Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by Giuseppe »

Another question:

if you date Qn before 70 CE, why did not Paul show knowledge of it ?
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Re: Bilby responds to re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by maryhelena »

vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 3:17 pm Saw a lot of web traffic to my blog coming from this thread, so here I am. Happy to verify my identity in any number of ways, including by writing in the next update/upload to my Gospel of the Poor book or my blogs something funny or cute that Giuseppe asks (within reason, of course).

Any questions I can answer? Problems with my methods or proofs in my book that I can address in the book itself? (Because I am treating it as an iterative Open Science publication to start, complete with hypotheses, scientific method, and lots of scientific proofs, I can make adjustments, corrections, retractions, etc., in the book as it evolves. Which is but to say, I'm sure I've made lots of errors, and I'm more than happy to correct them to improve the book. I'm committed to this work enacting a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement, rather than silly academic gotcha games.
How about explaining your overall theory in plain English i.e. no reliance on Greek (don't have any...)

So far, what I can figure out is that you are proposing that the gospels that we have contain various, for want of a better term, development cycles. I agree.

You also seem to be proposing that the writing of Marcion preceded the writing of Paul. If so, I agree.

If these two points are correct - how about writing a simple synopsis of your theory ?

I really don't want to get lost in another round of Bayes' Theorem or science type explanations. How you got to your theory might well be fascinating to you - I just want the results.... :) I either find the results interesting or I walk on. Not able to evaluable the results because of having no Greek - Greek is only the means to an end. It's the feasibility of the storyline that words have produced that becomes of primary concern. So - lets have your storyline.....
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by Ben C. Smith »

vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:49 pmFor example, if I gave you three statements, how would you order them sequentially as to when they first emerged in history and how they are related to each other?

1. "May the schwartz be with you."
2. "The schwartz, the force, same difference."
3. "May the force be with you.
In this case, because of my awareness of how puns work, I would probably stack them in the order 3, 1, 2 (original, pun, explanation of pun). But that is only because I know how puns (usually) work in English.

What about something like this?

1. Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were great Presidents.
2. Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan were great Presidents.
3. Presidents Lincoln and Reagan were great Presidents.

In this case, I would have no idea, because preferences for which Presidents are great can vary from person to person. Maybe person 1 made an assertion, person 2 added a name to the list, and then person 3 agreed with the addition but disagreed with one of the original names. Maybe that exact same process happened in the order 3, 2, 1. Maybe person 2 started with a full list, but persons 1 and 3 each removed the paradigmatic member of the political party opposite that to which each belonged (Republican or Democrat). Maybe person 3 named two Presidents, person 1 proposed an alternative for the more modern of the two, and person 3 said, "No, they were all great." Maybe that same thing happened in the order 1, 3, 2. I cannot tell.
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by Ben C. Smith »

vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:49 pmI'll take another look at the Aesop quote/reference in 4.23. Don't want to overstate my case there.
From my notes on the topic:

Homer, Iliad, book 11, lines 833-836 (English translation from Samuel Butler): For of the physicians Podalirius and Machaon I hear that the one is lying wounded in his tent and is himself in need of healing, while the other is fighting the Trojans upon the plain.

Aesop, Fable of the Frog and the Fox (English translation from George Fyler Townsend): A Frog once upon a time came forth from his home in the marsh and proclaimed to all the beasts that he was a learned physician, skilled in the use of drugs and able to heal all diseases. A Fox asked him, "How can you pretend to prescribe for others, when you are unable to heal your own lame gait and wrinkled skin?"

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, lines 473-475 (English translation from Paul Elmer More): Like a poor physician falling into sickness you despond and know not the remedies for your own disease.

Euripides, fragment 1086 (Nauck): A physician for others, but himself teeming with sores.

Cicero, Letters to His Friends 4.5.5 (Servius Sulpicius to Cicero; English translation from D. R. Shackleton Bailey): And then, do not forget that you are Cicero, a man accustomed to give rules and advice to others. Do not be like a bad physician, who professes medical knowledge to his patients but does not know how to treat himself.

Ovid, Cures for Love 314: And, I confess, despite being a physician, I was shamefully sick.

Genesis Rabbah 23 [15c]: Physician, heal your own lameness.

