What Really Killed Jesus? Mark 15 Redux

XTALK, the historical Jesus and early Christianity discussion group, has been discussing a recent article in the Jerusalem Post....Jim West originally posted the link:

>A clot on the lung, not blood loss.
>
> the JP has the story
>
>

> Jim

KILMON: Normally crucifixion was a long agonizing death, often taking days and prolongation by offering liquid was part of the process. That Jesus died within a few hours while those crucified with him required crurifragium is certainly indicative of some acute pathology resulting from the severity of Jesus' "special handling." A pulmonary embolism is, of course, very likely. My opinion, however, leans toward hemothorax caused by the intense concussive assault of the flagrum.

The Crucifixion scene of Jesus is a Markan fiction, a composition tinkered with by the other presenters of the writer's brilliant story. The idea that one could derive such detailed medical knowledge from the fictional construction of the writer of Mark is absurd.

Let's take a look again at the structure of the Crucifixion (blogged earlier here). The Crucifixion scene, as the writer originally presented it, begins, as all Markan structures do, with a scene change.

And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).(RSV)

This is the A bracket of a very large structure. Its complement is Mk 15:40-1.

There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

At first glance these do not appear related. Let's break out the parallels:

A: And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne.... the father of Alexander and Rufus,
A': There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me,

Here three men oppose three women, and a father of two sons opposes a mother of two sons.

A: who was coming in from the country,
A': when he was in Galilee,

Here country is opposed to Galilee. Simon functions as another double of Jesus, coming in from the country to Jerusalem.

A: to carry his cross.
A': followed him, and ministered to him;

Basically, whoever wants to follow Jesus should take up his cross, and the parallel is perfect here.

A: And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).
A': and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Golgotha opposes Jerusalem. The writer of Mark does not make Golgotha a hill, though that can be deduced from the meaning of the word. If one thinks of Golgotha as a mount of some kind, we have the common ANE theme of the Cosmic Mountain opposing the City of Zion. But that is probably pushing it too far.

Now we have our A and A' brackets.

A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

The B and B' brackets are similarly constructed of opposing elements. While the A-A' set consists of personal names that are most probably fictional, the elements in B-B' appear to be fictions created out of the OT.

B And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take

B' And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down." And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

These two brackets roll in ABCD and roll out DCBA. They actually pair off like this.

And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."

And they crucified him,
And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.

and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

[verse missing, probably resembled Matthew 27:36. See previous blog entry on this]
And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

Nothing can be deduced from these details, medically or historically, because the writer has drawn them from the OT.

Our structure now looks like this:

A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

The next two brackets (for the rules for forming brackets, see the excursus at the end of Chapter 1 of my Commentary on Mark)

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The oppositions are strongly thematic. Our accumulating structure looks like this now:

A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

The next set of brackets is also related, but not as clearly as the last pair.

..................D...And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

..................D'..And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

Here first men acknowledge Jesus King, and then the Heavens acknowledge his royal/divine nature.


A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).
.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

....................D...And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

....................D'..And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Like many Markan structures, this one has a very complex twinned center with an ABBA structure, a common one. It was studying this one that enabled me to grasp the rules dictating how the writer had structured each scene in his Gospel. The center consists of paired oppositions that are easy to grasp:

......................E...A And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

................................B And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

......................E'.......B So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."
...........................A Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

The A brackets refer to the thieves, the B brackets to others who mocked him. Here again the details are drawn from the Psalms and elsewhere in the OT. The complete structure looks like this:

A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

....................D...And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

.........................E...A. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

...................................B And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

.........................E'.......B So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."
...........................A. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

....................D'..And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

There can be no question that this is fiction. Its structure is clearly contrived, and the origin of its details lies in the Old Testament. Any claim that anything like medical or historical accuracy can be deduced from this structure is indefensible.

Mark and Q, Part 3 (reblogged due to technical difficulties)

...if these coincidences were explained by the Markan knowledge of Q. At first sight the similar divergences of Matthew and Luke from Mark give reason to believe that Mark is not their only common source. The deviations from Mark are then explained by means of Q. But, as soon as Q is reconstructed, one should conclude that it was also Mark's source. So far as I see, this result simply contradicts the premise, which should consequently lead to a re-evaluation of the premise. That is to say, if Mark used Q as a source, Q can no longer be reconstructed only on the basis of Matthew and Luke"(Dunderberg 1995, p502).

I have decided that the AntiQues are correct and there is no Q. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that Mark is Q, so to speak: it was Mark's use/invention of chreia that inspired Matthew to go out and get even more. And then Luke copied Matthew....

This is the third post of a series that attempts to show that the Ba'al-zebub reference in Mark 3 provides evidence that Mark is the original author of this passage. I previously blogged on the Beelzebub reference in Mark 3, which apparently contains at least one Markan theme. I would now like to identify another stylistic feature of Markan usage that appears in all three Synoptic gospels that strongly suggests that the originator of the Ba'al-Zebub story is in fact the writer of Mark. In the blog entry on Markan Interreferences I pointed out a feature of the writer: he tends to cite passages in one place that he parallels elsewhere in the Gospel. Here in Mark 3:20-30 is a good example of that.

Recall that the term "Be-el'zebul" occurs only once in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 1. The complete sequence of 2 Kings 1:1-8 runs:

1: After Ahab's death, Moab rebelled against Israel. 2: Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, "Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury." 3: But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, "Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?' 4: Therefore this is what the LORD says: 'You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!' " So Elijah went. 5: When the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, "Why have you come back?" 6: "A man came to meet us," they replied. "And he said to us, 'Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, "This is what the LORD says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!" 7: The king asked them, "What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?" 8: They replied, "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist." The king said, "That was Elijah the Tishbite." (NIV)

There are numerous mentions of demons Old Testament, some more than once, in addition to the Jewish apocryphal literature such as 1 Enoch and texts like The Testament of Solomon. Why pick this one? The mention of Ba'al-Zebub is a like a flare launched out of the Old Testament to attract the reader back to 2 Kings (although in the LXX of Kings the name is slightly different). There are reader will discover that the writer of Mark has paralleled this passage twice before in his Gospel. First, in Mk 1:1-8, he uses it to describe John the Baptist:

2 Kings 1:8
8: They replied, "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist." The king said, "That was Elijah the Tishbite." (NIV)

Mark 1:6
6: Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.

Next, in the conflict story of Mk 2:1-12, the writer offers us a version of the death of King Ahaziah (Price 2000). The paralytic is lowered through the roof, while the King falls through a lattice. The paralytic is healed because he has faith in Jesus, while the King dies because he does not have faith in God. The writer is using the story in 2 Kings to comment on the story he is writing, a splendid example of his hypertextual skills. The mention of Ba'al-Zebub is there to make sure that we do what generations of readers have done, go back to 2 Kings and see what it says there, and then reflect back on the story of the writer of Mark. Note that in 2 Kings 1:8, it is the King himself who identifies Elijah. The writer of Mark probably wants the reader to go back and complete the quotation and thus find out who John is.

In sum, Mk 3:22 presents us with a textbook example of a Markan interreference, a stylistic feature that is a creation of the hand of Mark. That has certain implications for the Mark-Q overlaps.

Both of these passages, Mark 3:20-3:30 (Beelzebub Controversy) and Mark 2:1-12 (Healing of the Paralytic) are preserved in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, who got them from Mark. Matthew dropped the sequence about being the paralytic being lowered through the roof.

