A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Giuseppe »

DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pm I hesitated to respond at first, as you know we are often at loggerheads
About those "loggerheads", :silenced: I should give the following explanation for the readers:
I think that if Paul lived in the 50 CE and wrote integrally the epistles attributed to him, then end of the discussion: Richard Carrier is right. Period.

Abandoning that assumption, I continue to read what DCHindley argues:
DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pm but I started to look at the issue.

IIUC, you are proposing that the earliest Christian good-news began with an account detailing several failed attempts to establish a Judean 'Kingdom of God' on earth, followed by the early Christian's solution: that Jesus was indeed a messiah (anointed leader) but one of a supernatural nature that opens salvation to everyone, not just Judeans.
Indeed Batsch thinks that the early Christians were the last post-70 followers of the various failed pre-70 Messianists (Theudas, the "Egyptian", possibly a rebel Galilean, the Samaritan false prophet, and many many others etc). I think that this view is corroborated by the fact that there are indeed in the Gospel tradition, docet Detering (following Augstein, here), a long list of items resembling this or that failed pre-70 messianist. By the 70, the embryonic topos existed already, that the "king of the Jews", "Messiah" or "Christos", was connected with the crucifixion as form of death, since the crucifixion was what expected fatally all the failed messianists. After the 70, this topos had only to be explicited by a story, based on the the various dicta et acta collected by the post-70 followers of the various pre-70 failed messianists.

I see here a first great difference between Batsch's view and DCHindley's view: the latter thinks that the principal hero of the post-70 story, i.e. "Jesus", is not an amalgam of various pre-70 failed messianists, but precisely the memory of a specific historical figure: the rebel Galilean crucified by Pilate, and only him.

At contrary, I think that this rebel Galilean crucified by Pilate, if he existed, could still (!) have contributed to zero for the post-70 story, since the name of Pilate could have been derived from the memory of Dositheus (identified by a lot of people in Internet with the false Samaritan prophet killed by Pilate), while the Galilean origin of the hero of the story could have been derived from the memory of Jesus b. Sapphat (docet Greg Doudna).

DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pmI have argued in the past that I felt that the three synoptic Gospels were completed as attempts to "correct" the common Roman government opinion that Jesus had been justly executed as an unapproved royal claimant, and thus a threat to peaceful society. They present Jesus as a sort of vagabond preacher of wisdom sayings and justice (not that uncommon at that time and region according to Kloppenborg 's The Formation of Q, 1987), who was framed by the evil Jews to serve their pursuit of unjust power by force. I have long proposed that proto-orthodox Christians had re-invented Jesus into a divine redeemer in response to the disappointments of the war's results, and an extreme form of social stratification that developed between "Greeks" and Judeans. in Judea, Galilee, Batanea and southern Syria generally. There were atrocities, war crimes, and extreme animosity between "sides."
the portrait of Jesus as a sort of vagabond preacher of wisdom sayings and justice may be a marcionite contribution (Marcion not coincidentially coming from Sinope), but at any case I see the gospels more as one against the other, rather than all allied against "the common Roman government opinion that Jesus had been justly executed as an unapproved royal claimant".

DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pm Regardless of the reason for this change in POV, the gentile wing(s) of Jesus's flavor of messianism had for sure reinvented him as a redeemer in a redemption story where, ironically, they and not the Judeans were the real "children" of the Judean God.
I agree completely with this view. Here I may see in action the Simonians, the Marcionites, the Cainites, followed by the proto-Catholics. Here I may see even the fabrication of Paul in the gentile field: after the Earliest Gospel (=the collection of acta et dicta) and before Mark. Paul himself may have acta et dicta found in the collection, insofar Paul himself (!) could be the expanded memory of the Herodian Saul, persecutor of the Zealots. The Herodian Saul was historically an active propagandist on behalf of the "king of the Jews" (Agrippa), but when the image of "king of the Jews" was connected with the image of the 'crucified Messiah' (docet Batsch), then the memory of Saul was distorted as the legend of the Christian apostle Paul/Saul and adopted easily by radical gentilizers (=anti-demiurgists).

DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pmDid I get you wrong. Where would you differ from me?
surely I differ from you insofar you distance yourself from the Batsch's theory of Jesus as post-70 amalgam of various failed pre-70 messianists. In other terms, your fault is that you are historicist: you really think that a Galilean victim of Pilate was remembered in the final product as and better (sic) than any other failed pre-70 messianist: this your view is historicism, isn't it?
Ulan
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Ulan »

DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pm I have argued in the past that I felt that the three synoptic Gospels were completed as attempts to "correct" the common Roman government opinion that Jesus had been justly executed as an unapproved royal claimant, and thus a threat to peaceful society. They present Jesus as a sort of vagabond preacher of wisdom sayings and justice (not that uncommon at that time and region according to Kloppenborg 's The Formation of Q, 1987), who was framed by the evil Jews to serve their pursuit of unjust power by force.
The central story is the Barabbas one. Every gospel makes a different message out of this one. The later Christian message stressed the unjust decision of the judges and the role of the Jews, but in Mark, it's just a Yom Kippur comparison. gMark makes the explicit connection of the scene to the insurrection - in a duplicate way, in order to make very sure you don't miss this detail (and yet, most interpretations just gloss over it). The Yom Kippur reference should tell us that Barabbas is not the one who gets away scot-free. The "released" offering is the one that is destined to perish in the wilderness, usually thrown off the cliff behind the temple in order to make sure that this actually happens. The "chosen" offering - here Jesus - is the one for the salvation of the priests and the temple.

So yes, this is telling the Jews that they had been looking for the wrong messiah all the time, the violent one, and that they had never even noticed that there was another one available. However, there is this nagging issue that even gMark has the triumphal entry into Jerusalem as a king. There goes the "unjust" death sentence.
Giuseppe
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Giuseppe »

I disagree strongly with the Barabbas story being central. Stahl/Couchoud have proved its anti-marcionite character (which continues to be true even if there is midrash from Leviticus 16)
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mlinssen
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by mlinssen »

Ulan wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 3:24 pm
DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pm I have argued in the past that I felt that the three synoptic Gospels were completed as attempts to "correct" the common Roman government opinion that Jesus had been justly executed as an unapproved royal claimant, and thus a threat to peaceful society. They present Jesus as a sort of vagabond preacher of wisdom sayings and justice (not that uncommon at that time and region according to Kloppenborg 's The Formation of Q, 1987), who was framed by the evil Jews to serve their pursuit of unjust power by force.
The central story is the Barabbas one. Every gospel makes a different message out of this one. The later Christian message stressed the unjust decision of the judges and the role of the Jews, but in Mark, it's just a Yom Kippur comparison. gMark makes the explicit connection of the scene to the insurrection - in a duplicate way, in order to make very sure you don't miss this detail (and yet, most interpretations just gloss over it). The Yom Kippur reference should tell us that Barabbas is not the one who gets away scot-free. The "released" offering is the one that is destined to perish in the wilderness, usually thrown off the cliff behind the temple in order to make sure that this actually happens. The "chosen" offering - here Jesus - is the one for the salvation of the priests and the temple.

So yes, this is telling the Jews that they had been looking for the wrong messiah all the time, the violent one, and that they had never even noticed that there was another one available. However, there is this nagging issue that even gMark has the triumphal entry into Jerusalem as a king. There goes the "unjust" death sentence.

John 18:40 Ἐκραύγασαν (They cried out) οὖν (then) πάλιν (again) λέγοντες (saying), “Μὴ (Not) τοῦτον (this one), ἀλλὰ (but) τὸν (-) Βαραββᾶν (Barabbas)!” ἦν (Was) δὲ (now) ὁ (-) Βαραββᾶς (Barabbas) λῃστής (an insurrectionist).

