Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

maryhelena wrote:My argument relates to a remembrance of a past event in the gospel 30/33 c.e. time frame.

I come to praise maryhelena, not to bury her.
The SINGLE episode around Antigonus is appealing to me as an Icing-on-the-Cake finish to the Hasmonean/Ascension of the Flavians Rewrite by the Romans. I would feel much better about it if there were not several other "3 Day" Scenarios that fit "at least" as well. A N Whitehead was concerned with consciousness as a rather contemplative reflection of something NOT being the case. With that in mind...

Josephus, Wars..., 7, 1, 3:

"Hereupon Titus ordered those whose business it was to read the list of all that had performed great exploits in this war, whom he called to him by their names, and commended them before the company, and rejoiced in them in the same manner as a man would have rejoiced in his own exploits. He also put on their heads crowns of gold, and golden ornaments about their necks, and gave them long spears of gold...So when they had all these honors bestowed on them, according to his own appointment made to every one, and he had wished all sorts of happiness to the whole army, he came down, among the great acclamations which were made to him, and then betook himself to offer thank-offerings [to the gods], and at once sacrificed a vast number of oxen, that stood ready at the altars, and distributed them among the army to feast on. And when he had staid three days among the principal commanders, and so long feasted with them, he sent away the rest of his army to the several places where they would be every one best situated..."

This is not a refutation of your Thesis. In fact, there is a glimmer of support here for your work. However, there are several "3 days" Motifs at work here, among them a most important one:

The Interregnum between Vitellius and Domitian. Is it possible to get to "3 days" from Vitellius attempting to forfeit Rulership by surrendering his ring to the Temple of Concord and the troops proclaiming Domitian as Caesar (again, before Vespasian was proclaimed Caesar in Rome...)?

The "Celebration" of Rome murdering a King of Judea is very suggestive. What would make the Thesis compelling would be to show that there is a Direct Link to the Story being given - God's Power is being transferred to Rome from the Jews as then constituted. "Jesus" on a Standard gives the picture. I fear, however, that the picture of Antigonus given is incomplete. I can easily find the other Regal Deaths in the NT and also deaths that were far more noble than "Antigone" (esp. Alexander Jannaeus), although from a Roman perspective, that would be a highly desirable object of satire. You may be correct but the Thesis requires greater relata than a "Stand Alone" Datum.

As I've stated before, however, I believe you are very close to many insights.

CW

The 'picture of Antigonus' doesn't have to be complete; it only has to be embellished.

neilgodfrey wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:I'll be corrected if I have overlooked something in Ehrman's book/debate, but my recollection is that Ehrman traces his trajectory in its earlier stages through the different presentations of Jesus in the canonical gospels -- Yet, yet -- all of that was a good twenty to forty years after Paul. . . .

I have to make that correction. While Bart bypasses Paul in his description of the steps towards the high christology in his debate he does begin with Paul in his book -- chapter 6.

My initial reservation stands. Ehrman cites Romans 1:3-4 as the sole Pauline evidence for a very early (pre-Pauline) creed of a human Davidic messiah who was made a son of God by the resurrection. But a closer look at his argument for this view of Romans 1:3-4 falls to pieces, I believe, on closer inspection. I have posted the details at Is Ehrman’s Pre-Pauline Quotation an Anti-Marcionite Interpolation?

Essentially, the arguments Ehrman deploys t conclude the passage is pre-Pauline are the same ones used elsewhere for interpolation.

