cites Psalm 110:1 to show that the "son of David" waits for God to take action against his enemies: "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet". The Son waits until the time the Father has chosen to bring about Judgment Day (Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32). Until then, the focus is on repentance and reform (in order so people may attain righteousness) in order to gather people into the kingdom of God which Jesus as the messiah has brought to the earth via his ministry (Matthew 4:19, 5:20, 7:21, 11:12, 12:28, 13:24, 37-43, etc.). The concepts of the kingdom and the Son of Man judging the world at Judgment Day are derived from Daniel, pertaining to the eschatological kingdom that replaces the present political order. The "fourth kingdom" of Daniel, responsible for the persecution of God's people and the defiling of the Temple, is the kingdom in power that is destroyed and wiped out when God's kingdom is given to the holy people (ch. 7). The synoptic gospels clearly identify that kingdom with Rome, which was the standard Jewish interpretation once Judea came under Roman rule. Thus the "great tribulation" at the close of the fourth kingdom, with its installation of the abomination of desolation (ch. 11-12), is identified by the synoptic writers with the events of AD 66-70. The Markan Olivet discourse places virtually no delay between this and the coming of the Son of Man in judgment ("in those days"), while Matthew, written later, inserts a short delay ("immediately after those days"). But in both cases, it is absolutely clear via the allusions to Daniel, that Jesus does NOT describe the Jewish revolt and destruction of the Temple as instituting a new era of Roman rule. It is the exact opposite. The era of the of the "fourth kingdom" (Rome) was about to come to a close. The final king of the final Gentile kingdom instituted the abomination of desolation in the Temple for only a short duration which ends with the destruction of the desolator (Daniel, ch. 9, 11), which then is followed by the resurrection to judgment (ch. 12). The Lukan version of the discourse makes this explicit: " Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (21:24). What comes to an end is the period of Gentile domination over Jerusalem. Then the Son of Man comes on the clouds of heaven, which (via Enochic messianic development in the Book of Parables) alludes to the judgment scene in ch. 7 of Daniel, whereupon the kingdoms are judged and replaced by God's kingdom when the "one like a son of man" comes on the clouds and sits on his throne. That is the scene in ch. 25 of Matthew: " When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne; a ll the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats" (v. 31-32). So it is false to claim that the Jesus of the gospels is a cheerleader for Rome and exists in order to get Jews to look upon Rome as their rightful ruler. The eschatological perspective rather is that Rome's days have almost drawn to a close, and that it would be Jesus himself — in the guise of the heavenly Son of Man — who would accomplish what Daniel prophesied about the demise of the "fourth kingdom". But Jesus must wait until the time of God's choosing, and until then, he subversively establishes his kingdom in the midst of the Roman empire through his ministry, like adding leaven to dough (Matthew 13:33). The revolutionaries were not representative of Judaism as a whole, but rather, were typical mainly of the fourth philosophy, Zealotism, whereas Jesus much more closely resembles the political profile of the Essenes. The Essenes were non-revolutionary, quietist, and in the case of the Qumran sect focused on developing a community of believers who would be the saved and constitute the chosen of the future kingdom. They would take part in the final battle of good and evil (1QM), but they were not doing anything to bring that about at the time of their choosing. The Essenes, like Jesus, were harshly critical of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they expected that the rule of Rome (the Kittim) would soon come to an end (1QpHab, 1QM). The sectarian Essene community was organized much like the early communal Christian community described in Acts. And on and on. The role of Jesus doesn't look anything like the imagined parallels with Vespasian and Titus, but it does resemble closely the Teacher of Righteousness who founded the specific Qumran sect of Essenism, who "teaches the law to his council and to all those volunteering to join the chosen of God observing the law in the council of the community, those who willk be saved from the Day of Judgment" (1QpMicah 10:6-9), who "will judge his enemies" (11:4), "to whom God has made known all the mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets" (1QpHab 7:4-5), "whom God installed to found the congregation of his chosen ones of the truth for him and straightened out his path in truth" (4Q171 3:15-17), etc.
Anyway, those are some thoughts. And please don't think this is any sort of actual rebuttal of the book; it has been years since I read it and I am not really interested in giving a point-by-point rebuttal, nor do I think it needs rebutting. You asked what my opinion was of the thesis, and why I thought it was a streeeetch, and so these are the reasons why. And I'm not really interested in having more to say that what I've written here (which I spent a few hours putting together).
I am aware that there were many Jesus'; how is that relevant to this discussion? Is there mention of a number of Jesus' who were executed by Pilate?
It's amazing how many Johns there are in American government history.
John Adams and John Quincy Adams? Sounds like he is a duplicate of the other. John Hancock? John Tyler and John F. Kennedy? How curious that a president who got assassinated was named John, and then two other Johns (John Wilkes Booth and John Hinckley) were assassins or potential assasssins of other presidents. Oh, and another John (John Lennon) was assassinated in New York even though he wasn't a president, but he was pretty famous. What are the odds that so many people mentioned in American history textbooks are named John?
MP:
I will address your points in sep posts to keep them separate.
@Leo
Okay, so to pick up from last night, I mentioned Fomenko in order to make a methodological point because he uses a very similar approach as Atwill. Both regard the narrative of Jesus as hoaxed from a later personage and find the parallels as too coincidental to be a product of chance
mP:
I havent read Fomenkos commentary about Jesus so i cant comment. I have absolute no clue what he says, so i am at a disadvantage to make any commentary. That said it really doesnt matter what F says as im not discussing anything about F. However if F said the same things then by all means mention them.