This is all that John has on Barabbas. Naturally, when you read him as last gospel, "you know what this is all about".
But what if you read him as first gospel? Then the second sentence makes sense as an addition to this introductory first - and do notice that λῃστής is another hapax legomenon in a sense: Mark and Matthew use it for the den of thieves, the arrest of IS and the two thieves impaled along IS; Luke uses it for the good Samaritan, the den of thieves, the arrest of IS - he uses κακοῦργοι for the two impaled, evil-workers, literally malefactors. John uses it for the good shepherd in John 10, and right here - he has ἄλλους δύο for the two impaled, and as usual there's a logical evolution from John through Luke to Mark there, which gets continued by Matthew. No "den of thieves" in John? Nope, merely an entirely apt οἶκον (a house) ἐμπορίου (of trade)

What does the word mean? Pirate, buccaneer

[ETA And naturally, Barabbas is a pun on soon of the father]
Ulan
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Ulan »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:26 pm I disagree strongly with the Barabbas story being central.
You may disagree, but somehow, every evangelist makes something different out of it. It's as if they found something and didn't know what to make of it.
Ulan
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Ulan »

mlinssen wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:03 am ... and do notice that λῃστής is another hapax legomenon in a sense: Mark and Matthew use it for the den of thieves, the arrest of IS and the two thieves impaled along IS;
As I said, it's doubled up in gMark's case, and I'm not talking about λῃστής:
Mk 15:7 "ἦν δὲ ὁ λεγόμενος Βαραββᾶς μετὰ τῶν στασιαστῶν δεδεμένος, οἵτινες ἐν τῇ στάσει φόνον πεποιήκεισαν."

Mark isn't talking about thieves, but some riot/tumult/insurrection that led to bloodshed. For some reason some insurrection with a definite article.
Giuseppe
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Giuseppe »

Ulan wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 6:21 am [quote=Giuseppe post_id=151278 it. It's as if they found something and didn't know what to make of it.
I have precised where I disagree with DCHindley. But I continue to not understand what is your point: are you advancing the thesis, shared by DCHindley, that a Jesus Nazarene existed under Pilate and was a seditionist?
Giuseppe
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Giuseppe »

Here is another strong difference between Batsch's view and DCHindley's view. DCHindley may even concede that the Gospel Jesus is an amalgam of more Jesuses, and even so he may insist that THE historical Jesus lived under Pilate. Why? The DCHindley's answer would be that a such Jesus would be the first at the origin of the growing snowball that would have lead to more Jesuses fused with the first Jesus (=the Jesus crucified under Pilate). Well: this is not the case for prof Batsch, who assumes that the hypothetical Galilean rebel crucified by Pilate was not the first of the list of Jesuses fused in only one by the Earliest Gospel. The reason is that even before Pilate there were failed messianists (cfr. Athronges, Judas the Galilean, etc): also they were merged in the Gospel mix.
Ulan
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Ulan »

Giuseppe wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:00 am
Ulan wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 6:21 am [quote=Giuseppe post_id=151278 it. It's as if they found something and didn't know what to make of it.
I have precised where I disagree with DCHindley.
Right. Which has nothing to do with our disagreement.
Giuseppe wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:00 am But I continue to not understand what is your point: are you advancing the thesis, shared by DCHindley, that a Jesus Nazarene existed under Pilate and was a seditionist?
No, I have no strong opinion on a general solution here. I was elaborating that, specifically, the Jesus of gMark can be read as a stand-in for any ("righteous") person and that this specific story is related to the failure of an insurrectionist approach to the figure of a messiah. I also elaborated how you could read this figure as an almagamation of failed wannabe messiahs.
Giuseppe
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Re: A collection of episodes about various failed Messianists of the past was the Earliest Gospel

Post by Giuseppe »

Ulan wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:24 amthe Jesus of gMark can be read as a stand-in for any ("righteous") person
correct.
Ulan wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:24 am this specific story is related to the failure of an insurrectionist approach to the figure of a messiah.
in Mark, yes. But I don't think that the pro-Roman apology was the first need of the author(s) of the Earliest Gospel (=not Mark, but a collection of dicta et acta of various failed pre-70 messianists). The idea that Rome rules is intrinsic in the topos that the "king of the Jews"/"Messiah" is 'crucified'. Hence the apology is not strictly necessary, at least prima facie. The post-70 Jews of Alexandria who collected the various dicta et acta of various failed pre-70 messianists started their work of collectionists under the assumption, proved by the recent war, that the idealized Christos is by definition a crucified king. How could the Romans fear a such image?


The Romans would have feared the Christians only if the former had still confused the latter with the rebel Jews (as it is really the case in Suetonius, in Pliny and in Tacitus): by an error of identification, not in virtue of the Christian image of a Crucified King.

The need of a more explicit pro-Roman apology emerges surely later.
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