The Jesus Hoax with Dr. David Skrbina
MythVision Podcast, 6 Febr. 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqvP2m1Dqs
6:18 Notice the equivocation.
Having degrees => being able to do quality research. Fine.
How he turns it around:
Not having degrees => not being able to do quality research. Does not follow.
19:04 As an Apologist, I am obviously doing a simuilar two step approach in reverse:
- showing that such a hoax could not have been accepted as truth
- showing why arguments saying the Gospel story is false do not hold.
However, I am willing to make my disposition adapt to Skrbina's ...
20:14 You look for confirming evidence ...
in the New York Times, Rome edition, for which you have complete archives as to all of the century and news coverage of all of the Empire?
If you looked there, and didn't find it, I bet "no confirming evidence!" ... except the "there" doesn't exist.
20:32 How upfront is Skrbina about documents and remains in general from this time? I mean especially written documents.
20:59 Traditional author assignment of St. Matthew's Gospel is in this timespan ...
21:28 OK, I suppose you just take the word of experts on when NT books were written, even if it contradicts traditional data and is reconstruction?
21:44 For unbiassed neutral third parties you again presumably to to the New York Times, Rome edition, 1st C AD?
W a i t ... doesn't exist.
Any historic facts from this time you have reporting that's fairly close to the events is a biassed reporting.
21:58 The philosophy professor when saying "it won't count as evidence" just lost credentials in historic epistemology.
22:41 Do you have 1st C contemporary and unbiassed evidence for Mark showing up around 70?
No. You have 19th and 20th C reconstructions with a Skrbina or Paulogia agenda for it. And for this being the first of the synoptics.
Here's traditional data, via the Haydock comment:
S. Matthew, author of the gospel that we have under his name, was a Galilean, the son of Alpheus, a Jew, and a tax-gatherer; he was known also by the name of Levi. His vocation happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ; who, soon after forming the college of his apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his Church. Before his departure from Judea, to preach the gospel to distant countries, he yielded to the solicitations of the faithful; and about the eighth year after our Saviour's resurrection, the forty-first of the vulgar era, he began to write his gospel: i.e., the good tidings of salvation to man, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Of the hagiographers, S. Matthew was the first in the New, as Moses was the first in the Old Testament. And as Moses opened his work with the generation of the heavens and the earth, so S. Matthew begins with the generation of Him, who, in the fulness of time, took upon himself our human nature, to free us from the curse we had brought upon ourselves, and under which the whole creation was groaning. A. — This holy apostle, after having reaped a great harvest of souls in Judea, preached the faith to the barbarous nations of the East. He was much devoted to heavenly contemplation, and led an austere life; for he eat no flesh, satisfying nature with herbs, roots, seeds, and berries, as Clement of Alexanderia assures us, Pædag. l. ii. c. 1. S. Ambrose says, that God opened to him the country of the Persians. Rufinus and Socrates tell us, that he carried the gospel into Ethiopia, meaning probably the southern or eastern parts of Asia. S. Paulinus informs us, that he ended his course in Parthia; and Venantius Fortunatus says, by martyrdom. — See Butler's Saints' Lives, Sept. 21st.
S. Mark, who wrote this Gospel, is called by S. Augustine, the abridger of S. Matthew; by S. Irenæus, the disciple and interpreter of S. Peter; and according to Origen and S. Jerom, he is the same Mark whom S. Peter calls his son. Stilting, the Bollandist, (in the life of S. John Mark, T. vii. Sep. 27, p. 387, who was son of the sister of S. Barnabas) endeavours to prove that this was the same person as our evangelist; and this is the sentiment of S. Jerom, and some others: but the general opinion is that John, surnamed Mark, mentioned in Acts xii. was a different person. He was the disciple of S. Paul, and companion of S. Barnabas, and was with S. Paul at Antioch, when our evangelist was with S. Peter at Rome, or at Alexandria, as Eusebius, S. Jerom, Baronius, and others observe. Tirinus is of opinion that the evangelist was not one of the seventy-two disciples, because as S. Peter calls him his son, he was converted by S. Peter after the death of Christ. S. Epiphanius, however, assures us he was one of the seventy-two, and forsook Christ after hearing his discourse on the Eucharist, (John vi.) but was converted by S. Peter after Christ's resurrection, hær. 51, c. v. p. 528. — The learned are generally of opinion, that the original was written in Greek, and not in Latin; for, though it was written at the request of the Romans, the Greek language was commonly understood amongst them; and the style itself sufficiently shews this to have been the case: —
——Omnia Græcè;
Cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latinè. Juvenal, Satyr vi.
