George Solomon versus Earl Doherty about the true identity of the "Zecharia" slain "between the Temple and the altar"

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Giuseppe
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George Solomon versus Earl Doherty about the true identity of the "Zecharia" slain "between the Temple and the altar"

Post by Giuseppe »

Earl Doherty, considered by me the greatest Mithicist of all the ages (and on this point I am 'dogmatic', pace the different caprices of the reader), wrote the following words:

The 11:49 saying speaks of "this generation (that) will have to answer for all the blood of all the prophets." And yet this generation has not been accused of the greatest blood of all. The saying includes the allotted span of Jewish responsibility for such blood: "from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the sanctuary." This Zechariah is generally thought to be a reference to the 2 Chronicles prophet, a pre-exilic figure, or possibly the prophet of the biblical book of that name who lived shortly after the exile. Either one is a rather distant cut-off (a terminus ad quem) for Wisdom's listing of murdered prophets. (Kloppenborg makes a similar observation.) Could a Q compiler who knew of the death of Jesus have settled for describing "the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world" as having ended several centuries previously?

(Jesus, Neither God Nor Man, p. 348)

Now, George Solomon, author of the book I have "discovered", wrote the following words precisely talking about the "blood of Zecharia":


Only here is the hitch ; how could such things come to be affirmed of the Pontius Pilate pretender, who, according to Luke's chronology, must have been but a stripling in years? and how could events which happened thirty years later in reference to another be ascribed to his time and him? And how could he have uttered those words put into his mouth by St. Matthew if he had suffered in Pontius Pilate's reign? (Matt, xxiii. 32-36): —

“Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the Temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation.”

For here we see, from the language of Jesus himself, that it was not he who was slain by Pontius Pilate, since this Zacharias, the son of Barachias, was killed in the Temple during the siege of Jerusalem, over thirty years after Pilate's recall. The event is recorded by Josephus. No other Zacharias, son of Barachias, suffered such a fate, and he was a contemporary of the historical Jesus, and not of Pontius Pilate. There was one other Zacharias, indeed, who was stoned, but he was not the son of Baruch, and he met his end, as Josephus tells us, long before Pilate's day.

(p. 230-231, cursive original).

How could Doherty have terribly ignored that Josephus recorded the death of Zacharias the son of Barachias in the Temple during the siege of Jerusalem ?

Now the seventy judges brought in their verdict that the person accused was not guilty, as choosing rather to die themselves with him, than to have his death laid at their doors; hereupon there arose a great clamor of the zealots upon his acquittal, and they all had indignation at the judges for not understanding that the authority that was given them was but in jest. So two of the boldest of them fell upon Zacharias in the middle of the temple, and slew him; and as he fell down dead, they bantered him, and said, "Thou hast also our verdict, and this will prove a more sure acquittal to thee than the other." They also threw him down from the temple immediately into the valley beneath it. Moreover, they struck the judges with the backs of their swords, by way of abuse, and thrust them out of the court of the temple, and spared their lives with no other design than that, when they were dispersed among the people in the city, they might become their messengers, to let them know they were no better than slaves.

https://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/comp ... i.v.v.html


I can forgive Doherty for this ignorance.

Afterall, he was devoted to deny the existence of a Jesus crucified under Pilate.

The famous Jesus who was crucified AFTER the death of Zecharia son of Baruch was Jesus b. Sapphat.
Giuseppe
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Re: George Solomon versus Earl Doherty about the true identity of the "Zecharia" slain "between the Temple and the altar

Post by Giuseppe »

What is interesting is the apparent candor of Doherty in his wonder about a so remote and distant terminus ante quem.

Doherty would have liked, as criterion to become persuaded about the presence of a historical Jesus meant in the saying, that a such terminus ante quem was close to the time of the death of Jesus. Well: if Doherty had assumed that the Jesus meant as having spoken that saying was active during the First Jewish Revolt, then he would have been probably satisfied by a so close terminus ante quem. He would have concluded that the saying was evidence of a historicist belief.

What is more, no "scholar" about the identity of this Zechariah has mentioned the Zechariah of Josephus. This is very a great error of an entire scholarship.

ADDENDA: This is why I have given up from long time to compare Doherty/Carrier's outer space theory against a traditional Christ historicist. The true challenge is between Jesus b. Sapphat as the true historical Jesus behind the Gospel Jesus, and the Christ Myth Theory as proposed by Doherty/Carrier.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: George Solomon versus Earl Doherty about the true identity of the "Zecharia" slain "between the Temple and the altar

Post by Giuseppe »

Curiously, who had noted previously the Zecharia of Josephus did so to deny the antiquity of the saying mentioning him:

Whatever the answer to the question, “To which Zechariah was Jesus referring?,” one thing is beyond any doubt: skeptics such as Dennis McKinsey do not have a shred of evidence that Matthew 23:35 is an uninspired, errant passage. Truly, the only proven contradiction regarding this matter lies, not in the Bible, but in McKinsey’s own book titled Biblical Errancy. On page 30, he insisted that the Zechariah of Matthew 23:35 “is actually the son of Jehoiada.” However, later in the book, he wrote (immediately following a quotation of Matthew 23:35): “The Zecharias mentioned was killed in Jerusalem in 69 C.E.; so that Matthew makes Jesus refer to an event that occurred forty years after his death. This is the same Zecharias Barouchus who, according to Josephus, was slain in the temple a short time before the destruction of Jerusalem” (p. 195). What evidence does McKinsey have for this last accusation? None whatsoever. Indeed, McKinsey—not the Bible writers—gives contradictory answers to the same question. Simply because we may not know for certain the identity of the Zechariah Jesus mentioned, does not mean we have the right to label Him and the Bible writers as erroneous.

https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcont ... ticle=2078


...While I am using the same evidence to prove that the source of that saying (especially if not authentic) was a tradition who assumed the same Gospel Jesus active during the First Jewish Revolt.

I.e. the same magical story placed his magical hero during the First Jewish Revolt, originally.
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