More "interesting" stuff at r/Academic Biblical

Pytine's comment and ex-Mormon's response are both "interesting," but I believe incorrect, especially no-Moremon.

First, Pytine.

The Cureton thesis on Ignatius is a minority view among scholars; Wiki has a decent summation of the issue. For more detail, see this link off a footnote there, that argues Ignatius had to have written post-140. It may not be a tiny minority view, but it's pretty darn small from what I read. That blows that idea out of the water, but with a 140s date, that as a terminus ad quem for the Gospels allows late dating of them. That said, there is another angle that might be possible. That is that the middle recension is original, but has interpolations, at least as we have it today; see Wiki's "authenticity."

The idea that Luke is dependent on the Gospel of Marcion, rather than him redacting Luke, I still find laughable. And, the Ockham's Razor claim by Pytine doesn't hold water. Rather, it's quite possible that, even though Luke went to Adam with his genealogy, vs Matthew to David, it was still too Jewish. Besides, there's Option 3, again per Wiki, that both derived independently from a common source document. In any case, the Lukan recension of Marcion holds less water when the Cureton idea on Ignatius is rejected.

No-Moremon? His buying the laughable theory, that still gets bruited, that Mark was writing in response to Caligula's proposed actions, is Not.Even.Wrong. Since Paul invented the Eucharist, how could Mark have written earlier? Crossley's theory is also laughable because it seems to be based on a Lukan-inspired take on the general historicity of a broad-ranging Council of Jerusalem.

No-Moremon then has a sub-comment to himself, but is brought up sharply by "Spike" on just what the "right hand of fellowship" in Acts probably actually meant. That said, Spike can be problematic and has been in the past; on this issue, citing THE R. Joseph Hoffman's take on the historical Jesus without noting RJ was once a mythicist, but abandoned that due to academic politics and more, is a lacuna. That said, RJ's hint that Judas Iscariot is really a cover for Judas the Galilean is interesting. But, the idea that Jesus was both a proto-Zealot and a member of the "fourth philosophy" is laughable.

For much more on the Marcionite vs Lukan priority, see this AB post. Per one commenter there, I agree, contra Pytine, and call it the "Gospel" of Marcion rather than seemingly privileging it by calling it the "Evangelicon."

Morton Smith: Still the forger of Secret Mark

At the Atlantic recently (workaround archive link avoids paywall) Ariel Sabar tackled anew this old question, known to biblical students like me (graduate theological degree, undergrad in classical languages): Did Morton Smith forge The Secret Gospel of Mark?

Tackled anew because of a 2023 book by Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau. Since titles can't be copyrighted, theirs is also "The Secret Gospel of Mark." They make the claim that the cover letter (remember, Smith never claimed to have found Secret Mark itself) was not by Clement of Alexandria, but also not a Morton Smith forgery, but rather, written in early Byzantine times by monks at Mar Saba to try to backdoor-justify same-sex monastic relationships.

There's no doubt that in what became the Orthodox world, as well as what became the Catholic world, such relationships existed, and if not common, were certainly not on the fringe, either.

But, would an invention of even a slice of a heresiac gospel have been the tool to do this? Doubtful. That's in part given that no such actual heresiac gospel appears to have existed. It's never mentioned by Eusebius, Ephiphanius in his Panarion compilation of heresies, etc.

Sabar, without mentioning all the relevant church father names, touches on the basics.

One thing he does not mention is epigraphy. At Biblical Archaeology Review, in 2009 renowned paleographer Agamemnon Tselikas discussed the "Clement" letter from that angle and essentially said that he can't prove Smith forged it, but he seems the most likely author. Ehrman and others have said somewhat the same.

And, lots of discussion, much of it semi-informed, at least, at the Early Writings site. (There's also some backbiting.) A lot of it discusses Tselkas' analysis. He says that Smith misread the Greek he had in his photos, and that it's actually "naked men with naked man," not "naked man with naked man." 

OTOH there? Although people call Tselkas the bomb of Greek paleographers today, what if he got this one wrong? Per another poster at Early Writings, almost all the accents in this photograph of Smith's actually are over consonants. So, that could be an accent over a final sigma after all.

Here is a semi-critical "fair transcription" of the Greek, with page-by-page English translation, and with text-critical footnotes in the Greek.

As far as why? Short of a smoking gun of a love letter, Sabar reviews all the evidence to document that Smith had a long-term gay lover. Atanas Todor Madjoucoff was actually bisexual, getting married and having kids. But, Smith's suicide revealed he'd willed almost all his estate to Madjoucoff. He had a personal photo of him that, presumably for reasons of emotional choke-up, Madjoucoff wouldn't accept.

