Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messianism

[Stephan Huller]

More on the regulation of the messiah by God.

Here is another way to look at it. God made the earth and sun. The rotation of one around the other leads to a 'year.' Every seven years is one sabbatical cycle. Seven sabbatical cycles plus one leads to the Jubilee - a divinely established principal. Not just at Qumran but in 'regular' Jewish religious texts the messiah will appear according to these pre-ordained cycles http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... d=2&uid=70

The idea isn't just that 'man' or 'mankind' revolts according to random circumstances but that a power has established a functioning universe which moves a long like a clock until the time of the advent of his beloved. I see no evidence of this concept being developed in other cultures. Zoroastrianism for instance didn't develop initially at least within an oppressed people. The Jews sublimated their impulse for insurgency into a religious - or even metaphysical - principle.

IMO that's why the 'gospel' is best understood as a Hebrew terminology = the year of the Jubilee. Even the Marcionites understood Jesus to have appeared in one of these jubilee cycles related to the year 6000.

The Jewish messianic concept was different from a mere random 'political uprising.' It was 'scientific' in the ancient sense of that word - it was 'according to the wisdom' or reason of God.

[neilgodfrey]

If we don't have evidence for X then we can't argue a case for or base a hypothesis on X. No-one is saying that X was not true. But if we have no evidence then we can't validly argue that it is true. Possibles, plausibles and probables are not facts. It's as simple as that. (Though if we see ideological motives associated with a hypothesis for which there is no evidence then that's not such a "simple" situation.)

If we have evidence for some alternative then that's what we can validly argue for.

If one day we discover new evidence then that's great. We can then validly revise our views.

It doesn't matter if we think there was a plot to destroy the evidence we want or believe should be there. That's the way Robert Tulip argues to justify the absence of evidence for his theory -- that, mixed with a lot of confirmation bias for all the other details.

If all this means we can never know the "absolute truth" then so be it. We can't ditch valid methods because we don't like the results.

[Avis Redivivus]

I completely agree Neil.
It is wonderful to discover what one thinks one knows is based on assumptions without evidence.
Let's hear it for valid methods!!!!

[Clive]

(I don't see the relevance of discussions relating to a Jewish religious "slave" mentality etc to the question.)

I don't understand this alleged lack of evidence! Are people arguing Jubilee does not exist? That Judaism was - and is - very rule bound, that some forms of Islam also reflect this?

Isn't the point to define the context? That Judaism was - and is - a belief system that differentiates its followers from others - the chosen people - the idea of the other, the gentile.

That a saviour figure is also part of this context? Once the idea of the chosen and other is set up, someone will ask, umm, but I love this alleged other, they aren't that different...

Solutions to this will be proposed, saviours, joiners, creators of new heavens and earth where swords are beat into ploughshares, lions lay down with lambs (tigers eat strawberries...).

Messiahs are part of the package! It is a Heath Robinson contraption, but it has a God, and some form of Moses - let my people go. Aren't messiahs really variants of the idea of prophets, probably with armies? What are all the arguments in Kings etc about having a King about?

[Stephan Huller]

Yes Clive it does seem to be a very harsh way of 'studying' history. It doesn't come down to slogans like 'If we don't have evidence for X then we can't argue a case for or base a hypothesis on X.' It's like speaking another language. My son (who is seven) assumes that everyone is 'supposed to speak English' and when he hears someone of another culture 'make mistakes' he thinks they are just plain dumb.

He like some on this board assume that there is a default 'position' which everything goes back to - in this case that everyone in antiquity 'rebelled' in the same way. But this is studying history with a sledgehammer. You can't assume that ancient Jewish rebellion was like the Indian rebellion against the British under Gandhi. The way one culture plays soccer is reflective of their 'soul' the same is true with rebellion, lovemaking, cuisine etc.

We can't just will a subject 'dead' in order to help us stuff it and put it on a mantelpiece. The facts are that EVERYTHING in the lives of Jews of antiquity was regulated by God via a priesthood. So when for instance in the Bar Kochba rebellion Simon was declared the messiah it was done by Akiba. While we don't have similar evidence for the first revolt there are good reasons for that I think. The first is that Josephus was a work very much written by an Imperial collaborator with a clear agenda to blame 'outsiders' - i.e. not members of his own tribe, religious group - for the calamity. Independent Jewish sources written in Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic have not survived and later Jews forgot or lost interest in the events leading up to the destruction (or those sources were destroyed).

But should we assume that this rebellion was 'just another Imperial rebellion' - a plain and simple power grab. No. As aforementioned certain expectations about a specifically Jewish rebellion stand. For instance mention is made in Josephus of (a) heavenly portents (b) scriptural 'predictions' and most importantly (c) 70 CE the year of the destruction was a jubilee. So even with the lack of evidence we can still see the signs that messianic expectation must also have been at play here.

