I'll take my chances with the Mods. I really don't think my disagreeing with your understanding of what sort of things constitute evidence is likely to get me suspended for off-topic spamming. If it did, you'd have been away long ago for refusing to read my disquisitions on critical analysis of the Gospels.
Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus
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What is spamming the thread and way off-topic is to keep making derisory personalised remarks in every other post. That’s not a way of constructive educational civilised discussion, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time replying to stuff like that.
And when it comes to the matter of evidence, the problem is that after all these many thousands of posts, still neither you nor anyone defending a HJ position has ever been able to produce any genuine evidence of Jesus. Absolutely none at all.
You are claiming that its just a difference of opinion about what constitutes evidence of a human Jesus. But you are quoting the bible as your evidence of Jesus. However, that cannot be credible or reliable evidence of Jesus because none of those biblical authors ever claimed to have known Jesus, and nor did they quote anyone else who ever credibly claimed to have known Jesus. So at best, that biblical writing cannot be evidence of anything more than the authors religious beliefs about Jesus.
So when you tell me to read your evidence from the bible, you are really telling me that I should accept peoples ignorant 1st century superstitious beliefs as if those beliefs were themselves evidence that the beliefs were true ... beliefs in the impossibly magical and miraculous by the way. That is not credible evidence of a living Jesus.
You may state all that a further thousand times, and I will still contend that an analysis of all the available texts produces useful information, and that your definition of the sources constituting the NT is overly crude and dismissive. So we disagree. But, and bear this in mind, it is on my part at least, an honest disagreement.
I don't think I have ever said that your "disagreement" was dishonest. In fact, if it comes to that I doubt if I have ever said that any individual here is being dishonest in what they post, except perhaps in the sense of failing to be entirely "honest" with themselves in the objective sense of what is reasonable to believe.
But what you say above is that you contend that "analysis of all the available texts produces useful information". But I don’t think I have ever really disputed that either! Anyone might find all sorts of things "useful" in reading the biblical texts. What I am talking about is not whether anyone thinks any such sentences are "useful", but whether they contain reliable and credible evidence of anyone ever knowing a living Jesus ... and they manifestly do not contain any such genuine evidence of Jesus. They contain evidence of what people believed as a matter of their religious faith, and no more (in respect of Jesus).
All that you have in any of the NT gospels and epistles, is later Christian copyists writing to say that various people who had never known Jesus, believed that other unavailable un-quoted people of the unspecified past had once witnessed Jesus do all sorts of things which were physically impossible.
As I have said several times before, a key factor here which is almost always overlooked, is the fact that in the 1st century almost everyone hearing such wondrous stories of the messiah unquestioningly believed the stories as true. Because at that time almost everyone believed that miracles happened every day. So that, in particular, when told of the miracles & wonders of Jesus, those very miracles and prophetic insights were what made it so certain for them that this unknown person “Jesus” really must have been the true messiah … because no other person could perform so many amazing “wonders” … it was the sheer amount and type of miracles that made them certain of Jesus.
But of course what we now know, is the complete precise opposite! The very miracles that made 1st century congregations so certain when they heard the Jesus stories, are now known to be the very things that make the stories absolutely untrue!
IOW - if people in the 1st century had known what we know now, then the Jesus stories would have been laughed out of existence on the very first morning they were preached by fanatics like Paul. But instead of course, 1700 years or so of continued public ignorance meant that people still believed those NT messiah stories as if they were certain fact right up to about 1700-1800. And even today, of course, millions of Christians still believe the stories are entirely, or largely, or partially true … even though they are physically impossible.
But that is the source, the NT, which you are consulting to search for your evidence. You are claiming to find things there which “might” be credible about a person named Jesus. Well, anything at all might be true, even miracles might possibly be true (because science does not claim literal certainty about anything), but given our present knowledge from science about what is likely to be true vs. what is not likely (and where miracles are far, far into the highly unlikely end of things), that inevitably leaves biblical writing of that miraculous sort as hopelessly and completely discredited as a factual basis for anything it’s anonymous non-witnessing writers ever believed through the ignorance of their 1st century faith.