But Smith had two reasons to forget the "Clement" letter and create its backstory. Actually, three, partially overlapping.

He was known as being not just skeptical but cynical about religious verities. He may have been an atheist, though I don't know if he has been confirmed as that or not.

The second and related? He'd been denied tenure at Brown. Other universities wouldn't hire him. When he got on at Columbia, it was in the department of ancient history. So spite would have been a motive, but driven by two reasons, not just one.

Sabar does not reference, per a screed by the one one-star reviewer of the 2023 book, three scholars who had trod this ground before him — and two of them before BAR in 2009 saying it thought the letter was genuine, paleography be damned. This review of Peter Jeffrey's book is big. (That said, per a couple of lesser reviews, as well as one other 5-star, Jeffrey's background as Benedictine oblate must be taken into account.) Jeffrey and Carlson are both discussed in detail at Early Writings.

Flip side? Also at Early Writings? Per Origin's take on the story of Jonathan loving David more than the love of any woman, was a homosexual slant to Christianity semi-common in pre-Nicene Alexandria? I don't think that's likely. First, we would have heard more about it, and ditto with the Smith/Landau thesis if it leaked outside the monastic world. In addition, the "Secret Alias" arguing for the gay Alexandrine Christianity, in reality is Stephen Huller, and he is an idiosyncratic Bible scholar indeed if he thinks Jesus not only did not claim to be the Messiah but instead claimed to be the herald for Herod Agrippa II as Messiah. No, really! Per a one-star review, it's worse! He apparently claims that Mark the gospeler IS Marcus Julius Agrippa, as in Herod Agrippa. Given that none of the gospels were originally identified by names of authors, this wasn't "the Gospel of Mark" at the start anyway.

As for people trying to defend Smith still? I remember reading Helmut Koester's defense long ago. Wrong. (And the "great fool" is rhetorical, especially since he also claimed that Secret Mark came before the canonical. Maybe you wanted to stake out an iconoclastic exegetical position. In reality, he knows that gospels in general have tended toward "expansion" the later they were written. Witness Matthew and Luke vs Mark. Witness the Protoevangelion. Etc., etc.) Didn't read Crossan's, but he was wrong too. BAR itself? Not.Even.Wrong.

There's one other thing that repeatedly gets mentioned. Yes, Mar Saba is "cloistered," and became more so after Smith published. But, Smith never made an effort to go back there to be able to get, or try to get, the actual manuscript so others could look at it.

But, even more, I think the Smith/Landau tertium quid idea is a dead duck. Most likely, Smith forged this letter. There's a bare bones shot it's legit. A cover letter of letters circa 600-700 CE? No.

New Atheism reaches new lows

 T.J. Coles, writing for Counterpunch and riffing on his new book, "The New Atheism Hoax," has the receipts.

The warmongering of original Gnu Chris Hitchens, in his slobbering over his alleged special care for the Middle East, and the trigger-happy Islamophobia of second-gen Gnu Slammin Sammy Harris, I already knew about. With both of them, and obviously with Harris, as with Gnu Richard Dawkins and his "Dear Muslima," Islamophobia is a big part of the issue. It's not just being anti-religious, or anti-theist as Camus put it in "The Rebel," it's Islamophobia in specific.

Apparently, Dan Dennett, seemingly the least belligerent of the original Gnus, has joined in since Oct. 7. At a minimum, by not calling out the Israeli genocide? "Silence gives assent," Dan. And Coles notes that Dawkins has signed a letter calling for "Israel's right to exist." That phrase has long been a dogwhistle.

Why Caesar died on the Ides of March, and some counterfactual history

Four years ago, in one of the most popular posts here, I wrote about the etymology of the "rex," the "king," that Julius Caesar supposedly wanted to become, that got him killed.

But, what are the details, beyond Shakespeare, on the actual assassination?

Caesar was indeed killed for wanting to be proclaimed rex. But, it wasn't just his idea. This piece from JSTOR reminds us that Antony, among others, thought that he needed to be proclaimed king before battling the Parthians, among other things. I don't follow Antony's reasoning; Pompey had defeated kings in the eastern Mediterranean, already. But, it's a good read for the timing of Caesar's assassination and other motives the plotters may have had. (Like the piece's author, I'm not sold on the idea of Caesar's calendrical reform being an additional motive for the plot.)

==

Good counterfactual history has only one major twist, so it doesn't become something like fantasy. It also doesn't involve time travel of either people or resources.

This fits both bills.