According to Fledderman (2001), the writer of Mark derived this from Q, based on the facts that (1) the material shared with Q is in the same order; (2) the Markan version has features derived from Q; and (3), the rhetorical question "How can Satan cast out Satan?" is derived from elements in the Q controversy; and, (4) the author of Mark combined two Q sayings. Fledderman notes three additional facts: that Mark's version is shorter, that the parts are scattered all over Q, and that there are no parts of Mark's text without a Q counterpart. Fledderman also observes that the Markan elements are scattered all over Q, and that there are no parts that do not have a Q counterpart. "Everything in Mark comes from Q" he tersely concludes (p27). Fledderman also claims that the charge that Jesus is possessed by Ba'al-Zebub comes from the claim in Q that John was possessed of a demon.

Let's examine these from the point of view of the typical behavior of the author of Mark. As the last shall be first, let's start with the claim that the writer of Mark derived his idea of Jesus' demon possession from Q. The Q-text Matt 11:18 (Luke 7:33) says:

16: “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: 17: “ ‘We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance; we sang a dirge
and you did not mourn.’
18: For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19: The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.” ’ But wisdom is proved right by her actions.”

Fledderman is claiming essentially that the writer of Mark saw this in a text that was later used by Matthew and Luke, and copied it over to Jesus. Recall that the Christology of the writer of Mark is Adoptionist. Let's envision two scenarios:

1. The writer of Mark needs a story to explain that the family was upset by their child's sudden imagining that he is the Adopted Son of God (see commentary on Mk 3:20-30 for further comments). He invents a story about people claiming that Ba'al-Zebub is possessing Jesus, selecting that particular demon out of the many in the Jewish literature and tradition of antiquity in the usual Markan style referring back to passages he has already paralleled. Further, the writer enjoys hiding ironic truths in errors of indentification by the characters, especially Jesus' opponents, in his gospel -- Jesus is in fact possessed, but by God, not by a demon. Later on Matthew picks up the story from Mark. Matthew's Christology is "higher" -- he thinks Jesus is God's Son from the beginning, so there can be no hint that Jesus is possessed by a demon. Therefore he transfers the demon to John, who after all is only a human and in any case a rival of Jesus. Not having any particular reason to prefer Ba'al-Zebub over other demons, Matthew does away with the name -- he has also eliminated the parallel to 2 Kings 1 in his story about the paralytic -- and simply refers to an unnamed "demon." Always willing to play Salieri to Mark's Mozart, Matthew thus eliminates the dancing Markan irony in favor of lurching Matthean didacticism.

2. The writer of Q invents or preserves a story about people claiming John is possessed by a demon (why?). Matthew incorporates it into his Gospel. Meanwhile the writer of Mark discovers Q. Ignoring the rich vein of material in Q so much like the other sayings he preserves, he zeroes in on this offhand remark about John and realizes he can use it for his story about Jesus' family. What a coincidence, eh? He can even use the name 'Ba'al-Zebub' which by happy chance can refer back to two earlier episodes in the Gospel. What luck! And even better, Jesus possessed by a demon is richly ironic, given the writer's Adoptionist Christology.

In case 1, the inclusion of Ba'al-Zebub is the result of the writer of Mark's careful craftsmanship. In case 2, it is the result of a lucky discovery in Q.

The remaining items do not constitute an argument either for or against Markan dependence on Q. The fact that Markan elements are scattered all over Q, and that there are no parts that do not have a Q counterpart, is explainable in a more parimonious fashion through Matthew's dependence on Mark. One need only glance at the passage above to note that Matthew has yoked a charge of being a glutton, derived ultimately from Mk 2:13-17 and before that, perhaps from Galatians, to the charge that John has a demon from Q. No matter which way we opt, for Markan priority and no Q, or Q priority and Markan dependence on Q, we are still stuck with an author taking passages from all over sources and sticking them together to make new passages. "Scattered material" cannot be an argument against anything.

The remaining arguments of Fledderman are explainable under either interpretive framework. If the material shared with Q is in the same order, surely that reflects Matthean dependence on Mark, which we already know is a fact. If the Markan version has features derived from Q that can hardly be surprising, since Matthew copied Mark. This same fact also explains how the rhetorical question "How can Satan cast out Satan?" is derived from elements in the Q controversy. One might note that on p25 Fledderman states: "If we examine Mark's version of the Beelzebub controversy, we note a conscious design that bears Mark's imprint." I couldn't agree more.

A further problem with Fledderman's thesis is that "Beelzebub" pops up in all three versions of the controversy. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have it:

The problem is plain. On Fledderman's thesis, Matthew and Luke derived these sequences from Q rather than from Mark. But if that is the case, what is Q doing with "Beelzebub" in it? In the Gospel of Mark "Beelzebub" fits into a rich system of allusions to the OT arranged by the writer of Mark, and is a Markan stylistic feature (interreference) like approximately a dozen similar features elsewhere in the Gospel. These allusions were not incorporated into Matthew (Matthew drops the story of the paralytic being lowered through the roof), so what is the name "Beelzebub" doing in Matthew? Any of several demons or an unnamed demon will do just as well. Unless it came to Matthew through Mark, there is no reason for it to be there at all. The word "Beelzebub" is a finger that points directly to the writer of Mark, and to Markan creativity in the heart of Q.

Book Review: Atwill, Caesar's Messiah

Caesar's Messiah : The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus
by Joseph Atwill. 256 pages Ulysses Press (April 15, 2005),

The last few years have seen the publication of three books arguing that the Jesus story is really the story of a Roman Emperor. These include Jesus was Caesar: On the Julian origin of Christianity, an Investigative Report, by Francesco Carotta, and Gary Courtney's Et tu, Judas? Then Fall Jesus!, both of which argue that that the Jesus story is based on the story of Julius Caesar, and Joseph Atwill's Caesar's Messiah, which makes the case that the Jesus story is the story of Titus. Of these, Caesar's Messiah is by far the best. While Carotta's work virtually ignores modern New Testament scholarship, Atwill is cognizant of it, though he does not locate his narrative within the scholarly paradigms. Caesar’s Messiah reads the texts closely, has a fresh perspective, and many original insights. The result is a book that is informative and challenging, and will repay even those readers who reject his main thesis.

Atwill's main thesis is actually a combination of several ideas. First, he argues that the stories of Jesus in the New Testament are actually stories of Titus' campaign through Galilee and the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. In this reading, the Gospels are clever satires created by the Flavian Emperors and their supporters. They thus function on the surface as religious tales, but the underlying story is actually a huge in-joke. Second, he argues that Josephus and the New Testament are essentially two sides of the same coin, one written in intimate relationship to the other. For example, discussing the sequence with the demoniac in Gadara/Gergasa, Atwill writes:

"The reason that the New Testament’s demoniac of Gadara can be seen as a satire on Josephus’ “tyrant” John and the battle at Gadara is simply because the two stories follow the same plot outline. In other words, the characters and events that can be seen as parallel occur in the same sequence. And it all occurs near Gadara. The satirical version in the New Testament tells the same story that Josephus does but, as is often the case with satire, the characters have different names."(p65)

In addition to the idea of satire and the close relationship between the NT and Josephus, this passage highlights another important theme of Atwill's: the importance of name switching among these texts. Discussing the famous passage about Jesus in Josephus, Atwill writes, citing Josephus himself:

"To solve the puzzle the reader must simply do as Decius Mundus recommends in the following chapter and 'value not this business of names.'"(p217)

The importance of this work lies in the originality of its reading of Josephus against the New Testament. Here Atwill's work resembles that of Cliff Carrington and other exegetes who have come to the conclusion that there is something highly suspicious about the way the two bodies of work are related. Atwill's strength is that not only has he pushed this line of insight farther than anyone else, he has constructed a full-fledged model to explain why this relationship exists. Hence, a good alternate title for this work might well have been There's Something Funky about the New Testament and Josephus.