It needs something independent of that religious writing in the NT if it is ever to count as objective credible evidence that anyone ever met a messiah named Jesus, let alone one who ever walked on water.
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What a co-incidence!! gMatthew is a forgery or falsely attributed.
The very FIRST author who claimed Jesus was born of a Ghost also admitted his Ghost born character was PREDICTED by God to come out of Egypt.
Matthew 2:15 KJV
The Matthean Ghost baby GREW in EGYPT and was unknown in Judea.
Virtually ALL the Ghost stories have been recovered in Egypt
The Jesus character is out of EGYPT--it is the Word of the Lord.
Out of Egypt have I called my son.
The Matthean Jesus story came out of EGYPT.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Except when you accuse other people of being closet Christians, that is.
Eight-Bits … sorry, I only just noticed that you had earlier asked me about the above.
Why do I think the Asscent.Of.Isaiah (AoI) is so similar to what Paul preached about Jesus? Well although I already quoted the relevant passage from the AoI three times on the immediately preceding pages, I will quote again below -
http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/pseudepigrapha/AscensionOfIsaiah.html
"The Ascension of Isaiah"
9. …. And he led me into the air of the seventh heaven … 3And I asked the angel who (was) with me and said, "Who is the one who prevented me, and who is this one (who turned to me that I might go up)?'" 4And he said to me, "The one who prevented you, this is the one [who (is) in charge of] the praise of the sixth heaven. 5And the one (who turned to you}, this is your Lord, the Lord, the Lord Christ, who is to be called in the world Jesus, but you cannot hear his name until you have come up from this body. 12And he said to me, "They do not receive the crowns and thrones of glory—nevertheless, they do see and know whose (will be) the thrones and whose the crowns—until the Beloved descends in the form in which you will see him descend. 13The Lord will indeed descend into the world in the last days, (he) who is to be called Christ after he has descended and become like you in form, and they will think that he is flesh and a man. 14And the god of that world will stretch out [his hand against the Son], and they will lay their hands upon him and hang him upon a tree, not knowing who he is. 15And thus his descent, as you will see, will be concealed even from the heavens so that it will not be known who he is. 16And when he has plundered the angel of death, he will rise on the third day and will remain in that world for five hundred and forty-five days. 17And then many of the righteous will ascend with him, whose spirits do not receive (their) robes until the Lord Christ ascends and they ascend with him
How similar is that to what Paul’s letters say about his preaching of Jesus? If you really don’t think that is very similar indeed, then I beg to differ. And just in case it's not patently obvious what I mean by that -
- afaik, Paul’s letters actually say very little about Jesus. In fact only about 4 or 5 things. One, that he was named “Jesus” (as in AoI). Two, that he had been crucified/died (as in AoI). Three, that his death was followed by him rising from the dead on the third day (as in AoI), as God’s essential message to the faithful that they too would be raised up to heaven by God (as in AoI).
Apart from that, iirc, all else that Paul really says about Jesus is just that he was involved in a ritual “last supper”, and that he (Paul) had experienced some sort of spiritual vision of the ascending/descending messiah. And he says he knew all this as a result what was written in scripture and as a result of what he received as his understanding either through his vision and/or directly from a heavenly God. This was, afaik, also all supposed to be part of “apocalyptic” preaching by Paul which was warning that the final day of judgement was now near (as in AoI), whence the faithful would indeed be raised up to heaven and the non-believers cast down to hell or otherwise excluded, which again appears to be the above belief in AoI.
Perhaps you think all of that is contained in various interpretations of other more disparate books of the OT anyway? And perhaps like David Mo you want to say that that Ascent of Isaiah is not technically classed as part of OT scripture anyway? But as I said earlier, that is really not the point and nor do I think it is a sound argument anyway. Because the point of drawing attention to the AoI is that all of those essential features are spelt out very clearly and very directly in one place and in one single passage of writing which Paul may afaik have quite easily regarded as in his view "scripture" anyway. I.e., if that story of the AoI was already known at the time of Paul, then preachers like Paul may simply have regarded that as part of the prophetic ancient history of what was “written” anyway … since, Isaiah was in any case supposed to have been a prophet who lived in the 8th century BC.