Imagine Caesar listening to friends of his — not a Shakespearean witch or wifely dream — and not going to the Senate. Or, even more, imagine him setting up a counterplot and trap. A few midlevel ringleaders get executed after formal, but drumhead, trials. Most the upper-level folks, though, like Brutus, are brought along with Caesar on the Parthian campaign, which now does take place.

Caesar offers some commands, at a certain level, knowing that even if they still hate him, committing battlefield treason and switching sides to the Parthians is highly unlikely.

What happens? He feints a straight-on attack, then has Antony pull a Neronian move through Armenia. But that itself is a feint. The right cross, to use a boxing term, comes from Julius Caesar himself. But, it's a controlled one. It's more a right hook that aims at the Parthian rear lines in Armenia rather than heading straight to Ctesiphon. Caesar avoids Crassus' mistakes, or the ones Antony will make later. Forces reunified, the then marches down Mesopotamia while sending out peace feelers at the same time. Tied to this, he drops hints that he's had communication with Bactrian princies, no matter how untrue.

And, the Parthians agree.

Terms?

Return of Crassus' standards and other lost objects. If he's still alive, the Parthians can keep Crassus himself. 

Roman control of Mesopotamia, with promises not to fortify the east bank of the Tigris. In other words, something like Trajan's conquest. Rome controls Armenia as well, but, as in reality, under some sort of client kingdom.

An exchange of hostages to seal the deal, as was common in antiquity. And, Caesar's hostages to the Parthians are some of the top-level plotters, especially ones he offered the command option and had them reject.

On return to Rome, he notes that he can offer hostages to German tribes as well.

Speaking of?

Remember that the Roman frontier in the north central part of the Empire was NOT on the Danube at this time. Presumably, Caesar would have done what happened in Augustan times. But, would Parthian kings look to have allied with German tribespeople? Could they even have physically made such a connection?

A slanderous lying fuq at Patheos

 Shock me that this is something that, on the political side, Charles Kuffner glommed on to.

A Fred Clark claims at Patheos (which I don't go to on my own since they chased the atheists off) that the only diff between White and Black evangelical Christians is racism or not.

Really? 

For starters, this ignores "liberal evangelicals." Sojourners mag came immediately to my mind. An internet search gives you liberal evangelical Episcopalians for doorknob's sake, and that's a pretty White denomination. Or a liberal evangelical Facebook group.

Second, contra Clark's asterisk that, racism aside, there's actually lots of differences between White and Black, or broader non-White evangelicals overstates those differences.

Third, contra Clark, per an actually academic Christian Century, there's not theological unity within White evangelicals anyway. The unity factor, today, for (conservative) White evangelicals (CC ignores the Sojourners world too) is politics.

Fred Clark could at least be that honest. Shock me that it's at the Slacktivist vertical. That has long been dreck.

Now, per Ryan Burge, one can argue about how politically liberal or not self-proclaimed liberal evangelicals are. But that's a different story. And, per Sojourners' Wiki page, Burge would appear to be right on them not being THAT liberal politically.

==

Shock me that at another post, also touted by Kuff, Clark rolls out the stupidity of the trolley problem, whose derpity I discussed here a week ago.

Exactly what's wrong with the trolley problem (and what's wrong with Reddit)

I've noted this in comments at Reddit’s trolley problem subreddit, but I decided it was time to make a post there, based on this piece at Psy Post which had just popped up in my blogroll on my Blogger site:

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Guy Crian critiques the “trolley method” of moral philosophy for its unrealistic simplification of moral decision-making, lack of consideration for the complexity and diversity of real-life ethical situations, and potential to mislead about the nature of moral agency and ethical reasoning.

Next, three pullouts.

First, the trolley method emphasizes dramatic scenarios that are rare or extreme compared to the everyday ethical decisions that people face. ...

Second, the method tends to present moral agents as generic or anonymized figures, ostensibly to make the scenarios universally applicable. However, this approach overlooks the fact that respondents often unconsciously fill in missing details based on their own biases or assumptions. ...

Third, the critique points out that the trolley method models ethical decision-making as a clear-cut choice between distinct options. Real-life ethical decision-making is often automatic and influenced by factors beyond immediate conscious deliberation. ...

Update: The derpity of the handwaving and more over at my Reddit post is laughable, if not head-shaking.

The worst is from SM Lion El, who says:

As someone with a philosophy degree it definitely is a philosophical question because it forces someone to consider their personal moral responses to a situation. I tend to believe that any question that forces a person to introspectively examine themselves is a philosophical question.

Really? You just ignored the whole post about how this is NOT a real philosophical problem, and also ignored all other commenters who disagree.