Why Not Engage the Evidence for Historicity?

[kllindley]

9 hours ago, Gray said:

It's impossible to prove a negative. CFR for citations of critical scholarship that argue Christianity before the first century CE.

 

While Christian theology embraces the OT, what makes it uniquely Christian (and not Jewish) starts to form in the NT and the post-NT church fathers and creeds. This is elementary stuff, klindley.

I am not going to respond to the CFR. I did not claim that any critical scholarship posits Christianity before the first century CE. I asked whether you knew of any scholarship that explained why the apparent references to Christian theology and doctrine in the OT were not such. You couldn't. Nevo cited a few, which I appreciate. 

It's funny that you come here and proclaim such allegiance to critical scholarship, but never quote or even refer to any. The essense of scholarship is accurately attributing sources of information, which you refuse to do. Getting juvenile and dismissing any critical examination of your assertions, which you further assert are "elementary," is humorous, but not persuasive. 

Edited July 1, 2018 by kllindley

[kllindley]

18 hours ago, Nevo said:

You don't need to take my word for it that scholars locate the origins of Christianity in the first century AD. Virtually any book on Christian origins will tell you as much. If you're looking for a specific reference, try Jonathan Knight's Christian Origins (T&T Clark, 2008).

Regarding the early Christian tendency to read Jesus into the Old Testament, here is Larry Hurtado (a critical biblical scholar):

You will note that Hurtado considers the idea that Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy and was prefigured by OT "types" to be a Christian "innovation" that arose in the first century AD.

Thank you for the reference. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

8 hours ago, Gray said:

Are you sure you carefully looked at the context of those citations?

Yep.

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The theme of the high priesthood of Christ in Hebrews has been dealt with extensively in secondary literature ... See also M. Barker, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy ...

 

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Several scholars have argued that some groups of priests and Levites believed that they could receive visions of the heavenly realm or actually enter into the heavenly throne room through certain ritual or liturgical practices.[38] ... 38 Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy, 188–201; Rachel Elior, “The Priestly Nature of the Mystical Heritage in the Heykalot Literature,” in Expérience et écriture mystiques dans les religions du livre: actes d’un colloque international tenu par le Centre d’études Juives, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne 1994 (ed. Paul B. Fenton and Roland Goetschel; EJM 22; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 41–54; eadem, The Three Temples, passim. Torleif Elgvin, “Priests on Earth as in Heaven: Jewish Light on the Book of Revelation,” in Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament (ed. Florentino García Martínez; STDJ 85; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 257–78; idem, “Temple Mysticism,” 227–42.

 

Quote

On the veil as a symbolic boundary in ancient Jewish and early Christian mystical texts, see Barker, Margaret, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2003) 202–28.

It's downright embarrassing to see researchers citing Barker's work in such a way, as if they haven't figured out yet that she's so on the fringes of mainstream scholarship that she should instead be summarily dismissed. At the very least, if they're going to cite her work they should at least be talking about how fringey it is and citing her in a way that demonstrates their understanding of this. Oh dear.

[Nevo]

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Unlike you, I cite both sides in the debate and am well aware of the diversity of views.  You need to begin by acknowledging those differences of opinion.

Regarding 4Q285, the "debate" ended in 1992. You seem to be in denial of this fact.

You wrote:

• "John Collins translates frag 5 line 4 as 'the Prince of the Congrega­tion, the Branch of David, will kill him',[9] against Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise's primary reading of 'they will put to death the Leader of the Communi­ty, the Bran[ch of David],' though they offer the alternative favored by Gaster and Martinez.[10]"

What you neglect to mention here is that Eisenman's and Wise's reading has been universally rejected by other DSS scholars. It was announced to great fanfare in late 1991 and was quickly shot down. Geza Vermes convened a seminar of 20 experts at Oxford the following year and their unanimous conclusion was that the fragment does not speak of a slain messiah. That remains the overwhelming consensus of scholars who've looked at this text. As someone who professes to follow the scholarship, you must know this. Yet you nevertheless present it to unsuspecting readers as a perfectly legitimate alternate reading, and even boldface it for emphasis.

