the quixotic infidel

That's an interesting observation, it is hard to g...

2009-10-20T07:37:16.424-07:00

That's an interesting observation, it is hard to get past preconceptions when reading the NT. I'll have to listen to that segment.

another 6/8. :) very nice.

2009-08-26T02:22:26.236-07:00

another 6/8. :)
very nice.

Your other post more specifically dealing with the...

2009-08-10T10:10:11.399-07:00

Your other post more specifically dealing with the claim that Ignatius and 1 Clement don't know nothing about Paul's letters (except possibly allusions to the opening of 1 Corinthians) has disappeared. But since you repeat the claim here, I'll add this comment directing people to my latest response to your claims:

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009/08/ignatius-reliance-on-pauls-letter-to.html

If you have dropped this claim, it would be better to just say so rather than try and hide the post containing your first analysis.

I just thought of another example. Should we scol...

2009-08-03T06:14:36.712-07:00

I just thought of another example.

Should we scold the author of the Gospel of Matthew for having written Chapter 27:9–10?

:P

Ó

"In the meantime, why don't you read what I wrote ...

2009-08-01T20:01:16.484-07:00

"In the meantime, why don't you read what I wrote and see if you can come up with any substantial objections that are not a mere rehash of the DR arguments?"

I read. I hope i didn't miss anything.

I doubt you'll be satisfied, but there goes!

peace

Ó

"2) John Malalas is an extremely unreliable 'histo...

2009-08-01T19:57:29.108-07:00

"2) John Malalas is an extremely unreliable 'historian', as you rightly suspect. He reports the most dubious anecdotes uncritically. So who cares how this independent 'tradition' about Ignatius sprang up?

The veracity is not the issue. The fact that the tradition existed and was written down by people who fancied themselves chroniclers.

This reminds me of the apologist use of Papias in other arguments such as Baukham's work.

(BTW, If you are going to call Malalas untrustworthy and useless, then we must do the same for Papias, who was called, by no other source than Eusebius himself 'a friggin' idiot' (I paraphrase) This last bit is a tangent, but I had to say it.)

What even qualifies it as a 'tradition' instead of mere 'rumor' or 'legend'? Why does any rumor or legend arise? You really think this counts against the authenticity of the letters

Yes, I do . . . very much so.

, which are much earlier and more reliably attested?"

Reliably, you say?

The question keeps nagging at me:
Why would a Christian monk write an account of Ignatius died in view of the Emperor in Antioch, if he was well aware of "the facts"?(notice the sarcasm?)

You can't just gloss over this tradition by brushing Malalas off as a flake.
He wasn't reporting a "rumor" he'd heard, by the way . . . go look at the text.

"1: How on earth do you know that Ignatius only kn...

2009-08-01T19:26:59.415-07:00

"1: How on earth do you know that Ignatius only knows the one Pauline letter? Just because he only cites one (actually, the most recent critical survey establishes that he is familiar with 1 Corinthians, Ephesians and 1-2 Timothy)? There are two glaring problems with your conclusion. First, a writer is not obligated to demonstrate his knowledge of all his readings in each and every writing. That would be absurd: his citations and allusions are expected to be contextually appropriate. Second, you have to think of the implied situation of Ignatius' letters (setting aside for now the question of whether the context is historically plausible): a prisoner, bound for Rome, to face the arena. One would hardly expect him to have access to his entire theological library! In fact, most Ignatian scholars are convinced that he quotes the NT texts he is familiar with from memory. Yours is a very dubious argument from silence."

Well . . . . (and thank you for your interactions, for I re acquainted myself with material I hadn't looked at in ten years)

We know that whoever wrote Ignatius' "letters" had at his disposal some version of the letter to the Corinthians (I even concede that this might have been an "actual letter"). We know this, because he quotes it . . . .. the language matches , not just the thematic content.

Is it plausible that he was quoting stuff from memory, and therefore didn't get all the words in order? Sure.