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Irish1975
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by Irish1975 »

vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:49 pm It's not simply about tracing the *direction* of signal transmissions. It's about tracing the process of how signals are synthesized over time (the third signal transmission type), and coupling this with triangulation (the basic principle for locating anything in space as well as time), to ensure independent transmission of two other signal types. The third type is the key, but it has to work in concert with the other two. The core of the theorem for sequencing texts is that synthesizing only goes forward in time, *never* backwards. Like our DNA, our speech and thought patterns are combinations of what came before. We can never give birth to the earlier combinatory signal sets that are our parents or grandparents. They can only give birth to us, and we to our children, and so on. Evolution isn't just the basic principle of life; it is how all signaling works. Evolution can be degradation or evolution of traits that are disadvantageous, but there is and can never be de-evolution.
Welcome to the forum.

The scripture/movie analogy can be illuminating. In movie culture, the sequential process of screenwriting, production, and editing make up an elaborate but to us familiar means of cutlural expression. There had to have been a similarly elaborate, complicated, difficult process for christian scripture, except unfortunately we know so little about it. To continue the analogy, all we have is the final movie. So how can we make sound inferences about the production process, when this signal transmission might have originated in the screenplay, that one might have come from the director, and this other one as a final edit?

It’s even worse with literature than with movies, really, since anything can be radically rewritten at any stage of production. There isn’t the cumbersome fact of having to use cameras and footage. So when it comes to the NT gospels, I worry that we’ll always be making assumptions about the process of production that are inherently slippery because based on ignorance, projection, etc.

In the 20th century, scholars such as Gunkel and Bultmann gave us “form criticism,” which generally (and still today with figures like Ehrman) appeal to the dubious presumption of “oral tradition” as a mediating process between original event and published text. This is just one variable about the production process, but it yields radically different outcomes for historical research. I don’t see how we can ever get “scientific” about our assumptions about scripture production, just as we would never attempt to scrutinize the art of Hitchcock or Welles or Antonioni on a “scientific” basis.
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by vocesanticae »

Please see all of the passages for which I've broken out Mk2 stratum materials in the latest version of my LODLIB and also see all footnotes labeled with "MkR2". It's a lot of material, and there is still much more to identify. Essentially, the Mk2 redaction (including the Longer Ending of Mark) boils down to a mid-2nd century attempt to reconcile and harmonize Early Mark (Mk1, 75-80) with all of the Gospels that had recently gone through major early-orthodox redactions, especially Lk2 (which plays up the Jewish piety of Jesus and the apostles--see Joseph Tyson's Marcion and Luke-Acts) and Mt2 (which saturates the Jesus story with LXX references), both of which had reified Petrine leadership (and implicitly the church in Rome) as supreme.
vocesanticae
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Re: Bilby responds to re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by vocesanticae »

maryhelena wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:30 am
vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 3:17 pm Saw a lot of web traffic to my blog coming from this thread, so here I am. Happy to verify my identity in any number of ways, including by writing in the next update/upload to my Gospel of the Poor book or my blogs something funny or cute that Giuseppe asks (within reason, of course).

Any questions I can answer? Problems with my methods or proofs in my book that I can address in the book itself? (Because I am treating it as an iterative Open Science publication to start, complete with hypotheses, scientific method, and lots of scientific proofs, I can make adjustments, corrections, retractions, etc., in the book as it evolves. Which is but to say, I'm sure I've made lots of errors, and I'm more than happy to correct them to improve the book. I'm committed to this work enacting a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement, rather than silly academic gotcha games.
How about explaining your overall theory in plain English i.e. no reliance on Greek (don't have any...)

So far, what I can figure out is that you are proposing that the gospels that we have contain various, for want of a better term, development cycles. I agree.

You also seem to be proposing that the writing of Marcion preceded the writing of Paul. If so, I agree.

If these two points are correct - how about writing a simple synopsis of your theory ?

I really don't want to get lost in another round of Bayes' Theorem or science type explanations. How you got to your theory might well be fascinating to you - I just want the results.... :) I either find the results interesting or I walk on. Not able to evaluable the results because of having no Greek - Greek is only the means to an end. It's the feasibility of the storyline that words have produced that becomes of primary concern. So - lets have your storyline.....
Hi Mary,

Did you read the two "highlights" pages in my book? They are a succinct distillation of my conclusions.

