Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 4:08 am But this world-changing fulfillment of God's promise happened in then-recent real life just the way God's anointed king foresaw? As Wiki so often notes, citation needed. But in a popular work, not so much a citation as a reassurance that a source might exist. Cue Alexander and Rufus.

For what it's worth, nothing is said about Simon of Cyrene (or his sons) as a witness, but the Gospel of Mark is much more explicit about the centurion and the women seeing the events and/or being witnesses at some point.












I understand that the last line says the opposite, but I include it because it's an inversion of expectation. Based on everything they saw, the Gospel of Mark portrays them as the natural witnesses to all the events (despite cultural considerations regarding women as witnesses), including both the crucifixion and the empty tomb. Unlike the women, the centurion does not go to the tomb, but he confirms the death of Jesus and provides his confession when seeing him die.

Meanwhile, Simon is pressed into service to carry the cross, but he is not said to be present at the death of Jesus (unlike the centurion and the women), he is not said to have confirmed that Jesus died (unlike the centurion), and he is not said to be present at the empty tomb (unlike the women). For Mark's purposes, he is much less valuable as a potential witness to the death of Jesus than the centurion and the women. Based on Mark's narrative, he might not have even been there until the end, unlike the people who are said to have been there.

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 7:29 pm That sounds more like a theological argument than a historical one. Why can't a historical man slain under Pilate also not be a lamb slain before the creation of the world? What makes a historical man less likely? I'm just trying to understand how you are assessing the probabilities there.

I see it as a description of three different explanations of what the author may believe:

Theology A:
the author believes that the figurative Lamb was slain as Jesus by Pilate on the cross, i.e. in history

Theology B:
the author believes that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, i.e. outside of history

Theology C:
the author believes that the figurative Lamb was slain both in history and outside of history

C carries the burden of not just being more complicated but also positing that the Lamb was slain on two different occasions, in two different ways, both in history and outside of history. It might be slightly too much to call this a contradiction. But it's as perplexing as a Trinity which says that God is both one and three.

I'm definitely comfortable with people saying that, if they see the author describe theology A, then they're going to attribute theology A to the author (and not C). And likewise if they see the author describe theology B, they're going to attribute theology B to the author (and not C). Before we start attributing theology C to any author, we should have some evidence for it in that author. So far I haven't seen evidence for it in pre-Nicene author. So that gives you a pretty wide window of about three centuries of Christian writing to find some kind of reason for holding out for that possibility.

I do respect the answer that someone doesn't think theology B is described. But once it is said to have been described, it's only fair to credit the implications.

ABuddhist wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 4:17 am

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 7:29 pmThat sounds more like a theological argument than a historical one. Why can't a historical man slain under Pilate also not be a lamb slain before the creation of the world? What makes a historical man less likely? I'm just trying to understand how you are assessing the probabilities there.

Such a being, though, is more likely to be fictional or mythological than a man who was only slain under Pilate.

But why? I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm trying to understand the logic. If, as you responded to Paul the U, "it is possible to believe that lambs existed before the world came into being... in some heavenly prototype of features of the world", why does that reflect on the historicity of someone associated with that being? For example, if I claimed that Pilate was a pre-existing slain Lamb, then does that lessen the odds for the historicity of Pilate? If so, how? What piece of data for historicity is affected?

Again: not saying you are wrong! Just that I don't understand the logic behind your statement.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:19 pmI see it as a description of three different explanations of what the author may believe:

Theology A:
the author believes that the figurative Lamb was slain as Jesus by Pilate on the cross, i.e. in history

Theology B:
the author believes that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, i.e. outside of history

Theology C:
the author believes that the figurative Lamb was slain both in history and outside of history

C carries the burden of not just being more complicated but also positing that the Lamb was slain on two different occasions, in two different ways, both in history and outside of history. It might be slightly too much to call this a contradiction. But it's as perplexing as a Trinity which says that God is both one and three.