In fact, I think Clement knew Hebrews because of similar thinking having to do with word order (I'm still working on a more awake and detailed review, which will be bigger, with greek comparisons) and more elaborate notes. But as for the other pauline epistles, there is no certainty.

Could he have known of them? Perhaps. We don't really know.
Would your case have been strengthened if he had quoted them . . . or at least given some indication like in the case of Hebrews and John?
Yes.

Once again, apologetics goes as far as establishing plausibility and no more.

And I might remind you . . . . you and I are arguing from the same exact silence.

"In interpreting ancient documents, genre is every...

2009-08-01T19:06:13.543-07:00

"In interpreting ancient documents, genre is everything, because genre establishes the interpretive parameters against which we should adjust our expectations. If we have misjudged genre, we cannot complain that the writing did not match our misguided expectations, and so cannot be what it claims to be."

Genre is everything? You may be right.
But if you think that the Diogenes letter and the Pauline corpus share anything but a vague didactic tone and length . . . . I'm afraid it is YOU who has misjudged genre.

"And yet you insist that even though Paul's letter...

2009-08-01T19:03:05.321-07:00

"And yet you insist that even though Paul's letters fit a well-known ancient literary genre for lengthy exhortations, it is still not 'functionally' a letter. Well, if by that you mean a friendly address sending news and tidbits from one loved one to another, of course Paul's letters aren't "letters"! Call them exhortatory diatribes if you wish. Ancient readers would have understood what they were. The point is that the length of Paul's epistles is NOT an indication of inauthenticity, as Detering thinks."

Actually, I agree with your last statement here. Their length is almost beside the point. Their composite nature is what give s it away, not their length.

And again, regarding contemporaneous longform correspondence . . . . the letter of Diogenes, when compared to even Romans (the letter it most closely resembles, IMO, but still falls way short), reveals a consistency of tone and style that the patchwork aspect of the paulines make possible.

So . . . . . I know you are tired of the word . . . . but i have to spin my little teacup on my pinky once again and call, "epicycle"!
(ever watch 'Tombstone'? :)

"The same goes for Detering's complaint that . . ....

2009-08-01T18:54:55.214-07:00

"The same goes for Detering's complaint that . . . . "

Argh . . . . Detering again!

"Do you see now why Detering's lack of knowledge o...

2009-08-01T18:52:52.788-07:00

"Do you see now why Detering's lack of knowledge of ancient epistolary types is relevant and devastating to his case? It's as if someone who has only ever seen black cats insists that a white cat simply cannot be a cat, because, well, all cats are black. The problem is not with the cat but with the person's lack of knowledge of all the different kinds of cats."

Do you see now why Lupia's demonstration of contemporary longform correspondenve is irrelevant?

The problem is not with the cat, but with the lack of knowledge of the person who might not realize that he's looking at a fox.

"Lupia's points are not at all irrelevant, nor are...

2009-08-01T18:44:19.454-07:00

"Lupia's points are not at all irrelevant, nor are they 'spinning in place'. Let me see if I can make this clear, since you seem to be a bit dense in this post.

Detering bases his case for the inauthenticity of 1 Corinthians in part on his conviction that such a long letter would not pass for 'actual correspondence' in late antiquity. He thinks he has a good idea of how long actual letters were and finds it unlikely that Paul would take such a long time to compose such a long letter (which according to Detering is not a real letter) when the situation required haste."

OK . . . Ley ME make myself clear, as YOU seem to be a bit dense on this matter:

Lupia argues that Romans et al could sure be correspondence . . . there are precedents, after all.

You nod your head and say . . . see? . . . It's Correspondence! It's possible. That settles it.

You wanna know what I see, though? I see the pauline corpus as a patchwork quilt made up of fragments of all kinds of things. Catholicizing things, proto gnostic things, Marcionite things, and yes . . . even fragments of letters, edited over time. The "letter' was a good form for the task at hand. The illusion of personal exhortation goes a long way toward credibility; no?