Best wishes,

Mark
vocesanticae
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by vocesanticae »

Irish1975 wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 7:03 am
vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:49 pm It's not simply about tracing the *direction* of signal transmissions. It's about tracing the process of how signals are synthesized over time (the third signal transmission type), and coupling this with triangulation (the basic principle for locating anything in space as well as time), to ensure independent transmission of two other signal types. The third type is the key, but it has to work in concert with the other two. The core of the theorem for sequencing texts is that synthesizing only goes forward in time, *never* backwards. Like our DNA, our speech and thought patterns are combinations of what came before. We can never give birth to the earlier combinatory signal sets that are our parents or grandparents. They can only give birth to us, and we to our children, and so on. Evolution isn't just the basic principle of life; it is how all signaling works. Evolution can be degradation or evolution of traits that are disadvantageous, but there is and can never be de-evolution.
Welcome to the forum.

The scripture/movie analogy can be illuminating. In movie culture, the sequential process of screenwriting, production, and editing make up an elaborate but to us familiar means of cutlural expression. There had to have been a similarly elaborate, complicated, difficult process for christian scripture, except unfortunately we know so little about it. To continue the analogy, all we have is the final movie. So how can we make sound inferences about the production process, when this signal transmission might have originated in the screenplay, that one might have come from the director, and this other one as a final edit?

It’s even worse with literature than with movies, really, since anything can be radically rewritten at any stage of production. There isn’t the cumbersome fact of having to use cameras and footage. So when it comes to the NT gospels, I worry that we’ll always be making assumptions about the process of production that are inherently slippery because based on ignorance, projection, etc.

In the 20th century, scholars such as Gunkel and Bultmann gave us “form criticism,” which generally (and still today with figures like Ehrman) appeal to the dubious presumption of “oral tradition” as a mediating process between original event and published text. This is just one variable about the production process, but it yields radically different outcomes for historical research. I don’t see how we can ever get “scientific” about our assumptions about scripture production, just as we would never attempt to scrutinize the art of Hitchcock or Welles or Antonioni on a “scientific” basis.
Great points. Movie production today is obviously far more involved and complicated an undertaking than the production of ancient texts. But the basic principle that ancient Gospel texts were productions (either scripts read aloud, or transcripts of performances) applies. Like listening to records, you can sample the signals between them to detect the process of synthesis.

Socratic question. What's one of your favorite songs that has been covered by another band?
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by vocesanticae »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 5:13 am
vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:49 pmI'll take another look at the Aesop quote/reference in 4.23. Don't want to overstate my case there.
From my notes on the topic:

Homer, Iliad, book 11, lines 833-836 (English translation from Samuel Butler): For of the physicians Podalirius and Machaon I hear that the one is lying wounded in his tent and is himself in need of healing, while the other is fighting the Trojans upon the plain.

Aesop, Fable of the Frog and the Fox (English translation from George Fyler Townsend): A Frog once upon a time came forth from his home in the marsh and proclaimed to all the beasts that he was a learned physician, skilled in the use of drugs and able to heal all diseases. A Fox asked him, "How can you pretend to prescribe for others, when you are unable to heal your own lame gait and wrinkled skin?"

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, lines 473-475 (English translation from Paul Elmer More): Like a poor physician falling into sickness you despond and know not the remedies for your own disease.

Euripides, fragment 1086 (Nauck): A physician for others, but himself teeming with sores.

Cicero, Letters to His Friends 4.5.5 (Servius Sulpicius to Cicero; English translation from D. R. Shackleton Bailey): And then, do not forget that you are Cicero, a man accustomed to give rules and advice to others. Do not be like a bad physician, who professes medical knowledge to his patients but does not know how to treat himself.

Ovid, Cures for Love 314: And, I confess, despite being a physician, I was shamefully sick.

Genesis Rabbah 23 [15c]: Physician, heal your own lameness.

Thank you, Ben. This is great. Have you read M. Froelich and T. E. Phillips, “Throw the Blasphemer off a Cliff: Luke 4.16–30 in Light of the Life of Aesop,” NTS 66 (2019) 21–32? They are both friends and former colleagues, and I helped a bit with the research for this article. It validates the Aesop imitation happening specifically in 4.23, 29-30, precisely *the only* verses to which Marcion's text witnesses for that pericope, and the opening of Qn according to my findings.
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Re: Bilby: a mix of fine exegesis and naive historicism

Post by Ben C. Smith »

vocesanticae wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 7:18 amThank you, Ben. This is great. Have you read M. Froelich and T. E. Phillips, “Throw the Blasphemer off a Cliff: Luke 4.16–30 in Light of the Life of Aesop,” NTS 66 (2019) 21–32?
I have not. Thanks for the recommendation. :cheers:
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