Yes, it's all fan fiction. Or, more accurately, when fan fiction is combined with religion: theology.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:19 pmI'm definitely comfortable with people saying that, if they see the author describe theology A, then they're going to attribute theology A to the author (and not C). And likewise if they see the author describe theology B, they're going to attribute theology B to the author (and not C). Before we start attributing theology C to any author, we should have some evidence for it in that author. So far I haven't seen evidence for it in pre-Nicene author. So that gives you a pretty wide window of about three centuries of Christian writing to find some kind of reason for holding out for that possibility.

I do respect the answer that someone doesn't think theology B is described. But once it is said to have been described, it's only fair to credit the implications.

Are there implications for the historicity of Jesus, in your view? Do any of Theology A, B or C increase/lessen the odds for the historicity of Jesus more than the others?

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:01 pm

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 4:08 am But this world-changing fulfillment of God's promise happened in then-recent real life just the way God's anointed king foresaw? As Wiki so often notes, citation needed. But in a popular work, not so much a citation as a reassurance that a source might exist. Cue Alexander and Rufus.

For what it's worth, nothing is said about Simon of Cyrene (or his sons) as a witness,

Agreed. Nor does Mark have any urgent reason to. He's writing a story that is best experienced as a whole performance, and so best if as few people as possible are so bothered by a "plot hole" as to close the book or leave the room.

To retain an audience member of one sort, all Mark needs to do is offer a possible natural way that his narrator might know, a generation or so after the supposed events, that his extraordinary claim about the uncanny parallelism of Psalm 22 and those supposed events could be well-founded. Yes, it could.

but the Gospel of Mark is much more explicit about the centurion and the women seeing the events and/or being witnesses at some point.

Simon's contribution to Jesus's death seems explicit enough to me. Your mileage differs. Neither one of us is going to be in print 1900 years from now. I'll defer to Mark's judgment as to how much secret sauce he needs where.

I understand that the last line says the opposite, but I include it because it's an inversion of expectation. Based on everything they saw, the Gospel of Mark portrays them as the natural witnesses to all the events (despite cultural considerations regarding women as witnesses), including both the crucifixion and the empty tomb. Unlike the women, the centurion does not go to the tomb, but he confirms the death of Jesus and provides his confession when seeing him die.

Where "authentic" Mark ends is a separate issue (although it came up at the SBL GV meeting presentation). Maybe a different thread sometime.

Meanwhile, Simon is pressed into service to carry the cross, but he is not said to be present at the death of Jesus (unlike the centurion and the women), he is not said to have confirmed that Jesus died (unlike the centurion), and he is not said to be present at the empty tomb (unlike the women).

You and I are discussing a work of literature, not a masters thesis.

For Mark's purposes, he is much less valuable as a potential witness to the death of Jesus than the centurion and the women. Based on Mark's narrative, he might not have even been there until the end, unlike the people who are said to have been there.

Indeed, Simon may have left. Mark doesn't say one way or the other.

Mark does not tell us his purposes, we only know to what purposes his work has been put. So, too, as I said in an earlier post, nobody alive today knows why Mark mentioned Alexander and Rufus. We can say, however, at least some of the things that would be different if they hadn't been mentioned. I have explained one of those things, as it appears to me. One plausible candidate to be among Mark's purposes was accomplished by the mention, and would have been less well accomplished had the mention not been included, paribus ceteris, all in my opinion.

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:35 pm If, as you responded to Paul the U, "it is possible to believe that lambs existed before the world came into being... in some heavenly prototype of features of the world", why does that reflect on the historicity of someone associated with that being?

Because, in general, people with such extraordinary associations are either fictional (such as a temple's servant in a very obscure video game who is simultaneously a dragon with powerful secret knowledge) or are mythical (such as Red Horn, aka Wears Human Faces in his Earlobes, aka He Eats Deer Lungs, who is at some level a human from a nythical past, a star, an arrow, and a god).