I see this piecemeal quality to the epistles (all of them) and I think it is demonstrable. You can almost see the figurative seams and the stitches in the texts!

Was there a form of correspondence whose main function was didactic and long form?
Sure, and the letter of Diogenes Laërtius is one such example.

The pauline corpus, however, while retaining some of the didacvtic aspects of this form, does not read like correspondence beyond its introductions and closings.
It was the obvious patchwork form that first led people to question the "authenticity" of the pastorals. What the Tüb/DRs in effect did—their greatest contribution, IMO— was to point out that the exact same arguments could be made against the "authentic" seven . . . or the big four (take your pick).

Insisting that Lupia's argument does anything more than demonstrate the existence of near-contemporary longform correspondence is thus just an epicycle in my view.

"Granted, such things have happened in the history...

2009-08-01T18:17:53.524-07:00

"Granted, such things have happened in the history of scholarship, as your example of epicycles shows in historical astronomy. Such things can happen in historical research as well. The question is, does the analogy hold in this particular case? Has Detering mounted a sufficiently cogent case for skepticism regarding the historical Paul? The upshot of my own critical review, and of those mainstream scholars who have interacted with the radicals, is that he has not.

Your epicycle analogy assumes without argument that Detering has made his case and that mainstream scholars must somehow explain away the difficulties he points to. But as I have demonstrated in my posts again and again (and which I note you have not interacted with), mainstream scholarship shows that Detering at most points to puzzles due to our incomplete historical evidence (which even the most conservative commentator would grant), and more often merely throws up pseudo-problems that are only problems for him because he is not familiar with the relevant research."

I have not interacted mainly because I wanna see Bauer and Van manen refuted, not Detering.

It looks to me like you have some kind of axe to grind with Herman. That's fine, but I am looking for a refutation of Tü/DRs. They were very clear, they don't need Detering (though, I'm sure they'd be grateful that he is bearing the torch). I understand your criticisms of Detering, and even grant you some of them.
but . . .
please. . .

I must make a confession: in spite of the cartoon ...

2009-08-01T17:53:21.074-07:00

I must make a confession: in spite of the cartoon near the bottom of my blog, I don't scour the internet looking for errors to correct.

I do think there is a reasonable chance that Origen found in Josephus something like the hypothetical original version of the Testimonium Flavianum reconstructed by Meier and others, and now given some textual support by Agapius. When Origen refers to Josephus not having been a Christian, it seems plausible that Origen had some reason to think that. Of course, it could just be something that was generally known or thought, apart from anything specific that Josephus wrote. But any claim that Origen "explicitly" mentions it is obviously wrong. And just as you or I might correct Witherington on this point, I myself expect to be corrected on many errors I have made and will make in the future.

That was the heart of my point. We all have a tendency to pride ourselves in how open minded we are. And yet we have blind spots where we buy into things that are pseudo-critical rather than critical. Even the antievolutionists proclaim how willing they are to be "critical" even of the scientific community and their consensus. I thought Religulous served as a useful illustration of how someone can be critical, but not consistently. And let's face it, criticism of religion served in Maher's case to justify a dislike that was already there - we often have ulterior motives for our views. I really liked Dale Allison's recent book, in which he manages to apply to his own publications the same critical gaze he applies to others.

"Detering is mounting a challenge to a scholarly r...

2009-08-01T17:51:36.247-07:00

"Detering is mounting a challenge to a scholarly research tradition that has established itself over hundreds of years of investigation. The burden of proof is his. It is HIS job to show that the problems and inconsistencies plaguing the mainstream paradigm are so numerous and severe that nothing less than overthrowing the entire paradigm is required. That was the job of Copernicus and Galileo, even though they were eventually vindicated."

Paradigm-shift is needed. Yes.

People like you, however (many many people like you) with the predilection for harmonizing epicycles, are in the way, however.

