# Bluffing one's way through **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 3, 2004, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068 "2004-04-03T16:22:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Iscariot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ac91a4/32.png) [@Iscariot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iscariot)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/1 "2004-04-03T16:22:57Z")
> [@Diogenes](#): > > Based on what scholarship? I have to wonder since you don’t understand some basic phrases like “Son of God” or the expectations of the Messiah Ignoring, for the moment, the utter lunacy of calling either of these issues “basic,” it was, as my subsequent citation of numerous scholars demonstrates, Diogenes, and not myself, who misunderstood these “basic” concepts. No critical discussion of either issue would term these “basic,” and much scholarly ink has been spent on understanding them. I’d be delighted to see Diogenes falsify that claim. > [@](#): > > Sanders is wishy-washy on miracles and the resurrection. When i say he’s “protective” of traditional Christianity, what I mean is that he still tries to protect the supernatural claims of Christianity as being spiritually valid rather than just admitting that they’re myths. Yet E P Sanders cites Cicero, De Divinatione 2.28 > [@Cicero](#): > > For nothing can happen without cause; nothing happens that cannot happen, and when what was capable of happening has happened, it may not be interpreted as a miracle. Consequently there are no miracles ? We > therefore draw this conclusion: what was incapable of happening never happened, and what was capable of happening is not a miracle Sanders goes on to note of this passage “The view espoused by Cicero has become dominant in the modern world, and I fully share it.”(_The Historical Figure of Jesus_, p.143) In the greatest of irony, Crossan–who Diogenes lauds–has this to say of the miracle on Emmaus: “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens.”(_Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography_, p.197). The irony, of course, is that Crossan is doing exactly what Diogenes has just condemned–finding a deeper, more meaningful sentiment behind Emmaus, rather than condemning it as the fiction it obviously is. This is characteristic of Crossan, who has observed more than once that he never distinguishes between the “jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith”–a dichotomy integral to any serious look at the historical Jesus. Schweitzer would be disgusted. > [@](#): > > Having read the page on Q I find a number of logical problems with it (as well as some theological bias). . . This, as seen in Diogenes’ condemnation of Sanders, Meier, and Brown–none of whom he’s read, save Brown’s _Death of the Messiah_ (and I doubt he’s read that except in the excerpts carried in Crossan’s response)–is his ad hoc response. Don’t agree with me? You’re theologically biased. Even more ironic, in a later thread he miscited the page he had just stated he’d read–he claimed that Mark Goodacre argued for an interpolated Lukan nativity. Goodacre does no such thing. > [@](#): > > No ancient author ever referred to the books of Nag Hammadi either but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Know one knew about the Gospel of Thomas until 1945. So this is an another argument from ignorance. Origen mentions Thomas as well, but it’s really unnecessary to find more than one to falsify this nonsense. Eusibius, Ecclesiastical Histories, 3.25 > [@Eusebius](#): > > . . .such books as the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any others besides them, and the Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles, which no one belonging to the succession of ecclesiastical writers has deemed worthy of mention in his writings. > [@](#): > > Farrer goes on in this manner making one fairly weak objection after another. It is also notable that he must completely lop off Luke’s Nativity Narrative in order to make his hypothesis work. He does this because Luke’s Nativity has no discernable relationship to Matthew and contains a directly contradictory geneology. Farrer was apparently supposed to be Goodacre. It doesn’t matter, neither makes this claim. As noted above, he obviously hasn’t read the Case Against Q webpage. Were it just one or two occurrences, one could easily conclude that they were simply mistakes, or cases of getting caught up in the heat of the moment. Taken together, these move one ineluctably to an obvious conclusion: Diogenes is interested not in discussion, but in dazzling us with research he hasn’t done, on topics he’s scarcely familiar with. Further discussion is thus a waste of my time. Regards. ---
**Author:** ![Never\_Have\_I\_Because\_I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@Never\_Have\_I\_Because\_I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Never_Have_I_Because_I)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/2 "2004-04-03T16:28:11Z")
link plz ---
**Author:** ![Iscariot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ac91a4/32.png) [@Iscariot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iscariot)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/3 "2004-04-03T16:35:10Z")
> [@Never Have I Because I](#): > > link plz > **[Were Barabbas & Jesus the same person? Your take-](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=247481)** > > (This could be considered a “GQ” but due to the subject matter I’m going to place it here.) Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by the name “Barabbas”, which, I’m guessing most Dopers already know, is the Latinization of the Hebrew ‘bar... [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=4716095](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=4716095) Regards. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/4 "2004-04-03T17:03:27Z")
If further discussion is a waste of your time why did you open a new thread about it? ---
