Date Jesus was supposed to be crucified

[Bertie]

One can also see that the passage in Mark, involving John the Baptist, Herod, Herodias and a second Herodias is also an interpolation. It interrupts the story being told before it and after it.

Do you think Eusebius put the story the Matthew and Luke, too? (I'm not sure there's an alternative, as he's about the last point in time/importance where you can argue an interpolation can be made that would sweep the entire manuscript evidence.)

If so, note that Eusebius has actually managed something pretty spectacular:
— He correctly put the story in the same place in Mark/Matthew/Luke
— He got the level of intertextuality between the three versions roughly in keeping with the level of intertextuality of the rest of the three gospels: sometimes verbatim at the sentence level, sometimes altered for style, synonymns, etc; sometimes cut/add stuff. But avoid perfect verbatim quotation above a certain length: no 30, 40, 50 matching Greek words in a row.
— He even made a mistake in the Matthew version that is a very common sort of mistake in Matthew and Luke (and is taken a powerful class of evidence for Markan Priorty): he made Matthew's Herod want to kill John the Baptist instead of fearing and protecting him as in the Mark version, but he neglected to consistently apply this tweak across the story, and so at the end Matthew's Herod is distressed at having to kill John as in the Mark version.

Do you think it is reasonable that Eusebius could have accomplished this, deliberately or accidentally, keeping in mind the rather weak understanding of the relationships between the Synoptics evidenced in the patristics (Papias and Augustine come to mind) compared with the 19th Century and beyond.

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Bertie,

The John the Baptist-Salome story in the gospels developed out of Josephus' story of Herod-Aratas.
Josephus has Tiberius calling for the head of Aratas, the king of Petras. Whoever put the story into Mark has Salome or somebody calling for the head of John the Baptist.
Matthew embellished the story from Mark and Luke embellished the story from Matthew.

Eusebius simply put the story in Josephus (and Origen). The story that he puts in, is quite different than the one the gospel writers have told. He did not want to repeat the story that everybody knew from the gospels, the Herod-Salome-John story. Putting the same story into Josephus would not tell people anything new.
He wanted to demonstrate the thesis that the crucifixion of Jesus caused the defeat of the Jews in the Judeo-Roman war. He simply says that Herod's execution of John caused Herod's defeat by Aratas. This is totally different than the gospel story. He wants the reader to draw the conclusion that if God punished Herod for killing John by defeat in war, he punished the Jews for killing Jesus by defeat in war. He tells how the Jews was scourged and crucified in Book II, chapter 26 of his ecclesiastica historia:

1. Josephus again, after relating many things in connection with the calamity which came upon the whole Jewish nation, records, in addition to many other circumstances, that a great many of the most honorable among the Jews were scourged in Jerusalem itself and then crucified by Florus. It happened that he was procurator of Judea when the war began to be kindled, in the twelfth year of Nero.

2. Josephus says that at that time a terrible commotion was stirred up throughout all Syria in consequence of the revolt of the Jews, and that everywhere the latter were destroyed without mercy, like enemies, by the inhabitants of the cities, "so that one could see cities filled with unburied corpses, and the dead bodies of the aged scattered about with the bodies of infants, and women without even a covering for their nakedness, and the whole province full of indescribable calamities, while the dread of those things that were threatened was greater than the sufferings themselves which they anywhere endured." Such is the account of Josephus; and such was the condition of the Jews at that time.

Eusebius makes his ideology of divine justice for the Jews due to their execution of Jesus more explicit in Book 3, chapter 5:

3 But the people of the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella. And when those that believed in Christ had come thither from Jerusalem, then, as if the royal city of the Jews and the whole land of Judea were entirely destitute of holy men, the judgment of God at length overtook those who had committed such outrages against Christ and his apostles, and totally destroyed that generation of impious men.

4 But the number of calamities which everywhere fell upon the nation at that time; the extreme misfortunes to which the inhabitants of Judea were especially subjected, the thousands of men, as well as women and children, that perished by the sword, by famine, and by other forms of death innumerable,-all these things, as well as the many great sieges which were carried on against the cities of Judea, and the excessive. sufferings endured by those that fled to Jerusalem itself, as to a city of perfect safety, and finally the general course of the whole war, as well as its particular occurrences in detail, and how at last the abomination of desolation, proclaimed by the prophets, stood in the very temple of God, so celebrated of old, the temple which was now awaiting its total and final destruction by fire,- all these things any one that wishes may find accurately described in the history written by Josephus.