After reviewing the history of the day, and exploring the links between the Flavians and early Christianity, Atwill lays out his thesis at the end of Chapter 2:

"The Gospels were designed to become apparent as satire as soon as they were read in conjunction with War of the Jews. In fact, the four Gospels and War of the Jews were created as a unified piece of literature whose characters and stories interact. Their interaction gives many of Jesus’ sayings a comical meaning and also creates a series of puzzles whose solutions reveal the real identities of the New Testament’s characters. Understanding the New Testament’s comic level reveals, for example, that the Apostles Simon and John were cruel lampoons of Simon and John, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion."(p36)

Atwill concludes this chapter with a discussion of Mark 1 and Mark 5 and parallels to Titus’ first battle on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Chapter 3 gives us Atwill’s discussion of the strange tale of Cannibal Mary. For readers who have read Josephus many times, Atwill’s claim that she represents a parody of Christianity will come as a shock. Yet it is hard to see a woman named Mary who kills and eats her son in the manner of a Passover sacrifice as anything but a satire on the tale of Jesus as told in the Gospels. Atwill observes that the words in her mouth were placed there by Josephus, and if read as a satire on Christianity, they take on a new and portentous meaning:

“As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a by-word to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.”(Whiston translation, cited on p46)

Why should anyone roasting and eating their own child expect it to be a “by-word to the world” and a fury to the “seditious varlets,” the Jewish rebels? As Atwill points out, if this scene were in a piece of modern literature, it would instantly be seen by everyone as a parody of Christianity. Nor is Atwill the first scholar to have had this insight into the passage, for Honora H. Chapman noted parallels between the 'Cannibal Mary passage' in Josephus and the symbolic Passover Lamb of the Gospels in her SBL seminar paper 'A Myth for the World', Early Christian Reception of Infanticide and Cannibalism in Josephus' Bellum Judaicum' (2000).

Over the next few chapters Atwill then attempts to sort out the problem of who Jesus really was and solve the problem of the Empty Tomb. His thesis is that the Gospels were essentially written together, and thus, must be read together. Hence, he reads the Empty Tomb tale as four versions of the same tale, in parts, distributed across the various gospels:

“My analysis revealed that these four versions were intended to be read as a single story. This combined story is divided into two halves. One half consists of the visits to the tomb described in the Gospel of John. The other consists of the visits to the tomb described in the other three Gospels. In the combined story the individuals described in the Gospel of John meet the individuals described in the other three Gospels and, in their emotional state, the different groups mistake one another for angels. This comedy of errors causes the visitors to the empty tomb to mistakenly believe that their Messiah has risen from the dead.”(p129)

The next few chapters cover the authors of the New Testament and how the tale was constructed. Then comes perhaps the most fascinating chapter in the work, his discussion of the Testamonium Flavianum (TF). Atwill’s reading of this and its surrounding passages as a complex satire is perhaps the most revolutionary insight in the work. Unlike his allegorical reading of the New Testament, which is easy for the reader to swat away, Atwill’s analysis of the TF and its companion passages will be impossible to ignore. Not only does his reading make sense of this section of the work, it is supported by strong linguistic and thematic links that will be difficult to refute. This chapter alone makes the book worth the price of admission.

But if a fresh and compelling look at the TF were not enough, Atwill offers in Chapter 13 a very interesting argument that Josephus has adjusted the dates of important events in his works to make them conform to the prophecies in Daniel.

Caesar’s Messiah closes with a discussion of the Apostles and the Maccabees, and other parallels between the New Testament and events in Titus’ campaign in Palestine prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. The coincidence of dates and names has also been noted by other authors, most recently in Jay Raskin’s piece in the Journal of Higher Criticism on the Maccabees and early Christianity.

Atwill’s prose is spare, even grim, and the book is refreshingly free of the silly attacks on New Testament scholars for being fools and scoundrels that tend to populate works of authors with out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Atwill usually is able to strike a sturdy posture that enables him to explain why no one has made all the connections he has (though a surprising amount of scholars have stumbled across pieces of the puzzle) without sounding triumphalist. My own view is that this work, intended for a lay audience, would have been even better had it presented some of the scholarly support for Atwill’s specific claims (a companion volume aimed at scholars due out soon). There are some regrettable moments, such as the statistical analysis of the parallels on p224 that reads like something out of Erich Von Daniken, and the mistaken attribution of a quote on p296 to Jesus rather than to John the Baptist. Overall, the work is clearly structured and very accessible.

I doubt that the central thesis of Caesar’s Messiah will find many takers; nor, ultimately, was this reader convinced. But many of the book’s insights commend themselves to thoughtful reconstruction and deconstruction. Well worth the price of admission, both lay readers and scholars will be able to find something in Caesar’s Messiah to challenge, to entertain, or simply to get the old gray matter back to pumping iron.

Congratulations to Mark Goodacre Again!

Congratulations to Mark Goodacre for the new post in the USA! I predict, however, that Mark will be forced to turn this post down. This is because he'll have to apply for a visa to enter the US, which in turn will force him to reveal the secret to how he is able to perform research, teach, write, blog, and still find time to raise a beautiful family and watch movies -- he is actually triplets.

Bryan Cox Assimilated!

Another brave soul has been captured by the Blogsphere! Bryan Cox, sometime sparring partner in the Bible Criticism Forum at Infidels, has fallen to the Blogsphere after a vicious struggle to remain unaddicted. His new Blog, Biblaridion, is available deep in the heart of the Blogsphere. Here's Bryan after the assimlation took place.


Byran after throwing his ring into the...er...his hat into the ring.

For those of you with long databases but short memories, Bryan rose to international prominence briefly after becoming the object of Rochelle Altman's ire during the James Ossuary debacle. Which, at least at BAR, appears to be still ongoing.

Anyway, Bryan forgot to enable "comments" on his blog settings, so I was unable to leave my usual quota of snide comments and absurd claims on his new blog, and must give vent to my frustrations here.

Welcome aboard, Bryan!

Theological Terms from the Esoteric Dictionary of Quasi-Spiritual Mistaken Knowledge

I found this over at XnForums....originally from The Door


Theological Terms from the Esoteric Dictionary of Quasi-Spiritual Mistaken Knowledge

By Randall F. West
Issue #188, July/August 2003

Trini-tini-tarianism – Belief in a miniscule but three-personed God.

Exebegesis – Textual interpretation that results in scaring the pants off you.

Septuasquint – Vision deficit resulting from intense study of small-print version of the Septuagint.

Codex Sinusitis – Historically important New Testament manuscript that makes you sneeze.

Hypocrypha – extra-canonical documents that pretend to be part of the apocrypha but aren’t.

Apocalips – The intensely pursed expression of readers of Left Behind books.

Tell-e-all-ogy – The theological justification for sleazy unauthorized biographies.

Penetetouche´ – A crushing rejoinder to arguments that Moses did not write the Penteteuch.

More-pheology Theology – The study of the slippery changes of the prosperity doctrine.