Don't get me wrong, I think you are brilliant and very well prepared for the task of apologetics. But, like I have suggested before, there is very little difference between apologetics and astrology to me.

Also, it took approximately 1,600 years for Seleucus' discovery to even make it to the consciousness of people like Kepler and Copernicus and Bruno. And a few hundred years after that for the heliocentric model to finally be the consensus.
Which is all just so say that I have faith that the Tüb/DRs will also be vindicated in the end. One hundred and fifty years of exposure has not been long enough to crack the several millenia of habitual piety. It's a mighty hard nut to crack.
But, like Jesus, reportedly said, "you can't cover up the light of truth."
I actually think that's both true and wise.

for now . . .

When I have moments, I will tackle each point as i...

2009-08-01T17:30:47.087-07:00

When I have moments, I will tackle each point as it comes . . .

"You've already made one huge blunder in your scholarly engagement with this issue. I would have thought it would make you more careful in your analysis. You still seem caught up in your enthusiasm for the DR school, however, and do not have a good grasp of the actual state of play."

I expect to make may blunders along the way. I intend to correct them, as I go along and am shown to be wrong.

"State of play?" Are we at play?
Come to think of it, "play" is a good word for epicycling.

Funny! Guess you were too carried away by Aretha's...

2009-07-31T05:32:53.682-07:00

Funny! Guess you were too carried away by Aretha's voice to notice.

Miriam don't you weep? No, she was dancing... It's tough, all the people who would be comforted with a song in the bible would be the people rejoicing over Pharaoh's drownded army.

I know some progressive Passover seders include a remembrance for the pain experienced by the Egyptians, maybe Miriam could be shoe-horned in there. ;^)

continued from above . . . You're right, I AM ent...

2009-07-30T22:16:09.313-07:00

continued from above . . .

You're right, I AM enthusiastic about the gist of the Tübinmgen and Dutch findings. And I find all of the prolix epicycles aimed at Detering to be, well-written, erudite, extremely well-read and researches, but just like that long astrological chart . . . . in the end, it is just so much dissembling bafflegab.

Honestly, if you had a good argument, I would consider it. You will surely blame me and my enthusiams and my inferior acumen, if you wish, I'm cool with that.
The truth is that I found all of the links you sent me to and both of your posts to be less than convincing.
Again, well-written, verbose, well-formatted, disciplined . . . . but ultimately unconvincing.

Why is it that after reading Van Manen's work, I got enthusistic, but after reading you guys, all i get is bafflegag?
You want me to be enthusistic about your case? Bring better witnesses, instead of haughty, smug, academic posturing fideists.

I know that you guys do this day and night . . .
It boggles the mind.

I am of the opinion that apologists are just fideists who vainly wear paper armors.
As a friend of mine quoted earlier today:
“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
Well-read fanatics. But fanatics.
I also suspect that a fanatic is simply one who harbors a secret doubt, but that's a subject for an entirely new post.

In the spirit of fairness, I'd engage any point you would like to discuss, but not in the way you are used to.
Limit it to one specific point. Short and brief.

For instance.

I say that none of the pauline letters are "letters" functionally, though they haved earned the right to be semantically called "letters".

This being the case, what difference does it make if it can be called semantically a "letter" or not? Detering's point (but please, don't think I came to defend him) was about the function of the letter
You're making mountains out of molehills,climb to the top of them like it's some self-important Academic Ring-Around-the-Rosie game . . . . and, instead of saying: "hey, looks like we need an exterminator" . . . you look down from those imaginary airy heights in your high-tech climbing gear . . . down on us peasants (heathens? who knows how you see us) who just don't buy your tenuous epicycles.

In the meantime . . .

Do you know where I could find a decent refutation of the Tübingen School and/or the Dutch Radicals?
I would LOVE to read one.

I wish you well

Ó

1- I am not a defender of Detering. My main readin...