**Author:** ![Iscariot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ac91a4/32.png) [@Iscariot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iscariot)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/5 "2004-04-03T17:05:15Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > If further discussion is a waste of your time why did you open a new thread about it? To clarify for purposes on the other thread why I wouldn’t be responding to further arguments presented by Diogenes. Regards. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/6 "2004-04-03T17:20:13Z")
> [@Iscariot](#): > > Ignoring, for the moment, the utter lunacy of calling either of these issues “basic,” it was, as my subsequent citation of numerous scholars demonstrates, Diogenes, and not myself, who misunderstood these “basic” concepts. > > No critical discussion of either issue would term these “basic,” and much scholarly ink has been spent on understanding them. I’d be delighted to see Diogenes falsify that claim. To summarize that discussion, I said that the Jewish expectation of the Messiah is not a divine one and that certain phrases (i.e.“Son of God”) have symbolic meanings rather than literal. You then spent a lot of time talking a bout the Dead Sea Scrolls and hyperbolic descriptions of a supernatural Messiah (not God, but something like an angel). You agreed that no Jew thought the Messiah was God, which was my only real point, and you just quibbled over the definition of “divinity” which I used only in the sense of the Messiah being an incarnation of God or being an object of worship. I eventually agreed that the Essenes may have had a more superhuman view of the Messiah so I don’t see what the disagreement is there. Yet E P Sanders cites Cicero, De Divinatione 2.28 Sanders goes on to note of this passage “The view espoused by Cicero has become dominant in the modern world, and I fully share it.”(_The Historical Figure of Jesus_, p.143) In the greatest of irony, Crossan–who Diogenes lauds–has this to say of the miracle on Emmaus: “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens.”(_Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography_, p.197). The irony, of course, is that Crossan is doing exactly what Diogenes has just condemned–finding a deeper, more meaningful sentiment behind Emmaus, rather than condemning it as the fiction it obviously is. This is characteristic of Crossan, who has observed more than once that he never distinguishes between the “jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith”–a dichotomy integral to any serious look at the historical Jesus. Schweitzer would be disgusted. [/quote] All this stuff is about whether which scholars have theological agendas and which don’t. I’m pretty sure I never “lauded” Crossan so much as I just said that I agreed with some of his conclusions (specifically that Jesus did not have an apocalyptic message). I denied that _I_ had a theological agenda. I don’t think I commented one way or the other about Crossan. > [@](#): > > This, as seen in Diogenes’ condemnation of Sanders, Meier, and Brown–none of whom he’s read, save Brown’s _Death of the Messiah_ (and I doubt he’s read that except in the excerpts carried in Crossan’s response)–is his ad hoc response. Don’t agree with me? You’re theologically biased. I _had_ to read _Death_ in college, I was a religion major. as a matter of fact, I had to read Brown’s _Death_ AND Crossan’s _Historical Jesus_ then write a paper about who I thought was more convincing. I though Brown took too much as historical and I resonated more with some (but not all) of Crossan’s conclusions. I didn’t see as much theological bias in Crossan but that’s purely subjective on my part. > [@](#): > > Even more ironic, in a later thread he miscited the page he had just stated he’d read–he claimed that Mark Goodacre argued for an interpolated Lukan nativity. Goodacre does no such thing. You said this: > [@Iscariot](#): > > > [@Diogenes](#): > > > > Let’s just pursue Q in this thread. What alternative explanation would you advance for the commonalities in Matthew and Luke? > > Essentially that Luke was originally crafted without a birth narrative, and simply used Matthew and Mark. > > If you’re not familiar with the Farrer-Till hypothesis, it’s probably best if we stay this one until you familiarize yourself a bit. Depending on your skill level, you may want to give Farrer, Till and the like a miss, as their arguments are, for the most part, rather academic, very technical, and often dependent on a reasonable grasp of Greek–I’ve only recently been able to really appreciate such arguments myself, hence my current skepticism about Q. The way this response was constructed led me to believe you were summarizing the Farrer hypothesis. I didn’t realize the Lukan Nativity thing was your own modification. It was just a misunderstanding. So sue me. > [@](#): > > Origen mentions Thomas as well, but it’s really unnecessary to find more than one to falsify this nonsense. Eusibius, Ecclesiastical Histories, 3.25 Origen was probably referring to the _Infancy_ Gospel of thjomas. Eusebius probably just followed Origen. > [@](#): > > Farrer was apparently supposed to be Goodacre. It doesn’t matter, neither makes this claim. As noted above, he obviously hasn’t read the Case Against Q webpage. I corrected my own mistake. The link said “Farrer Hypothesis.” I didn’t realize that the author was Goodacre until after I posted my response. As soon as I figured out my error i corrected it. > [@](#): > > Were it just one or two occurrences, one could easily conclude that they were simply mistakes, or cases of getting caught up in the heat of the moment. Taken together, these move one ineluctably to an obvious conclusion: Diogenes is interested not in discussion, but in dazzling us with research he hasn’t done, on topics he’s scarcely familiar with. > > Further discussion is thus a waste of my time. > > Regards. Really, you haven’t shown anything that I was “bluffing” about, only that I disagreed with you on some things and made a couple of mistakes of attribution. I don’t claim to be an expert (I just have a BA in Religious Studies) but I do have a working familiarity with these topics. I’m sorry if I failed to be blown away by your arguments. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/7 "2004-04-03T18:24:33Z")
> [@Iscariot](#): > > To clarify for purposes on the other thread why I wouldn’t be responding to further arguments presented by Diogenes. > > Regards. And you couldn’t do that in the original thread? ---
**Author:** ![Iscariot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ac91a4/32.png) [@Iscariot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iscariot)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2004, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bluffing-ones-way-through/238068/8 "2004-04-04T03:43:15Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > And you couldn’t do that in the original thread? The post is an attack on one’s character, calling into question motivations rather than his arguments–I’d already explained why the arguments were wrong. An attack on one’s motivations is an ad hominem. It doesn’t belong in a debate thread. Regards.