@Leo
In order for Atwill to be right, you would have to dismiss all historical sources on early Christianity as frauds, and pretty much throw out all of critical scholarship on the NT in order to maintain his ideas on authorship (all the gospels, and indeed all the NT coming from the same small circle), provenance, date, and genre (the whole thing, or least the gospels, being satire). That is a lot of evidence to account for, but it is hand-waved simply in favor of a set of parallels that just do not meet such a high burden of proof. You asked why I found Atwill to be a real stretch, and that's essentially it in a nutshell. His hypothesis has little descriptive or explanatory adequacy, it is inherently unlikely, and it is poorly supported with evidence. It advances a conspiracy theory that is constructed around anomalies and claimed coincidences and sustained through question-begging, which is not valid historical methodology.
mP:
It was not that long that scholars said the bible was almost perfect. Today we have many scholars who still say Jesus did those miracles. I wont deny many of these are xian fundies but still, it shows scholars are people as well and they arent always honest. There are a lot of nutty muslim scholars, i dont believe them, but still they say many things aswell that are obviously stupid like beliving mohammad split the moon in half as it is writtein hte koran.
After all taht lets forget about this appeal to authority and actually look at the items of interest.
Leo:
For example, there is an enormous amount of conceptual, stylistic, and linguistic diversity in the NT (and indeed across all early Christian writings). The same is the case with writings of Second Temple Judaism, or the Old Testament, or the Greek philosophers, or the early church fathers. Such polyphony normally shows that the different texts comes from many different hands,
mP:
Are we to believe that the Romans were incapable of hiring the best minds to produce these texts. If theres anyone with deep pockets surely it must be the imperial government. THe facts are education was very much a privlege of the rich, the rich had a best of interest in cooperating w/ the Romans, to keep the status quo.
I really cant see how this argument impressed you, its too easy to disprove. At best it actually points to the Romans more than scattered individualss.
They had the money, motivation and force to kill those that dont cooperate.
Leo:
He ascribes the gospels and Josephus , and indeed the entirety of the NT, as coming from the same author, or small circle of authors.
mP:
His book only quotes the gospels and mostly follows only jesus life. I think you have confused yourself here. The story of jesus life only appears in the gospels, we cant really count the remainder as really biographical, the mentions in paul are a joke.
Leo:
I don't find such analysis convincing or persuasive.
mP:
You are entitled to your opinion but first you must make your case. Youve wasted 1/4 of your reply telling us about Fomenko. Your 2nd para is very long and completely without any examples. Your opinions about how different religions form their theology are well interseting but completely ignore the Titus v Jesus parallels. I will ignore this paragraph as its without any hard facts, i dont think i can honestly say much more without getting diverted. I notice your remainder has scriptures and more details which i will attempt to comment upon.
Leo:
Similarly, Atwill uses Josephus ' account of the Jewish War as the interpretive rubric for discovering what the gospels are "really" talking about. I don't find such analysis convincing or persuasive.
mP:
Again an opinon. this hardly accounts until flaws in the parallels are shown.
more to follow...
Leo:
I am aware that there were many Jesus'; how is that relevant to this discussion? Is there mention of a number of Jesus' who were executed by Pilate?
It's amazing how many Johns there are in American government history.
John Adams and John Quincy Adams? Sounds like he is a duplicate of the other. John Hancock? John Tyler and John F. Kennedy? How curious that a president who got assassinated was named John, and then two other Johns (John Wilkes Booth and John Hinckley) were assassins or potential assasssins of other presidents. Oh, and another John (John Lennon) was assassinated in New York even though he wasn't a president, but he was pretty famous. What are the odds that so many people mentioned in American history textbooks are named John?
mP:
Come on you are being unfair. You very well know i was referring to the fact there were many individuals in Israel called Jesus and we cant assume that Tacitus as previous quoted was referring to THE one and only jesus, because there were no others. If anything your example shows that names are common and rarely unique especially if they are a common name in that society. jesus was a common name. Your example shows this with your examples of John. Most xians unfortunately dont realise that Jesu was a common name.
Leo:
On the matter of parallels, it must be pointed out that there are some real parallels that he discusses. These are the parallels between Josephus and Luke-Acts which are distinctive (i.e. detailed, unusual, involving similar wording), which have been noted by scholars for a very long time, and which indicate a special relationship between Luke-Acts in particular and Josephus . That is usually explained as due to the fact that the author of Luke-Acts , being a historiographer, had read Josephus and drew details for background information. The idea that both had common authorship is implausible on many grounds, including the fact that the author of Luke-Acts bungled quite a few historical details from Josephus .
mP:
Atwill only writes about the gospels. We arent really talking about Luke. can we actually focus on the gospels first. So some body used Josephus to write Luke. Its fairly possible that some romans did this. So they screwed up so what. Everybody makes mistakes. Are you stating that hte Romans didnt make mistakes.. i dont understand how this shows that the Romans didnt writ e the gospels.
You have failed to show a single scripture from Mt, Mk, Lu or Jo that is completely flawed in the parallels of Titus campaign.
Leo:
There were a plethora of different messianic concepts in the first century, from a Davidic kingly messiah, to an Aaronid priestly messiah, to a messiah who would proclaim good news to the poor and heal the wounded (4QMessianic Apocalypse), to a messiah who would judge the living and the dead, etc. And Jesus' ethic of non-retaliation ("turn the other cheek", "love your enemies"), as a halakhic interpretation of OT laws on lex talionis, is NOT foreign at all to the Judaism th
mP:
Again how does this make it impossible for the Romans to not have leveraged some of these compatible ideas in their creation ? it is irrelevant that other philosphies or religions were peaceful, that does not exclude the possibility. Interesting, surely, historical, yes, a case against the Romans, sorry no banana.