2009-07-30T22:15:52.263-07:00

1- I am not a defender of Detering. My main reading on these matters has been Van Manen, Bauer, Baur, and those guys that Detering trying to defend. I don't relly give a hoot for Detering other than give him credit for being one of the only credited scholars doing work. I don't know why you either a: focus in on Detering, as what I really want to see is a refutation of the DR. Not Detering.

2- Neither Clement, nor any of the Ignatian epistles serve the function of "letter". I have already said that semantically speaking it can be a letter . . . . sure. The point, again, stands, though. Either that, or come up with a better epicycle, please.I think it is a waste of time (on both our parts) for me to engage your epicycles.

That was the whole point of the epicycle metaphor.

3- Bringing up John Malalas again, after I specified how little importance I place on its veracity . . . proves to me that you are just on auto-pilot, dude. Now I wonder if you even got the point of my mentioning him in the first place.

No matter.
The DR arguments don't need to be re-hashed; they were just fine the first time around. Until I find an actual refutation of their arguments (Detering notwithstanding) I will simply keep looking around. I know you think that you are refuting the DR, but you're not.
I see epicycle after epicycle.
If there is any rehashing going on, it is in all the prolix self-congratulatory, cross-referenced appeals to other apologists, going on in long posts.
I mean, citing Witherington and Holding?
Good lord!

continued below

(cont'd) The same goes for Detering's complaint t...

2009-07-30T20:55:08.232-07:00

(cont'd)

The same goes for Detering's complaint that writing such a lengthy letter would have taken too long and would not have gotten to its destination in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, as Lupia shows, a letter of 1 Corinthians' length could have been composed in two weeks and gotten to its destination in scarely more time. Lines of communication in antiquity were VERY efficient. And it makes perfect sense for Paul to write a letter if he could not make the trip just yet to deal with the situation in person.

And yet you insist that even though Paul's letters fit a well-known ancient literary genre for lengthy exhortations, it is still not 'functionally' a letter. Well, if by that you mean a friendly address sending news and tidbits from one loved one to another, of course Paul's letters aren't "letters"! Call them exhortatory diatribes if you wish. Ancient readers would have understood what they were. The point is that the length of Paul's epistles is NOT an indication of inauthenticity, as Detering thinks.

In interpreting ancient documents, genre is everything, because genre establishes the interpretive parameters against which we should adjust our expectations. If we have misjudged genre, we cannot complain that the writing did not match our misguided expectations, and so cannot be what it claims to be.

As for your questions on Ignatius, I'll deal with those in my relevant post, but let me briefly respond now.

1: How on earth do you know that Ignatius only knows the one Pauline letter? Just because he only cites one (actually, the most recent critical survey establishes that he is familiar with 1 Corinthians, Ephesians and 1-2 Timothy)? There are two glaring problems with your conclusion. First, a writer is not obligated to demonstrate his knowledge of all his readings in each and every writing. That would be absurd: his citations and allusions are expected to be contextually appropriate. Second, you have to think of the implied situation of Ignatius' letters (setting aside for now the question of whether the context is historically plausible): a prisoner, bound for Rome, to face the arena. One would hardly expect him to have access to his entire theological library! In fact, most Ignatian scholars are convinced that he quotes the NT texts he is familiar with from memory. Yours is a very dubious argument from silence.

2) John Malalas is an extremely unreliable 'historian', as you rightly suspect. He reports the most dubious anecdotes uncritically. So who cares how this independent 'tradition' about Ignatius sprang up? What even qualifies it as a 'tradition' instead of mere 'rumor' or 'legend'? Why does any rumor or legend arise? You really think this counts against the authenticity of the letters, which are much earlier and more reliably attested?

There is much more to say about Ignatius and Clement, but they will be dealt with in a forthcoming post. In the meantime, why don't you read what I wrote and see if you can come up with any substantial objections that are not a mere rehash of the DR arguments?

Quixie, You've already made one huge blunder in y...

