Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ken Olson wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 12:21 am

JarekS wrote: ↑Sun Jul 28, 2024 10:11 pm It is one thing to draw an argument from existing evidence and another thing to create evidence to draw an argument.

Are you saying I created evidence? If so, could you say specifically where?

Did he write +60 years before Constantine? How old was Eusebius when he wrote if he was born in 264 and died in 340. Constantine became Augustus and Caesar of the western provinces in 307. Eusebius and Constantine are men of the same generation.
But that doesn't matter.

No, it doesn't matter. You frequently bring up stuff that does not matter and has no discernible logical connection to the claims you make.

The alleged motivation is still too weak for me to credibly justify the interpolation theory.

I do not hold your opinion as the gold standard and I suspect no one else on this forum (or probably elsewhere) does either. Your dismissal of my case without discussion or argument makes me think I should probably not waste time trying to engage with you.

A small digression
I started to like TF for one reason. All of Paul's knowledge of the historical Jesus does not extend beyond the information from the TF.
TF seems to be a testimony of generic information about the historical Jesus proclaimed Messiah by devotees locating him in time and space. From this information, the development of content went in two directions - revelations and myths (gospels). The authors of both groups competed with each other until the leaders selected the literary works.

This is again just an assertion of an opinion. The knowledge Paul claims to have of Jesus extends well beyond the TF. Jesus was descended from David (Rom 1.7) and he forbade divorce (1 Cor 7.10). Now one could argue that those are not referring to Jesus as an historical person who lived on earth, so aren't about the *historical* Jesus, but that is true of everything Paul says about Jesus.

Is it your goal in participating on this forum to present arguments that are credible to other people? Or just to make claims as to what you think is the case?

Best,

Ken

JarekS wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 1:30 pm ....and most recently Mason's work last year.

Chrissy Hansen wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 5:44 am

AdamKvanta wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 1:20 am I think I've changed my mind and now I think that the Separated Edition was earlier than the Chronograph indeed. Now I think it was first done by a Russian Christian (so not by a Jew) and later on, it was added to the Chronograph together with some other Christian additions, maybe as a reaction to Novgorodian Judaizers.

My reasons:

1. It seems much more sensible to make a translation of the History of the Jewish War first (as a single work) than to translate it right into the Chronograph.

2. Almost all variant readings of the Volokolam manuscript are closer to the Greek manuscript of the Jewish War than the readings of the Chronograph manuscripts. How is that possible? I haven't seen this addressed by Leeming & Leeming. Either the Volokam manuscript is more authentic than the Chronograph manuscripts or the author of the Volokam manuscript had the Greek manuscript of the Jewish War and repaired the errors in the Chronograph manuscript. But if he was repairing why did he leave all the non-Josephian additions?

3. If the Separated Edition was done earlier and then it deteriorated that would also explain the big omissions in the Separated Edition. The author of the Chronograph probably had some version of the Separated Edition already in bad shape and therefore he also used Hamartolos to fill these omissions (eg. in Book 1).

In conclusion, I don't think the extra Christian elements were removed, I think they were added. However, I don't think there is anything authentically Josephian in the extra material of the Slavonic Testimonium flavianum.

Where is the source for claim (2)? Also, as Creed and others noted the Vol 651 codex is not even remotely a straightforward translation. It is heavily mutilated, so your claim that it was a straightforward translation at first makes no sense since NO manuscript appears to be a straight-up translation at all.

maryhelena wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 10:54 pm

JarekS wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 1:30 pm ....and most recently Mason's work last year.

Do you have a link to Mason's work last year ?

JarekS wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2024 2:06 pm Based on Mason's essay..
The problem is that in referring to scenic elements in his two-volume work, the author of Luke-Acts (whose name we don’t know) mentions just a few things that happen to be things featured by Josephus. So there’s been a long discussion about the best way to explain this. The most common explanation is that they drew on a common source, or common knowledge. Mason's contribution arises from deep and careful study of Josephus, which has identified some of these elements as apparently peculiar to Josephus’ way of writing up the past — not the bare mention of events, but the distinctive Greek language he uses to suit his themes. But if this is Josephus’ distinctive language, and if it turns up in L-A, then L-A must have been influenced, directly or indirectly (by a middleman), by Josephus. The best way to refute Mason's proposal would be to show that these were not distinctive traits of Josephus’ work, which would be hard to do.
So together with Goldberg's statistical analysis of Emmaus Narrative and TF we have big bada boom.
It seems that the Gospel Jesus is a cover of an old forgotten story told by Josephus. Candyman
In the content business, location in time and space matters

JarekS wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 1:30 pm The seminar participants dated the Acts to the years 110-120, and some to the years 100-150.
This opened up a direct transmission line from Josephus to Luke, which radically changes Goldberg's conclusions.

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2024 1:04 pm About the relation between the Emmaus episode and the TF, Richard Carrier writes:

On this much I agree with Goldberg: his previous demonstration that the TF is just mindlessly, uncritically, and slavishly copied from the Emmaus narrative in Luke is in my opinion conclusive (see Gary Goldberg, “The Coincidences of the Testimonium of Josephus and the Emmaus Narrative of Luke,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 13 (1995): 59–77). The probability of that conclusion, on the evidence he presented, simply beats all alternatives now

(The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas and the Canonical Gospels in Conversation with Josephus (n.p.: Journal of Higher Criticism Supplement Series, 2020, my bold)


Also Samuel Zinner agrees with Carrier on the reality of a such relation, but with a crucial difference:

...of extreme interest is that there is in fact a literary relation between the Testimonium Flavianum and Luke’s Emmaus story, which Gary J. Goldberg has identified.56 It is their uniquely shared language in the statement “he appeared to them again spending a third day restored to life,” rather than the more familiar “on the third day.” How do we explain this relationship? One might argue that Josephus’ text in this instance includes expressions not typical of Josephus, and suggest Luke has been used to alter Josephus to some extent at least. On the other hand, one can counter that Josephus used many sources, and some of these could have contained language atypical of Josephus which he decided to reproduce more or less literally. However, because we know Luke has used Josephus elsewhere, the most parsimonious explanation is that Luke is paraphrasing Josephus.

(my bold)

How do you deal with it?

• It seems that the Ken's solution is the denial of the premise (there was none relation between the Emmaus narrative and the Testimonium Flavianum, contra Goldberg).

• While the Richard Carrier's solution is the very stupid insistence that Luke-Acts was written in the first century (sic) or at any case before the Antiquities 18.