Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Posted: **Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:37 am**

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 5:43 am
maryhelena wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 1:49 am
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 1:10 amWhen someone is dealing cards from the bottom of the stack how do we know the whole game is not rigged?
If suspicious - walk away and find another table worth your money and your time.
But I'm not there to play the game. I am investigating the corruption associated with the publication of the theological-historical fiction of the Jesus Story Book.

Eusebius, the dude who deals the TF and the Jesus to Abgar letter from the bottom of the pack, is the same dude who is the Editor-in-Chief of the imperial 4th century NT Bible codices. Coincidentally he also just happens to be the same dude who is our one and only guide and "historian" in respect of the Universal Church industry and the "Nation of Christians" for the 300 years prior to the Nicene Council. Do you think Eusebius knew the Jesus story was an historical account? Do you think Eusebius knew the story was a theological-historical fiction but was passing it off as history?

I'm not interested in Eusebius or any church fathers. I'm interested in the Josephan writings. Jewish/Hasmonean history not Christian church history. Writings over 200 years prior to Eusebius.

It is evident that the narrative of events contained in Josephus's texts should not be taken at face value. The interpretative framework as outlined indicates that to distinguish between the comments and the narration of events is not possible. It is not simply a matter of dismissing Josephus's interpretations, nor a matter of working out which version of an event is accurate. The interpretative process is more fundamental: it controls the entire choice of subject matter and, therefore, the overall picture that is being conveyed. We must now contend with the possibility that although we can make conclusions and observations regarding what Josephus narrates, what we can conclude is, in itself, the product of an interpretation. In other words, the picture being used to understand the first century CE in Judaea may not necessarily provide the reader with a 'full' or 'balanced' representation of what was happening in the territory. In effect, our major resource for examining the period is itself a constructed picture.

James S. McLaren: Turbulent Times ? Josephus and Scholarship on Judaea in the First Century CE. page 6

A constructed picture of Judaea in the First Century - so, like the gospel constructed story - we don't read Josephus at face value. Both his writings and the gospel writers need to be subject not only to an interpretative process but our interpretations need to face the historical jury.

Why Josephus Matters

Steve Mason on Flavius Josephus

If we leave biblical and New Testament authors out of the frame, Flavius Josephus (37–100+ CE) was the most consequential ancient writer in the West. This claim is not provable by statistics, but a process of elimination supports it. Plato was big, Aristotle too. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius had their admirers, and every literate Roman knew Cicero and Livy. But Christian Crusaders did not take Plato into battle in the Holy Land. Thucydides was not rewritten in Latin and Hebrew versions, as Josephus was, amplifying his already huge impact. From the first to the twenty-first centuries, Josephus’ work has mattered to more people and more consistently than any other non-biblical text.

................

In the complexities of Josephus’ works lie inexhaustible riches for the historian as for the humanist.

https://themarginaliareview.com/why-josephus-matters/

So Pete - I'm staying at the Josephus table. However many tricks he might have up his sleeve, however many games he might win - the law of chance is still in play - for him, or his writers - and for his readers. Don't think there is ever a perfect crime - Josephus will be put in the historical dock and one day will be found wanting. However, his failure would be our gain for it opens the door to other possibilities. Well, something like that....

Posted: **Sun Jan 08, 2023 8:41 am**

maryhelena wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:37 am
Why Josephus Matters

Steve Mason on Flavius Josephus

If we leave biblical and New Testament authors out of the frame, Flavius Josephus (37–100+ CE) was the most consequential ancient writer in the West. This claim is not provable by statistics, but a process of elimination supports it. Plato was big, Aristotle too. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius had their admirers, and every literate Roman knew Cicero and Livy. But Christian Crusaders did not take Plato into battle in the Holy Land. Thucydides was not rewritten in Latin and Hebrew versions, as Josephus was, amplifying his already huge impact. From the first to the twenty-first centuries, Josephus’ work has mattered to more people and more consistently than any other non-biblical text.

................

In the complexities of Josephus’ works lie inexhaustible riches for the historian as for the humanist.

https://themarginaliareview.com/why-josephus-matters/

I like Steve Mason, he is a pleasant and kind and intelligent man, and he reminds me of Mark Goodacre in that way.
But let's face it: where the world always has been littered with Greek and latin prose, poetry, satire, comedy and everything else, there has been only one single author ever on Judaic history, and that is Josephus.
And naturally, precisely because his work allegedly was so very revered we must be exteemely suspicious that none of his work has survived in any other form but 11th CE careless scribbles at the very earliest

Other than that, never listen to monographists on monothemes: Josephus is the monoculture of Mason in precisely the same way that Thomas is my monoculture - although I am not financially dependent on any of it, as opposed to Mason

Posted: **Sun Jan 08, 2023 9:32 am**

mlinssen wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 8:41 am But let's face it: where the world always has been littered with Greek and latin prose, poetry, satire, comedy and everything else, there has been only one single author ever on Judaic history, and that is Josephus.

