Nice catch. It was such a naked ad hominem that I didn't even bother chasing down the quote.

And in any case, Daniel Wallace and Bart Ehrman are in agreement about many (if not most) things, certainly the basic sort of stuff that has come up in this thread, their disagreements tend to pertain to matters of degree, not of kind, and often to very specific details that aren't of much interest to non-experts. The idea that Ehrman is some renegade atheist who is out of step with the general consensus in the field is entirely fictional.

I never said that being hung from a tree is cursed... only that the Jewish scriptures say so. — Seppo

Well, you are using scripture as "evidence" for your arguments, aren't you? :grin:

the Jewish scriptures claim that dying on a tree is a curse, — Seppo

All things confirmed by Paul, when he tells us how they had difficulty converting Jews — Seppo

according to all our records including/especially the Gospels, — Seppo

even the Gospels tell us he was a peasant — Seppo

I never said that being hung from a tree is cursed... only that the Jewish scriptures say so. — Seppo

You are constantly citing religious narratives to "prove" your point. Or are you retracting your statements?

I didn't say other peasants "looked down on him", I said that the notion of a dead peasant being the literal anointed King of Israel struck most Jews as absurd. Being a peasant and being the king are sort of mutually exclusive- or are you going to dispute that too? — Seppo

1. IMO it is entirely conceivable for a peasant to become king. Joseph was a slave and became second-in-command after the Pharaoh, which after all is much higher than a Hebrew king.

2. The NT states that Jesus was of royal descendance (from King David):

And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us (Matthew 9:27).

Clearly, not everyone thought he was a peasant. So, on what scientific basis are you accepting religious narratives claiming he was a "peasant" and rejecting religious narratives claiming he was of royal descent?

Well, you are using scripture as "evidence" for your arguments, aren't you? :grin: — Apollodorus

Asked and answered-

Accepting that the scriptures say something obviously isn't the same thing as accepting the thing it says. — Seppo

If you can't even read the posts you're responding to, why should I waste the time extending you a courtesy you're unwilling to extend to me? Either get serious, or stop wasting my time.

1. IMO it is entirely conceivable for a peasant to become king. Joseph was a slave and became second-in-command after the Pharaoh, which after all is much higher than a Hebrew king. — Apollodorus

We're not talking about a peasant becoming king, but a peasant being the king. The anointed king. Despite not having been anointed, and not being the king. You still don't see the problem?

Clearly, not everyone thought he was a peasant. So, on what scientific basis are you accepting religious narratives claiming he was a "peasant" and rejecting religious narratives claiming he was of royal descent? — Apollodorus

Yes, everyone thought he was a peasant. A carpenter or artisan, specifically. And we accept this particular scriptural detail as probably historical because it is attested to by literally all of our sources, and because its not really the sort of thing someone would make up, if they were inventing details. If you were going to make up a story about a guy secretly being the rightful King of Israel, you wouldn't invent the detail that he was a peasant. When people lie, they tend to lie in a way that serves their interests, not in ways that harms them.

Obviously there's always the possibility that despite all that, our sources are wrong. But that's an unavoidable problem in history, since unlike the observational sciences we cannot recreate or re-test the hypothesis. So the best we can do is determine the degrees of probability or confidence in light of the relevant evidence. And we have no reason to doubt that Jesus was, as he was claimed to be, a peasant artisan from a peasant village.

This part is quite exiting: "anti-Christian activists like yourself cite other anti-Christian activists like Ehrman as their "eminent authority". You aren't fooling anyone."

Do the activists go to secret meetings in order to train together? Are special handshakes involved?

And who will be the "Christian" in this matter? There are so many interpretations and forms of worship under this name that it is like being Anti-Smith as an agenda. Even self-identified anti-Christians have to say what it is before they slap it up the side of the head.

This part is quite exiting: "anti-Christian activists like yourself cite other anti-Christian activists like Ehrman as their "eminent authority". You aren't fooling anyone." — Paine

Oh dear, did he really call Ehrman an "anti-Christian activist"? :lol:

I didn't realize quite the level of religious crank we were dealing with here. Suddenly things make a lot more sense.

