Why Dr. Thiering's methodology from all sources produces sound history
crunch
> On Nov 3, 2:40 pm, crunch <pchristain...@yahoo.com> wrote:
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> > On Nov 3, 1:59 am, Cormac <cormac.brada...@gmail.com> wrote:
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> > > On Nov 2, 5:34 pm, crunch <pchristain...@yahoo.com> wrote:
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> > > >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qumran_origin/message/5396
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> > > > "In this connection, a further support for my case, and one of equal
> > > > significance
> > > > for the existence of the pesher, is that the Synoptics say that Jesus
> > > > was put on
> > > > the cross at 9 am (Mk 15:25) and John's gospel says it was noon (Jn
> > > > 19:14)."
>
> > > > ---
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> > > >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qumran_origin/message/3522
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> > > > "The value of the calendar study to us, arising from new knowledge, is
> > > > that it is a provable
> > > > matter, giving a reliable basis for the discovery that the NT contains
> > > > a factual
> > > > history of a great event in the past.
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> > > > ---
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> > > > Comments, please.
>
> > > > David Christainsen
>
> > > This is not history. Go away.
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> > > Cormac.- Hide quoted text -
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> > > - Show quoted text -
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> > Your comment is ignorant of Dr. Thiering's scholarship
> > and I have given sources to it on usenet before.
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> > So, it IS history, were you to be diligent, because we
> > find the calendar in the New Testament and consider
> > the NT a legitimate historical source, properly interpreted.
>
> > David Christainsen
>
> The NT is not history. Please keep your religious sermons to relevant
> groups.
>
> Cormac
I am happy to refute you.
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Answers on the Kingdom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qumran_origin/message/3491
Please note that, in addition to the NT, the Nag Hammadi codices
(Elaine Pagels), the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, and Philo
are major HISTORICAL sources. Also, there is Apocrypha.
"For the actual term, the Kingdom, we turn to the NT, asking first the
question
unanswered by orthodoxy, "Why did John the Baptist, before Jesus,
preach the
Kingdom of Heaven?" (Mt 3:2). From the arguments about the direct
connection
between Qumran and early Christianity - a connection attested very
plainly, but
denied by earlier scholars - and from the evidence that John the
Baptist was the
Teacher of Righteousness, the historical steps can be understood.
Under the
ambitious Herod the Great, the concept of a Kingdom of the Jews arose.
It was a
time when the Roman power was just rising. Herod and Diaspora Judaism
thought
that their time had come to establish a world power, imposing their
religion, in
both east and west. Then the inevitable schisms due to cultural
differences
arose. The Sadducees, very westernised, superseded the Herods after
his death in
4 BC. Less nationalistic, they called it a Kingdom of God rather than
of the
Jews. A further adjustment called it the Kingdom of Heaven. But the
main point
available from all the sources is that it was not just a concept in
people's
minds, as orthodox Christians have wanted to think, but was fully
political. Its
political activities were the reason why Jesus was crucified. His
party took the
inevitable next step, of dropping the Jewish identity, but retaining
an
organised religious force that would overcome paganism. Christianity
arose, not
de novo with Jesus, but from a long series of steps, for which the DSS
now give
us the missing parts."
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On Methodology
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qumran_origin/message/2694
"Q. 3. The information from the DSS pesharim helped solve the NT
pesher,
but the NT pesher is not a direct extension from the OT pesharim of
the DSS.
A. I think I recognise here a criticism stemming from Vanderkam, that
I am not using pesher in the same sense as in DSS. He did not
distinguish between the definition of scripture contained in the DSS
pesharim, and the final form that those pesharim took. The definition
of scripture that they contained was that it had two levels, an
obvious meaning to everyone, and a hidden meaning that was only
available to an interpreter who had special knowledge – or, in their
view, to whom God had revealed the secret. Their analogy was in the
interpretation of dreams. The word pesher is another form of the word
pithron, from verb pathar, meaning the interpretation of dreams as in
Gen 40:8. Pharaoh’s dream of the 7 fat cows and 7 thin cows contained
information about events in the near future, but Pharaoh and all his
wise men could not understand it , only Joseph. So, in 1QpHab 7:1-5,
God told Habakkuk to write down certain matters concerning subsequent
historical events, but God did not make known even to Habakkuk (who
belonged to the Old Covenant) when the time would come when those
events, the End of Days, would occur. The pesher of Habakkuk concerns
the Teacher of Righteousness, "to whom God made known all the
mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets". He was the
‘Joseph’ who knew the hidden meaning.