For balance, you might consider adding the following references to the next version of your paper (which any responsible treatment ought to include):

• Geza Vermes, "The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research Seminar of the Rule of War from Cave 4 (4Q485)," Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992): 85–90.
• Markus Bockmuehl, "A 'Slain Messiah' in 4Q Serekh Milhamah (4Q285)?" Tyndale Bulletin 43, no. 1 (1992): 155–169.
• Martin G. Abegg Jr., "Messianic Hope and 4Q285: A Reassessment," Journal of Biblical Literature 113, no. 1 (1994): 81–91.
• Bilhah Nitzan, "Benedictions and Instructions for the Eschatological Community (11QBer; 4Q285)," Revue de Qumrân 16, no. 1 (1993): 77–90.
• Philip S. Alexander, "A Reconstruction and Reading of 4Q285 (4QSefer ha-Milhamah)," Revue de Qumrân 19, no. 3 (2000): 333–348.

By the way, Alexander—one of the editors of 4Q285 in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series—has this to say about the fragment in question (now renamed fragment 7):

P.S.  Florentino García Martínez doesn't favor Eisenman and Wise's reading either. Not sure where you got that from.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Nevo

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Regarding 4Q285, the "debate" ended in 1992. You seem to be in denial of this fact.

You wrote:

• "John Collins translates frag 5 line 4 as 'the Prince of the Congrega­tion, the Branch of David, will kill him',[9] against Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise's primary reading of 'they will put to death the Leader of the Communi­ty, the Bran[ch of David],' though they offer the alternative favored by Gaster and Martinez.[10]"

What you neglect to mention here is that Eisenman's and Wise's reading has been universally rejected by other DSS scholars. It was announced to great fanfare in late 1991 and was quickly shot down. Geza Vermes convened a seminar of 20 experts at Oxford the following year and their unanimous conclusion was that the fragment does not speak of a slain messiah. That remains the overwhelming consensus of scholars who've looked at this text. As someone who professes to follow the scholarship, you must know this. Yet you nevertheless present it to unsuspecting readers as a perfectly legitimate alternate reading, and even boldface it for emphasis.

For balance, you might consider adding the following references to the next version of your paper (which any responsible treatment ought to include):

• Geza Vermes, "The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research Seminar of the Rule of War from Cave 4 (4Q485)," Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992): 85–90.
• Markus Bockmuehl, "A 'Slain Messiah' in 4Q Serekh Milhamah (4Q285)?" Tyndale Bulletin 43, no. 1 (1992): 155–169.
• Martin G. Abegg Jr., "Messianic Hope and 4Q285: A Reassessment," Journal of Biblical Literature 113, no. 1 (1994): 81–91.
• Bilhah Nitzan, "Benedictions and Instructions for the Eschatological Community (11QBer; 4Q285)," Revue de Qumrân 16, no. 1 (1993): 77–90.
• Philip S. Alexander, "A Reconstruction and Reading of 4Q285 (4QSefer ha-Milhamah)," Revue de Qumrân 19, no. 3 (2000): 333–348.

By the way, Alexander—one of the editors of 4Q285 in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series—has this to say about the fragment in question (now renamed fragment 7):

P.S.  Florentino García Martínez doesn't favor Eisenman and Wise's reading either. Not sure where you got that from.

Thank you for the very helpful comments, Nevo.  I shall certainly take them into consideration in my future rewrite of that section.  You correctly perceive that I have formal paper which discusses those various claims.  Eisenmann was one of my teachers, by the way, and I spent many long hours debating him.  I always considered him a bit over the top, but he was always willing to entertain my objections to some of his provocative ideas.

That, however, is only one item in a long list of characteristics of Qumran which precede Jewish Christianity (often most pointed in Johannine literature), and particularly applicable to the Suffering Servant theme.

[Robert F. Smith]

22 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

..........................
I don't think we can assume that Joseph Smith's translation of Nephi's apocryphal visions recorded on the small plates were not influenced by what he had read in Mormon's abridgment of the Book of Lehi. It seems more likely that his second pass through that history would have been greatly influenced by the abridgment of Mormon, a 5th century Christian. Joseph's personal visions and interactions with angels and prophets (including Nephi and Mormon) would have also influenced the translation of the small plates.

...................... If Joseph was personally schooled by Nephi in the 1820s, its impossible to argue that Jesus Christ appearing in 1st and 2nd Nephi is an anachronism. But I admit, it doesn't make it any less weird.

Would you apply the same consideration to the Early Modern English translator of the book of Lehi, and then the books of Nephi?  I wonder whether Don Bradley has commented on this question?

