How Much of the Gospel is Actual History

[Secret Alias]

Sanhedrin 21b = if Ezra would have been worthy of writing the Torah if it hadn't already been written by Moses. Sounds to most scholars like it is a reaction to things said by Christians and pagans about Ezra's authorship of the Torah. Ezra's distinctive title magnified the singularity of his own constitutional position and role. Singlehandedly, or so it is made to appear,” he re-established a torah which had almost completely been forgotten (TB Sukah 20a).

[Secret Alias]

On Ezra as second Moses in the rabbinic tradition:

https://books.google.com/books?id=MXecW ... ra&f=false

[outhouse]

But the Jews themselves acknowledge the same tradition. Read the rabbinic literature. The Jews are ok with Ezra writing the text too.

That is a later tradition.

And even if it did extent before the 1rst century, god inspired was the context. No one discounted Moses as a mythical character which is what your trying to imply indirectly.

[Secret Alias]

Well of course it is a fucking later tradition. Almost nothing except the Qumran text survives from the earlier period of Jewish life. So now I see where you get your stupid views of Judaism. You exclusively rely on people who rely exclusively on Josephus. Therein lies the difficulty. Ignore the documents preserved among the Jews, prefer the texts of a Jewish turn-coat written for a Gentile audience. Now it all makes sense.

[Secret Alias]

The point is that since you have Christians and pagans citing the Ezra story as early as the second century there can be no doubt that the information about Ezra writing the Torah came from Jewish sources which existed before them. Who else would even know who Ezra was? As such the rabbinic literature is only preserving older traditions that were known to Irenaeus and Porphyry.

[Secret Alias]

And of course acknowledging that the Pentateuch was written by Ezra would have undermined Josephus's whole purpose in writing Jewish Antiquities because ... well ... as the title suggests he's trying to establish that there were in fact 'Jewish antiquities' to speak of. If the Torah was only written around the time of Socrates (and long after Homer) there are no Jewish Antiquities relative to other great nations. Josephus copied the idea for the Jewish Antiquities from Dionysius's Roman Antiquities which begins with by citing "the most learned of the (previous) Roman historians" that the Romans were descendants of Greeks "part of those who once dwelt in Achaia, and that they migrated many generations before the Trojan war." If Josephus start with the idea that Jews were slaves who came back from captivity to establish themselves in a peculiar people in an insignificant part of the world around the time of Socrates who do not have 'the true logos' (as Celsus would later argue) but stole their ideas from other nations and ultimately had one of their own forge a text in the name of great mythical founder of their people it would be of course an entirely historically accurate statement but one which destroys the purpose of writing his very book. Small problem for Josephus, so he ignores the story entirely not surprisingly ...

[Secret Alias]

One would also suspect that early Christians - since they already accepted that only the ten commandments came from heaven (cf Matt 19) - would have used the Ezra story to buttress their preference for the ten commandments (and thus allowing them to opt out of dietary laws, circumcision and other unfun things associated with Judaism). I bet the Marcionites used the Ezra story which the key to unlocking the Marcionites IMO. Not surprising also then that Irenaeus embraces the story too but in a completely different way - i.e. to buttress the claim that people like him could compose forgeries out of thin air. But notice again that Irenaeus would be using (and reworking) arguments and stories which were being used by the heretics.

[outhouse]

. So now I see where you get your stupid views of Judaism. You exclusively rely on people who rely exclusively on Josephus. Therein lies the difficulty. Ignore the documents preserved among the Jews, prefer the texts of a Jewish turn-coat written for a Gentile audience. Now it all makes sense.

U tink weez all dumbs and not under tand the lens in which to understand Josephus.

Weez done pretty mch nose callin josephusses a jew is sillee

[Secret Alias]

So we agree. You see we can find common ground. That's what I like about this forum. The truth always comes out in the end.

[outhouse]

So we agree. You see we can find common ground. That's what I like about this forum. The truth always comes out in the end.

I never have viewed Hellenistic jews as jews.

I view Paul and Josephus as born and raised Proselytes who are self proclaimed Jews, or considered jews only in Hellenistic circles . We only have a biased view of first century Judaism, but were not blind either.