Yes. Click on the link Fooloso4 provided.

Oh brother, they really did say that :gasp:

I'm genuinely embarrassed for our poor friend Apollodorus. Yikes.

For my part, I don't want to assign an agenda to someone assigning an agenda. i can oppose it or question it without doing that.

That is my ideal, anyway, which I often fail to accomplish.

t

I didn't realize quite the level of religious crank we were dealing with here. Suddenly things make a lot more sense. — Seppo

This is only part of it. When he first joined the forum he was touting the work of Kerry Bolton.

In 1980, Bolton co-founded the New Zealand branch of the Church of Odin, a pro-Nazi organisation for "whites of non-Jewish descent".

He founded the national-socialist Order of the Left Hand Path (OLHP).It was intended to be an activist front promoting an "occult-fascist axis"

Bolton created and edited the Black Order newsletter, The Flaming Sword, and its successor, The Nexus, a satanic-Nazi journal

And to defend Bolton Apollodorus cited Kevin B. MacDonald. Kevin B. MacDonald is an American anti-semitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and a retired professor of evolutionary psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). In 2008, the CSULB academic senate voted to disassociate itself from MacDonald's work.

The moderators deleted his threads. He claimed ignorance, but he routinely digs up dirt on academics who hold views contrary to his own. I will leave it to the reader to decide how credible his pleas of ignorance were,

Accepting that the scriptures say something obviously isn't the same thing as accepting the thing it says. — Seppo

Of course not. What your beliefs are makes no difference to me. I'm simply pointing out that your argument doesn't add up. You seem to be rejecting or accepting bits of text depending on whether they fit or not some preconceived opinion or yours. If you think that's a "scientific" method, that's your problem. But you can't expect people to take you seriously.

Yes, everyone thought he was a peasant. — Seppo

I don't think so. Some called him "son of David".

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham ... (Matthew 1:18)

Of course, that genealogy could be made up. But then the whole text could be made up, in which case it's a waste of time discussing it. :grin:

Good thing, then, that I never said such a thing. — Seppo

You did imply that if Ehrman says so, then somehow it must be so. You are also using terms like "probably", etc. Have you personally calculated the mathematical probabilities in each case? And even if you did and you could demonstrate that something is probable, "probable" doesn't mean it must be so, does it?

I'm not saying you can't hold those beliefs. Only that your statements seem to be based on belief rather than fact.

Well, that does count as an agenda. Disregard my previous reserve on that point. This place is stranger than I thought.

Only that your statements seem to be based on belief rather than fact. — Apollodorus

:lol: okay now if this isn't the Platonic Form of Pot-Calling-the-Kettle-Black. Sorry man, I didn't realize you were such a diehard religious crank, so I'm not longer interested.

Sorry man, I didn't realize you were such a diehard religious crank, so I'm not longer interested. — Seppo

Well, I told you your logic was flawed! Just because you are a religious crank, that doesn't mean that others must be religious cranks, does it? :wink:

And since you know absolutely nothing about my religious beliefs, I can only assume you're a fantasist in addition to being a religious crank.

BTW, how does calling Ehrman "anti-Christian" make you a "religious crank"?

Plus, if you look at your own comments, you might notice the many "probably", "possibly", etc., none of which amounts to "proof" even if you invoke Ehrman a thousand times.

We're not talking about a peasant becoming king, but a peasant being the king. The anointed king. Despite not having been anointed, and not being the king. You still don't see the problem? — Seppo

No, I don't, actually. If some believed that Jesus was of royal descent, as they obviously did, then they couldn't have regarded him as a "peasant". In fact, some even believed that he was the son of God. It follows that it is incorrect to claim that everyone believed he was a "peasant".

As I said, I'm simply pointing out the inconsistencies and flaws in your arguments (without calling you names). IMO, that's what discussion forums are for. But if you expect people to take your (or Ehrman's) word for it, good luck with that .... :smile:

P.S. For your information, none of my threads were ever "deleted" by anyone, as there was no reason to do so.