While Romans 1:3-4 is a key text for Ehrman's exaltation christology he also uses texts from Acts:

Acts 13:33-33
Acts 2:36
Acts 5:31

Ehrman's sees these texts as upholding an exaltation christology brought about via resurrection. He views these texts as referencing the earliest views of the christ figure. Ehrman building his position from the gospel Jesus story. That Ehrman is wrong re assuming a historical Jesus does not negate his position re an early exaltation christology for the gospel Jesus figure. The question is: If the gospel figure is not historical - what could the early exaltation christology relate to? I would suggest that it relates to the Jerusalem 'below' - flesh and blood. Not the flesh and blood of any historical man but man in the abstract, a symbolic man that reflects human nature; bodily nature. How is this 'man' raised up, exalted? Genesis might well have the answer:

Adam becomes like god when he eats the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. i.e. Adam becomes an intellectual being, a spiritual being. Obviously, Adam is still a physical being. Adam has a dual nature. Physical body and a spiritual, unseen, intellect. That Genesis scenario indicates an exaltation christology; man becomes godlike. The incarnation, the high christology idea, relates to a top down scenario instead of the bottom up exaltation christology. Incarnation theology relates to an intellectual context not a physical context. The Word becoming flesh does not indicate that physical laws are negated but rather that wisdom, that ideas can, as it were, become us. Our intellect and our physicality work together in the pursuit of living our lives as rational beings.

Our intellect is evolutionary. Ideas evolve and ideas die. Crucifixion, sacrifice, can have symbolic meaning within intellectual evolution. That's is Pauline theology/philosophy. 'Jesus' crucified in a celestial realm i.e. an intellectual context. Pauline high christology (theology/philosophy) does not negate exaltation christology - the 'christology' whereby flesh and blood is exalted to being godlike by virtue of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Two very different contexts but two contexts that interact one with the other.The gospel story highlights exaltation christology. The Pauline epistles emphasis an incarnation, high christology. It's not a choice between one or the other. It's not a choice between body and spirit. Flesh and blood, historical reality, has a place in the NT story - as does theology/philosophical ideas. The Jerusalem 'above' requires a Jerusalem 'below. Mythicists really do need to realize that, as Wells wrote some years ago in connection with the ideas of Doherty - it's not all in the mind....

neilgodfrey wrote: My initial reservation stands. Ehrman cites Romans 1:3-4 as the sole Pauline evidence for a very early (pre-Pauline) creed of a human Davidic messiah who was made a son of God by the resurrection. But a closer look at his argument for this view of Romans 1:3-4 falls to pieces, I believe, on closer inspection. I have posted the details at Is Ehrman’s Pre-Pauline Quotation an Anti-Marcionite Interpolation?

And one more -- after the above I had a look at Ehrman's arguments for Acts citing very early Christological tradition and found Ehrman presenting the very opposite arguments he set out in his 1993 Orthodox Corruption .....

Another Flip Flop Argument: Ehrman again on early Low Christology

The imaginary evidence of pre-Pauline texts has all vanished like the Cheshire cat.

neilgodfrey wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote: My initial reservation stands. Ehrman cites Romans 1:3-4 as the sole Pauline evidence for a very early (pre-Pauline) creed of a human Davidic messiah who was made a son of God by the resurrection. But a closer look at his argument for this view of Romans 1:3-4 falls to pieces, I believe, on closer inspection. I have posted the details at Is Ehrman’s Pre-Pauline Quotation an Anti-Marcionite Interpolation?

And one more -- after the above I had a look at Ehrman's arguments for Acts citing very early Christological tradition and found Ehrman presenting the very opposite arguments he set out in his 1993 Orthodox Corruption .....

Another Flip Flop Argument: Ehrman again on early Low Christology

The imaginary evidence of pre-Pauline texts has all vanished like the Cheshire cat.

From the quote below I don't see where Ehrman is ''presenting the very opposite arguments'' to those he presents in How Jesus became God. All I can see is that Ehrman has refined his argument re early adoptionist christology - now preferring the term 'exaltation' christology to an 'adoptionist' christology - for reasons he set out on page of 232 of the Kindle edition of How Jesus became God.

Bart Ehrman: The Orthodox corruption of scripture : the effect of early Christological controversies on the text of the New Testament.

• Many of these preliterary traditions
  evidence adoptionistic views.
  