Though even after all that, do note what I said before about this. I.e., that I am not presenting the AoI as some sort of proof of where Paul obtained his Jesus-messiah belief. I am just noting the rather obvious similarity between what Paul says and what is said in the AoI. And further highlighting the fact that the supposed dates of the AoI are not so far removed from the time of Paul as to make it impossible that Paul could have known this story and been motivated by that as his source of understanding what he believed was the true meaning of the messianic message “hidden so long” in scripture.
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So, the "End Times" that Jesus was saving everyone from was invented by Paul?
Or, are you saying that Jews had been preaching about Jesus and the End Times for ages before Paul started talking about them?
How does this line up with Jewish Warlord Messiah beliefs?
David Mo
Philosopher
“Stauron” is the Greek word for Latin “Crux”.
Josephus (War 11 especially) is an example.
This has nothing to do with canonicity.
Effectively, the contribution with several Paul's texts where he mentions the cross is mine. I have contributed with these translations made by all the experts without exception that consider that Paul is speaking of a cross and a crucifixion. Some included "nailed". I haven’t done any translation. I hope this is clear for you and your English now.
Everybody that enters in a forum in good faith has the right to questioning and the duty to answer. They are the rules of fair play.
It is obvious that when Paul writes that Jesus "died on a cross" he is thinking that Jesus was fixed in a cross to die. With or without nails is an irrelevant issue now since you admit that ropes or nails can be used in crucifixion by Romans..
My question now:
I have not seen any "consistent cite" of a translation of a Pauline text in terms of "gibbet". Do you know any authoritative version of a Pauline text that includes "gibbet" instead of "cross" or “gibbeting” instead of “crucifixion”? This is a clue question.
Thank you.
David Mo
Philosopher
"Deceit"? I don't know what you are speaking about. Perhaps you confuse good manners with deceit.
It will also be a relief to me that you stop repeating yourself. Good thing we're both happy.
Again we see a most flawed approach to dating the Pauline Corpus pre 70 CE by using texts that are in far worse condition than the Pauline Corpus.
The Ascension of Isaiah [AoI] is virtually completely useless to date the Pauline Corpus before c 70 CE.
The AoI utterly fails 'Source criticism'.
1. The author of the AoI is unknown.
2. The date of authorship of the AoI is unknown.
3. The provenance of the AoI is unknown.
4. The earliest fragment of the AoI is from the 5-6th century
5. The Pauline writers did NOT acknowledge any manuscript called the AoI.
6. Supposed early apologetic writings did not acknowledge a manuscript called the AoI.
7. The AoI is a source of fiction and implausibility.
The Ascension of Isaiah [AoI] is virtually completely useless to date the Pauline Corpus before c 70 CE.
The AoI utterly fails 'Source criticism'.
1. The author of the AoI is unknown.
2. The date of authorship of the AoI is unknown.
3. The provenance of the AoI is unknown.
4. The earliest fragment of the AoI is from the 5-6th century
5. The Pauline writers did NOT acknowledge any manuscript called the AoI.
6. Supposed early apologetic writings did not acknowledge a manuscript called the AoI.
7. The AoI is a source of fiction and implausibility.
eight bits
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Ian
Thanks.
The passage you quoted shares material with Paul or even later Gospel material (for example at 14, "not knowing who he is" - that's not Paul, that's Luke). But who read whom? Do you havesome ideas about how to sort that out? The dating of bits and pieces of AoI is fraught, I hear.
Where do the non-canonical flourishes fit in? (for example at 16, 545 days when some dead ascend with him? That's not in the canon anywhere, and Paul is wrting decades after his conversion, which occurred after the resurrection). Or do they?
David
http://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/14955/crux-crucis
So here's the deal, David: either you know what Paul's Greek says or you don't. If you don't, then this discussion is a waste of time, and it ends here. If you do, then stop hiding the ball. Disclose the chapter and verse where Paul wirtes, in Greek, what the cause of Jesus' death was. Then, after I've checked it, we can disucss what you think is "obvious" about that passage.