Admittedly, at least 1 person has apparently suggested that Red Horn was really a charismatic shaman from a certain 1st Nation, but that model has not found much acceptance if the wikipedia article about Red Horn be accepted as accurate.

If Pilate were to be taught to be simultaneously human and a lamb who died before the world's creation, that would suggest strongly that he is fictional or mythical. But we have multiple sources (including Philo from his lifetime) which make no such claims about him, meaning that if we were to have such a source and it were to be dated later than the other sources, we could dismiss it as a later legend or propaganda.

In Buddhism, a similar process of accretion of legendary and aggrandizing details surrounds Shakyamuni Buddha. The Shakyan sage who in earlier texts is said to have sought and found enlightenment, to be be indistinguishable from his monastic followers in appearance and to suffer from bad health later in life in later texts is said to have many marks of distinctness (none of which is obesity!) and in some Mayahana Sutras is said to have been enlighened for millions of years prior to his birthduring which he only pretended to seek enlightenment, grow older, sicken and die - because he is really immortal and larger than the world! If we were to judge Shakyamuni Buddha's historicity only by these later Mahayana texts, he would be less likely to be historical.

Do these words make sense to you?

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:48 pm

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:01 pm

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 4:08 am But this world-changing fulfillment of God's promise happened in then-recent real life just the way God's anointed king foresaw? As Wiki so often notes, citation needed. But in a popular work, not so much a citation as a reassurance that a source might exist. Cue Alexander and Rufus.

For what it's worth, nothing is said about Simon of Cyrene (or his sons) as a witness,

Agreed. Nor does Mark have any urgent reason to. He's writing a story that is best experienced as a whole performance, and so best if as few people as possible are so bothered by a "plot hole" as to close the book or leave the room.

To retain an audience member of one sort, all Mark needs to do is offer a possible natural way that his narrator might know, a generation or so after the supposed events, that his extraordinary claim about the uncanny parallelism of Psalm 22 and those supposed events could be well-founded. Yes, it could.

but the Gospel of Mark is much more explicit about the centurion and the women seeing the events and/or being witnesses at some point.

Simon's contribution to Jesus's death seems explicit enough to me. Your mileage differs. Neither one of us is going to be in print 1900 years from now. I'll defer to Mark's judgment as to how much secret sauce he needs where.

I understand that the last line says the opposite, but I include it because it's an inversion of expectation. Based on everything they saw, the Gospel of Mark portrays them as the natural witnesses to all the events (despite cultural considerations regarding women as witnesses), including both the crucifixion and the empty tomb. Unlike the women, the centurion does not go to the tomb, but he confirms the death of Jesus and provides his confession when seeing him die.

Where "authentic" Mark ends is a separate issue (although it came up at the SBL GV meeting presentation). Maybe a different thread sometime.

Meanwhile, Simon is pressed into service to carry the cross, but he is not said to be present at the death of Jesus (unlike the centurion and the women), he is not said to have confirmed that Jesus died (unlike the centurion), and he is not said to be present at the empty tomb (unlike the women).

You and I are discussing a work of literature, not a masters thesis.

For Mark's purposes, he is much less valuable as a potential witness to the death of Jesus than the centurion and the women. Based on Mark's narrative, he might not have even been there until the end, unlike the people who are said to have been there.

Indeed, Simon may have left. Mark doesn't say one way or the other.

Mark does not tell us his purposes, we only know to what purposes his work has been put. So, too, as I said in an earlier post, nobody alive today knows why Mark mentioned Alexander and Rufus. We can say, however, at least some of the things that would be different if they hadn't been mentioned. I have explained one of those things, as it appears to me. One plausible candidate to be among Mark's purposes was accomplished by the mention, and would have been less well accomplished had the mention not been included, paribus ceteris, all in my opinion.

I'm not saying you're wrong about Simon.