  One of the earliest examples derives from the
  opening verses of Paul’s letter to the Romans, in
  which he appears to be quoting a bipartite
  christological creed: “[Christ Jesus . . .] who came
  from the seed of David according to the flesh, who
  was appointed Son of God in power according to the
  Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead”
  (Rom 1:3–4). That the text embodies a pre-Pauline
  creed is evident on both linguistic and ideational
  grounds: terms such as (“appointed”) and
  (“Spirit of holiness”) occur nowhere
  else in Paul, nor does the notion of Jesus’ Davidic
  descent. In particular, the idea that Jesus received a
  divine appointment to be God’s Son at his
  resurrection is not at all Pauline. What has struck a
  number of scholars in this connection is that the
  highly balanced structure that one normally finds in
  such creedal fragments is here broken by a phrase
  that is distinctively Pauline. Once this
  Pauline feature is removed, a balanced structure is
  restored, and one is left with a christological
  confession that appears to pre-date the writings of
  our earliest Christian author, or at least his letter to
  the Romans (dated usually in the late 50s C.E.), a
  confession that acknowledges that Christ attained his
  status of divine sonship only at his resurrection.
  
  Interestingly, the same christological notion
  occurs in other preliterary sources embedded in the
  New Testament. Thus, a form-critical analysis of
  Paul’s speech in Acts 13 reveals traditional material
  that has been incorporated in a surprisingly unedited
  form. Here Paul makes the following
  pronouncement: “What God promised to the [Jewish]
  fathers he has fulfilled to us their children, by raising
  Jesus from the dead—as it is written in the second
  Psalm, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’”
  (vv. 32–33). The force of the final clause should not
  be minimized: it is on the day of his resurrection that
  Jesus receives his sonship. This corresponds closely
  with other preliterary traditions of the book of Acts.
  In his sermon on the day of Pentecost, Peter
  proclaims that Jesus’ unjust treatment at the hands
  of his executioners was reversed by his glorious
  vindication when God raised him from the dead and
  exalted him to his right hand: “Let all the house of
  Israel know that God made him both Lord and Christ,
  this Jesus whom you crucified” (2:36); later, when
  addressing Cornelius’s household, Peter speaks of
  Jesus as “the one who has been appointed (
  , cf. Rom 1:4) by God to be the judge of
  the living and the dead” (10:42). Paul also, in his
  speech on the Areopagus, speaks of God having
  appointed ( ) Jesus in connection with his
  resurrection (17:31). The adoptionistic thrust of these
  passages is not mitigated by a minor change of
  wording, as happened in Romans 1:3-4, but by their
  incorporation into the wider context of Luke-Acts,
  where Jesus is the Son of God already at his birth
  (Luke 1:35).
  
  As I have already stated, most of the later
  adoptionists that we can actually identify—the
  Ebionites, Theodotus, Artemon—located the time of
  Jesus’ adoption not at his resurrection, but at his
  baptism. One would naturally expect that unless they
  invented this notion themselves, traces of it should
  be found in earlier traditions. Such traces do in fact
  exist, and most of them, as we shall see, were
  changed in one way or another by various scribes
  during the history of their transmission. Adoptionists
  could read the Gospel of Mark itself as one indication
  that Jesus was made the Son of God at his baptism.
  There is no birth narrative here, no mention of Jesus
  at all until he is an adult; his first public appearance
  comes at his baptism, when the Spirit of God comes
  upon him and the divine voice proclaims him to be
  his Son. Whether Mark “intended” an adoptionistic
  Christology is difficult to say. What is clear is that
  this, our earliest Gospel, makes absolutely no
  reference to Jesus’ virginal conception, nor to his
  pre-existence or deity.
  