I say gibbeting because of what the word cucifxion connotes, when Paul's letters are blended together with later writings that describe Romans cooperation with Jewish officials to kill Jesus, not because of what it denotes, an open display of a dead body on a support.
Are you clued yet?
Thanks.
The passage you quoted shares material with Paul or even later Gospel material (for example at 14, "not knowing who he is" - that's not Paul, that's Luke). But who read whom? Do you havesome ideas about how to sort that out? The dating of bits and pieces of AoI is fraught, I hear.
Where do the non-canonical flourishes fit in? (for example at 16, 545 days when some dead ascend with him? That's not in the canon anywhere, and Paul is wrting decades after his conversion, which occurred after the resurrection). Or do they?
David
So what, David? It is also the Greek word for pole. Nobody here has denied that a Latin crux is a kind of staur-. Sometimes a crux is a pole, too. You like dictionaries, David. Here's one for you:
http://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/14955/crux-crucis
You have yet to show a single instance where Paul wrote that Jesus, quote, died on a cross, close quote, much less what is in actual dispute, whether Paul wrote that Jesus died because he was on a cross. Instead, you parade English translations, reeking of Christian piety informed by authors later than Paul. Then, when I call upon you to show the correspondence between your English and Paull's Greek, you complain that the translations aren't really yours, deftly avoiding the fact that Paul's Greek doesn't say what your English translation does. Rinse and repeat.
So here's the deal, David: either you know what Paul's Greek says or you don't. If you don't, then this discussion is a waste of time, and it ends here. If you do, then stop hiding the ball. Disclose the chapter and verse where Paul wirtes, in Greek, what the cause of Jesus' death was. Then, after I've checked it, we can disucss what you think is "obvious" about that passage.
What are you talking about, David? That nails were used to kill Jesus was your idea. Whether Romans never, always or only sometimes used nails is all the same to me and to anything I have written here. Good try, though. Good hustle.
Instead of? No. Why would it be instead of? Gibbeting with poles, stakes, crosses, trees. ..., in a variety of cultures, where victims are affixed alive, mortally wounded or dead, is often called crucifxion in English. It's a much more common word than gibbeting.
I say gibbeting because of what the word cucifxion connotes, when Paul's letters are blended together with later writings that describe Romans cooperation with Jewish officials to kill Jesus, not because of what it denotes, an open display of a dead body on a support.
Are you clued yet?
eight bits said:
What you say is irrelevant especially when you have no supporting evidence from antiquity.
The Pauline writers clearly claimed Jesus was crucified and Christian writers throughout antiquity who mentioned the crucifixion claimed Jesus was NAILED to the Cross.
1. Ignatius’ To the Smyrnaeans
2. Justin’s First Apology
3. Irenaeus’ “Against Heresies”
4. Tertullian’s Apology
5. Arnobius’ Against the Heathen
6. Hippolytus’ Refutation of All Heresies
7. Augustine On the Nature of Good
8. Gregory of Nyssa On the Soul and the Resurrection
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Hi. .... well, the short answer is "no", I don't have any specific answers to the above questions.
But re the questions on , "not knowing who he is" and “545 days when some dead ascend with him?”, I was not saying that things like that are specifically said in Paul’s letters. And I don’t think that is a telling omission, is it? Because as I say - Paul actually only says about 4 or 5 important things about Jesus, most of which (apart from the last supper) are I think in the AoI (as pointed out in the post above)?
Also the AoI is a pretty long piece of writing which says scores, if not hundreds of things, about heaven, God, Jesus, and everything surrounding that entire belief. So I don’t think we should expect to find all of that specifically said in Paul’s letters.
However the main points of similarity are of course the name Jesus, the death by “hanging on a tree”, the rising again on the third day, and the fact that death and resurrection are proof to the faithful that they too will be raised up on a day of judgement which is close at hand. To that you might also add the overall concept of the vision where AoI says the Lord will descend into the world and then ascend back to heaven again, and where Paul of course talks of his vision of a spiritual Jesus risen from death and presumably on his path rising back to heaven etc.