Thanks for sharing this in-depth and enlightening information. I haven't had much time to study these topics for the past few months due to personal commitments and online debates. But the comments here have sparked my curiosity again, and I'll surely look into these intriguing events as soon as I possibly can. A true "gift" indeed.

Btw, if you have any book recommendations, I shall be immensely grateful to receive them. I am not the best at choosing :p

Josephus is a good place to start I suppose. Popular writers of Historical Jesus secondary literature abound: Ehrman, Sanders, Vermes, Eisenman, Schweitzer, Bultmann, Maccoby, Levine, Maier, Pagels, Chilton, Falk, Tabor, even just writers like Reza Aslan did a decent job coalescing sources. Then just look up any academic journal article in Second Temple Judaism, Palestine under Greeks and Romans, History of Israel under Greco-Romans, New Testament Studies, Historical Jesus, Jerusalem Church, James the Brother of Jesus, Jewish Christians, Early Christianity, and have a ball.

#Overwhelmed :clap:

Thank you so much!

It's pretty silly to argue against the idea when Yeshua quoted the septuagent and was raised in Nazareth surrounded by Greek philosophy and culture.

Yeshua quoted the septuagent — SkyLeach

Where?

Literally every time he quoted scripture. You do know that all the gospels are written in Greek? Every time Jesus quoted the Torah it was a word-for-word quote from the Septuagint. There is no evidence (at least that I'm aware of) that he ever quoted Hebrew.

Literally every time he quoted scripture. You do know that all the gospels are written in Greek? Every time Jesus quoted the Torah it was a word-for-word quote from the Septuagint. — SkyLeach

Right. But that could be simply because the writers checked on the source they had access to while writing the gospels.

There is no evidence (at least that I'm aware of) that he ever quoted Hebrew.

He spoke Aramaic.

The NT does indicate reliance on LXX (Septuagint) as a principal source. But this in turn puts into question the whole Aramaic Hypothesis. If Aramaic was the sole (or even main) language spoken and written in Roman Palestine, why would anyone turn to the Greek LXX instead of Aramaic or Hebrew texts?

IMO this seems to suggest that Greek was more widely spoken than sometimes assumed.

The scrolls used by religious leaders during that period of time were always in Hebrew, not Aramaic. It would have been sacrilege to any Jew to "quote" scripture only after translating it into the common tongue. Even today Yiddish is used to speak but Hebrew is used in prayer and worship.

At any rate the language of education during that time period was Greek, not Latin. The transition to Latin as a scholars language took a couple of generations because there was no printing press and the predominant scholar language must be what scrolls and books are written in. Outside of the synagogues that was Greek.

Unless a person was a member of the religious (and thus ruling) class they simply had no way to learn Hebrew.

I'm not aware of any of the apostles that even knew Latin except for Peter (who was a Roman citizen).

In the end, however, almost all of this is extrapolated from the dead sea scrolls and cultural norms pieced together from historian accounts (largely Josephus). We can pick up a lot of cultural evidence of the impact of Aristotle's "science" as the ideas spread up through Italy even before the idea of Rome had taken shape. There is a great deal of academic speculation on the impact of those ideas on the shape of political structures to come. Keep in mind that the renaissance started in Italy which at the very least should give us a massive clue that science and Greek culture had penetrated to the soul of that people.

The scrolls used by religious leaders during that period of time were always in Hebrew, not Aramaic. It would have been sacrilege to any Jew to "quote" scripture only after translating it into the common tongue. Even today Yiddish is used to speak but Hebrew is used in prayer and worship. — SkyLeach

That is simply not true. Targumin existed for a reason, and they were not sacrilegious. Or not too much, not anymore than the Septuagint...

Jesus read the Tanak in Aramaic. Like everybody at the time.

Note that modern Israelis speak Hebrew. Nobody speaks Yiddish anymore.