  With respect to other New Testament traditions
  concerning Jesus’ baptism, the earliest textual
  witnesses of the Gospel according to Luke preserve a
  conspicuously adoptionistic formula in the voice
  from heaven, “You are my Son, today I have
  begotten you” (Luke 3:22). I will argue that this text
  is, in fact, original to Luke and that it coincides
  perfectly with his portrayal of Jesus’ baptism
  elsewhere in his two-volume work. Here it is enough
  to observe that an adoptionistic construal of the
  scene appears to be as primitive as our oldest textual
  witnesses to the Gospel.
  
  Other potentially adoptionistic texts within the
  New Testament will be discussed throughout the
  course of this chapter, as we see how they were
  invariably changed by one or another orthodox
  scribe. This introductory sketch is sufficient to show
  that the adoptionists of the second and third
  centuries stood in a long line of christological
  tradition and could therefore appeal to this earlier
  tradition in support of their views.

What I wrote in an earlier thread on Ehrman's How Jesus Became God merits restating:

That Ehrman's position in How Jesus Became God is able to hold to both an exaltation and an incarnation christology is a challenge to Carrier's version of the ahistoricist/mythicism.

viewtopic.php?p=31928#p31928

In fact it is this book, How Jesus Became God, that is really Ehrman's challenge to the Carrier/Doherty mythicists - not his book Did Jesus Exist?


------------------------------------
For those interested in earlier threads on How Jesus Became God:

Richard Carrier slams Ehrman's latest book

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1413&hilit

Ehrman's "How Jesus Became a God" is now out.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=482

---------------------------
Richard Carrier:

Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/6923

Ulan wrote: I know that many people feel embarrassed by not being able to answer a question, but I prefer no answer to an answer of which I know that it has a high probability of being wrong (those answers still have their place in questions of life and death, where a decision is, as far as probabilities go, better than no decision, but that's not the case here). That doesn't mean that it is, nevertheless, fine to think about these matters and to point at problems, but it's always good to also acknowledge the limits of the own approach.

Edit: Actually, if I had a job in this field, I would probably follow your suggestion. In that case, it's necessary to cling to an idea and fight for it. Indecision is lastly boring, and nobody will listen to you. But that says more about human psychology than anything else.

I like your prudence, and respect your point of view and yet I am convinced that it can be demonstrated, at least in theory, the non-existence of Jesus ''beyond a reasonable doubt''. Personally I think that R G Price has summarized very well the best demonstration of the thesis when he wrote:

The case stands on several legs.

#1) Mark is fiction – but this doesn’t prove that Jesus never existed
#2) Key scenes in Mark can be shown to be literary allusions, which proves that their inclusion in other Gospels must have originated from Mark, not some other external source.
#3) This shows that every narrative about Jesus ultimately is based on Mark.
#4) The fact that every narrative about Jesus is based on Mark, must mean that there was no other information about Jesus to be had. It was the only source of “information” about a human Jesus.

#4 is what proves that Jesus didn’t exist, and it is proven on two counts: #1) All of the narratives about Jesus are based on Mark #2) There were significant doubts about the early existence of Jesus among several so-called Christian sects, which 2nd-4th century apologists had to combat. The ONLY evidence that they ever mustered was theological reading based on the Gospels, THAT’S IT.

The issue is not that we can’t go back today and find evidence because it was too long ago, the issue is that within 100-200 years of this person’s supposed lifetime there was a compelling need to provide evidence for his existence, and we know that early Christians did in fact search for many of the physical pieces of evidence of Jesus’s existence, like his tomb, like the place where he was crucified, etc., but the fact is that THEY NEVER FOUND ANY, within 100 years of his supposed life.

And the issue is that these guys were trying very hard. The 2nd-4th century apologists had a lot of opposition and they were trying desperately to PROVE that Jesus had in fact been incarnate “in the flesh”, but the ONLY evidence they EVER mustered was the Gospels. The entire case for Jesus having existed “in the flesh”, made by apologists within 100-300 years of his supposed existence, rested entirely on the Gospels. And their case for the “reliability” of the Gospels rested entirely on the belief that what they had was four separate independent eyewitness or second hand accounts that corroborated each other.

