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Post by sandwiches on Jul 31, 2013 21:49:28 GMT
I though the claim about illiteracy was unlikely when I recently saw it asserted without evidence by an atheist in another forum, viz: www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/the-god-question.885882/page-321We have two whole books written by Caesar, whereas we have nothing written by Jesus at all (he was most likely illiterate).Jesus was a peasant from a tiny village, not someone with the time or luxury to be learning to read or write. Jewish literacy was higher than in other ancient cultures, but still low meaning that the chances he was literate are also low, especially given his background and social status. And the two gospel references to him reading and writing are both ones that we can show to be most likely non-historical. So "unlikely"? No, quite the opposite. A rather unnuanced and perhaps slightly dated opinion there. See e.g. www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2011/11/02/reading-and-writing-in-herodian-israel-was-jesus-an-illiterate-peasant-part-one/Ben WitheringtonReading and Writing in Herodian Israel– Was Jesus an Illiterate Peasant? Part One I am not particularly concerned with whether Jesus could have written anything, though I suspect he could have done, but what I am concerned with is his ability to read things. And here we are on firmer grounds....Let us first eliminate the old canard, which suggests ‘since Jesus was a peasant, he was very likely to be illiterate’. First of all, Jesus was not a peasant. He was an artisan, a ‘tekton’ For a fuller academic treatment see e.g.: EDUCATING JESUS: THE SEARCH FOR A PLAUSIBLE CONTEXT Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Vol 4.1 pp7-33 Paul FosterABSTRACT Many reconstructions of the life of the historical Jesus have tended to portray him as being bom into illiterate peasant stock. By so doing, significant statements in the Gospels, both canonical and non-canonical, are ignored. While much caution is needed,...there are indicators that Jesus' background did not reflect the lowest echelons of Galilean peasantry. Instead, it is suggested that internal Gospel evidence and knowledge of aspects of the social milieu of first-century Judaism give weight to seeing Jesus as a person with what would now be classified as functional on basic literacy levels.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 1, 2013 11:22:59 GMT
There were two points of any substance in there - the rest was up there with Neil Godfrey's best efforts. Methinks they doth protest too much. 1. Le Donne and Keith are decent scholars, and I have one of Le Donne's books and have read quite a bit on the blog. I will give them some credit for not posting rubbish. 2. The review starts with this: "I am predisposed to like Reza Aslan’s latest book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is a talented author, he’s not Christian and he’s writing about Jesus. What’s not to like? Another point in his favor: Aslan strives to understand Jesus in the context of Jewish first century Palestine."Again, I am inclined to believe him. 3. And it ends with this: "Frankly, it’s exhausting to read a book like Zealot, and constantly have to pause in mid-thought to ask if Aslan is giving me the straight dope. I’m not a Ph.D. like Chris or Anthony; it’s not clear to me from page to page when I can trust Aslan to lead the way. Still, I suppose that when I’m dealing with an author who could write an older book as good as No God But God, I owe it to myself to keep reading the newer book and try to find its central point. Which I will do."I don't see anything there, or elsewhere, to justify all your assertion: "I think it's pretty clear why this one is being singled out for what seem to be pretty ordinary conclusions."It's not at all clear, and I don't think you have offered any reason to cast such aspersions. Much fairer to take him at his word - he respects Aslan but feels there are so many minor errors that he's not sure he can trust his scholarship. Why would you think otherwise? More importantly, what does he say that you can offer as evidence that he has other motives. Just to be clear, I don't really care all that much about this book, it doesn't worry me what he believes as long as his scholarship is good. I just think making broad sweep statements that malign people without justification is committing the very mistake you are accusing others of doing. OK. The statement was made in a reply to me, so I just assumed you were addressing it to me. I apologise - I'm sorry I made a mistake and glad I was mistaken.
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 1, 2013 12:56:48 GMT
Another review, which while trying to be polite and spot the good points, nevertheless points out some of the errors and omissions: www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-carey/reza-aslan-on-jesus_b_3679466.htmlReza Aslan on Jesus: A Biblical Scholar Responds Finally, Aslan seems to have bought into an outdated model of Christian development. According to that model, Jesus was a mighty prophet, but it took decades for the idea of Jesus' divinity to take shape. Aslan imagines a Jewish Jesus tradition that developed without the trappings of a divine Jesus. It took the Hellenized Paul and his circle of Gentile converts to start the church on the path to Nicea. Paul, Aslan asserts, "created" the figure of Jesus as "Christ."