So even apart from the very few things that Paul says about Jesus being almost all exactly what is said in the AoI, the whole idea of the descending/ascending crucified lord in the AoI seems very similar to what Paul was preaching, does it not?
As for the dates and the question of which writing came first, ie either Paul before AoI or the reverse, of course I don’t think anyone knows. The usual claim seems to be that AoI dates from about 20-80 years after Paul’s writing, but clearly some authors think that the AoI could be much earlier than that, such that Paul could have known the story of the AoI even before his vision. So, there is at least the reasonable possibility that Paul knew the story of the AoI before writing his letters and proclaiming what he believed about Jesus … especially as all we have from Paul is, in fact, something most likely written around 200AD or even later.
Even so, none of this is really relevant to the central question of what evidence exists to show that Jesus was a living 1st century preacher. Really the AoI possibility is just a side issue that I raised for two reasons - (1)because I think these HJ threads have run their course and gone the same way that all previous HJ threads have, and failed to provide any of the claimed evidence of a living Jesus; and (2) because David Mo and CraigB were arguing that Paul could not have obtained the idea of crucifixion from any earlier “scripture” and that in fact he must have been told about the crucifixion by James, Cephas and John in Jerusalem who actually knew all about it themselves. So I was just pointing out that apart from other references in the OT, the AoI also specifically says (apparently) that Jesus would be “hung on a tree” … of course he (David) objects that the AoI is not regarded as strictly part of OT scripture, but I think it’s perfectly possible that if the AoI was known from a time before Paul’s letters, then Paul may have simply regarded writing like the AoI as part of what he classed as “scripture” … Isaiah being a scriptural prophet dating back as far as 8th century BC anyway.
So in summary of all that - the AoI issue is, from my point of view, just an interesting talking point as a possible source from which Paul and other early Christians might have obtained their ideas about Jesus as the messiah, apocalyptic preaching, and their central gospel of preaching belief in a symbolic death and resurrection as salvation of the faithful, etc etc.
eight bits
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dejudge
Yes, if you think Justin or Irenaeus is an earlier author than Paul, then your view would follow. I lose track whether Augustine (354-430), too, is earlier than Paul in your view, but Romans supposedly weren't doing crucifixions in his time, so I am unsure where his opinion about how things went down three centuries before and thousands of kilometers east fits in your narrative.
Of course, Saudi Arabia crucifies people in our time - apparently they gibbet beheaded corpses, but it's a nice illustration that even when there is no Christian context, gibbeting will be called crucifxion in English. I can also attest the phrase death by crucifixion, when gibbeting a beheaded corpse is meant.
In any event, I asked for a canonical reference to nailing plausibly composed earlier than John 20, and I see that you don't have one of those. Thank you for looking, though.
Ian
The AoI stuff is interesting. I do thank you for bringing that forward. Early Christianity is a mess, but an interesting mess sometimes.
Yes, if you think Justin or Irenaeus is an earlier author than Paul, then your view would follow. I lose track whether Augustine (354-430), too, is earlier than Paul in your view, but Romans supposedly weren't doing crucifixions in his time, so I am unsure where his opinion about how things went down three centuries before and thousands of kilometers east fits in your narrative.
Of course, Saudi Arabia crucifies people in our time - apparently they gibbet beheaded corpses, but it's a nice illustration that even when there is no Christian context, gibbeting will be called crucifxion in English. I can also attest the phrase death by crucifixion, when gibbeting a beheaded corpse is meant.
In any event, I asked for a canonical reference to nailing plausibly composed earlier than John 20, and I see that you don't have one of those. Thank you for looking, though.
Ian
The AoI stuff is interesting. I do thank you for bringing that forward. Early Christianity is a mess, but an interesting mess sometimes.
What total absurdity!!
You can't remember that your view is at least 1600 YEARS later than Irenaeus and Augustine? You have lost track.
You yourself are making claims about Jesus and Paul in the 21st century using copies of copies of copies of writings of unknown date of authorship, riddled with fiction and implausibilty.
It is just totally illogical that the supposed WITNESSES of antiquity for the BELIEFS and teachings of the Jesus cult are useless but your opinion is relevant 1800 years later.