The old MS. in Latin, kept at Venice, and supposed by some to be the original, is shewn by Montfaucon and other antiquaries, to have been written in the sixth century, and contains the oldest copy extant of S. Jerom's version. — S. Peter revised the work of S. Mark, approved of it, and authorized it to be read in the religious assemblies of the faithful; hence some, as we learn from Tertullian, attributed this gospel to S. Peter himself. S. Mark relates the same facts as S. Matthew, and often in the same words: but he adds several particular circumstances, and changes the order of the narration, in which he agrees with S. Luke and S. John. He narrates two histories not mentioned by S. Matthew; the widow's two mites, and Christ's appearing to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; also some miraculous cures; (Mark i. 40, vii. 32, viii. 22, 26) and omits many things noticed by S. Matthew. . . But nothing proves clearly, as Dom. Ceillier and others suppose, that he made use of S. Matthew's gospel. In his narrative he is concise, and he writes with a most pleasing simplicity and elegance.
It is certain that S. Mark was sent by S. Peter into Egypt, and was by him appointed bishop of Alexandria, (which, after Rome, was accounted the second city of the world) as Eusebius, S. Epiphanius, S. Jerom, and others assure us. He remained here, governing that flourishing church with great prudence, zeal, and sanctity. He suffered martyrdom in the 14th year of the reign of Nero, in the year of Christ 68, and three years after the death of SS. Peter and Paul, at Alexandria, on the 25th of April; having been seized the previous day, which was Sunday, at the altar, as he was offering to God the prayer of the oblation, or the mass.
S. Luke was a physician, a native of Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, and well skilled in the Greek language, as his writings sufficiently evince. In some ancient MSS. he is called Lucius, and Lucanus. Some conjecture that he was at first a Gentile and a pagan, and was converted by the preaching of S. Paul, at Antioch; others, that he was originally a Jew, and one of the seventy-two disciples. SS. Hippolitus and Epiphanius say, that hearing from our Lord these words, he that eateth not my flesh, and drinketh not my blood, is not worthy of me, he withdrew, and quitted our Saviour, but returned to the faith at the preaching of S. Paul. But, to leave what is uncertain, S. Luke was the disciple, travelling companion, and fellow-labourer of S. Paul. Of him S. Paul is supposed to speak: (2 Cor. viii. 18.) We have sent also with him (Titus) the brother, whose praise is in the gospel, through all churches: and again, Luke, the most dear physician, saluteth you: (Coloss. iv.) and, only Luke is with me. 2 Tim. iv. Some are of opinion that as often as S. Paul, in his Epistles, says according to my gospel, he speaks of the Gospel of S. Luke. This evangelist did not learn his gospel from S. Paul only, (who had never been with our Lord in the flesh) but from the other apostles also, as himself informs us in the beginning of his gospel, when he says, according as they have delivered them unto us; who, from the beginning, were eye-witnesses, (autoptai) and ministers of the word. His gospel, therefore, he wrote as he heard it; but the Acts of the Apostles, from his own observations; and both, as some believe, about the same time in which his history of the Acts finishes, towards the year of Christ 63. But the received opinion now is, that S. Luke wrote his gospel in Achaia, in the year 53, ten years previously to his writing of the Acts, purposely to counteract the fabulous relations concerning Jesus Christ, which several persons had endeavoured to palm upon the world. It does not appear, as Calmet observes, that he had ever read the gospels of S. Matt. and S. Mark. . . He chiefly insists in his gospel, upon what relates to Christ's priestly office; hence the ancients gave, of the four symbolical representations, mentioned in Ezechiel, that of the ox, or calf, to S. Luke, as an emblem of sacrifices. He lived 84 years in the state of celibacy, was crucified at Elœa, in Peloponnesus, near Achaia, and was buried in the church of the apostles, at Constantinople, to which city his remains were translated, together with those of S. Andrew and S. Timothy, in the year 357, by order of the emperor Constantius. When this church was repaired, by an order of Justinian, the masons found three wooden chests, in which the bodies of these saints were interred. Baronius mentions, that the head of S. Luke was brought by S. Gregory from Constantinople to Rome, in the year of Christ 586. S. Luke writes purer Greek than any of the other hagiographers; yet many Syriac words, and turns of expressions, occur in both his gospel and Acts of the Apostles; some also that imitate the genius of the Latin tongue. He cites Scripture according to the Septuagint, and not after the Hebrew text. S. Paul, in his Epistles, generally quotes the gospel in a manner the most conformable to S. Luke, as may be seen in the following instances; 1 Cor. xi. 23. and 24. c. xv. 5. The Marcionites