So without the Gospels, the 2nd-4th century case for the “humanity of Jesus” utterly falls apart, and basically the Docetists and Marcionites win.

I might differ from Price on the identity of first Gospel (for example, it may have been the gospel of Marcion and not Mark) and yet the proof that Jesus did not exist would vary slightly from his.

I can't see pre-Gospel traditions behind our Gospels. To affirm that Jesus existed because there were oral or written sources behind our Gospels means explaining what is not seen by introducing something else that is not seen. And so on ad infinitum.

To be ''Jesus Agnostic'' means basically to wait until new archaeological evidence emerges about Jesus and the Christian origins (decisive evidence pro or against HJ). My problem with Jesus agnosticism is that I am tired of waiting. Because it is implied, in expectation of new evidence, that we are hoping / assuming already its existence. But why to hope for new evidence when precisely those who had every interest in preserving it (i.e. the same winners) did not find it?

Giuseppe wrote:My problem with Jesus agnosticism is that I am tired of waiting.

That's what I said about human psychology up there. When humans don't have an answer, they just invent one, because not getting an answer becomes unbearable. That's also as good an explanation for religion as any.

maryhelena wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote: My initial reservation stands. Ehrman cites Romans 1:3-4 as the sole Pauline evidence for a very early (pre-Pauline) creed of a human Davidic messiah who was made a son of God by the resurrection. But a closer look at his argument for this view of Romans 1:3-4 falls to pieces, I believe, on closer inspection. I have posted the details at Is Ehrman’s Pre-Pauline Quotation an Anti-Marcionite Interpolation?

And one more -- after the above I had a look at Ehrman's arguments for Acts citing very early Christological tradition and found Ehrman presenting the very opposite arguments he set out in his 1993 Orthodox Corruption .....

Another Flip Flop Argument: Ehrman again on early Low Christology

The imaginary evidence of pre-Pauline texts has all vanished like the Cheshire cat.

From the quote below I don't see where Ehrman is ''presenting the very opposite arguments'' to those he presents in How Jesus became God.

Read the post where I quote Ehrman at one time making a judgement based upon the assumption that we should expect Luke to be consistent and another time arguing the opposite based on the claim that we should NOT expect Luke to be consistent. Whatever suits. I quoted his contradictory arguments.

neilgodfrey wrote: Read the post where I quote Ehrman at one time making a judgement based upon the assumption that we should expect Luke to be consistent and another time arguing the opposite based on the claim that we should NOT expect Luke to be consistent. Whatever suits. I quoted his contradictory arguments.

.......
''......I had a look at Ehrman's arguments for Acts citing very early Christological tradition and found Ehrman presenting the very opposite arguments he set out in his 1993 Orthodox Corruption .....

Ehrman's argument in both books is that a 'low' christology was earlier than a 'high' christology. Whether Ehrman considered the Lukan writer to be consistent or inconsistent does not change Ehrman's position that there was a pre-Pauline adoptionist/exaluation christology. That's the argument that needs to be addressed ......

maryhelena wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote: Read the post where I quote Ehrman at one time making a judgement based upon the assumption that we should expect Luke to be consistent and another time arguing the opposite based on the claim that we should NOT expect Luke to be consistent. Whatever suits. I quoted his contradictory arguments.

.......
''......I had a look at Ehrman's arguments for Acts citing very early Christological tradition and found Ehrman presenting the very opposite arguments he set out in his 1993 Orthodox Corruption .....

Ehrman's argument in both books is that a 'low' christology was earlier than a 'high' christology. Whether Ehrman considered the Lukan writer to be consistent or inconsistent does not change Ehrman's position that there was a pre-Pauline adoptionist/exaluation christology. That's the argument that needs to be addressed ......

You seem to have missed the point of the post and the contradiction at the heart of his claim that there is pre-Pauline evidence to support his view of the earliest christology being low. Or you just want to find a way to disagree with me on something.