Contemporary scholarship is undermining that familiar model.,,,The old model that Paul "invented" devotion to Jesus the Christ, particularly devotion to a divine Jesus, simply does not hold.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 1, 2013 14:00:07 GMT
And here's another view of what seems to be something of a "big issue" in the US - from OT scholar Peter Enns, whose blog I read regularly with great appreciation. It includes reference to a review by Anthony Le Donne (which I haven't read). I get the impression from Enns' comments that the apparently quite nasty Fox interview has made this a celebrity story, where all sorts of people are being asked all sorts of questions, and somewhat polarising because of that.
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Post by himself on Aug 1, 2013 16:06:44 GMT
The Fox interviewer asked a softball lead-in question: viz., why would a muslim write about Jesus, as one might ask a Jew why he wrote a book about Islam or a Christian why he wrote a book about Buddhism, etc. Aslan could have answered in any number of ways. Instead, he got on his academic high horse and made the whole interview about him.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 1, 2013 16:23:35 GMT
I get the impression from Enns' comments that the apparently quite nasty Fox interview has made this a celebrity story, where all sorts of people are being asked all sorts of questions, and somewhat polarising because of that. The interviewer is indeed extremely nasty and Aslan was surprisingly polite, given the circumstances. The interview can be watched here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwWbPpFZ31sObviously Aslan didn't expect the vitriol, though he had seen Fox's attack article: www.salon.com/2013/07/29/reza_aslan_was_not_prepared_for_fox_news_attack/It seems you are correct in your estimate that it became a celebrity story. The New York Times report that the interview boosted sales greatly: www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/business/media/odd-fox-news-interview-lifts-reza-aslans-biography-on-jesus.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1375373617-e/4HNHfe2lUvvsBaZrK3hgMeanwhile the Get Religion blog, which seems to have a Republican bias, claims Aslan misrepresented his credentials (and that he discredited himself by that): www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2013/07/snickering-at-foxnews-while-getting-duped-by-zealot-author/I haven't found his curriculum vitae, but they don't seem to have a cogent case so far. How do they know he was not specialised in sociological history, to name one possibility? The Fox interviewer asked a softball lead-in question: viz., why would a muslim write about Jesus, as one might ask a Jew why he wrote a book about Islam or a Christian why he wrote a book about Buddhism, etc. Aslan could have answered in any number of ways. Instead, he got on his academic high horse and made the whole interview about him. Though you are correct in stating that Aslan immediately cited his credentials, it's hard to see that as an "academic high horse". In any case, it was not he who made the interview about him. It is more than obvious that Green had an axe to grind from the outset. She remained on this point with dogged determination - so there was no softball intro.
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 1, 2013 17:05:54 GMT
ignorantianescia, Perhaps we should concentrate on the book and its views? However,since you concentrate so much on the interview and his credentials and his representation of the same: au.ibtimes.com/articles/495742/20130731/zealot-reza-aslan-muslim-scholar-life-times.htm#.UfqTSW3AG-c"Aslan does have four degrees, as Joe Carter has noted: a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on "The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark"; a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara."