5 But it is necessary to state that this writer records that the multitude of those who were assembled from all Judea at the time of the Passover, to the number of three million souls, were shut up in Jerusalem "as in a prison," to use his own words.

6 For it was right that in the very days in which they had inflicted suffering upon the Saviour and the Benefactor of all, the Christ of God, that in those days, shut up "as in a prison," they should meet with destruction at the hands of divine justice.

By putting the idea that God took vengence on Herod for John's death into Josephus and putting the TF into Josephus blaming the death of Jesus on the Jews, he expects that anybody who reads his church history will understand the cause of the Jews' destruction without him stating it explicitly. Its a euthymeme that he is creating. It is kind of like saying 2 + ____ = 4. Anybody of minimal intelligence can fill in the blank.

There is also the secondary element of the nature of baptism. Since his interpolation into Origen (a baptism for sins) directly contradicts what he puts into Josephus (a baptism for physical health), we can be sure that he changed his mind on this idea. We would need to examine Eusebius' views on Baptism to prove this.

Again, the story interpolated in the gospel of Mark was much earlier than the quite different story interpolated by Eusebius in Josephus. The former is taking material out of Josephus and putting it into the gospels, the latter is putting material from the gospels (but also other stuff) into Josephus.


Warmly,
Jay Raskin

One can also see that the passage in Mark, involving John the Baptist, Herod, Herodias and a second Herodias is also an interpolation. It interrupts the story being told before it and after it.

Do you think Eusebius put the story the Matthew and Luke, too? (I'm not sure there's an alternative, as he's about the last point in time/importance where you can argue an interpolation can be made that would sweep the entire manuscript evidence.)

If so, note that Eusebius has actually managed something pretty spectacular:
— He correctly put the story in the same place in Mark/Matthew/Luke
— He got the level of intertextuality between the three versions roughly in keeping with the level of intertextuality of the rest of the three gospels: sometimes verbatim at the sentence level, sometimes altered for style, synonymns, etc; sometimes cut/add stuff. But avoid perfect verbatim quotation above a certain length: no 30, 40, 50 matching Greek words in a row.
— He even made a mistake in the Matthew version that is a very common sort of mistake in Matthew and Luke (and is taken a powerful class of evidence for Markan Priorty): he made Matthew's Herod want to kill John the Baptist instead of fearing and protecting him as in the Mark version, but he neglected to consistently apply this tweak across the story, and so at the end Matthew's Herod is distressed at having to kill John as in the Mark version.

Do you think it is reasonable that Eusebius could have accomplished this, deliberately or accidentally, keeping in mind the rather weak understanding of the relationships between the Synoptics evidenced in the patristics (Papias and Augustine come to mind) compared with the 19th Century and beyond.

[/quote]

[Bertie]

So let's complete what has to happen to get Mark out of its 20s-30s setting.

You can take the word Pilate out of there. But that alone doesn't get you as far back as you're thinking, does it? Mark 15 is a post-6 CE world of direct Roman rule with a governor and Roman soldiers and a Roman form of execution. Throw in Mark 12, "Render onto Caesar" which also is a story for a post-6 CE Judea. The latter is a little enough anecdote that the interpolation card may be played, but the former is not; Mark 15 is the climax of the narrative and the first or second most important thing (after Mark 16) — fact or fiction — in all of Christian storytelling; changes made in this section would have a huge impact on the reception of the story and why anyone would bother with it at all, no?

Oh, and taking Pilate out means that the bit about Jesus in Tacitus would be required to be at least hearsay, if not interpolation, as would the Josephus TF.

Comments —

• Interpolation between Mark and Matthew is really threading the needle on timing, right? That's 10 years apart on the conventional dating; I think it is probably more than that but...still.
• So, is there any good positive evidence for pre-6 CE historicity to put against all this; is there any reason to believe this over a more conventional minimal historicity. I mean, you've required large interpolations in Mark and Josephus, asserted without manuscript evidence as well as...something done to Mark 15 and what is gained by doing so is...?

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Bertie,

We have to distinguish between the setting for a work and when a work was composed.

