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Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:35 pm
by Stephan Huller
FFS. It's not about Samaritans versus the Jews; it's hardly about "freedom"; nor race; nor inter-religious conflict per se.
No you don't get it because there is something wrong with your brain. It's like playing tic tac toe. There isn't a lot of variation possible. If the first guy puts the X in the center and he's playing against someone who isn't an imbecile it's always going to be a draw. The same thing with Judaism and Samaritan - it's always going to be the same outcome BECAUSE THE FUCKING RULES (THE TORAH) IS BASICALLY THE SAME. Go back to imagining complete nonsense related to Christianity. Judaism won't allow for your flights of fancy. It's the same game over and over again with very little variation.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:38 pm
by Stephan Huller
Neil might as well be saying 'in the past when people played tic tac toe' the person drawing X always beat the guy drawing 0s. No, it was the same 2000 years ago (if people were playing tic tac toe 2000 years ago) as it was today. The same Torah means same basic shape to the religion, just like tic tac toe is only entertaining for 3 year olds.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:57 pm
by MrMacSon
Stephan Huller wrote:
... with Judaism and Samaritan - it's always going to be the same outcome BECAUSE THE FUCKING RULES (THE TORAH) IS BASICALLY THE SAME.
err, No. Hellenism ... & Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Ebionites, Zealots, etc. show diversity; ie. show otherwise.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:50 pm
by neilgodfrey
Stephan Huller wrote:and it would have been even less free in antiquity. You fail to grasp what Judaism is. I won't say that's because you have no Jewish friends (because that will set you off). it's because you are too bookish.
"would have been" is a conjecture and without evidence.
Whatever Judaism "is" we have abundant evidence that it "was" in some significant ways different in the Second Temple era.
Your personal jibes are nothing but ad hominem and are uncalled for. Too bookish tells me you reject scholarship and scholarly methods and prefer to be a self-taught wise man casting stones and character judgments at everyone who has read a lot more widely than you have and has a lot more awareness of how historians work and what the fundamentals of historical methodology are. Your methods are the not much different from those of Acharya S -- only you apply them to your own pet hobby horse.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:52 pm
by neilgodfrey
Stephan Huller wrote:You fail to grasp what Judaism is. I won't say that's because you have no Jewish friends (because that will set you off). it's because you are too bookish. It's nice to read and read and read but it's all theoretical and ultimately distracting from what is. Go to a synagogue, go to a Sabbath dinner, visit Israel if what you really want is knowledge about Judaism. If you won't or can't then stop pretending you are interested. This is silly.
And I could never understand what Nazism is because I don't flirt with the Nazis. You also forget my past associations with Judaism and yes I understand tribalism - but I suppose if I remind you (not that I need to because you know already by some occult means about my mind, my friends, things I have learned etc) then you'll say I'm as good as a self-hating Jew now.
You have a habit of going down this racial supremacist route and implying those who don't fall into your way of seeing things are somehow "anti-Jewish" or worse whenever you are challenged on your methods of argument. Nice.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:56 pm
by neilgodfrey
Stephan Huller wrote:And with respect to differences between cultures. My son brought a book home today on tennis (because my wife used to be quite good at it). We played soccer today and he happened to mention that New Zealanders are quite good at rugby for some reason. It got me to think again how many sports were invented by the British. Why is that? I told him because they like rules. That's just their 'thing.' Soccer couldn't have got started and spread the way it did without the British being its ambassadors. Even if the South Americans had come up with the idea they'd be cheating and fouling each other. No one would want to play. But the British with their rule loving nature were ambassadors for this sport because people found it curious and ultimately desirable to imitate the British 'idealism.' I've been reading a lot of books on the history of soccer with first hand accounts of foreigners who observed these crazy people kicking a ball in an organized fashion.
The Jews were very similar in a way with regards to a book. It made them unique like the British were unique in the late eighteenth century. Your desire to make their ordinary and bland - and 'not special' - is contradicted by ancient observers. The Jews were strange but ultimately deemed an attractive race 'intellectually' at least because of their adherence to rules.
This is all a very nice story but has nothing to do with the fundamentals of methods of historical inquiry and how to handle documents and evidence.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:02 pm
by neilgodfrey
John T wrote:
You are claiming that there are no (read none) ancient texts supporting a popular belief of a messiah. That is demonstratively false and I gave you several examples of it.
No, John. No, no, no. You have it completely backwards.
I am asking for evidence that shows us that there WAS A WIDESPREAD/GENERAL POPULAR EXPECTATION of the coming of a conquering Messiah in Second Temple Judaism -- prior to the time of the First Jewish War. (By "widespread general popular" I do not mean "idiosyncratic sectarian".)
Just showing us a text that describes a coming messiah is not evidence that that view was believed upon and acted upon by the Jewish populace generally. You are committing the very error of circular reasoning that Green is pointing out.
We have texts saying a variety of things about messiahs. Not many from the era but a variety. That's not in dispute.
Do you want me to repeat what it is that I think we lack evidence for?
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:07 pm
by neilgodfrey
Stephan Huller wrote:What's with this 'first century' vs 'modern' debates? I am sorry but you people don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
It's obvious you have no idea about the scholarship in this area or how historical inquiry works. You have to resort to this sort of language as your fall-back position. Nice.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:08 am
by neilgodfrey
Stephan Huller wrote:Again I ask the enlightened members of this thread to explain to me - since the slavish devotion to the Law would only have been stronger, not weaker in antiquity, why we should expect that Jews would revolt 'just like any other' bunch of assholes in antiquity? The pagan world was not governed by a 'rule book,' the Jews were but somehow they're all the same when it comes to armed rebellion. Nonsense.
You would do well to expand your mind and study a wide range of peoples, cultures and civilizations. It may help you rehabilitate your favourite tribe to the human race in your own mind at least.
I recommend (not for Stephan but for anyone interested) for interesting insights into the origins of contemporary Jewish cultures and the historical roots for them (which will make clear that they have little to to with the Second Temple era) Slezkine's "The Jewish Century" and Elan's "The Pity of it All". There are many studies on the rise of rabbinic Judaism, too, that explain why it took on the character that it did and how unlike the Judaisms of the Second Temple era rabbinic Judaism became.
The simple fact remains that if we interpret our past through our present identities and wish-fulfilments or fears or whatever then we are guaranteed to create a mythic past that will reassure us and probably make us as intolerant and antagonistic to "the other" as we see in Stephan Huller's responses here. That sort of history (for most of us) was left behind in the mass wars of the twentieth century.
Re: Questioning the Historicity of Early 1C Popular Messiani
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:12 am
by neilgodfrey
I guess if my OP has come down to this I have to conclude that there can be no serious discussion of the grounds for the view of a popular messianic expectation among Jews up until the end of the Second Temple era on this forum. I will keep looking, though. Maybe one day I can come here and explain some good evidence we had all overlooked this time round.