[Nevo]

10 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Thank you for the very helpful comments, Nevo.  I shall certainly take them into consideration in my future rewrite of that section.  You correctly perceive that I have formal paper which discusses those various claims.  Eisenmann was one of my teachers, by the way, and I spent many long hours debating him.  I always considered him a bit over the top, but he was always willing to entertain my objections to some of his provocative ideas.

I was just re-reading the Wikipedia entry on Eisenman. Can't believe he's in his 80s already, but then E. P. Sanders is too. Anyway, he sounds like he had quite an interesting life before entering academia. And it looks like you both spent time on kibbutzim.I expect you and he had a lot to talk about.

[Rajah Manchou]

41 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Would you apply the same consideration to the Early Modern English translator of the book of Lehi, and then the books of Nephi?  I wonder whether Don Bradley has commented on this question?

I see it like this. Let's say I give you my mission journal (1998) to transcribe. You complete the task, but you lose the transcript. Not to worry, let's meet up and I can tell you all about it. After we have talked at length, and I have shared all my 21st century thoughts and ideas with you, how close to the original 20th century journal will your transcript be? Most likely you will find it difficult to reconstruct my original journal without adding out-of-place redactions from our more recent conversations about the same events.

This is what Joseph would have been dealing with. Before he knew the small plates existed, and before he lost the 116 pages, he had long conversations with the authors of the Book of Mormon about the history of the Lehites. These 19th century manifestations of Nephi and Moroni would have been familiar with Christianity and the KJV of the Bible. Who knows, maybe they spoke EModE. Dare we speculate that the bulk of the translation happened during these visits?

But even if we don't allow for angelic visits, it is still possible that Joseph's translation of the small plates were influenced by his earlier translation of Mormon's abridgment and the lost 116 pages. Mormon was a Christian. Mormon was familiar with the teachings of Jesus. Since Joseph wasn't reading off the Small Plates, its safe to assume that 1st and 2nd Nephi are heavily dependent on Mormon's abridgment of the Large Plates.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Robert F. Smith]

38 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

I see it like this. Let's say I give you my mission journal (1998) to transcribe. You complete the task, but you lose the transcript. Not to worry, let's meet up and I can tell you all about it. After we have talked at length, and I have shared all my 21st century thoughts and ideas with you, how close to the original 20th century journal will your transcript be? Most likely you will find it difficult to reconstruct my original journal without adding out-of-place redactions from our more recent conversations about the same events.

This is what Joseph would have been dealing with. Before he knew the small plates existed, and before he lost the 116 pages, he had long conversations with the authors of the Book of Mormon about the history of the Lehites. These 19th century manifestations of Nephi and Moroni would have been familiar with Christianity and the KJV of the Bible. Who knows, maybe they spoke EModE. Dare we speculate that the bulk of the translation happened during these visits?

But even if we don't allow for angelic visits, it is still possible that Joseph's translation of the small plates were influenced by his earlier translation of Mormon's abridgment and the lost 116 pages. Mormon was a Christian. Mormon was familiar with the teachings of Jesus. Since Joseph wasn't reading off the Small Plates, its safe to assume that 1st and 2nd Nephi are heavily dependent on Mormon's abridgment of the Large Plates.

I wasn't referring to the effect upon Joseph of his reading of the book of Lehi, but rather to his simply reading off the seerstone the translation phrase by phrase, like a talking dog.  He did not know EModEnglish, and so could not have authored the text.  Someone else did long before him.  That someone may very well have been familiar with both the book of Lehi and the books of Nephi, and thus it may have influenced his translation phrasing.  Joseph was not directly involved in that formulation.

[Rajah Manchou]

16 hours ago, Gray said:

It's impossible to prove a negative. CFR for citations of critical scholarship that argue Christianity before the first century CE.

The two centuries before Christ were full of interesting events, its much too difficult (and far too convenient) to draw a clean line between BC and AD. Philip Jenkins has a new book that goes into some detail about what he calls the "crucible years".

Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World

One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition

In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible Era." It was during these years that Judaism grappled with Hellenizing forces and produced new religious ideas that reflected and responded to their changing world. By the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized-and thus passed on to Christianity and later Islam. Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, Creation and the Fall, and the nature of God and Satan.

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but did note this:

[Gray]

On 6/29/2018 at 2:58 PM, clarkgoble said:

Hmm. I'd be careful there depending upon what you mean.

What I mean was that topics like Jesus' divinity and atonement theology were not a part of the teachings of Jesus in his lifetime.

