Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 11:29 am
Made WHAT up out of thin air? I am telling you what he said himself. JA does not say he has personal knowledge of Jesus' genealogy, he says he is making an inference from Law.Mental flatliner wrote:This is getting stupid.Diogenes the Cynic wrote:Africanus does not claim to be citing documented records, he only cites Levirate tradition and infers the rest from that.
If you're claiming that Julius Africanus just made it up out of thin air, provide a source.
Source for what? Levirate law? What else does he claim to actually know? I think you don't actually read the sources you try to cite. You just harvest names from apologist websites or something and post them in vague terms, devoid of specific quotation or seeming knowledge of actual content or context.If you're claiming that Julius was quoting some other source, provide the source.
Here is the complete quote of Julius Africanus on the genealogies of Joseph:
Where does he claim to have a specific source of information here? He argues completely from the Old Testament, not from an claim of documentary sources (which you have not even shown ever existed in the first place).Some indeed incorrectly allege that this discrepant enumeration and mixing of the names both of priestly men, as they think, and royal, was made properly,1034 in order that Christ might be shown rightfully to be both Priest and King; as if any one disbelieved this, or had any other hope than this, that Christ is the High Priest of His Father, who presents our prayers to Him, and a supramundane King, who rules by the Spirit those whom He has delivered, a cooperator in the government of all things. And this is announced to us not by the catalogue of the tribes, nor by the mixing of the registered generations, but by the patriarchs and prophets. Let us not therefore descend to such religious trifling as to establish the kingship and priesthood of Christ by the interchanges of the names. For the priestly tribe of Levi, too, was allied with the kingly tribe of Juda, through the circumstance that Aaron married Elizabeth the sister of Naasson,1035 and that Eleazar again married the daughter of Phatiel,1036 and begat children. The evangelists, therefore, would thus have spoken falsely, affirming what was not truth, but a fictitious commendation. And for this reason the one traced the pedigree of Jacob the father of Joseph from David through Solomon; the other traced that of Heli also, though in a different way, the father of Joseph, from Nathan the son of David. And they ought not indeed to have been ignorant that both orders of the ancestors enumerated are the generation of David, the royal tribe of Juda.1037 For if Nathan was a prophet, so also was Solomon, and so too the father of both of them; and there were prophets belonging to many of the tribes, but priests belonging to none of the tribes, save the Levites only. To no purpose, then, is this fabrication of theirs. Nor shall an assertion of this kind prevail in the Church of Christ against the exact truth, so as that a lie should be contrived for the praise and glory of Christ. For who does not know that most holy word of the apostle also, who, when he was preaching and proclaiming the resurrection of our Saviour, and confidently affirming the truth, said with great fear, “If any say that Christ is not risen, and we assert and have believed this, and both hope for and preach that very thing, we are false witnesses of God, in alleging that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up?”1038 And if he who glorifies God the Father is thus afraid lest he should seem a false witness in narrating a marvellous fact, how should not he be justly afraid, who tries to establish the truth by a false statement, preparing an untrue opinion? For if the generations are different, and trace down no genuine seed to Joseph, and if all has been stated only with the view of establishing the position of Him who was to be born—to confirm the truth, namely, that He who was to be would be king and priest, there being at the same time no proof given, but the dignity of the words being brought down to a feeble hymn,—it is evident that no praise accrues to God from that, since it is a falsehood, but rather judgment returns on him who asserts it, because he vaunts an unreality as though it were reality. Therefore, that we may expose the ignorance also of him who speaks thus, and prevent any one from stumbling at this folly, I shall set forth the true history of these matters.
One more thing - even if JA had said he'd seen documents, that would not mean he was telling the truth. Your strange notion that a claim is entitled to a presumption of truth as the default is simply incorrect and not how history is done. Tacitus claims he saw the Emperor Vespasian heal a blind man. Do you believe him?