Writings attributed to Josephus, Irenaeus, Ignatius, Justin, Hippolytus, Arnobius, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Origen, Tertullian, and the author of gJohn are evidence AGAINST you.
1. Hundreds of CRUCIFIED Jews were NAILED to Crosses in the 1st century.
2. Christians of antiquity claimed the CRUCIFIED Jesus, the Son of God, was NAILED to a Cross.
3. Christian writers who mentioned the Pauline Corpus claimed the Pauline Jesus was NAILED to a Cross.
Your 21st century view that the Pauline Jesus was gibbeted is contradicted and without support in the stories of Jesus in and out the Canon.
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David Mo
Philosopher
And?
My “parade” is all the translations I have find without exception, even accepted by Richard Carrier and Neil Godfrey. Can you show your “parade”?
καί σχήματι εὑρεθείς ὥς ἄνθρωπος ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and becameobedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and becameobedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
http://bibleapps.com/study/philippians/2-8.htm
Any translation of θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ as “death on gibbet” or similar?
No problem, but first of all you show your qualifications in Ancient Greek. If not, I’m afraid we ought to limit us to the authoritative translations. And in this field the score is 100-0 in my favour.
“Maxtin Mengel, however who wrote what is perhaps the definitive scholarly report of the subject of Crucifixion in antiquity (…). He argues that nailing the victim by both hands and feet was the rule and tying the victim to the cross was the exception"
(Joe Zias: “Crucifixion in Antiquity. The Evidence”)
I underline because it seems to me that you are not reading attentively my quotations. You are wrong but this issue of nails or ropes is irrelevant for our discussion.
Crucified in the gallows pole? Truly is it very common? Surely You're Joking, Mr. eight bits!
Well, you don’t need any more than put here an example of some authority that translates stauros by otherwise than crucifixion in this context.… or show your credentials as a Classical Greek expert. Why anyone in the world translates stauros by gibbet except you? Why you strive to maintain a position that you can not show?
You are trying to argue against my argument of difficulty without any valuable reason. I maintain that the crucifixion was only and exclusively a Roman punishment at the time and place. You can not prove otherwise. Then you insist on an incorrect translation of stauros to justify their belief.
Although I am not an expert in Ancient Greek I can provide a simple reason why stauros is never translated by gibbet.
"Gibbet" is an ambiguous word. It can mean a gallows,/ an upright post with an arm on which the bodies of executed criminals were left hanging as a warning or deterrent to others, / the execution by hanging. (Oxford Dictionary). You can see visual examples just searching for “gibbet” in Google Images or similar.
Stauros or crux was the death penalty that consisted in fixing a man in a stake till his death. Ropes or nails, one stake or two are circumstantial facts that are irrelevant to our debate.
The Jewish practice to fix a corpse in a tree as a public damnation of a criminal fits well with the concept of gibbet, but not with the crucifixion. Because the man had been previously killed by stoning or burning and then hanged on a tree. Neither stoning or burning can be translated by stauron.
By the way, call it as you like, the Pauline Phil 2 :8 I quoted above speaks about Jesus as dead on a cross. Not his body exposed after his death, but death hanging from a stake.
So the stauron or crucifixion was a specifically Roman (Josephus, Philo, Seneca and others) punishment and Paul necessarily had to know it.
So, when he blames the Jews for having killed Jesus either he means they are guilty to have delivered Jesus to Romans or we have here an ulterior interpolation.
The difficulty argument maintains all its force.
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eight bits
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dejudge
The issue I addressed is what is aserted in those copies. No nailing is described in earlier canonical materials, only in later materials. Jesus' condition when he was placed on the gibbet, dead or alive, is not discussed in Paul. Paul's silence makes some sense, since Jesus' cause of death is plausibly of no christological significance for Paul, but how the corpse was handled after an execution is significant for him. Paul points to a pertinent Jewish scripture verse.