 

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As for what parts of Christian orthodoxy were Hellenistic, most of the key doctrines were modified platonism. So the neoplatonic One gets disrupted by becoming the Trinity with the novel creation ex nihilo replacing a total emanation theory. However outside of those two doctrines Christianity is basically platonic. Even with the rise of Aristotileanism with Aquinas and others it's still mostly platonism. You also have a pretty strong backlash against Aristotle's influence excommunicating many theologians. It's not really until the Renaissance that Aquinas' merger of Aristotle and Plato becomes dominant. While Protestantism abandons some medieval theological notions, the basic platonic conception remains.

Mormonism is odd that we become materialists (with a few gasps of the form Protestantism took embracing Descartes in the tripartite model of the soul). 

The LDS Godhead to me is a variation of the trinity. It certainly wasn't present in first century Christianity. The Holy Spirit wasn't seen as a conscious being early on, but rather the power of God.

I agree that LDS notions of organizing pre-existing material is more in keeping with ancient Hebrew theology/cosmology

Edited July 1, 2018 by Gray

[Gray]

On 6/29/2018 at 9:27 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

For those who don't know the sources (which I have cited), it will always seem  that nothing in the OT is a precursor to Christianity.  Along with that, one has to deny that the Essenes ever existed, so that we don't need to explain them.  The bifurcation has to be total in order to satisfy our need to deny any connection.  One dare not admit any exceptions in order to maintain the fantasy.

No one is claiming that nothing in the OT is a precursor to Christianity. Christianity didn't spring up in a vacuum. Let's not indulge in straw man arguments.

[Gray]

On 6/29/2018 at 9:44 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Substantive scholars do not share your view.  Nor do the denominations which consider Mormonism to be a major heresy.  Perhaps you are simply not conversant with that debate, and have no background in theology or philosophy.  Either way, you are simply wrong.  Astonishingly so. You probably need to begin with the small books by Sterling McMurrin on the theological and philosophical foundations of Mormonism.  I could go over the major disjunctures right here right now, and have done so in the past on this board, but (without the McMurrin intro) you couldn't hope to understand the issues.

Substantive scholars are claiming that Christianity predates the first century? Some sources, if you please. That's the issue under discussion, not whether some doctrinal ideas were in development previously. Remember that Jesus himself was in no sense a Christian. He was a good observant Jew. Christianity doesn't rise as a completely separate tradition until later in the first century.

 

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Why not simply say that you and Ehrman consider all such visions to be mere internal fantasies.  Michael Shermer was even on Radio West today speaking about the biological basis for such visions (interviewed by Doug Fabrizio, http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/heavens-earth-0 ), and he noted that such visions can be induced with drugs.  Since this is obviously true, there is no need for further inquiry. Right? 

As I have pointed out on this board several times, atheists are a very closed-minded group.

It has nothing to do with atheism or theism. It has to do with what history can cover. The supernatural is outside the realm of history.

Those on the extremes of theism and atheism seek to reduce the importance of visions if they don't have some kind of supernatural element. But as a good naturalist, you should know that a vision that can be ascribed to naturalistic causes loses none of its essential meaning or value.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Gray

[Gray]

22 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You are ignoring the actual Qumran texts and their meaning, as though there is no continuity whatsoever from OT times down to NT times, which is a fantasy which non-scholars revel in.  The result is failure to understand texts in context, and denial of the normal process of change through time.  You emphasize change and demand t hat there be no connections because it would be too upsetting to you to accept them (as it is to most normative Christians).  You deny the stream of tradition because it demands that Judaism be given its due, something destructive of normative Christianity -- and it is normative Christianity which you are tied to in order to deny it.  If normative Chrstianaity is false, then you have nothing to deny.  How inconvenient.

You're misreading my argument again. Is it intentional? I'm talking about the uniquely Christian doctrines, which developed in the first century onward. Obviously Christianity has Jewish roots. That's not the topic under discussion, Robert. You need to focus on what I'm actually saying and respond to that, not to what you which I had said. I never said "Christianity was not influenced by anything that predates it."

 

Quote

Of course, Lehi predates the Essenes, and so does Jeremiah -- who uses the very references to yeshua "salvation," which can be read as prophecy of Jesus, along with substituting a new heart for physical circumcision, along with the "Gospel."  Isaiah does much the same, but it all escapes you because you simply don't know your OT texts,  And even when they are cited for you, you miss the point entirely.  The biblical text might just as well not exist, because it is inconvenient for you to acknowledge it, and therefore have to wrench your  mind around to face the unpleasant reality.