Trylemma – The crisis of conscience experienced by agnostics who try to respond to C.S. Lewis’ “Lord, liar or lunatic” argument.

Eh-scatology – Ho-hum exposition of the end times.

Decalogue – A dialogue between ten people. Often unsuccessfully attempted in Episcopal and Presbyterian communities. (Not related to the Ten Commandments, unless to debunk them.)

Christodgily – Dry, academic discussion of the various manifestations of Christ.

Form Criticism – What liberal theologians engage in when they go on Spring Break.

Intarnation – Ontological epithet often inserted into the sentence “What…are you doing?”

Propitchiation – A testimony of faith given by professional baseball players.

Par-wooz-sia – State of mental fuzziness induced by overlong fasting while reading the book of Revelation.

Par-ooz-sia – A divine appearance bringing about the end of the world in a slow, icky way.

Par-oops-sia – Heresy propounded by some writers who forgot where to look for the book of the Revelation.

KerygMama – A dynamic woman preacher (see also: Franklin, Aretha).

Kantikle of Kanticles – Seldom-sung love song based on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Synaptic Gospels – Fast paced cyber-version of the Gospels edited by Keanu Reeves and the cast of The Matrix. Features amazing special effects, including the Apostle Paul evangelizing faster than humanly possible.

Dyslexic Gospels – Version that only makes sense read backwards.

Pteredactor – A theological dinosaur known for biting large holes in the text.

Was Detering Right about the Date of Mark?

Was Detering Right about the Date of Mark?

The following verse, Mark 13:14 is one of the most famous verses in the Gospel:

14: "But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; (RSV)

This is the famous "Abomination of Desolation" that the writer derived from Daniel 9:27. The majority of scholars hold that it refers to the occupation of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 by Roman troops, who "worshipped" their standards there, according to Josephus. The reference to "false Christs" in 13:21-22 may well be a reference to messianic pretenders like Simon Bar Giora, a key Jewish leader of that war, which would also put the Gospel of Mark after 70. The "Legion" of the demoniac of Mark 5:1-20 that was sent into pigs may be a reference to Legio X Fretensis, which occupied the Temple after 70 and among whose legionnary standards was a boar.

However, a handful of exegetes, among them the brilliant German scholar Hermann Detering, see Mark 13 as referring not to the revolt of 70 but to the later revolt of 135, in which the Jewish nation was not only defeated but eliminated. The Jews were evicted from Palestine, the Temple area occupied by a Roman Temple, and Jerusalem renamed. Even the name "Judea" disappeared as Hadrian renamed the area "Syria Palestina" to deliberately blot it out.

The later revolt also fits the descriptions in Mark, in some ways slightly better. The catalyst for the Jewish Revolt of 135 was Hadrian's erection of not merely a statue of himself, but a statue of Jupiter and a Roman Temple on the site of the Jerusalem Temple. Construction began during the Emperor's visit to the area. When he left in 132 the rebellion began to swell as Jews fortified villages and occupied strongholds all over Palestine. A savage war ensued whose devastation far exceeded the affray of 70. No less than twelve Roman legions were brought in, some from as far away as Britain. The enormous number of Jews participating in the revolt forced the Roman leader, Julius Severus, to follow a policy of scorched earth and starvation rather than open confrontation. These events may also be seen in Mark 13, particularly since Hadrian persecuted both Christians and Jews, and animosity between the two groups grew throughout the second century. Since Legio X Fretensis remained in Palestine and occupied Jerusalem in the second century, the possible reference to it in Mark 5 is also supported, perhaps even enhanced (Ken Humphreys outlines some of the late-date information here).

There is an additional piece of data that favors a later date for the Gospel of Mark than usually given. TE Schmidt (1995) argued that the scene depicted in Mark 15:16 to 15:22 is essentially meant to depict a mock Roman triumphal procession. Such mock processions are known from history. For example, Sejanus received one before his execution.

Schmidt was among a small number of exegetes who have observed that Golgotha may also be translated as head as well as skull. That would make Golgotha the Place of the Head. A Roman legend records that in Rome when a temple was being built on a hill, a human head was found with its features still intact. According to the legend, the soothsayers then said this meant the hill would be the head of all Italy. The hill was thus named Capitoline Hill. The significance of this should not be missed: the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on Capitoline Hill, the Capitolium, the placed named after the Death's Head, was the terminus of every Roman triumph.

This may well be a pointer to another Capitoline Hill, the Temple Mount. In two important ways. If we take, in the writer's allegorical geography, the reference to Rome to understand where the writer wants us to think Jesus was crucified, we need only to know that Jerusalem was also a city with a key hill surmounted by a Temple, the Temple Mount itself. Mark may well be implying that Jesus was crucified on the Temple Mount.

The dating datum here is that the Temple Mount did have a Capitoline Temple on its mount, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, erected by Hadrian on the ruins of the Temple. In which case the Place of the Skull would be a very direct reference to the Temple Mount indeed.

This now takes us back to Mark 13:14, where we can at last understand Mark's dual implication of the Abomination in the Desolation. Tate (1995) laid out the parallels between Mark 13:9-13, where Jesus makes a prophecy of future persecution:

Disciples before Councils
Jesus before Sanhedrin

Disciples beaten in Synagogues
Jesus beaten after Sanhedrin Trial

Disciples before Governors
Jesus before Pilate

Disciples brought to trial and "handed over"
Jesus on trial and "handed over"

Brother betrays brother
Judas betrays Jesus

Disciples hated in Jesus' name
Reaction to Jesus' claim to be the Blessed One.

This takes us through Mark 13:13. The very next verse, Mark 13:14, refers to the Abomination. This gives us the crowning parallel:

Abomination Stands in the Desolation
Jesus' Cross Stands on the Temple Mount

Now we have come full circle.

References
Schmidt, T.E. 1995. Mark 15:16-32: the Crucifixion Narrative and the Roman Triumphal Procession. New Test. Stud. vol 41, 1995. pp1-18.

Tate, W. Randolph. 1995. Reading Mark from the Outside: Eco and Iser Leave Their Marks. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications.

Bible Literacy Project

UPDATE: If you have come to this from another site, I have now demonstrated that the Biblical Literacy Project is a project of the American Religious Right.

++++++++++

I hadn't been planning to blog here this week, but courtesy forces me to....

Sarah Jenislawski, Executive Director of the Bible Literacy Project, left some comments on my blog about my earlier post on the Bible Literacy Project:

"Thank you for posting about the Bible Literacy Report. We don't advocate only knowing the catch phrases of the Bible, but are attempting to illustrate some of the basic concepts with which students should be familiar. For more information on our pedagogical approach, please see The Bible and Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide, a set of guidelines we co-published on how to teach about the Bible legally and fairly in the public schools.

We advocate an elective course on the Bible as literature and in literature for high school students. Regarding your comments about Markan priority, JDEP, chiasms, dating of books, Palestinian history and archaeology, these are all subjects worthy of study, but may be a bit advanced for students who may never have read the text of the Bible before. We are not attempting to provide religious education or a complete scholarly overview of the Bible - which could take a lifetime - but only to familiarize students with the basic concepts and themes of the Bible."

First, I'd like to thank Ms. Jenislawski for her very kind response. I can only say that "familiarizing students with the basic concepts and themes of the Bible" cannot take place without the larger context of history and basic scholarship. It would be like trying to teach To Kill a Mockingbird without ever mentioning racism in the South, or without any discussion of its underlying mythical and literary allusions. Your list does not even contain foundational information, such as "the New Testament was originally written in Greek" although such low level information about original languages would certainly be part of any presentation of Flaubert or Hugo in a high school class.

