RE: Josephus and other contemporaries on Jesus
July 6, 2018 at 11:05 am
(This post was last modified: July 6, 2018 at 11:36 am by Minimalist.)
The expected jewish moschiach was a great warrior.... not some wimpy little fuck who got himself killed. Try again, asshole.
I wanted to circle back to this before it gets lost in the shuffle. Ehrman, as a proponent of historical criticism, has stated that he believes it is possible to get past all the scribal errors, doctrinal edits, and political changes to get back to the earliest copy which would then, by definition, be closest to the original. That sounds logical and in terms of the assorted human fuck ups is probably true but so what? Doubtless there are scribal errors and omissions and insertions into Homer as well and if you get back to the very earliest copy of Homer's Iliad you may have something closer to the original written tale but it remains a story of how the Olympian gods interfered with the lives of men for their own vanity. It's a story. I rather doubt there is a xtian who would grant that Apollo, Zeus, Poseidon and Hera are real because Homer wrote about them.
Yet, that is exactly what xtians.... and all theists with a book - don't want to let the muslims off scot free - ask us to believe. Homer took tales which had probably existed for centuries and wrote them down. The thing is, they existed as oral tales and oral tales change every time they are recited. And there is the rub.
Now, as to P-52 and the "original" of John goes, I maintain that it is less important when something was first written and more important as to when it was last edited. Scholars have long known that Justin in his First Apology made reference to something called the memoirs of the apostles. For just about as long they have known that the parts he cited do not match up to what passes for the canonical gospels of today. This leads to a couple of possible conclusions:
1 - Justin was referring to another book(s) which did not survive.
2- The book(s) Justin referred to were in the process of composition/editing in 160 and were not finalized and ready for Prime Time until Irenaeus c 185 came along and attached the names to them.
3- Justin was as big a bullshitter as everyone else.
Ehrman and others are prepared to give the status of the authentic pauline epistles, another concept which requires a lot of thought but we'll ignore it for now, as being the earliest xtian writings. They also admit that "paul" never knew anything about a historical jesus who lived shortly before his own time and who got his info straight from "god" as revelation. In order to have "memoirs" of the apostles you first needed to invent "apostles."
(July 5, 2018 at 8:49 pm)Minimalist Wrote:(July 5, 2018 at 7:08 pm)JairCrawford Wrote: Correct. There have been no discoveries of 1st century manuscripts. In fact P-52 is, iirc, the oldest known manuscript we have. I know its 2nd century. The earliest date people initially gave it was 100 AD but that's been re-evaluated recently to 125-175 AD, which could put it closer to the 3rd century. I'm not contesting that point.
However; this does not mean that P-52 is the original of John.
A good point and worthy of further discussion. Lots of assumptions made on that score.
I wanted to circle back to this before it gets lost in the shuffle. Ehrman, as a proponent of historical criticism, has stated that he believes it is possible to get past all the scribal errors, doctrinal edits, and political changes to get back to the earliest copy which would then, by definition, be closest to the original. That sounds logical and in terms of the assorted human fuck ups is probably true but so what? Doubtless there are scribal errors and omissions and insertions into Homer as well and if you get back to the very earliest copy of Homer's Iliad you may have something closer to the original written tale but it remains a story of how the Olympian gods interfered with the lives of men for their own vanity. It's a story. I rather doubt there is a xtian who would grant that Apollo, Zeus, Poseidon and Hera are real because Homer wrote about them.
Yet, that is exactly what xtians.... and all theists with a book - don't want to let the muslims off scot free - ask us to believe. Homer took tales which had probably existed for centuries and wrote them down. The thing is, they existed as oral tales and oral tales change every time they are recited. And there is the rub.
Now, as to P-52 and the "original" of John goes, I maintain that it is less important when something was first written and more important as to when it was last edited. Scholars have long known that Justin in his First Apology made reference to something called the memoirs of the apostles. For just about as long they have known that the parts he cited do not match up to what passes for the canonical gospels of today. This leads to a couple of possible conclusions:
1 - Justin was referring to another book(s) which did not survive.
2- The book(s) Justin referred to were in the process of composition/editing in 160 and were not finalized and ready for Prime Time until Irenaeus c 185 came along and attached the names to them.
3- Justin was as big a bullshitter as everyone else.
Ehrman and others are prepared to give the status of the authentic pauline epistles, another concept which requires a lot of thought but we'll ignore it for now, as being the earliest xtian writings. They also admit that "paul" never knew anything about a historical jesus who lived shortly before his own time and who got his info straight from "god" as revelation. In order to have "memoirs" of the apostles you first needed to invent "apostles."