Who the messiah was of the first revolt against Rome was we can't say for certain. Nor can we be absolutely certain that the Jews even knew who that messiah would be. Perhaps they were waiting to see him manifest on the battlefield. I don't know. But to argue that it wasn't present in a period leading up to a Jubilee with 'signs in the heavens' and with the Jewish cultural mindset the way it is seems rather incredible. Everything in the life of a Jew is regulated by God - even rebellion against the state.

[Stephan Huller]

And in the modern era, look at the manner in which Jewish theologians wrestled with the creation of the state of Israel WITHOUT the appearance of the messiah.

[Stephan Huller]

And sometimes history comes down to losing the last surviving manuscript. Look at Samaritan history. Abu'l Fath makes mention to historical persecutions in the Roman period but glosses over Samaritan revolts against the Roman state. I think we need to show balance in our assessment of what did or what didn't happen in antiquity. Sometimes the way people at this board speak I imagine what if archaeologists took their 'sledgehammer' approach. Yes you can't 'love' your subject matter. This is the accusation against 'theologians' who engage in history and the implied accusation that Jewish messianism is assumed because those engaging in history making 'want it to be there.' But if the archaeologist doesn't care about preserving the history of a culture and 'loves' that culture he's not going to care enough to go out and spend months and years in the desert trying to recover that culture. It's a fine balance I think but it does begin with 'loving' a lost ancient culture and then caring enough to resurrect it in some way. Do people cross the line? Certainly. But the expectation is that with hundreds of other scholars trying to work things out and evaluating his/her discoveries or thoughts that it will all balance out. But just to begin with the assumption that 'Jews' weren't 'special' - that Christians 'weren't special' etc and assume that they were so bland that everything in their history proceeded the same as other cultures so wherever 'characteristically' Jewish or Christian things can't be proved they mustn't have existed is just parodied 'disinterest.'

[John T]

You are trying to imply that the historical Jesus is a myth because our concept today of what a messiah should be is different (if the idea existed at all) back then.

That doesn't really make sense.

Agreed. I cannot make any sense of John T's reasoning or what he somehow imagines me to be thinking or trying to do. It is evident that there is nothing I can say he will not somehow distort or twist in some bizarre fashion.

This is the your lead statement in your O.P. "Occasionally when a reference appears here to popular messianic movements in the first half of the first century I have dropped what some seem to think is the equivalent of a flat-earth argument -- that we cannot be sure there was any such popular expectation in the times of Jesus."...neilgodfrey

Neilgodfrey goes on to argue 'that we cannot be sure' using the fallacy of incomplete evidence as well as other common errors in logic.

One of his biggest errors is he implies that since we can't travel go back in time and verify with the people of the 1st century what the popular belief about the anticipated messiah was, that he is justified in dismissing all written evidence the contrary, no matter how voluminous, e.g. the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls.

Then upon questioning of his methods he takes personal offense and stoops to the fallacy of name calling.

Ad hominem attacks is an admission that the argument is lost but one doesn't know how to graciously concede the matter.
I would hope in the future we should be able to agree to disagree without having to default to such tactics.

John T

[Stephan Huller]

Evidence for mass destruction of textual material before the third century - Samaritan tradition from Abu'l Fath's chronicle (which clearly used earlier sources no longer available to us):

After Eleazer, ‘Aqbun was High Priest for 23 years. ln the days of this ‘Aqbun, terrible hardships fell upon the Samaritans from Commodus the king — worse than anything that had befallen them from Hadrian. He forbade them to read the Torah; he closed the schools of learning and (forbade) all instruction in the Law. He bolted shut the Synagogues. The High Priests fled, The High Priests fled, as did the wise men, from the tyranny of Commodus the king on account of the great number whom he killed and crucified in every place.

The reason for this (persecution) was a debate that took place in his presence between Levi and a man from his (Commodus') community called Alexander Aphridisias, from Aphridisias, concerning the coming-into-being of the world. Alexander said that its Substance and Prime Matter were eternal and that the Creator only provided the Form and Accidents. Levi replied that Substance and Matter need an originator, just as Form and Accidents do. To this, Alexander retorted, "This would lead to a situation where the world would not be possible and where God would have no power to bring it into being. . For, if he had the power from the first, then before that it cannot have been possible. And yet, if before that it were impossible, this would be a restriction, and there can be no restriction on his power."

Levi said that the world was possible of existence ab aetemo and that no time could be conceived in which the coming-into-being of the world could not be conceived. "lf it were to be supposed that the world simply 'existed' without being created and it be tried to prove that this belongs to the realm of possibility, then this would be a figment of the imagination — an intellectual fiction — and the world would be insubstantial and immaterial. And if something were to exist such as Matter and Substance, then it would exist de se. This existence must be either possible or necessary. lf it were possible, then the argument would be as before. lf it were necessary, however, then it would share with the first Almighty One in eternal existence. And if it did thus share, it would not change either in toto or in paribus, for change is an effect and an effect presupposes an Agent. For the one thing cannot be both Matter and Agent under any aspect.