would only receive the gospel of S. Luke, and from this they retrenched the first two chapters, with regard the birth of Jesus Christ, and only admitted ten of S. Paul's Epistles, as Tertullian and S. Epiphanius have remarked. Marcion embraced the errors of Cerdon: to these he added others, the offspring of his own brain. He began to disseminate his novel opinions at Rome, about the year of Christ 144. He could not bring himself to believe how a spirit, such as the human soul, could be shut up in a body, be subject to ignorance, to weakness, to pain; nor in what manner, or for what end, the great and good Lord, the Creator of spirits, could have thus degraded them. Revelation, which teaches us the fall of the first man, did not appear to the Marcionites, to solve the difficulty, since the first man was composed of a spiritual soul and a terrestrial body; they, moreover, imagined that an all-good, an all-powerful God, ought to have prevented the fall of man. No wonder then, that they refused to adopt the first two chapters of S. Luke, which contain the miraculous births of Jesus and his precursor; as also sundry texts of the very scanty portions of holy Scriptures which their party chose to retain. But what does this shew? that tradition, in the first instance, must be admitted, to inform us what is authentic scripture; and, secondly, an infallible Church-authority, to inform us what is the genuine interpretation of the genuine text. Without the assistance of apostolical tradition and Church-authority, could any Seeker (even with the assistance of Brown's Self-interpreting Bible, in 2 vols. 4to.) rest secure, that he properly understood the disputed points of holy writ; that his, and no other interpretation, was the genuine sense of these mysterious words, when he was informed that by far the greater part of learned societies, and learned individuals, gave a widely different interpretation to the same texts. This freedom of expounding Scripture, by unassisted reason and private spirit, was the first germ of the daily increasing spread of sects and heresies; this is the nucleus, which, after enveloping itself like the comet, in much nebulous obscurity, terminates in a fiery tail, of portentous magnitude, the ruinous effects of which can only be prevented by a speedy return to first principles, apostolical tradition, and Church-authority.
So, St. Matthew 42, St. Luke 53, St. Mark certainly before 68, certainly even before 65.
23:14 Biassed documentation ... what Roman author outside Christianity and Judaism and involved in history as main subject (and not just peeping in from anecdotes) is not selling the Rome story in a very biassed way?
The reason why Velleius Paterculus is a good refutation of a Protestant talking point is, he shows what prayers of the (then and there relevant) Gentiles were really like, alluded to in Matthew 6,7.
The reason why he shows that is, he is praying for Rome, so displaying his bias.
23:55 Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny ... what about Polybius? No, not the arcade game ...
"Polybius' father, Lycortas, was a prominent advocate of neutrality during the Roman war against Perseus of Macedon. Lycortas attracted the suspicion of the Romans, and Polybius subsequently was one of the 1,000 Achaean nobles who were transported to Rome as hostages in 167 BC, and was detained there for 17 years. In Rome, by virtue of his high culture, Polybius was admitted to the most distinguished houses, in particular to that of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, the conqueror in the Third Macedonian War, who entrusted Polybius with the education of his sons, Fabius and Scipio Aemilianus (who had been adopted by the eldest son of Scipio Africanus). Polybius remained on cordial terms with his former pupil Scipio Aemilianus and was among the members of the Scipionic Circle.
"When Scipio defeated the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War, Polybius remained his counsellor. The Achaean hostages were released in 150 BC, and Polybius was granted leave to return home, but the next year he went on campaign with Scipio Aemilianus to Africa, and was present at the Sack of Carthage in 146, which he later described."
So, for the third punic war, he was contemporary. For the second, it ended when he was born, it was 218–201 BC, and he was born around 200 BC, in a region not concerned by it.
24:48 His followers would trust their memory!
He had been giving them oral teaching for 3 and a half years, He was relying on their memory.
Part of the reason St. Matthew starts writing in 42 is, people are persecuted and therefore dying off. It's a bit like the last decade having added vastly to people writing down memories from Auschwitz or Dachau.
Skrbina was already at zero points for historical epistemology as applying to 1st C AD, now he's on the minus side!
25:20 Once again, Skrbina is relying on a reconstruction not just in the absence of traditional evidence, but flying in the face of the traditional evidence that's there.
St Matthew who wrote in 42 was precisely one of the twelve.
To be continued ...
No comments:
Post a Comment