You're reading the text like a Sunday school teacher, not a scholar. Christian eisegesis of OT text is right there in the NT. That doesn't mean OT writers understood them like first century Christians and proto Christians. Your historical reading is anachronistic, in other words.

 

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On the contrary, what I am arguing for is a complete upending of the normative Christian dogma which has long maintained the primacy of Hellenistic learning and theology, even though the best scholars have known for a generation that it is moribund.  Yet you base all your assumptions on that false dogma -- so strongly propounded by the Jesus Seminar.  You have accepted that outmoded view, and have built on it a series of false assumptions which are not matched by actual history or text.  Buying into absurd and false reconstructions of the life of Jesus does not advance the historical or theological enterprise.

I have not once referenced the Jesus Seminar, Robert. That was more than 20 years ago. Was that the last time you engaged with scholarship that wasn't either on the far conservative fringes or was apologetic in nature?

Jesus suffering for sins is not a Jewish idea - that's a Christian idea. The Paschal lamb didn't suffer for anyone's sins. It was a meal shared with God, in reconciliation. Baptism for the remission of sins and entrance into heaven is a Christian idea, not a Jewish idea. The Jewish ritual that it evolved from had a completely different function. This is normative Christianity, and this is the heart of Mormonism too.

 

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As in the case of the place of Jesus" birth, which is entirely a matter of faith, you put your trust in Nazareth being his place of birth, not because there is actual evidence for it (no text says so), but only because it fits an apriori schema in which the entire Christian story is and must be a fantasy.

Nazareth is merely the most likely location, since Jesus was known to be from Nazareth. We can be confident that Bethlehem was not the place, because the evangelists show embarassment that Jesus was not known to be from Bethlehem, and contort their stories to place him there, yet have him grow up in Nazareth, using a number of non-historical plot devices to accomplish it.

 

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  A secular need, requiring that Bethlehem not be the place of his birth simply because it might fulfill a prophecy.  That is the nature of a systematically demythologized text, a process which you do not acknowledge.

It has nothing to do with "a secular need". It has to do with responsible historical scholarship, Robert. Not Sunday School sermons and apologetics. Those have their place too, but this thread is about history.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Gray

[Gray]

21 hours ago, kllindley said:

I am not going to respond to the CFR. I did not claim that any critical scholarship posits Christianity before the first century CE. I asked whether you knew of any scholarship that explained why the apparent references to Christian theology and doctrine in the OT were not such. You couldn't. Nevo cited a few, which I appreciate.  

It's funny that you come here and proclaim such allegiance to critical scholarship, but never quote or even refer to any. The essense of scholarship is accurately attributing sources of information, which you refuse to do. Getting juvenile and dismissing any critical examination of your assertions, which you further assert are "elementary," is humorous, but not persuasive. 

I can't quote you critical scholarship saying that the sky is blue or that Jesus wasn't an alien from Mars, either klindley. That's because critical scholar would imagine that anyone would need those things explained to them .

[Gray]

15 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Yep.

 

 

It's downright embarrassing to see researchers citing Barker's work in such a way, as if they haven't figured out yet that she's so on the fringes of mainstream scholarship that she should instead be summarily dismissed. At the very least, if they're going to cite her work they should at least be talking about how fringey it is and citing her in a way that demonstrates their understanding of this. Oh dear.

You still don't get it. Oh well.

[kllindley]

23 minutes ago, Gray said:

I can't quote you critical scholarship saying that the sky is blue or that Jesus wasn't an alien from Mars, either klindley. That's because critical scholar would imagine that anyone would need those things explained to them .

Funny you couldn't, but Nevo could.

[kllindley]

28 minutes ago, Gray said:

I can't quote you critical scholarship saying that the sky is blue or that Jesus wasn't an alien from Mars, either klindley. That's because critical scholar would imagine that anyone would need those things explained to them .

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/sky-really-blue-some-hunter-gatherers-don-t-describe-colors-same-way-most-people-do

 

[Rajah Manchou]

5 hours ago, Gray said:

No one is claiming that nothing in the OT is a precursor to Christianity. Christianity didn't spring up in a vacuum. 