The earliest discussion of Jesus' condition at fixture, Mark's, describes Jesus as having, within fewer than eighteen hours, been arrested in an armed struggle, beaten by two sets of soldiers, Roman and Jewish, and flogged by the Romans, that is, partly flayed. He couldn't walk a short distance with load, and died faster than expected by an experienced Roman observer. The English expression for Jesus' condition at fixture, as presented in Mark, is "half dead."
None of that is in Paul. Nor are there nails in that first improvement upon Paul. That Augustine admired John's even later, more theatrical version of the story is irrelevant to what appears in Paul. Whether Paul's letters are forged, interpolated, corrupted or the pristine word of the man from Tarsus is irrelevant to what the documents in hand assert.
David
Jesus' cause of death is unconstrained by his corpse's placement on a gibbet. He could have been beaten to death, mortally wounded on arrest, stoned to death, beheaded ... and then his corpse displayed on a support. Or, he could have been placed on the support in the very bloom of manly health, and left there until the bloom faded. Paul doesn't say one way or the other.
On a related matter, I read your quotations just fine. I disagree with what they assert. Very little is known about Roman crucifixions except how variable the practice was over time and space - or if Seneca the Younger is a source, even at the same place and time. Nobody disputes that Jesus might have been affixed by nails, ropes, or just gravity and friction if he was dead or nearly so, and Roman involvement is a later addition to the story than Paul anyway.
Speaking of which,
Jesus was cruified
and argue that who assents to that assents also to what it connotes:
Jesus was nailed alive to a wooden cruciform gibbet and left there until he died.
That last sentence is what crucifxion, especially as used in the proper noun phrase The Crucifixion, most routinely means in English, a death like that described in the canonical Gospels.
We, however, are discussing Paul, who never read John, nor any other Gospel. So "crucifixion" as a translation of whatever Greek terms Paul used must include a reservation. Those terms cannot mean to Paul what crucifxion means to a living English-speaker who lives in a cultuire dominated by the idea that John describes the same event as Paul.
In fact, the Greek terms Paul uses are consistent with the only aspect of Jesus' death scene that Paul offers any detail about, the handling of Jesus' corpse after an excecution. English has no fewer than two words for that, crucifixion and gibbeting. I prefer gibbeting when discussing Paul because it lacks the connotations that entered the English-speaking community by way of writings later than Paul. This caution is especially important when discussing other posters who have questionned the degree of Roman involvement in Jesus' death, partly based on Paul.
Of course, Christian apologists will insist that Paul is describing one and the same event as John, and since they assume that John accurately depicts an actual historical event, Paul simply must have meant that, regardless of what he actually wrote. In this thread, however, that "actual event" and its victim are what is in dispute.
Your declaration of victory is received with thanks. Safe home!
The issue I addressed is what is aserted in those copies. No nailing is described in earlier canonical materials, only in later materials. Jesus' condition when he was placed on the gibbet, dead or alive, is not discussed in Paul. Paul's silence makes some sense, since Jesus' cause of death is plausibly of no christological significance for Paul, but how the corpse was handled after an execution is significant for him. Paul points to a pertinent Jewish scripture verse.
The earliest discussion of Jesus' condition at fixture, Mark's, describes Jesus as having, within fewer than eighteen hours, been arrested in an armed struggle, beaten by two sets of soldiers, Roman and Jewish, and flogged by the Romans, that is, partly flayed. He couldn't walk a short distance with load, and died faster than expected by an experienced Roman observer. The English expression for Jesus' condition at fixture, as presented in Mark, is "half dead."
None of that is in Paul. Nor are there nails in that first improvement upon Paul. That Augustine admired John's even later, more theatrical version of the story is irrelevant to what appears in Paul. Whether Paul's letters are forged, interpolated, corrupted or the pristine word of the man from Tarsus is irrelevant to what the documents in hand assert.
David
I don't know. You brought up that crux was the Latin cognate of staur-. Yes it is, and like the Greek word, crux doesn't exclude a simple pole, doesn't exclude fixture after death, and doesn't say anything about nails. If you had any point in bringing it up, besides distraction and misdirection, then you didn't share your point with us. Don't blame me, then, if you can't remember what your own point was, or that you didn't have a point in the first place.