Consider the famous pericope which you have labeled "CAST THE FIRST STONE". The context on that one is crystal clear: that doesn't even belong in the Bible (so why is it being taught?). Will students be made aware that the presence of the concept of "HELL" in the Bible is debatable? Further, what do I get to teach as a "theme?" Can I teach that one of the themes of the Bible is a movement from early polytheism to later monotheism? If I am a Jewish student, can I object to inclusion of the New Testament in the course ("it's not in MY Bible"). And which translation do you plan to use -- are students going to made aware that the translations vary, and that in many cases the text is difficult or impossible to pin down? It seems like you are opening a huge can of worms, and you are entirely without any worm catching gear.

BTW, ya'll might take note that you have listed the Golden Rule three times there. Not only that, but AFAIK the phrase "THE GOLDEN RULE" is not found in the Bible, and did not even come into use in that context until a few centuries ago. Your scholarship fills me with confidence. Another thing ya'll might ponder is the almost complete lack of females on the list. None of the great Jewish females is there, but Mary is. This smacks of a double bias, first against women, and second, in favor of Christianity. The latter suspicion is strengthened by the fact that all of the selections involving Jesus present him in a favorable light; the allegations of demon possession, the blasting of the fig tree, the rejection by his family -- none of these are there.

Finally, the project is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which is not exactly a religiously nuetral organization, nor is it a scholarly or literary organization, but instead promotes religion and free-market causes. This doesn't look like education to me; instead, it stinks of religion-pushing. Fundamentally, an educator provides context for the information presented to enable students to make informed judgments about the material and their relationship to it. By not demanding that Bible literacy be real literacy about the Bible, you in essence indicate that you have other interests than education.

Once again, I thank you for your time.

UPDATE Friday, May 20

A disturbing comment about their connections. Here is the skinny from their home page:

Our primary task now is to move beyond words, to action: To produce and muster
support for a Bible literacy curriculum for public schools that is fair,
balanced, rigorous and constitutional; a textbook which will harm no child's
faith, while leaving every teen knowledgeable about the Bible. Our Bible course
has been reviewed by leading Bible literature scholars, faith leaders, and
educators to ensure its fairness and accuracy. In addition, lawyers from the
Becket Fund for Religious Liberty are reviewing the course to ensure it is legally appropriate for the public schools. The Becket Fund has also agreed to defend, free of charge, any school district sued for using our Bible curriculum in a manner consistent with The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide.

The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty is a "conservative" advocacy group that supports school prayer, vouchers and other right-wing religious causes. The link to this group is quite suggestive.

Snowed under...

...by classwork and translation. Won't be posting here til next week. On the list, reviews of Atwill's Caesar's Messiah, Mack's A Myth of Innocence, more on Mark and Q, and other stuff.

Bible Illiteracy?

The Weekly Standard article on Bible Illiteracy linked to at Bibleinterp.com claims:

Lincoln was America's most "biblical" president--"no president has ever had the detailed knowledge of the Bible that Lincoln had," writes the historian William Wolf. Lincoln turned to the Bible more and more frequently and fervently as the war progressed. His heterodox but profound Christianity showed him how to understand the war as a fight to redeem America's promise to mankind. Lincoln never joined a church, but said often that he would join one if "the Saviour's summary of the Gospel" were its only creed. He meant the passage in Mark and Luke where Jesus restates God's requirements in terms of two edicts from the Hebrew Bible: to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Lincoln's religion was deeply biblical--and characteristically American.

Um, let's not trade in Bible Illiteracy for historical illiteracy. Lincoln was an atheist, not a Christian, who wrote an anti-Christian tract when he was young. He nevered wavered from this position, a position confirmed by both his wife and closest friend late in his life. I agree, though, that there was something "characteristically American" about Lincoln the Infidel: like so many Infidels, he knew the Bible better than his Christian neighbors.

AMERICAN HISTORY STARTS with the emergence of Puritanism in 16th-century Britain. The Bible was central to the founding and development of Puritanism. It was central to the emergence of modern Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries--and modern Britain was important in turn to America and to the whole world.

Hello? The oldest settlements in North America come from which European nation?

The invention of printing in the mid-15th century, and the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th-

Ummm, printing was invented by the Chinese hundreds of years before that....

The Bible Literacy Report is here:

http://www.bibleliteracy.org/Site/index2.htm

Download requires registration.

UPDATE: It looks like some kind of propaganda thing. The study advocates bible literacy, without bible study. Here is the list of things that they think constitute literacy:

GENESIS
JESUS
ADAM AND EVE
BIBLE
MOSES
DAVID AND GOLIATH
LAST SUPPER
NOAH AND THE FLOOD
OLD TESTAMENT
GOLDEN RULE
NEW TESTAMENT
CRUCIFIXION
DO TO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD
HAVE THEM DO TO YOU
GOOD SAMARITAN
JOB
JUDAS ISCARIOT
LUCIFER
SATAN
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL
CREATION
EYE FOR AN EYE
HELL
LET THERE BE LIGHT
PSALMS, BOOK OF
AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?
APOCALYPSE
EXODUS
FALL OF MAN
NOAH’S ARK
OLIVE BRANCH
PRODIGAL SON
SECOND COMING
HEAVEN [OR HEAVENS]
ORIGINAL SIN
PARABLES
PARTING OF THE RED SEA
PONTIUS PILATE
TOWER OF BABEL
WALKING ON WATER
CAST THE FIRST STONE
JEWS
JUDGMENT DAY
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR
AS THYSELF
MESSIAH
ARMAGEDDON
SODOM AND GOMORRAH
TWENTY-THIRD PSALM
ABRAHAM AND ISAAC
GOSPELS
JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS
LORD’S PRAYER
MAGI
MARY [THE VIRGIN], THE MOTHER OF JESUS
PROMISED LAND
SERPENT
APOSTLES, THE TWELVE
IN THE BEGINNING
JACOB AND ESAU
JONAH AND THE WHALE [BIG FISH]
NATIVITY
PASSOVER
RENDER UNTO CAESAR THE THINGS
WHICH ARE CAESAR’S
RESURRECTION
REVELATION, BOOK OF
ROOT OF ALL EVIL
SABBATH
SOLOMON
TIME TO BE BORN AND A TIME TO DIE

Note that there is no mention of Markan priority, JDEP, chiasms, dating of books, Palestinian history and archaeology, etc, etc, etc. It's purely a way to get people to read the Bible without context using public school funds. I'm all for Bible Literacy. Let's make it literacy, however, not religious propaganda.

The recommendations are disturbing and are obviously political:

6. Determine the current major challenges to teaching Bible literature, and then explore creative, practical solutions for meeting those challenges. No teacher in this study felt that the Bible was absent from their school’s curricula due to “lack of importance” or “lack of community support.” At schools that did not teach about the Bible, the reason most frequently cited by the surveyed teachers was, “Too politically difficult.”

7. Explore the possible correlation between scholastic and economic success and the inclusion in curricula of Bible literature study. Are students in schools of medium- and low-end communities discriminated against by not being offered the opportunity to study Bible literature? Is it possible to help reduce economic disparity through Bible literacy?