Westerns were a very popular novel, movie and television genre, perhaps reaching its peak in television series of the late 1950's and 1960's. Generally as a rule they were set in the American West between 1865 and 1880. However, they could vary. Western Dime novels were actually published starting in the 1860's and many contained fictionalized accounts taking place in the contemporary American West. The first movie Western "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) described a real train robbery that had taken place around 1890. "The classic Art-Western Movie "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (1971) was set in 1902.The Western television series "Daniel Boone" (1964-1970) was set around the time of the American revolution, 1774-1780, however one episode involved an incident with an historical character, Aaron Burr, that occurred in 1806. A Five part mini-series Davey Crockett (1955) covered that period from about 1800 to 1836. Another popular series, Bonanza (1959-1973) was set around the time of the American Civil War 1860-1865. However one episode talked about the recent Dred Scott decision, 1857, and another episode mentioned the death of General Custer (1876)

In fictions, we may get detailed copies of actual historical events or we may get very light and twisted references to historical events.

In the gospels we seem to be getting light and twisted references to a number of historical events ranging from 4 B.C.E. to about 70 CE. There are also numerous references to fictional events in Hebrew scriptures. While the writer of the gospel of Luke might have been trying to give a relatively precise date, I'm not sure that the other three writers were aiming at anything more precise than "sometime before the first Judeo-Roman War".

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

So let's complete what has to happen to get Mark out of its 20s-30s setting.

You can take the word Pilate out of there. But that alone doesn't get you as far back as you're thinking, does it? Mark 15 is a post-6 CE world of direct Roman rule with a governor and Roman soldiers and a Roman form of execution. Throw in Mark 12, "Render onto Caesar" which also is a story for a post-6 CE Judea. The latter is a little enough anecdote that the interpolation card may be played, but the former is not; Mark 15 is the climax of the narrative and the first or second most important thing (after Mark 16) — fact or fiction — in all of Christian storytelling; changes made in this section would have a huge impact on the reception of the story and why anyone would bother with it at all, no?

Oh, and taking Pilate out means that the bit about Jesus in Tacitus would be required to be at least hearsay, if not interpolation, as would the Josephus TF.

Comments —

• Interpolation between Mark and Matthew is really threading the needle on timing, right? That's 10 years apart on the conventional dating; I think it is probably more than that but...still.
• So, is there any good positive evidence for pre-6 CE historicity to put against all this; is there any reason to believe this over a more conventional minimal historicity. I mean, you've required large interpolations in Mark and Josephus, asserted without manuscript evidence as well as...something done to Mark 15 and what is gained by doing so is...?

[Charles Wilson]

So, is there any good positive evidence for pre-6 CE historicity to put against all this; is there any reason to believe this over a more conventional minimal historicity. I mean, you've required large interpolations in Mark and Josephus, asserted without manuscript evidence as well as...something done to Mark 15 and what is gained by doing so is...?

What counts as "Historicity before 6 CE"?

Mark 13: (RSV):
[7] And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet.
[8] For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.
[9] "But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them.
[10] And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.
[11] And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.
[12] And brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death;
[13] and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.
[14] "But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains;
[15] let him who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything away;
[16] and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle.
[17] And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days!
[18] Pray that it may not happen in winter.
[19] For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be.

Antiquities..., 13, 13, 4 and 5, in parts:

"4. About this very time Antiochus, who was called Grypus, died His death was caused by Heracleon's treachery, when he had lived forty-five years, and had reigned twenty-nine. His son Seleucus succeeded him in the kingdom, and made war with Antiochus, his father's brother, who was called Antiochus Cyzicenus, and beat him, and took him prisoner, and slew him. But after a while Antiochus, the son of Cyzicenus, who was called Pius, came to Aradus, and put the diadem on his own head, and made war with Seleucus, and beat him, and drove him out of all Syria. But when he fled out of Syria, he came to Mopsuestia again, and levied money upon them; but the people of Mopsuestin had indignation at what he did, and burnt down his palace, and slew him, together with his friends. But when Antiochus, the son of Cyzicenus, was king of Syria, Antiochus, the brother of Seleucus, made war upon him, and was overcome, and destroyed, he and his army. After him, his brother Philip put on the diadem, and reigned over some part of Syria; but Ptolemy Lathyrus sent for his fourth brother Demetrius, who was called Eucerus, from Cnidus, and made him king of Damascus. Both these brothers did Antiochus vehemently oppose, but presently died; for when he was come as an auxiliary to Laodice, queen of the Gileadites, when she was making war against the Parthians, and he was fighting courageously, he fell, while Demetrius and Philip governed Syria, as hath been elsewhere related.