What elements of Christianity did not exist before Jesus Christ? Which of his teachings would have been foreign/new to the disciples of Jesus? What distinguished them from groups like the Essenes and Therapeutae.
I'm sure there are plenty. Just thinking it might be helpful to list them.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, Gray said:

You're misreading my argument again. Is it intentional? I'm talking about the uniquely Christian doctrines, which developed in the first century onward. Obviously Christianity has Jewish roots. That's not the topic under discussion, Robert. You need to focus on what I'm actually saying and respond to that, not to what you which I had said. I never said "Christianity was not influenced by anything that predates it."

You yourself say that you are "talking about the uniquely Christian doctrines, which developed in the first century onward," and that is why I have been hectoring you to stop applying moribund normative Hellenistic Christian doctrines.  This is precisely the form of Christianity denied by LDS theology, even though you are blind to it.

5 hours ago, Gray said:

You're reading the text like a Sunday school teacher, not a scholar. Christian eisegesis of OT text is right there in the NT. That doesn't mean OT writers understood them like first century Christians and proto Christians. Your historical reading is anachronistic, in other words.

I know of no sunday school teachers who talk about the text as I do.  Instead I read them in ancient context with the full panoply of archeology and intertestamental literature, and ferreting out the OT Hebrew parallels which are so fully masked by the KJV translation -- things which you don't see or acknowledge.

5 hours ago, Gray said:

I have not once referenced the Jesus Seminar, Robert. That was more than 20 years ago. Was that the last time you engaged with scholarship that wasn't either on the far conservative fringes or was apologetic in nature?

Yet you seem to accept the historical reconstructions of the Jesus Seminar (and those like them), while I tend to accept Birger Pearson's criticism of them and their flawed assumptions -- especially the criterion of uniqueness as a measure of the "oldest 'layer' of Jesus-tradition," which excludes anything from either Judaism or the Easter faith (the later Christian community):  Walter Weaver notes that "the trend in Jesus research is away from this strict criterion and toward locating Jesus precisely within his Judaic context."  Weaver in Charlesworth & Weaver, eds., The Old and the New Testaments: Their Relationship and the "Intertestamental" Literature, 3-4.

5 hours ago, Gray said:

Jesus suffering for sins is not a Jewish idea - that's a Christian idea. The Paschal lamb didn't suffer for anyone's sins. It was a meal shared with God, in reconciliation. Baptism for the remission of sins and entrance into heaven is a Christian idea, not a Jewish idea. The Jewish ritual that it evolved from had a completely different function. This is normative Christianity, and this is the heart of Mormonism too.

I guess you didn't get the memo on proxy sacrifice in Judaism, Gray:  James Barr pointed to that important principle in II Macc 12:45-46, which C. L. Brinton renders in his Septuagint (LXX) translation as “reconciliation for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin.”  The New American Bible translates “atonement for the dead that they might be free from sin,” the New English Bible as “an atoning sacrifice to free the dead from their sin,” and the Jerusalem Bible as “atonement sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sin.”  The principle was obviously present prior to New Testament times, though the means in the Maccabean source (in the Apocrypha) was a Temple offering, a standard mode of expiation for living and dead Israelites – if merely a type of the atonement to be made by Jesus.  Indeed, the late, great James Barr goes so far as to assert that, in discussing proxy baptism in I Corinthians 15:29, Paul was referring directly to II Maccabees 12 (Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism [1983] 40-43, n. 19).  You deny continuity, while I emphasize it.

5 hours ago, Gray said:

Nazareth is merely the most likely location, since Jesus was known to be from Nazareth. We can be confident that Bethlehem was not the place, because the evangelists show embarassment that Jesus was not known to be from Bethlehem, and contort their stories to place him there, yet have him grow up in Nazareth, using a number of non-historical plot devices to accomplish it.

I wasn't raised near the place where I was born, and that is not a necessary consideration.  Just because someone was from someplace doesn't mean that that was his birthplace. The assumption you are making is a faith assumption equally as much as the notion that Bethlehem is Jesus' birthplace.  At this remove from the events, how could we establish the fact either way?   We cannot.  And it is absurd to suggest that there is a historical fact in that matter.  Not only the Jesus Seminar sought to establish facts about the historical Jesus, but many scholars have attempted to do so, and nearly all have failed.  Why? Because they pretended to know more than can be known via secular historical principles.  Most scholars now acknowledge that the best way to understand Jesus is to understand Judaism.  Not Hellenism.

5 hours ago, Gray said:

It has nothing to do with "a secular need". It has to do with responsible historical scholarship, Robert. Not Sunday School sermons and apologetics. Those have their place too, but this thread is about history.