I'm saying that you need to credit what the text actually says about witnesses to the death of Jesus, ie the women and the centurion. What you did was to assign primary credit as witness to someone not said to be a witness, while also the ignoring those who the author of Mark named as witnesses as better candidates.

But writing out that bit again explicitly, and based on the overly defensive and at the same time unconvincing response you gave, now I guess that I am saying that it's more likely than not that you are wrong.

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:44 pm

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:19 pmI see it as a description of three different explanations of what the author may believe:

Theology A:
the author believes that the figurative Lamb was slain as Jesus by Pilate on the cross, i.e. in history

Theology B:
the author believes that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, i.e. outside of history

Theology C:
the author believes that the figurative Lamb was slain both in history and outside of history

C carries the burden of not just being more complicated but also positing that the Lamb was slain on two different occasions, in two different ways, both in history and outside of history. It might be slightly too much to call this a contradiction. But it's as perplexing as a Trinity which says that God is both one and three.

Yes, it's all fan fiction. Or, more accurately, when fan fiction is combined with religion: theology.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:19 pmI'm definitely comfortable with people saying that, if they see the author describe theology A, then they're going to attribute theology A to the author (and not C). And likewise if they see the author describe theology B, they're going to attribute theology B to the author (and not C). Before we start attributing theology C to any author, we should have some evidence for it in that author. So far I haven't seen evidence for it in pre-Nicene author. So that gives you a pretty wide window of about three centuries of Christian writing to find some kind of reason for holding out for that possibility.

I do respect the answer that someone doesn't think theology B is described. But once it is said to have been described, it's only fair to credit the implications.

Are there implications for the historicity of Jesus, in your view? Do any of Theology A, B or C increase/lessen the odds for the historicity of Jesus more than the others?

I'm not even talking about the odds of the historicity of Jesus, and I am confused by you bringing that up. That's a different discussion.

Also, if you understood this sentence from ABuddhist as a sentence directly about the likelihood of the historicity of Jesus:

Peter's translation went as follows:

Revelation 13.8: “And all who dwell on the earth will worship him [the [first] beast who came out of the sea], everyone whose name has not been written in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain from the foundation[/creation] of the world.”

This translation suggests that the lamb was slain from the world's foundation, which weakens the likelihood that a historical Jesus's death is what is being referred to.

Then you misunderstood it. ABuddhist is saying the same thing I did, a different way, talking about what the author seems to believe (... based on a certain way of reading a particular translation, which ABuddhist didn't even endorse). ABuddhist wasn't making a comment here on the probability of the historicity of Jesus.

The "implications" I am referring to are simply that (if theology B is described, then) they believed in theology B and not C.

But writing out that bit again explicitly, and based on the overly defensive and at the same time unconvincing response you gave, now I guess that I am saying that it's more likely than not that you are wrong.

That would bite worse if it addressed the actual position that I had argued. The narrator's problem is to account for how he could possibly know about plot-critical events that supposedly occurred a generation +/- earlier. Among the ways to do that is for people who are witnesses to some of those events to have had children. Neither Alexander nor Rufus nor Jacob of Mary nor Joseph of Mary are witnesses. They are, however, potential informants (or if you prefer, tradents), being intimates of witnesses.

Their parents are not in some kind of competition as to who was the best witness. Simon is in one place, the women are in another, the narrator may have drawn from both, a generation later. Both Simon and the women are there for reasons other than bearing witness. Their presence needs no special explanation. What needs explanation are the mentions of the children who aren't there so far as we know and contribute nothing to the action, unlike their parents.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 2:48 pm

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:44 pmAre there implications for the historicity of Jesus, in your view? Do any of Theology A, B or C increase/lessen the odds for the historicity of Jesus more than the others?

I'm not even talking about the odds of the historicity of Jesus, and I am confused by you bringing that up. That's a different discussion.

Sure, no worries. Apologies for the tangent. I'd just wondered if you saw any implications around historicity. Thanks for your response.