Joe Atwill, Caesar's Messiah, p. 17:

"All scholars have faced the same difficulty in trying to understand first-century Judea: a lack of source material. Before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, the important literature describing firsthand the events of first-century Judea were the New Testament and the works of Josephus. For two millennia, only these two works illuminated an era so seminal to Western civilization.

"This absence is unusual. In Greece, thousands of pieces of writing from the same era have been discovered. Jesus constantly complained about scribes, who, one must assume, were writing something..."

Mo' later,

CW

Posted: **Sun Jan 08, 2023 5:03 pm**

maryhelena wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:37 amI'm not interested in Eusebius or any church fathers. I'm interested in the Josephan writings. Jewish/Hasmonean history not Christian church history. Writings over 200 years prior to Eusebius.

The writings of Josephus were not discovered in a jar, a cave or a crypt untouched since the late 1st century. The writings of Josephus were "preserved" by Eusebius and the church fathers alone, and - one would expect - for their own agenda about how to write various interfaces into Christian history (if it indeed existed in the 1st century!!!)

Why Josephus Matters

Steve Mason on Flavius Josephus

If we leave biblical and New Testament authors out of the frame, Flavius Josephus (37–100+ CE) was the most consequential ancient writer in the West. This claim is not provable by statistics, but a process of elimination supports it. Plato was big, Aristotle too. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius had their admirers, and every literate Roman knew Cicero and Livy. But Christian Crusaders did not take Plato into battle in the Holy Land. Thucydides was not rewritten in Latin and Hebrew versions, as Josephus was, amplifying his already huge impact. From the first to the twenty-first centuries, Josephus’ work has mattered to more people and more consistently than any other non-biblical text.

https://themarginaliareview.com/why-josephus-matters/

In that extract Dr Mason wants to "leave biblical and New Testament authors out of the frame" and yet mentions Christian crusaders. I don't know which Christian crusaders he has in mind but T.D. Barnes talks about Constantine and his army as a Christian crusade as early as the year 324 CE. Josephus was not translated into Latin until the 4th century. The prime mover here IMO was the rise of the Latin church industry under Damasus and his pupil Jerome.

What impact did Josephus have before he was given a platform by Eusebius in the 4th century? Do we have much evidence that the pagans read the bible and Josephus? And what evidence do we have concerning when the conversions start happening at any scale before the 4th century (aside from the 5,000 in Acts)

The Bible was no literature for the pagan.
Its Greek was not elegant enough.
/---/

Normally the educated pagans of the Roman empire knew nothing about either Jewish or Christian history. If they wanted some information about the Jews, they picked up second-hand distortions such as we read in Tacitus. The consequence was that a direct acquaintance with Jewish or Christian history normally came together with conversion to Judaism or to Christianity. People learnt a new history because they acquired a new religion. Conversion meant literally the discovery of a new history from Adam and Eve to contemporary events.

The new history could not suppress the old. Adam and Eve and what follows had in some way to be presented in a world populated by Deucalion, Cadmus, Romulus and Alexander the Great. This created all sorts of new problems. First, the pagans had to be introduced to the Jewish version of history. Secondly, the Christian historians were expected to silence the objection that Christianity was new, and therefore not respectable. Thirdly, the pagan facts of life had to get into the Jewish-Christian scheme of redemption. It soon became imperative for the Christians to produce a chronology which would satisfy both the needs of elementary teaching and the purposes of higher historical interpretation. The Christian chronographers had to summarize the history which the converts were now supposed to consider their own; they had also to show the antiquity of the Jewish-Christian doctrine, and they had to present a model of providential history.

///

All went according to plan, except that the pagan historians of the fourth century were not really going to die. They were only going to sleep for some centuries. They belonged to that classical tradition in historiography for which ecclesiastical history, whatever its merits, was no substitute. Though we may have learnt to check our references from Eusebius — and this was no small gain — we are still the disciples of Herodotus and Thucydides: we still learn our history of the late empire from Ammianus Marcellinus.

Pagan and Christian Historiography
in the Fourth Century A.D.
* This essay first appeared in A. Momigliano, ed.,
The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century,
The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1)
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/Arnal ... 20post.htm

So Pete - I'm staying at the Josephus table. However many tricks he might have up his sleeve, however many games he might win - the law of chance is still in play - for him, or his writers - and for his readers. Don't think there is ever a perfect crime - Josephus will be put in the historical dock and one day will be found wanting.

Well its good to know you remain skeptical while at the Josephus table. It is a good practice to hone should you ever - even fleetingly - sit at the Eusebius table.

However, his failure would be our gain for it opens the door to other possibilities. Well, something like that.... ;)

Doors to other poker tournaments?

Playing Poker with Constantine and the "Christian Poker Association"
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/poker ... erview.htm

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