I emphasize continuity with the OT, you just don't see it, and in so doing you are certainly not alone -- many people make that crucial error -- precisely those wedded to a sunday school level of understanding, which makes all the wrong assumptions about normative Christianity.   As long as you maintain the fantasy that you are conversant with "responsible historical scholarship," you will continue to fail to understand Jesus in his actual context.

[mfbukowski]

17 hours ago, Nevo said:

I was just re-reading the Wikipedia entry on Eisenman. Can't believe he's in his 80s already, but then E. P. Sanders is too. Anyway, he sounds like he had quite an interesting life before entering academia. And it looks like you both spent time on kibbutzim.I expect you and he had a lot to talk about.

You mean kibbitzing on kibbutzim?

Oy gevalt! 

[Nevo]

1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

What elements of Christianity did not exist before Jesus Christ? Which of his teachings would have been foreign/new to the disciples of Jesus? What distinguished them from groups like the Essenes and Therapeutae.
I'm sure there are plenty. Just thinking it might be helpful to list them.

This is an interesting question, but let's not lose sight of the key point from your earlier post that "much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE." The "revolutionary developments" that Jenkins describes were not in place yet in 300 BCE, let alone in 600 BCE, and were a response to specific historical developments in Palestine. Yet, very early on, the Book of Mormon discusses the importance of faith in Jesus Christ, baptism for the remission of sins, universal resurrection, heaven and hell, Satan and his "angels", a crucified messiah who atones for the sins of the world, the Fall of Adam, the gospel going to the Gentiles, etc., all of which is thoroughly anachronistic.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Nevo

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Gray said:

Substantive scholars are claiming that Christianity predates the first century? Some sources, if you please. That's the issue under discussion, not whether some doctrinal ideas were in development previously. Remember that Jesus himself was in no sense a Christian. He was a good observant Jew. Christianity doesn't rise as a completely separate tradition until later in the first century.

Well, a separate tradition in some sense.  But why do you insist in making the center of your argument the normative Hellenistic Christianity late in the 1st century AD.  Is this the primitive church for you?   It should not be.  And do you understand that primitive christianity as consonant with many ideas at Qumran?

6 hours ago, Gray said:

It has nothing to do with atheism or theism.

I was referring to research which shows atheists to be closed-minded.

6 hours ago, Gray said:

It has to do with what history can cover. The supernatural is outside the realm of history.

Correct.  The supernatural (a law-abrogating principle) is not only outside the realm of history, it is also a paradox, and is not even possible.  Yet it is a constituent element of normative Judaism and Christianity.

6 hours ago, Gray said:

Those on the extremes of theism and atheism seek to reduce the importance of visions if they don't have some kind of supernatural element. But as a good naturalist, you should know that a vision that can be ascribed to naturalistic causes loses none of its essential meaning or value.

Depends  very much on whether that vision is an internal electro-chemical function of the brain, or an actual communication from outside one's self.  Both are entirely natural functions.  Yet they are not necessarily of equal value.

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, Nevo said:

This is an interesting question, but let's not lose sight of the key point from your earlier post that "much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE." The "revolutionary developments" that Jenkins describes were not in place yet in 300 BCE, let alone in 600 BCE, and were a response to specific historical developments in Palestine. Yet, very early on, the Book of Mormon discusses the importance of faith in Jesus Christ, baptism for the remission of sins, universal resurrection, heaven and hell, Satan and his "angels", a crucified messiah who atones for the sins of the world, the Fall of Adam, the gospel going to the Gentiles, etc., all of which is thoroughly anachronistic.

I agree there are anachronisms. People here are no doubt tired of hearing me talk about them. But I don't think its fair to force it into the 6th century BCE and then rattle off a list of all the things that didn't exist in the 6th century BCE. There's more to it.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Nevo]

54 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

I agree there are anachronisms. People here are no doubt tired of hearing me talk about them. But I don't think its fair to force it into the 6th century BCE and then rattle off a list of all the things that didn't exist in the 6th century BCE. There's more to it.

"It" being the Book of Mormon? I'm not misrepresenting the text ("forcing it into the 6th century BCE"). The book opens "in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah" (1 Ne. 1:4). That's pretty straightforward. I know you have proposed various explanations for how the anachronistic elements got into the text, but I don't think it's "unfair" to point them out.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Nevo