If Aramaic was the sole (or even main) language spoken and written in Roman Palestine, why would anyone turn to the Greek LXX instead of Aramaic or Hebrew texts? — Apollodorus

They wouldn't, not in 1st century Palestine, but a century later, when Greek speakers wrote the story, they used the LXX to check that they had the quotes right.

They wouldn't, not in 1st century Palestine, but a century later, when Greek speakers wrote the story, they used the LXX to check that they had the quotes right. — Olivier5

Well, it is entirely possible that the Gospels are fictitious narratives fabricated by Greek speakers in the second century.

However, who exactly were these “Greek speakers”?

I think it is fairly clear that they were Palestinian Jews as they were obviously familiar with the local geography, society, culture, and language.

And if there were Greek-speaking Palestinian Jews in the 2nd century, there is no reason why there couldn’t have been Greek-speaking Palestinian Jews a few decades earlier, in the time of Jesus.

It follows that the original quotes could perfectly well have had the LXX as source, in which case there would have been no need for anyone to check.

if there were Greek-speaking Palestinian Jews in the 2nd century, there is no reason why there couldn’t have been Greek-speaking Palestinian Jews a few decades earlier, in the time of Jesus. — Apollodorus

Of course there were. But it does not follow that Jesus was one of them.

I don't know why people keep on looking for Greek influences on Jesus. A more useful line of analysis takes a longer historical view, and look at the influence of the Persian Zoroastre on Jewish religious development, from the times of Cyrus to the 1st century.

Consider the "two powers in heavens" heresy within Judaism. In a now famous book, Alan Segal demonstrated that this belief was widespread among Jews and even some rabbis by the first century, and may have been a catalyst for the Jewish rejection of early Christianity, when ultimately the rabbis rejected "Binitarianism". In this view, god has two sides: a good one and a bad one. In other similar views, the demiurge or prince of this world is not the god who created the world (who is good), but a bad god. Like Sheitan if you prefer. This maps well with Jesus' tendencies to reject this world as inherently corrupt, and the Devil as dwelling in it.

Jesus was influenced by Hellenistic thought. — Dermot Griffin

Of course, Jesus must have been influenced by the Greek culture that had ruled the Middle East for centuries. But the actual "sayings" of Jesus reflect his own Jewish culture -- especially the wisdom literature of the Essenes. So, It may have been the apostles to the gentiles that presented their Christian doctrine in terms familiar to non-Jews.

Paul was educated in both traditions, but even staunch-Jewish John used the Greek philosophical concept of the abstract principle "Logos" as a metaphor for the super-human notion of "Christ", the eternally existing deity who manifested in human form. That hybrid god-human model was sacrilegious to monotheistic Orthodox Jews. Anyway, I doubt that Jesus himself was as Hellenized as the Catholic canon of scriptures made it seem. For example, a god trinity was common to both Greeks and Romans. :smile:

Jesus' World :
Things like Platonic philosophy and Stoic philosophy at the level it was appropriated by a person like Philo, probably would not have had a direct impact on Jesus.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/hellenisticculture.html

Triple Deity :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity

This maps well with Jesus' tendencies to reject this world as inherently corrupt, and the Devil as dwelling in it. — Olivier5

Whatever the source of that idea, it is incongruous with the Platonic teaching, expressed continuously over hundreds of years before Jesus, that there can only be a single universe and that evil is distance from the Good that provides order to it.

Of course there were. But it does not follow that Jesus was one of them — Olivier5

Correct. But it does follow that he could have been one of them. In which case the LXX quotes in the NT could have been original and not inserted later by "Greek speakers" to make them sound more "authentic".

As regards Persian influence on Judaism, it seems highly likely, as does Assyrian, Egyptian, and Babylonian influences.

I think the main Greek influence on Jesus was linguistic, as was the case with other Palestinian Jews of the period. But cultural influences shouldn't be ruled out. After all, there was such a thing as Hellenistic Judaism and, as is well-known, Jewish texts like the Book of Wisdom and Maccabees 2, 3, 4 were composed in Greek and show clear Greek influence.