8. Investigate trends in religious knowledge, in addition to those in religious and spiritual beliefs, affiliations, and practices. What the next generation knows about religion—their own and other peoples’—is a significant question for the study of religion that we hope will receive more and more regular attention in the future from serious scholars and educators.

"Investigate trends in religious knowledge." Hmmm -- are the authors aware that there are sociology of religion scholars doing just that? It looks like they want to append to that "....and make sure everyone is "on-script."

Some of the questions are also comical:

Awareness of Five Major Religions of the World

More than three-quarters (78%) of teenagers, when asked, can name Christianity as one of the five major religions of the world. And, 83% cited either Christianity or a specific Christian denomination. Buddhism was recalled by 54% and Judaism by 47%. While 54% could name at least three of the major religions, no more than one in ten (10%) could name all five religions and 15% could not name any of the five major religions. Male students were more likely to name Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism than were female students.

EARTH TO REPORT: Taoism? Is it not bigger than Judaism? This question is a pointless exercise in ethnocentricity.

It's not much of a survey. It looks like it was created merely to support Bible-pushing at taxpayer expense.

UPDATE II: Yup. That's a big 10-4.

* Funded by the John Templeton Foundation

Neusner on Morton Smith

The following was posted to the Biblical Studies list, owned by Jim West. I suspect that we're going to see a lot more of this over the next few weeks. I am confident that Carlson is right, and so are the others who have seen the paper. But I think it would be best if everyone held off with the attacks on Morton Smith, and later engaged in thoughtful post-mortems rather than vengeful pre-mortems.

On the other hand, I can't resist noting that will be fun to watch Carlson's demolition of Secret Mark in conjunction with the James Ossuary trial.

I hope NT studies can come out of this with a renewed commitment to catching and killing forgeries before they become ensconced, as well as renewed suspicion toward artifacts already accepted. In particular, Tel Dan stinks for me, and a scholar interested in forgeries once suggested to me that the Mesha Stele is a probable forgery (it certainly stinks). It might be good to put some time and effort into re-examination of the various inscriptions turned up in the 19th century, such as the Sergius Paulus inscription found outside Paphos in 1877. There's probably lots of stuff out there that should be looked at again.

Kevin P. Egdecomb writes:

Stephen Carlson's tantalizing announcement regarding his work on the "Secret Gospel of Mark" letter brought to mind a scathing indictment I'd read of Morton Smith some time ago penned by Jacob Neusner. Neusner notes in his lengthy foreword to the 1998 combined edition of Birger Gerhardsson's Memory & Manuscript/Tradition & Transmission in Early Christianity (xxvi-xxvii, xxxi) that Smith was the major reason for Gerhardsson's work being ignored for so long. I think list participants will find informative (and perhaps even enjoy!) the following excerpt from Neusner's foreword:

[begin quote]
Like Arthur Darby Nock, but lacking the perspicacity and cultivation, Smith made his career as a ferocious critic of others. Smith thereby surrounded himself with a protective wall of violent invective; what he wished to hide, and for a while succeeded in hiding, was the intellectual vacuum within. Of his entire legacy one book survives today, quite lacking influence but still a model of argument, and a handful of suggestive but ineffective articles. In all Smith wrote three important contributions to scholarship, one a model of argument and analysis though broadly ignored in the field to which it was devoted, another a pseudo-critical but in fact intellectually slovenly and exploitative monograph, and the third an outright fraud. But in the early 1960s, when Gerhardsson's book became a target of opportunity to demonstrate his capacity to seize the jugular, no one could have known the reality. I took as my model his sharp pen and his analytical wit, not understanding that Smith had no constructive capacities and would never on his own write an honest and important book.

The model of argument comes first. His Th.D. dissertation, written at Harvard under the general supervision of Harry A. Wolfson, the greatest academic scholar of Judaism of modern times, on Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament, in my view remains a model of scholarly argument and insight. Smith completed that work in the late 1950s, and it would mark not the beginning but the apex of his contributions to learning. It was what he could do when a great mind guided him. What he could do on his own suffers by comparison, being slovenly and poorly formulated. His prior Hebrew University Ph.D. dissertation, Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels, presented at the Hebrew University, where at that time scholarship in the New Testament cannot be ranked as informed, was the work of an autodidact. No professor of New Testament criticized the Gospels part, and the Tannaitic parallels part pursued issues no professor of Rabbinics addressed -- thus, self-instruction. As I have demonstrated in vast and accurate detail in Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels? A Refutation of Morton Smith, Smith presented very dubious arguments in behalf of remarkably obtuse propositions.

As to the scholarly fraud, who speaks of it any more, or imagines that the work pertains to the study of the New Testament at all? I need not remind readers of this reprint of the scandal of Smith's "sensational discovery" of the Clement fragment, the original of which no one but Smith was permitted to examine. Purporting, in Smith's report, to demonstrate that the historical Jesus was "really" a homosexual magician, the work has not outlived its perpetrator. In the end many were silenced -- who wanted to get sued? -- but few were gulled.
...
Apart from malice, which I think animated nearly everything Morton Smith ever wrote or encouraged others to write (or indeed actually wrote for them, under their names), what prevented him and others then close to him from paying attention to the careful language Gerhardsson used? It was the assumption that the only valid scholarship answered the narrowest historical questions: did it really happen? did he really say it? and if so, what kind of history can we make of it all, meaning, what can we say about what was really said and done? Smith honestly believed that he could write the life of the historical Jesus, which is why the spurious Clement fragment would form the center of the scholarly oeuvre that would occupy nearly his whole active career -- that and the Jesus the Magician that would convey his (self-)hatred for Jesus and for Christianity -- and would therefore bring about an irreparable breach between him and me.
[end quote]

Why are strict religions popular? An economist explains

The Power of the Mustard Seed:Why strict churches are strong, a summary on Slate.com:

What does the pious person get in return for all of his or her time and effort? A church full of passionate members; a community of people deeply involved in one another's lives and more willing than most to come to one another's aid; a peer group of knowledgeable souls who speak the same language (or languages), are moved by the same texts, and cherish the same dreams. Religion is a " 'commodity' that people produce collectively," says Iannacone. "My religious satisfaction thus depends both on my 'inputs' and those of others." If a rich and textured spiritual experience is what you seek, then a storefront Holy Roller church or an Orthodox shtiebl is a better fit than a suburban church made up of distracted, ambitious people who can barely manage to find a morning free for Sunday services, let alone several evenings a week for text study and volunteer work.

Bible Illiteracy is Rampant

Bible Dudes Blog, whose comical format and fantastic sense of humor make it easy on both the eyes and the heart, reports on rampant theological illiteracy among Christians. The article they cite notes:

For example, Michael J. Vlach, president of TheologicalStudies.org, a Web site devoted to providing Christian theological information, has reported that the most widely known Bible verse among adults and teens is this: "God helps those who help themselves."

The problem is that the verse isn't even in the Bible and its message is in serious tension with the Good Book's word of grace.

Hmmm....really? But Proverbs 6 says....

6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: 7 Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 8 Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

The saying itself may not be in the Bible, but the sentiment could be seen to be.

In any case, it is a fun blog, and I recommend it....

UPDATED: Bibleinterp.com (which, if you aren't reading, you should be) has an article on Bible ignorance from the Chicago Tribune.

Congrats to Mark Goodacre: 2 Million

Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway website reached its two millionth visitor today! Congratulations on the resounding success of the web's best New Testament website!