I have no parade. I have a critical edition of the Greek, to which I have repeatedly linked. I haven't the faintest idea what Richard Carrier or Neil Godfrey have to do with any of this.
Nice rearrangement of the word order. What the Greek says is "... of death, of death and of the cross," allowing cross for the type of gibbet, and if you prefer even instead of and, that's fine, too. But the text says only that Jesus both died and also was on a cross. Yup, that what's gibbeting is, all right, doing something additional after killing a person.
Jesus' cause of death is unconstrained by his corpse's placement on a gibbet. He could have been beaten to death, mortally wounded on arrest, stoned to death, beheaded ... and then his corpse displayed on a support. Or, he could have been placed on the support in the very bloom of manly health, and left there until the bloom faded. Paul doesn't say one way or the other.
It's none of your business who I am IRL, nor is it relevant to the discussion here. You have just posted that you and I agree what the Greek is, at least in that passage, and I know of no other passage where we disagree what the Greek is. Since we are discussing only what a Greek-writing author wrote in Greek, there is no controversy for my "qualifications" to bear upon.
On a related matter, I read your quotations just fine. I disagree with what they assert. Very little is known about Roman crucifixions except how variable the practice was over time and space - or if Seneca the Younger is a source, even at the same place and time. Nobody disputes that Jesus might have been affixed by nails, ropes, or just gravity and friction if he was dead or nearly so, and Roman involvement is a later addition to the story than Paul anyway.
I am informed that the Saudis practice crucifxion, as already described in the earlier post. The relevance of that to our discussion is how such things are described in English, and that is relevant only because you repeatedly argue about how Paul is translated into English. Again, if you can't be bothered keeping track of your own talking points, don't complain to me about it.
Speaking of which,
As I said in the post which you claim to have read, I do not dispute that the modern word crucifxion can be used for a wide variety of gibbeting practices. However, as your postings illustrate, people will take the perfectly fine, so far as what it denotes,
Jesus was cruified
and argue that who assents to that assents also to what it connotes:
Jesus was nailed alive to a wooden cruciform gibbet and left there until he died.
That last sentence is what crucifxion, especially as used in the proper noun phrase The Crucifixion, most routinely means in English, a death like that described in the canonical Gospels.
We, however, are discussing Paul, who never read John, nor any other Gospel. So "crucifixion" as a translation of whatever Greek terms Paul used must include a reservation. Those terms cannot mean to Paul what crucifxion means to a living English-speaker who lives in a cultuire dominated by the idea that John describes the same event as Paul.
In fact, the Greek terms Paul uses are consistent with the only aspect of Jesus' death scene that Paul offers any detail about, the handling of Jesus' corpse after an excecution. English has no fewer than two words for that, crucifixion and gibbeting. I prefer gibbeting when discussing Paul because it lacks the connotations that entered the English-speaking community by way of writings later than Paul. This caution is especially important when discussing other posters who have questionned the degree of Roman involvement in Jesus' death, partly based on Paul.
Of course, Christian apologists will insist that Paul is describing one and the same event as John, and since they assume that John accurately depicts an actual historical event, Paul simply must have meant that, regardless of what he actually wrote. In this thread, however, that "actual event" and its victim are what is in dispute.
Yes, General Gavin's famous advice to his countrymen generalizes readily to all unwinnable situations: "Declare victory and go home."
Your declaration of victory is received with thanks. Safe home!
Your argument is void of logic.
The same supposed early sources you use do not mention gibbeting.
Gibbeting is not discussed in gMark and the Pauline Corpus.
The supposed early sources discuss the crucifixion.
The supposed early Josephus claims Crucified Jews were NALIED to Crosses.
Supposed Early Christian writers who used the supposed early writings [gMark and the Pauline Corpus] argued that Jesus was NAILED to a Cross.
The Teaching and Belief of the Jesus cult is that Jesus the Son of God was NALIED to a Cross.
Now, look at recovered evidence that Crucified Jews were NAILED in the 1st century.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-a-stone-box-a-rare-trace-of-crucifixion/
You mean Josephus was forged in the eleventh century or thereabouts, cos that when the earliest extant manuscripts were written?
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