None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan's repeated claims that he has "a Ph.D. in the history of religions" and that he is "a historian" are false. Nor is "professor of religions" what he does "for a living."Though perhaps all this is over-dissecting something that does not merit such close examination. If the (more knowledgeable) reviews are to be trusted, then the failings are in the book.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 2, 2013 15:47:42 GMT
I appreciate your concern for keeping this (though I think "so much" is exagerated). And thanks for the link, as I think this is quite telling: However, in defense of Aslan's claim as historian of religion, his dissertation adviser, Mark Juergensmayer, said:
"Since I was Reza's thesis adviser at the Univ. of California-Santa Barbara, I can testify that he is a religious studies scholar. (I am a sociologist of religion with a position in sociology and an affiliation with religious studies). Though Reza's PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies. Though none of his 4 degrees are in history as such, he is a "historian of religion" in the way that that term is used at the Univ of Chicago to cover the field of comparative religion; and his theology degree at Harvard covered Bible and Church history, and required him to master New Testament Greek. So in short, he is who he says he is."That should end the conspiracy theories (but won't). Back on topic, here is a review by Anthony LeDonne (via Peter Enn's blog, linked to by UnkleE): historicaljesusresearch.blogspot.nl/2013/07/a-usually-happy-fellow-reviews-aslans.htmlSome might find several points fastidious, but the first four sections are well worth quoting: Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is an attempt to rehabilitate the *Jesus as a failed military revolutionary* argument that is well-known and well-worn in Jesus studies. Aslan suggests that Jesus’ regional affiliations (Galilean militants), his enigmatic statement about Roman taxation ( ROMANES EUNT DOMUS ROMANI ITE DOMUM), attempts to keep his “messianic” aspirations a secret (a retread of Aslan’s undergraduate senior thesis), and a few of Jesus' statements about social discord make him a good fit as a proto-Zealot. There’s more to his case, but almost every suggestion he makes in support of his thesis is as tenuous as the four mentioned here.
The strongest element of his case is the fact of the crucifixion. The fact that Jesus was executed as “King of the Jews” suggests that at least some Roman authorities recognized him as a political insurgent. But this is not nearly enough to build the case that Aslan is trying to build: that Jesus was probably preparing his disciples for a militant uprising.
To be taken seriously on this point, Aslan would have to interact with David Chapman and/or Gunnar Samuelsson. These scholars represent the most up-to-date researchers on the crucifixion in Jesus’ world. Aslan cites neither. If this key element of the book had been researched with more care, Aslan might have had a better chance of overcoming the many other deficiencies of this book.
Jesus’ preaching about God’s kingdom is undoubtedly political. It makes sense that this teaching was directly related to the title posted on the cross (and/or the symbolic value of that title in Christian memory). This much is not all that controversial. Defining “political” is the key problem. Reza Aslan’s book barely touches the vast sea of literature on this problem. In short, this book is a surface-level (albeit well-promoted) rehash of an old puzzle in Jesus research. Unfortunately, Aslan brings nothing new to the table that will help us solve the puzzle. He simply dismisses all of Jesus’ sayings about nonviolence as Christian invention. This move isn’t unheard of, but he fails to make his case for invention adequately.So he also considers Aslan describing Jesus as a nationalist revolutionary. What do you people think of the review?
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 2, 2013 16:30:53 GMT
Personally, I found these comments illuminating: www.tennessean.com/article/20130801/NEWS/308010122/1971/NEWS06?nclick_check=1Coppenger also questions Aslan’s academic credentials. The author isn’t a New Testament scholar by training – instead he’s a sociologist of religion best known for this book “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.”
The seminary professor also doubts that Jesus was a revolutionary. He point out that Jesus rode a donkey — not a war horse — when he came to Jerusalem. And though he chased money lenders out of the temple, Jesus never killed anyone or told his followers to attack the authorities.
“If that is your best shot at being a dangerous revolutionary, that’s pretty weak,” he said.
Boston University religion professor Steven Prothero said that Aslan’s perspective as a Muslim may have influenced his writing. He said that the picture of Jesus in “Zealot “seems more like a failed version of the Prophet Mohammed than the figure depicted in the Bible.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 2, 2013 23:36:52 GMT
What do you people think of the review? As I said before, and for what it's worth, I like Anthony Le Donne, I read his blog intermittently and I have one of his books (which I thought interesting and not controversial - despite it leading to him losing his job at a conservative institution - but perhaps not quite as innovative as advertised). I thought it was a fair and convincing review. He named the people that should have been referenced but weren't, and why they were important. I think that was fair, though I can't know if he was correct.