My hypothesis, which remained in that status for many years until it
was validated by a study of every word, was that the evangelists were
working with the same definition of scripture, that it had two levels.
They set out to write a new scripture for their radical version of the
New Covenant, so they employed the same definition of scripture. They
had a practical reason for doing so in addition to their acceptance of
the definition. In their situation, they had an urgent need to give
something that was both hidden, yet available to those with special
knowledge, like the Teacher. The Christians wanted to make it appear
that their religion was a new revelation, every aspect of it
authoritative because it came directly from heaven through Jesus. But
at the same time they wanted to be honest about their extensive debt
to the previous Qumran community. Their strong organisational links
with it were apparent from the first discovery of the Scrolls. The
information would also guide their leaders in future developments.
From this point, there are departures from the Qumran model. First,
that the evangelists were recording a present and immediately past
history, whereas the Qumran pesharists believed that the OT prophets
in the past were writing about events in the far future. The Qumran
writers were using the word ‘prophet’ to mean one who predicted the
future. (That is, incidentally, an alteration of the meaning – the OT
prophets were political commentators on their own times.) Second, and
most importantly, the Qumran writers were arbitrarily forcing their
meanings on texts that were not intended for them. It was only when
they ‘recognised’ in their own time the ‘fulfilment’, by considerable
fiddling with the text even to altering it, that they ‘found’ that it
really referred to events in their own time. (I was always reminded of
an old lady who lived next door to us forty years ago, who was
convinced that the prophet Ezekiel was predicting an Armageddon that
was then happening in Jerusalem. There have been quite a few
Armageddons since then.)
The NT evangelists, however, set up a text that was actually intended
for it. They lived in monastic communities that delighted in riddles
and puzzles – we have plenty of evidence for that, including the books
of Enoch. The analogy that always came to my mind was that of a
cryptic crossword. It has riddling clues, plays on words etc, and
there is only one answer to it, it is either right or wrong. If you
get one item wrong the whole thing goes wrong. To put it more grandly,
the solution is subject to Popper’s falsifiability principle. It is
capable of being either falsified or verified by the use of tested
evidence.
The gospels are not a continuation of the content of the DSS pesharim.
Their radical break with Qumran, their rejection of its whole
structure of ‘uncleanness’, was one of the reasons why they wanted to
appear quite new.
A first step on my way was the observation that information from 1QS
6:13-23 was directly relevant to the ‘miracle’ of turning water into
wine in Jn 2. The 1QS passage describes the steps of initiation. When
taken with the parallel in Josephus, it showed that preliminary
members were given a baptism with water only, and two years later male
Jewish celibates were given full initiation, which included being
given the wine at the sacred meal. The many descriptions in the
Scrolls of ‘unclean’ people and those who were not physically perfect,
who were excluded from full membership, meant that such people,
including Gentiles, were confined to baptism only. To ‘turn water into
wine’ meant, in these terms, to allow Gentiles into full membership,
to partake of communion. To explain one miracle in such natural terms
opened up the prospect of explaining all miracles similarly."
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"Q. 6. You solved the NT pesher by painstakingly observing the usage
of
vocabulary and syntax, looking for consistent usage, and correlating
it with your knowledge of the DSS pesharim and the information
gleaned from the sectarian DSS.
A. Yes. It took at least 15 years before I was quite sure. It also
involved, of course, knowledge of the OT (my teaching subject at
University), its related literature, apocryphal literature etc."
David Christainsen