Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Loisy allows me to appreciate it better the way how the name of Pilate was connected with Chrestus, before, and then with Christus.

• The Roman authorities heard about a Chrestus by marcionites. Evidence: in Bithiny Pliny the Younger had known probably marcionites, Bithiny being near the Pont, the place of provenance of Marcion of Sinope.

• This Chrestus caused riots, according to Roman authorities. Evidence: the suetonian impulsore Chresto.

• How could a Chrestus quasi deus cause continually riots? He was probably a seditious rebel, so the Roman authorities believed. Hence he was not a Chrestus, they explained, he was Christus. Evidence: Tacitus's auctor nominis eius.

• So Loisy, explaining the Couchoud's view:
  
  
  De là proviendrait l'erreur de Tacite, erreur dont Marcion aurait fait son profit.
  
  (p. 124)

Result: Marcion was the first Christian who connected Pilate and Jesus on the same row.

Alfred Loisy était le Bart Ehrman de son temps. Tres critique quand il étudiait les évangiles, au point même d’avoir été excommunié du catholicisme.

Mais comme Ehrman, il a la faculté de se transformer en apologiste conservateur quand il défendait l’historicité de Jesus

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 6:41 am Alfred Loisy was a mere Christian apologist.

Cute. Wrangled with the Pope, tussled with Harnack, on the Index, and excommunicated... but he didn't like Couchoud. So bad man bad.

We live in a secular era where practically nobody cares and the only way to get a rise at all is to be cartoonish and vulgar, but then still nobody really cares. But sure, let's congratulate ourselves for taking absolutely no risk and showing absolutely no merit for the kind of stances we take, when on the average they are nothing more than a natural result of our own biases.

I expected a such answer, which is the reason why I have taken the book.

Judge by yourself:

Couchoud: James is called "brother of Lord", just as Abraham is called "friend of God".

Loisy: but Abraham is not always called "friend of God", while James is always called "brother of the Lord".


Here I am remembered about Gospel of Thomas where James is only called "the Just".

What disturbs more, as specified in previous post, is the appeal to interpolation to neutralize in advance the Pauline passages requiring necessarily the hypothesis of an explosion of ecstasy and visions by early Christians.

This appeal to interpolation proves at least that Loisy concedes implicitly the logical implication: if the relative Pauline passages are genuine, then Couchoud's mythicism is correct.

Curiously, the only point where Loisy doesn't use the card "interpolation" against Couchoud, is when he denies that Nazareth is interpolated in Mark. So he can confute easily Couchoud's claim that in Mark also, just as in *Ev, Jesus descends from above in Capernaum.

This emphasizes a point until now too much ignored, indeed: if Nazareth was absent in Mark's incipit (spin's suggestion on this forum), then was the place of provenance of Jesus the heaven above Capernaum? Does not this fact alone prove the marcionite priority over Mark?

Sinouhe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 7:09 am Alfred Loisy était le Bart Ehrman de son temps. Tres critique quand il étudiait les évangiles, au point même d’avoir été excommunié du catholicisme.

Mais comme Ehrman, il a la faculté de se transformer en apologiste conservateur quand il défendait l’historicité de Jesus

Indeed so. Sadly, Loisy could be vitriolic and abusive towards Couchoud. He went beyond a straightforward intellectual defence of his views. Guignebert, too.

But I cannot think of Ehrman anywhere near the same level as Loisy in critical nous. Ehrman is more of a popularizer of what I see as basically mainstream critical scholarship and when he tries to do more his arguments are so often embarrassingly fallacious. He may have had a great hit with the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture once, but since then...?

neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 10:27 pm Indeed so. Sadly, Loisy could be vitriolic and abusive towards Couchoud. He went beyond a straightforward intellectual defence of his views. Guignebert, too.

But I cannot think of Ehrman anywhere near the same level as Loisy in critical nous. Ehrman is more of a popularizer of what I see as basically mainstream critical scholarship and when he tries to do more his arguments are so often embarrassingly fallacious. He may have had a great hit with the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture once, but since then...?

Ehrman just turned sides, period - and money is the obvious motive there. As if we didn't have enough clumsy apologists in disguise

Only a bit from Couchoud's reply to Loisy:


Jésus dieu ou homme ?
In la Nrf , Paris 1939