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Post by timoneill on Aug 3, 2013 8:07:41 GMT
Jesus was a peasant from a tiny village, not someone with the time or luxury to be learning to read or write. Jewish literacy was higher than in other ancient cultures, but still low meaning that the chances he was literate are also low, especially given his background and social status. And the two gospel references to him reading and writing are both ones that we can show to be most likely non-historical. So "unlikely"? No, quite the opposite. A rather unnuanced and perhaps slightly dated opinion there. See e.g. www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2011/11/02/reading-and-writing-in-herodian-israel-was-jesus-an-illiterate-peasant-part-one/Ben WitheringtonNeither dated nor unnuanced thanks. And I've taken the semi-apologist arguments by people like Witherington into account. As with most of the arguments by evangelical conservatives like him, his is some scant facts, some possibilities boldly stated as facts, some face values readings of the gospels asserted unquestioningly as facts and a lot of wishful thinking. Some of his article is hard to even begin to fathom. Take this weird claim: "And then too we have the evidence of Jesus using loan words like ‘hypocrites’ "We do? Did Ben send a tape recorder back in time? Because unless he did, we have no evidence of Jesus (perhaps) saying anything at all beyond the gospels, which are written in Greek. So I'm wondering by what evangelical voodoo Ben manages to work out that a Greek word written in a Greek text and attributed (decades later) to Jesus represents Jesus the Aramaic speaker using a Greek loan word. It's hard to take anyone who says crap like this very seriously. Then we get this: "Let us first eliminate the old canard, which suggests ‘since Jesus was a peasant, he was very likely to be illiterate’. First of all, Jesus was not a peasant. He was an artisan, a ‘tekton’ which means one who carves and molds stone and wood, more often stone than wood in many cases in the Holy Land. Jesus’ family had a trade. They had a home in Nazareth, and in the town just over the next hill, Sepphoris, you have a ton of building going on. "Despite Ben's bold assertions here, the position that he tries to scoff away as "the old canard" isn't going to disappear quite that easily. He blithely asserts that Jesus "was an artisan", a claim that dangles from two very slender textual threads: Mark 6:3 and its variant cognate Matt 13:55. Only the former describes him as "the carpenter" while the latter has "the carpenter's son". Nowhere else is Jesus described as a tekton or associated with that word. The first problem here is the possibility (and yes Jonathan, I acknowledge your points made on this elsewhere, but it remains a possibility) that the writer of gMark simply misunderstood a rabbinical euphemism by which the Aramaic “naggārāʾ (carpenter) is used to mean a Biblical scholar. So, not understanding this, he read "He is not a “naggārāʾ" as "Is he not the “naggārāʾ". Which means Jesus may not have been an tekton at all. That aside, Witherington ignores the possible meanings of tekton that don't suit him (simple craftsman, village carpenter, maker of yokes and fixer of buckets) and leaps straight for one that does (specialist artisan, almost an architect). Then there's the small problem that Nazareth was a tiny impoverished hamlet inhabited by subsistence farmers, but he piles on the suppositions by having Jesus the Architect working in Sepphoris. Luckily he stops there before he awards Jesus a Rhodes Scholarship, but he thinks this middle class Jesus must, therefore, have been educated and therefore literate. Exactly the same evidence can be used to come up with Jesus as an illiterate peasant fixing buckets in his one donkey hamlet, but Witherington doesn't go down that speculative path because it doesn't suit his purposes. And by this selective speculation based on little more than wishful thinking, the equally reasonable idea that Jesus was an illiterate peasant is magically turned into an "old canard". Witherington's fond imaginings aside, devout Galilean Jews like Jesus and his brothers could very easily have been quite learned in the Torah and still illiterate. As M.T. Clanchy's seminal work on oral erudition and literacy in medieval England From Memory to Written Record argues, being illiterate did not equate with being unlearned in a substantially oral culture. The idea that unless you were literate you were some kind of unlearned oaf is a modern prejudice and seems to be the main one motivating these attempts to make Jesus into a literate non-peasant middle class professional (that a bit of projection on the part of people like Witherington). Jesus and his brothers could very easily have been part of a large orally-learned tradition who were learned in a quite difference way to the literate "scribes" who formed an upper strata in a largely non-literate society. The way the gospels consistently depict these "scribes" and "teachers of the (written) law" as being threatened by and in opposition to Jesus is telling. A Jesus who knew the scriptures well but couldn't read or write sits oddly with many modern people, but makes more sense in Jesus' context than Witherington's yuppy architect Jesus. With Witherington, we find Schweitzer's dictum about people seeking and finding a Jesus very much like themselves playing out. I'm entirely open to the idea that Jesus was literate, of course, but there simply isn't enough evidence to indicate whether he was or not. As for Aslan's book, I'm taking a rather radical approach to working out what it says: I've bought it and am reading it. So far it's actually very good and quite reasonable. Of course, I have a great advantage over many of his detractors: I only have to measure it against what makes sense given the historical evidence and am not constrained by any a priori religious positions. That always helps.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 3, 2013 12:29:33 GMT
I thought it was a fair and convincing review. He named the people that should have been referenced but weren't, and why they were important. I think that was fair, though I can't know if he was correct. Mason indeed doesn't appear in his bibliography, which is odd if he indeed relies for quite a lot on Josephus. So I've bought the book and have read the first two chapters. These are my impressions so far: - The book is very well written and readable, a point that I don't recall having read in the reviews.