2009-07-30T20:54:30.965-07:00

Quixie,

You've already made one huge blunder in your scholarly engagement with this issue. I would have thought it would make you more careful in your analysis. You still seem caught up in your enthusiasm for the DR school, however, and do not have a good grasp of the actual state of play.

Detering is mounting a challenge to a scholarly research tradition that has established itself over hundreds of years of investigation. The burden of proof is his. It is HIS job to show that the problems and inconsistencies plaguing the mainstream paradigm are so numerous and severe that nothing less than overthrowing the entire paradigm is required. That was the job of Copernicus and Galileo, even though they were eventually vindicated.

Granted, such things have happened in the history of scholarship, as your example of epicycles shows in historical astronomy. Such things can happen in historical research as well. The question is, does the analogy hold in this particular case? Has Detering mounted a sufficiently cogent case for skepticism regarding the historical Paul? The upshot of my own critical review, and of those mainstream scholars who have interacted with the radicals, is that he has not.

Your epicycle analogy assumes without argument that Detering has made his case and that mainstream scholars must somehow explain away the difficulties he points to. But as I have demonstrated in my posts again and again (and which I note you have not interacted with), mainstream scholarship shows that Detering at most points to puzzles due to our incomplete historical evidence (which even the most conservative commentator would grant), and more often merely throws up pseudo-problems that are only problems for him because he is not familiar with the relevant research.

Lupia's points are not at all irrelevant, nor are they 'spinning in place'. Let me see if I can make this clear, since you seem to be a bit dense in this post.

Detering bases his case for the inauthenticity of 1 Corinthians in part on his conviction that such a long letter would not pass for 'actual correspondence' in late antiquity. He thinks he has a good idea of how long actual letters were and finds it unlikely that Paul would take such a long time to compose such a long letter (which according to Detering is not a real letter) when the situation required haste.

In order for this argument to stand Detering has to demonstrate that epistles of the length and genre represented by Paul's letters were never sent as actual correspondence in late antiquity. But Lupia amply demonstrates that there were examples of such lengthy epistles. They may not have been letters of the kind sent from a brother away at sea to a father at home, but so what? Paul is writing in order to solve theological problems in his congregations when he did not have time to make a visit himself. As such his letters are not 'filikos' or 'friendly family letters' (first category of Pseudo-Demetrius's classification) but 'symvouleftikos' (category 11) or exhortative letters, and must be judged in terms of their proper genre. As Lupia concludes, "The epistles of St. Paul are literary papyri. They are not common letters of exchange but lengthy exhortative letters laden with theological instructions and doctrine...To compare St Paul's epistles' length, say for example, to a letter of inquiry regarding the sale or purchase of property shows a SERIOUS LACK OF KNOWLEDGE regarding documentary papyri and epistolary documentary types."

Do you see now why Detering's lack of knowledge of ancient epistolary types is relevant and devastating to his case? It's as if someone who has only ever seen black cats insists that a white cat simply cannot be a cat, because, well, all cats are black. The problem is not with the cat but with the person's lack of knowledge of all the different kinds of cats.

Hi Quixie, In case you're interested, I've comple...

2009-07-26T17:07:29.423-07:00

Hi Quixie,

In case you're interested, I've completed another couple of posts on Detering and the Dutch Radicals:

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009/07/dutch-radical-criticism-part-iiia-paul.html

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009/07/dutch-radical-criticism-part-iiib-paul.html

That is really cool. I wonder if there is some alt...

2009-07-24T07:38:53.653-07:00

That is really cool. I wonder if there is some alternate scenario or telling of the stories out there which would explain it. It seems conceivable an island could be named for its major significant feature (to the Spaniards), its port. But the puerto not getting the "Puerto" name is still odd then.

Or maybe something as simple as a cartographer botching the names on a map. Kind of like Colón's "Indians." Or something! I love history.

It's lovely, that would be an awesome surprise I'm...

2009-07-20T21:35:47.518-07:00

It's lovely, that would be an awesome surprise I'm sure. Must be nice to be artistically talented!