Now I can finally shut down that bot I set up to run random searches at NT Gateway every thirty seconds. Managing that thing was really getting to be a pain....

My cousin writes on the Pope in Common Dreams

Suzanne Camino writes Why I am Still a Catholic. She's a wonderful person whom I love very much, and I am proud that she had a global audience. Go Suzanne!

Carotta ..Again Info & Discussions

I thought I'd put these posts about Carotta's claim that Julius Caesar was Jesus up here, since a poster who is pushing Carotta at IIDB has decided to engage in personal attacks on those who disagree.

There's been quite a push in several forums about this book. The forums for the movie The Beast had a discussion. The push also appeared at ephilosopher.

Anyway, without further ado, still more posting on Carotta:

DISCLAIMER: I have only read what's on the website. Haven't seen the whole book.

Much of Carotta's text is online. Here is a chapter/excerpt that shows some of the problems with Carotta's view. Mark was originally written in Latin. Let me show you some of the problems with this chapter. Randomly:

CAROTTA: Detailed examinations of the oldest manuscripts—especially the bilingual Latin/Greek—have shown that with Mark the Greek text in fact is dependent on the Latin.[248] And there is still more: the deviations between the readings in the
Greek manuscripts are explained best if they are seen as different versions of
translation of the Latin text. [249] Also the fact that the Church
Fathers—demonstrably Clement, Irenaeus and Justin—cite the Latin Mark, which
they translate ad hoc into Greek, speaks for the priority of the Latin version.

First off, scholarship accepts that Mark was originally composed in Greek. If you want to confront and change that, you will need some powerful argument. So when I check the citation, what do I find? Citation [248] is from a book by Harris written in (drum roll) 1893! Citation [249] is from Couchoud -- a familiar name -- written in 1926. So we see the pattern we have seen elsewhere -- that Carotta picks and chooses to make his case. He does not demonstrate familiarity with a range of scholarship, nor does he present any potent argument to support his case. Century-old scholarship is unacceptable. He does argue that the Latinisms in Mark constitute a case for it being originally written in Latin, but that case is not anywhere accepted today.

Carotta goes on to say:

It has been observed for some time now that the Gospels contain miraculous
healings that appear to be simplified reports of those Vespasianus had performed
in Egypt, where according to Tacitus the emperor healed a blind man and a man
with a withered hand[passage omitted]

Actually, the idea that the healings are "simplified" versions of the Vespasian incident is laughable. The healings are easily demonstrated to parallel the core of the Elijah-Elisha tales in 1 & 2 Kings, and Andrew Criddle and I just tussled over that in a recent thread at IIDB which I welcome you to resurrect and read. Numerous authors have written on the derivation of the healings, from Gundry to the Jesus Seminar to Robert Price. Carotta shows no familiarity with any of the conclusions of this scholarship. You will note that Carotta's absurd claim goes uncited, probably because no one believes it but him. if you want to overturn the accepted view, you gotta bring big guns.

Carotta then claims:

Moreover the Gospel contains the core of a speech, reported by Plutarchus, in
which Tiberius Gracchus bemoaned that the appropriation of public land by the
aristocrats had rendered the farmers landless and the poorest of people.

Speech of Tiberius Gracchus:‘The wild beasts of Italy have their holes and their hiding places but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy only the light and the air.
Homeless, they roam restlessly with wife and child. Our rulers lie when they
call on the soldiers to fight for the graves and shrines of their ancestors.
Because none of these Romans can point to a paternal altar or an ancestral tomb.
But rather, they fought and died to bring wealth and luxury to others. They are
called masters of the world and they have not a single clod of earth that is
their own.’[251]

Matthew:‘And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his
head.’[252]

Carotta seems unaware that this saying has parallels -- much better ones than the one above -- in the Cynic tradition, as do many other sayings in the Gospel literature. Witty sayings like this, called chreia, were common in antiquity -- Mark has twenty or so, as I recall. Again Carotta does not interact with any of the scholarship on this saying, and refute the several positions held on it by scholars. Why is that?

Carotta writes:

Also, because the same Mark writes a vulgar Greek without the use of the later
Hebraisms and Septuagintisms of Matthew and Luke, and uses popular Aramaisms
instead, the track leads us to the Roman veterans in Syria, either to those of
the Colonia Iulia of Heliopolis (Baalbek) or to those who were settled by
Herodes in Caesarea, Galilaea, Samaria and Decapolis. Namely, they were the ones
who had originally spoken the Latin of the legionaries, and were settled in
rural areas where they inter-married with the local population that still spoke
Aramaic, whereas the official language of the Empire was Greek by this
time.[257]

Far from being without "Septuagintisms" Mark tracks the Septuagint word for word on many, many occasions. For example, the Gospel opening:Here is my herald whom I send on ahead of you Idou, apostello ton aggelon mou pro prosopou sou is taken directly from the Greek of the Septaugint version of Exodus:Idou, apostello ton aggelon mou pro prosopou souIn Mk 1:3 the first 13 words track the septaugint exactly. Mk 1:6 copies phrases from Kings to describe JBap.
I could go on and on. Suffice to say that Carotta doesn't know what he is talking about.

But in case you want to claim that I misunderstood Carotta, he reiterates this point later when discussing Jesus mythicism:

no Gospel was ever written in Aramaic, the Greek of the presumably most ancient
Gospel in particular, that of Mark, is filled with Latinisms whilst the
citations from the Jewish scriptures only emerge in abundance in Matthew.

Mark is filled with citations of the Jewish scriptures (about 150 in 660 verses in some counts). This does not count the use of Jewish scriptures as parallels for structuring, nor the allusions to other jewish writings such as Maccabees and Tobit, as well as inclusions of oral lore (possibly). Mark is a thoroughly Jewish gospel.

But then we go on to:

The apostle Paul writes in his second letter to Timotheus:‘The cloak that I left
at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but
especially the parchments.’[258]

Here the King James Bible uses ‘parchment’, which is called membranae, ‘thin skins’, in the Greek original—a striking use of a Latin borrowed word.

Carotta is busily attempting to prove that Latinisms indicate the text was originally latin in origin. But that is neither here nor there -- note how Carotta refers to 2 Tim as a book written by Paul. Anyone got a problem with that? Not Carotta!

This next selection is picked entirely for style:

Did the itinerant preaching and miracle working members of the early Christian
communities—with the passage of time and the persistent fine-tuning of the
copies of the copies—turn the exemplary fatherly chief commander into one of
themselves, a Church Father made in their own image? From the divine founder of
the Empire to the proclaimer of the Kingdom of God? Did they gradually convert
Divus Iulius, the God of the Roman veteran colonies in the East, into the Jesus
of their communities which had found shelter there? Did they become the creators
of their creator until they themselves finally became Lords over their Lord?

Catch the Erik Von Daniken style of argument-by-unanswered-questions? There's a lot of that in Carotta.

Note Carotta's beliefs on Gospel dating:

Contrary to the later canon, which places Matthew in the first and the most
ancient position,[301] scholarship mostly considers the Gospel of Mark, the
shortest, to be also the most ancient. The given dates are between 40 and 60 AD
and that is why it is called the protoevangelium; it served as source for both
the other synoptics. Matthew and Luke are independent of each other, and both
first wrote after the Jewish war that ended in 70 AD. Where either of them, or
both of them, correspond with Mark they are obviously using Mark, but where they
correspond with each other but not with Mark, they are following a lost logion
source (‘Q’—theory of the two sources); or, according to another opinion, they
are following the oral tradition. In addition they use oral special material
(Sondergut). John is independent of the synoptics; if and to what extent he used
written sources is a matter of controversy.