- There is not much discussion at all in the book, most of the time he simply gives his reconstruction in the main text. This is very different to, for instance, Jesus of Nazareth by Casey, which is full of detailed discussions.
- He does not include discussion of the Testimonium Flavianum in his narrative. This is what he writes in his notes:
In addition to the story of the fiendish Jewish priest Ananus, there is one other passage in Josephus's Antiquities that mentions Jesus of Nazareth. This is the so-called Testimonium Flavianum in book 18, chapter 3, in which Josephus appears to repeat the entire gospel formula. But that passage has been so corrupted by later Christian interpolation that its authenticity is dubious at best, and scholarly attempts to cull through the passage for some sliver of historicity have proven futile. Still, the second passage is significant in that it mentions Jesus's crucifixion. (page 220)
- I get the impression that the complaints that there are many errors or overstatements is justified, even if it is nitpicky.
- He has some relatively late dates. gMatthew and gLuke are dated 90 - 100, gJohn is dated 100 - 120.
- His reconstruction of Jesus is without doubt that of a zealous, nationalist revolutionary.
In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of the first century C.E.; the second is that Rome crucified him for doing so. By themselves these two facts cannot provide a complete portrait of the life of a man who lived two thousand years ago. But when combined with all we know about the tumultuous era in which Jesus lived - and thanks to the Romans, we know a great deal - these two facts can help paint a picture of Jesus of Nazareth that may be more historically accurate than the one painted by the gospels. Indeed, the Jesus that emerges from this historical exercise - a zealous revolutionary swept up, as all Jews of the era were, in the religious and political turmoil of first-century Palestine - bears little resemblance to the image of the gentle shepherd cultivated by the early Christian community.
Consider this: Crucifixion was a punishment that Rome reserved almost exclusively for the crime of sedition. The plaque the Romans placed above Jesus's head as he writhed in pain - "King of the Jews" - was called a titulus and, despite common perception, was not meant to be sarcastic. Every criminal who hung on a cross received a plaque declaring the specific crime for which he was being executed. Jesus's crime, in the eyes of Rome, was striving for kingly rule (i.e., treason) the same crime for which nearly every other messianic aspirant of the time was killed. Nor did Jesus die alone. The gospels claim that on either side of Jesus hung men who in Greek are called lestai , a word often rendered into English as "thieves" but which actually means "bandits" and was the most common Roman designation of an insurrectionist or rebel.
