Ben, gone

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
StephenGoranson
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Ben, gone

Post by StephenGoranson »

Ben C. Smith gave up trying here.
Have we learned anything?
Secret Alias
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by Secret Alias »

Life is like Sartre's No Exit?
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by Leucius Charinus »

StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 2:28 pm Ben C. Smith gave up trying here.
Have we learned anything?
Common courtesy is a valuable commodity?

Did Brent Nongbri give you a heads up in a recent blog?
https://brentnongbri.com/2022/06/19/bla ... head-bone/

I can't comment on why Ben gave up trying here because ///

MOVED to Lounge
Last edited by Leucius Charinus on Thu Jun 23, 2022 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Secret Alias
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by Secret Alias »

I can only dream of emulating your "modesty" in claiming that the history of Christianity from Jesus to Hosius of Cordoba is an orchestrated forgery. It's true. You're not a run of the mill rapist of history. You're that special kind of psychotic rapist who thinks that being polite while you defile something no long makes it rape nor you a rapist. I'll be the first to let you know mountainman you're the Jack the Ripper of rapists of texts and history.
My take on you. You're belief in "the Big Lie" paradoxically justifies your Cato-like obsession with spreading your own lies. You must have been an honest person at one time.
gryan
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by gryan »

Ben's free to go. We all are.

Ben worked on projects that interested him. We are all welcome here on the Christian Texts and History forum to work on projects that interest us.
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mlinssen
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by mlinssen »

The only thing that bothered me about Ben was his zealous anti-mythicism packaged as "helping to flesh out ideas" - but his ginormous contributions here (much) more than made up for that

Life goes on, sometimes people do as well. Honestly there's very little to retrieve here regarding feedback to your own ideas, but there are a handful posts of interest every month or so.
And say what you will, but Giuseppe's crazy ideas are the engine behind this forum - and there always is the odd one out that is really, really interesting

Let me put it this way: I'm happier with Ben gone here and his site still up than vice versa. But he'll always hold the title to all time greatest contributor to this forum
Secret Alias
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by Secret Alias »

Ben helped provide ORDER. He provided a way of understanding the evidence which got around the issue of whether Christianity as such was falsified. So in another words, taking the orthodox as having more credibility, more authority, more credibility than the Marcionites. We don't know much about the Marcionites other than they thought the orthodox falsified Christianity. Regardless we are left with the fact that the two oldest organized Christian communities accused one another of mass falsification of documents and traditions in the late second century sure - Ben's reconstruction of history is comforting, true - in short 'the best.'

But here was my point. Whether or not the Marcionites were right about the orthodox basically being corrupt. The fact that orthodox say the same thing about the Marcionites means that A CORRUPTION DID HAPPEN. Right? So either the community that won were the 'good guys' and the corruption happened wholly within a group of far away weirdos THAT HAD NO CONSEQUENCE on history. Or, as the Marcionites would have it, the bad guys corrupted Christianity and won.

This might be oversimplistic. But the general sense is right. You either continue the 'optimism' which has guided Western civilization that 'the Truth' has been on this 2000 winning streak thanks do the Providence of God or you explore the possibility that world history is based on the CORRUPTION OF THE ORIGINAL TRUTH which whether right or wrong has never been fully investigated, contemplated, considered, questioned by the same 2000 years of scholarship which is quite happy celebrating the continual triumph of 'the Truth.'
Ulan
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by Ulan »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 12:02 pm Ben helped provide ORDER. He provided a way of understanding the evidence which got around the issue of whether Christianity as such was falsified. So in another words, taking the orthodox as having more credibility, more authority, more credibility than the Marcionites.
Ben always worked with solid evidence when he developed his ideas. Unfortunately, the only evidence we have is that from the orthodox side, and as there isn't any other, that's what everyone has to work with in the end. If the orthodox hadn't mentioned some of the Marcionite ideas - whether they depicted them correctly or not - we wouldn't know anything of them. For some of the Gnostics, we have at least the Nag Hammadi texts.

Framing Ben as "zealous anti-mythicist" certainly doesn't do him justice. Ben just stated the obvious: there isn't enough evidence to decide the matter. And if you come to the question with a mindset that doesn't need to decide this question because your belief depends on it, the realization that there isn't enough information to make that decision is all you are left with.

Personally, I am of the opinion that the Marcionite claim that the Orthodox falsified the evidence has more merit than the claim that the Marcionites substantially falsified the texts, simply as the Orthodox voices that defend their standpoint dismantle their own reasoning while they make it. However, I think that the Jesus figure in a text like gMark is still a very different figure than both, the Orthodox church fathers' own position or their depiction of Marcionite beliefs, paint him as. Who knows, maybe the Ebionites got it right, but again, we also only know them from Orthodox sources, and there's still no way to decide the matter.

I mean, look at this board. You have as many positions on such questions as there are people who write here, and quite a few are very zealous of their ideas, indeed. I can see that, in such a situation of heated arguments, someone who simply states he cannot decide the matter may be seen as irritating. But let nobody get lost in this "if you aren't with me, you're against me" argument. Ben's contributions were always valuable, yes, even if they may not help you with deciding your own burning questions.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by GakuseiDon »

mlinssen wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 8:13 am The only thing that bothered me about Ben was his zealous anti-mythicism packaged as "helping to flesh out ideas" - but his ginormous contributions here (much) more than made up for that
Ben wasn't anti-mythicist. He was borderline mythicist himself. He was simply anti-bad scholarship. His contributions made this website a valuable resource for many. He'll be missed here.
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mlinssen
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Re: Ben, gone

Post by mlinssen »

GakuseiDon wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 7:29 pm
mlinssen wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 8:13 am The only thing that bothered me about Ben was his zealous anti-mythicism packaged as "helping to flesh out ideas" - but his ginormous contributions here (much) more than made up for that
Ben wasn't anti-mythicist. He was borderline mythicist himself. He was simply anti-bad scholarship. His contributions made this website a valuable resource for many. He'll be missed here.
Ulan wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 6:10 pm Ben always worked with solid evidence when he developed his ideas.
You likely missed this exchange then, where Ben was frantically trying to go against the very evidence at hand

viewtopic.php?p=124451#p124451

and

viewtopic.php?p=125021#p125021

And his hidden motivation is revealed by
If the alternative is that either Matthew or Thomas made up the word from thin air, like baby talk, then I demure. It obviously came from somewhere.
As I've found out now, the word points to Sisyphus via ζίζυφον - but Ben was predetermined to NOT have the word originate from Thomas, just as he was predetermined to have logion 96 NOT say colostrum.
Mythicist? My ass

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... zi%2Fzufon

There are only 3 words in LSJ that have ZIZ in them:

ζίζυφον , τό, a tree, the fruit of which is
A.the jujube, Zizyphus vulgaris, Gp.10.3.4; ziziphus, Colum.9.4.3: gen. pl. zizuforum, Edict. Diocl.6.56

A Z instead of an S, yes: Σίσυφος

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/mor ... Fsu%5Efos0

Wouldn't it have been fun if Ben would have actually helped there, instead of "demur"? We could have solved one of the minor great puzzles together!
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