The debate between them dragged on, with argument and polemic . The situation reached the stage where the possibility of the Creator's "Speaking" was denied. And the Mission of the Messengers is (implicitly) denied by whoever denies that the trustworthy Message has been uttered .( 690) Perhaps more of the discourse of this question ought to have been given here. But I have related it as I found it, and as much as I could cope with.

The situation became such that Commodus took umbrage, and said, "These people have perverted our faith, and have maliciously watered down what our sect regards as traditional, and they have acted in a hostile manner towards us.” So, he stretched out his hands, and many of their wise men were burnt to death; and the eyes of some of them were put out with red-hot iron pokers. He wiped out a great number of people, taking the Books of Chronicles which they had, as well as the Hymns which used to be recited over the Offerings.

In his day Galen the Physician had been an instructor of Commodus . Commodus ordered that the flesh of swine should be sold in every place and that it should be used with all that was eaten and drunk, so as to defile the Samaritans. He also forbade the Samaritans to open a Synagogue for themselves to pray or to read (the Torah) in. Many of the priests fled as from the sword. He took 100 elderly men from among the Chiefs of the Samaritans, and said to them, "Worship the idols". They refused, so he had them burnt to death. He captured 40 priests and dipped a bunch of grapes in pigs' fat and said to them, "Eat it !" They refused, so he heated iron pokers in a fire until they became red-hot and then put them in their eyes. Then he captured another 40 and said to them, "Eat this bunch (of grapes)". They refused, so he crushed them under the stones of the wine press. Then he took 40 of the High Priests "Eat this bunch (of grapes)". They refused, so he had them flung from the top of the fortress and no one dared bury them

He crucified numbers of them, and (other) people he beheaded and the dogs ate their corpses. The Chiefs of the Empire said to him, "If you want all "these Samaritans to embrace our religion, and to bow down to images, then summon their High Priest ‘Aqbun, for he is their model. Compel him to bow down, and all the others will follow him". Now ‘Aqbun was an extremely wealthy man. They sought him, and out of fear he hid himself. They looked for him in the Mountains and in caves, but they did not succeed in finding him. So the king instructed his servants, "Confiscate his wealth and burn down his house.”

This they did, and in burning down his house, they burnt in it the Prayers, the Songs of Praise and the Hymns which used to be recited on the Sabbath and Festivals and which had been handed down from the days of Divine Grace. And it was said to the High Priest 'Akbon: "All that is yours has been taken and your house is burnt down". And he answered and said "All is from God and it belongs to God, and if they have obtained mastery over me and my abode, I submit myself to affliction and destruction but I will not disavow God nor Moses, His prophet, nor His law." So they seized his two sons and the King said to them: "Worship idols." And they said: "We will die, but we will not worship other than God the Merciful."

And they inserted sticks under their nails and they flayed them alive and they put them to death with all torture and they cast their corpses to the dogs; and they hanged on the walls of Nablus thirty-six priests and they did not take down their corpses until they fell of themselves. And in the days of this King Commodus (may God curse him) none taught his son the Torah, except one out of a thousand and two out of a myriad secretly. And Commodus ruled thirty-two years and he died (may God not have mercy on him).

How do you expect Jewish or Samaritan documents which justified war against the Roman state to have survived when everything else was put to the fire?

[MrMacSon]

You are trying to imply that the historical Jesus is a myth because our concept today of what a messiah should be is different (if the idea existed at all) back then.

That doesn't really make sense.

Agreed. I cannot make any sense of John T's reasoning or what he somehow imagines me to be thinking or trying to do. It is evident that there is nothing I can say he will not somehow distort or twist in some bizarre fashion.

This is the your lead statement in your O.P. "Occasionally when a reference appears here to popular messianic movements in the first half of the first century I have dropped what some seem to think is the equivalent of a flat-earth argument -- that we cannot be sure there was any such popular expectation in the times of Jesus."...neilgodfrey

Neilgodfrey goes on to argue 'that we cannot be sure' using the fallacy of incomplete evidence as well as other common errors in logic.

One of his biggest errors is he implies that since we can't travel go back in time and verify with the people of the 1st century what the popular belief about the anticipated messiah was, that he is justified in dismissing all written evidence the contrary, no matter how voluminous, e.g. the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls.

err, No. You misrepresent when you say " he is justified in dismissing all written evidence". Your emphasis on 'all' is false.

Also, There is no "fallacy of 'incomplete evidence' ".

Then upon questioning of his methods he takes personal offense and stoops to the fallacy of name calling.

Ad hominem attacks is an admission that the argument is lost but one doesn't know how to graciously concede the matter.

I would hope in the future we should be able to agree to disagree without having to default to such tactics.

John T

JohnT,

• " I cannot make any sense of John T's reasoning or what he somehow imagines me to be thinking or trying to do. It is evident that there is nothing I can say he will not somehow distort or twist in some bizarre fashion."

is Not an ad hominem attack.

It is a reflection on the poorly worded sentence I highlighted & criticized.

You misrepresent again. It is often hard to get a sense of your reasoning on the basis of the way you write sentences or whole passages.