Three rebels on a hill covered in crosses, each cross bearing the racked and bloodied body of a man who dared defy the will of Rome. That image alone should cast doubt upon the gospels' portrayal of Jesus as a man of unconditional peace almost wholly insulated from the political upheavals of his time. The notion that the leader of a popular messianic movement calling for the imposition of the "Kingdom of God" - a term that would have been understood by Jew and gentile alike as implying revolt against Rome - could have remained uninvolved in the revolutionary fervor that had gripped nearly every Jew in Judea is simply ridiculous. (pages xxviii - xxix) This book is an attempt to reclaim, as much as possible, the Jesus of history, the Jesus before Christianity: the politically conscious Jewish revolutionary who, two thousand years ago, walked across the Galilean countryside, gathering followers for a messianic movement with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God but whose mission failed when, after a provocative entry into Jerusalem and a brazen attack on the Temple, he was arrested and executed by Rome for the crime of sedition. It is also about how, in the aftermath of Jesus's failure to establish God's reign on earth, his followers reinterpreted not only Jesus's mission and identity, but also the very nature and definition of the Jewish messiah. (page xxx)
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 3, 2013 13:22:07 GMT
The first problem here is the possibility (and yes Jonathan, I acknowledge your points made on this elsewhere, but it remains a possibility) that the writer of gMark simply misunderstood a rabbinical euphemism by which the Aramaic “naggārāʾ (carpenter) is used to mean a Biblical scholar. So, not understanding this, he read "He is not a “naggārāʾ" as "Is he not the “naggārāʾ". Which means Jesus may not have been an tekton at all. Apologies for the nitpick/dumb question, but how is this a problem for an argument that Jesus was in some sense literate? If he was a ngr' in the sense of a Tenakh scholar, he surely would have been capable of reading, wouldn't he? Though I don't think Jesus was a ngr' and your point on tektōn being not as specific as Witherington would like is valid.
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Post by timoneill on Aug 3, 2013 17:18:54 GMT
The first problem here is the possibility (and yes Jonathan, I acknowledge your points made on this elsewhere, but it remains a possibility) that the writer of gMark simply misunderstood a rabbinical euphemism by which the Aramaic “naggārāʾ (carpenter) is used to mean a Biblical scholar. So, not understanding this, he read "He is not a “naggārāʾ" as "Is he not the “naggārāʾ". Which means Jesus may not have been an tekton at all. Apologies for the nitpick/dumb question, but how is this a problem for an argument that Jesus was in some sense literate? If he was a ngr' in the sense of a Tenakh scholar, he surely would have been capable of reading, wouldn't he? Though I don't think Jesus was a ngr' and your point on tektōn being not as specific as Witherington would like is valid. Firstly, you could be a scholar of the Tanakh without being literate. Just as today there are scholars of the Qu'ran who work purely from oral recitation and memory, so there were many illiterate or semi-literate devout Jews who did the same with the scriptures. Note that with one exception (the Lucan cognate with the Nazareth story, which represents the writer of gLuke's own invented addition), Jesus is never depicted as reading scripture but is regularly (and more plausibly) depicted as reciting it. Secondly, I'm suggesting that the writer of gMark, working from his Aramaic source/s, didn't understand the euphemistic use of "naggārāʾ" and mistook the Nazarene listeners asking "Is this a scholar?" (implying that he isn't one) for a face-value "Is this a carpenter?" and then tried to make sense of that in the context. Though I'm noting this only as a possibility because the use of a phrase we know was a euphemism for a man of learning coming in the context of a story where his learning is being questioned in a text we know drew from Aramaic sources but didn't always understand them makes this speculation valid.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 4, 2013 17:39:53 GMT
Okay, I get your point now. Back to the book, I think this is a needed nuance to the previous quote on Jesus being an insurrectionist: To be clear, Jesus was not a member of the Zealot Party that launched the war with Rome, because no such party could be said to exist for another thirty years after his death. Nor was Jesus a violent revolutionary bent on armed rebellion, though his views on the use of violence were far more complex than it is often assumed.
But look closely at Jesus's words and actions at the Temple in Jerusalem - the episode that undoubtedly precipitated his arrest and execution - and this fact becomes difficult to deny: Jesus was crucified by Rome because his messianic aspirations threatened the occupation of Palestine, and his zealotry endangered the Temple authorities. That singular fact should color everything we read in the gospels about the messiah known as Jesus of Nazareth - from the details of his death on a cross in Golgotha to the launch of his public ministry on the banks of the Jordan River. (page 79) He also seems to think that some part of the Testimonium Flavianum is genuine, as indicated by this - though I cannot find a reference in which it is attributed to Josephus: Even those who did not accept him as messiah still viewed Jesus as "a doer of startling deeds." (page 105) Here is another review by an actual New Testament scholar. He is also critical, pointing for instance at the unzealous stories of Jesus associating with prostitutes and collaborating tax collectors, but he is more positive than Le Donne. I've finished the book and beside his zealous nationalist Jesus, I'm also sceptical about his Paul of Tarsus.
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