"5. As to Alexander, his own people were seditious against him; for at a festival which was then celebrated, when he stood upon the altar, and was going to sacrifice, the nation rose upon him, and pelted him with citrons [which they then had in their hands, because] the law of the Jews required that at the feast of tabernacles every one should have branches of the palm tree and citron tree; which thing we have elsewhere related. They also reviled him, as derived from a captive, and so unworthy of his dignity and of sacrificing. At this he was in a rage, and slew of them about six thousand.

A...13, 14, 1 and 2, in part:

"1. SO Demetrius came with an army, and took those that invited him, and pitched his camp near the city Shechem; upon which Alexander, with his six thousand two hundred mercenaries, and about twenty thousand Jews, who were of his party, went against Demetrius, who had three thousand horsemen, and forty thousand footmen. Now there were great endeavors used on both sides, - Demetrius trying to bring off the mercenaries that were with Alexander, because they were Greeks, and Alexander trying to bring off the Jews that were with Demetrius. However, when neither of them could persuade them so to do, they came to a battle, and Demetrius was the conqueror; in which all Alexander's mercenaries were killed, when they had given demonstration of their fidelity and courage. A great number of Demetrius's soldiers were slain also.

"2. Now as Alexander fled to the mountains, six thousand of the Jews hereupon came together [from Demetrius] to him out of pity at the change of his fortune; upon which Demetrius was afraid, and retired out of the country; after which the Jews fought against Alexander, and being beaten, were slain in great numbers in the several battles which they had; and when he had shut up the most powerful of them in the city Bethome, he besieged them therein; and when he had taken the city, and gotten the men into his power, he brought them to Jerusalem, and did one of the most barbarous actions in the world to them; for as he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes. This was indeed by way of revenge for the injuries they had done him; which punishment yet was of an inhuman nature, though we suppose that he had been never so much distressed, as indeed he had been, by his wars with them, for he had by their means come to the last degree of hazard, both of his life and of his kingdom..."

Yer gonna hafta to come up with a little more than Parallel-O-Mania and "Mere Coincidence" here. You can play "Match-Em-Up" and laugh if you want but notice what you get when you seriously consider this: Who committed the Abomination of Desolation? Remember, it's gotta be Greek and it is. The Abomination of Desolation was committed by Demetrius Eucerus. The Jewish Mercenaries are so repelled by this that they defect from Demetrius and throw in with Alexander Jannaeus. Note the Absurdity of Josephus' description: "Now as Alexander fled to the mountains, six thousand of the Jews hereupon came together [from Demetrius] to him out of pity at the change of his fortune; upon which Demetrius was afraid, and retired out of the country..."

ABSURD!

Further, we get an immediate gut wrenching notation as to what follows this event, when Jannaeus marches on Jerusalem: [17] And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days!

What counts as Evidence? Historicity? If the Argument is about inconsequentials that affected the story of the savior/god, then there is NO HISTORICITY THAT CAN OR WOULD MATTER.
This stuff is screaming at you!

Does this count?

CW

[EdwardM]

Hi Jay,

Yes, and gMark also has "In those days," too. GMk 1:9.

Hi Stephan Huller, Steve43 and all,

Fascinating, the scholars love to use gLuke to establish a crucifixion date of 30 CE these days, and some antenicene fathers use it to claim 29 CE, when in fact gLuke tells us that JtB was active for several years until Jesus shows up around 35 CE. Then gets whacked in 36, at Passover. All because of that census under Quirinus thing.

(Oh, and Mary was pregnant with Jesus for 10 years+, too. Which is why we're dealing with fiction here. )

[Stephan Huller]

Said by Origen with reference to the text of Luke which reads: 'The sun was eclipsed.' The purpose of these enemies was to injure the church since they knew that there was no eclipse of the sun recorded for that time. Origen preferred the 'sun was darkened' reading. Here is a list of ancient eclipse dates - http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JSEX/JSEX-EU.html

[EdwardM]

Well I can't upload the info presently (damned i-phone!), Stephan, I do recall the closest eclipse to that time and place was 24 November 29 CE.

So Jesus was crucified at Channukah?! :p