There is no way on God's green earth that Mark, who is thoroughly familiar with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, dates from prior to 70. That position is held only by religious conservatives. His thumbnail also contains another inaccuracy, as "John" is at least three people. It is arguable whether John is independent.

Another issue here is Carotta's dependence on old scholarship, a certain sign of incompetence. In this chapter he interacts entirely with Loisy, Couchoud, and others of a bygone era. His Catholic Introduction to the NT dates from 1973. Apparently Carotta is in a time warp where work from within the last decade has not yet penetrated.

My favorite part of this is the conclusion:

The one, Divus Iulius—an indubitable historical figure—is as God,
nonexistent: all writers mention him; but there is no religion, no liturgical
texts, no hagiography, no legends.

The other, Jesus—an absolutely doubtful historical figure—is existent only
as God: no chronicler mentions him; but there is a religion, even several, and
there are liturgical texts, hagiographies and legends.

Well, you've never seen them together, have you? So they must be the
same person.

The next chapter has more comical stuff in it. I skipped some from my original post. I especially like this explanation of baptism:

Well, inspection in Latin is lustratio, which actually means ‘cleansing’,
‘lustration’, but in military language it stands for ‘inspection’ because of the
acts of ritual cleansing and expiatory sacrifices that accompanied it. Along
with the lustratio, the inspection of soldiers, went the inspection of weapons,
the armilustrium, the ‘cleansing of weapons’ in the sense of ‘ceremony of
purifying the arms’. The word lustratio comes from luo, ‘to wash’ and in the
second instance means ‘atone’, which finds its Greek pendant in the loutrón,
meaning ‘wash’, ‘bathe,’ and comes from the corresponding verb louô, also ‘to wash’, ‘to bathe’. In the Christian sense these words became ‘baptism’,
respectively ‘baptize.’ The transition from ‘inspection of soldiers with
cleansing of arms’ (the Latin lustratio) to ‘baptism of repentance’ (the Greek
loutrón) came about through the common concepts of ‘washing’ and ‘purifying’. The same meaning is also found in the other Greek word alternatively used for louô, baptizô, which in the Christian sense is also translated with ‘to baptize’(probably because it comes from baptô, which means ‘to dunk’). Before becomingbaptism, baptisma, too, simply meant washing: a further excellent literal
translation of the Latin word lustratio, the inspection. And the fact that baptism was originally seen as the reception into the army of Christ is certainly not contradictory to this idea.

Is Carotta aware that there is a long history of ritual bathing in Judaism (HINT: what is a mikvah)?

It's OK to perform all these operations on words in two languages. It is not okay to do so without explaining why all other scholars are wrong, and without providing powerful evidence to overturn the consensus, and without dealing with the scholarship. I can't resist...there's just so much badness here. Here Carotta analyzes the Pericope Adultera as a Caesar story.

The pendant for the adulterous wife of Caesar is the pericope of the adulteress;
this pericope is not found in the synoptic Gospels, but exclusively in John.It
may appear improper for us to use this pericope, but it is well known that it
only landed in John because it was deleted elsewhere: Where exactly, the textual
critics do not know. We can only say that we are lucky to have it at all, for
again and again, attempts have been made to remove this ‘foreign body’ from
John, ultimately for so-called purely formal reasons, because it does not fit
the style of this particular Evangelist. Augustine delivers the real reason: the
leniency Jesus demonstrates towards the adulteress might be misunderstood![432]Even in the bible text used today, it is only referred to in parentheses or
with a preceding question mark, meaning it is mentioned with reservation:

Carotta appears not to know that this pericope IS found in the Synoptics, in Luke. He tries to pretend that the reason it is rejected is because of its theology, but the reality is that even the ancients knew it wasn't an authentic part of the gospel.

Need we say more? He doesn't know basic stuff, plays games with words, cites scholarship that is decades out of date, doesn't interact with modern scholarship, etc.

In this post at IIDB I wrote a very long discussion of Carotta's derivation of the colt and the ass, too long to put up here. In my next post I showed why the alleged parallels are not parallels. A taste:

CAROTTA:Both Julius Caesar and Jesus began their careers in northern
countries: Caesar in Gaul, Jesus in Galilee;

TURTON: Incorrect. Caesar's public career began in Asia Minor, where at his
own expense he raised a scratch army to fight the invasion of Mithridates of
Pontus in 74. Caesar became a war hero when his forces were able to hold out
long enough to let a real army arrive and save the day. Then he was a magistrate
in Spain, then he was aedile, in charge of the bread and circuses (made himself
popular), and then he was made pontifex maximus. It was only after he had become
famous that he was governor of Gaul. Does Carotta not have an ADSL line in his
home?

But that's still a parallel. After all, you could say their public careers
began in the East. *howls with laughter*

My earlier blogposts on Carotta are (#1) and (#2). I just want to add my closing words from anothe post...:

Now, it is entirely possible that Jesus really is some offspring of Julius Caesar's cult. In principle that is possible. But the fact is that in order to demonstrate that everyone has been completely wrong for 2000 years, you need to analyze every single problem with your case, and understand what the scholars say and incorporate that into your analysis. Further, you have to be able specify clear rules for what you are doing, and why.

So far, there doesn't seem to be anything like that here.

Steve Carlson's Paper on Secret Mark is Out...

I just wanted to take a moment and crow about Steve Carlson's paper on Secret Mark. Identifying the Hand of Secret Mark, was accepted for the 2005 Annual Meeting SBL's 125th Anniversary program unit Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East.

I had the great privilege of reading a draft of this paper. After Steve gives this baby, everyone at that conference will look just like this:

What is a Minimalist?

Rod Green over on the JesusMysteries List notes:

BTW, there is nothing "minimalist" about the Copenhagen perspective, a charge that perplexes me. The only thing they have minimized is bad history. Their history of Palestine is robust and full of people, places, and activities. They just don't happen to sync up with the OT.

Excellent way of putting it, Rod.

Swamped....

I'll be back next week.....

Michael

Carotta: the Push

Those of you running, or involved in, forums devoted to Biblical Studies, ANE, and Classical lit, as well as informal discussion forums on Christianity and related topics, may be experiencing a concerted drive to push F. Carotta's book Jesus was Caesar On the Julian Origin of Christianity.

Thanks to Toto at Infidels for the heads up on that one. A Google search will turn up many links, suspiciously many to forums and similar discussion areas. They don't seem to have invaded the scholarly forums.

The book is, needless to say, not worth the time. It is full of incredible howlers, like this one, where he is discussing the Parable of the Sower:

CAROTTA: Here he has almost everything together: the rocky ground without deep soil—like the gaps in the tile floor; the impossibility of growing roots there and that the palm should have withered; that plants without light suffocate—whether under thorns or under the temple roof. And in spite of this they shot up as if on good land. Perhaps not one hundred percent, as on fertile land, but still sixty, or thirty percent.

Carotta seems unaware that the thirty, sixty, and hundred on the end of this parable are not PERCENT but -FOLD! Jesus is talking about fantastic multiplication, not reduced output.

I pity the poor scholars who will be fighting this one for years to come. Enjoy your week! Mine shall be very busy. I just finished Mack's A Myth of Innocence, and Rhoads' book on Mark awaits my perusal. Book reviews later this week.