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Reply to Criticism of New Classical Scholarship
A REPLY BY THE NEW CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP (N.C.S.) REGARDING THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BY THE ROMAN PISO FAMILY (By Roman Piso, 09/22/02)
PART I
In answer to James Patrick Holding's article "On the Authorship of the NT by the (gag) Roman Piso Family" by James Patrick Holding. His article, herein will be referred to as "the article," whereas,
Mr. Holding is herein referred to in this response as "the author."
Mr. James Patrick Holding took the time to write an article about what he thought of the New Classical Scholarship, which is what I am replying to here. He did not even know that what he was referring to is called the New Classical Scholarship, and did not even bother to learn anything about it before writing his article. Being ignorant of so much about the subject, you will see as you read on just how many things he has gotten incorrect. His comments from the article in which he had authored is seen here in quotes, whereas my reply to his comments are not. He begins by saying…
"Many years back when I used to pick up copies of The Humanist for cheap laughs, I recall seeing a small advertisement among the back-matter ads (for things like atheist joke books that offered such howlers as, "What would you name a Christian dairy in the Holy Land?"; "Cheeses of Nazareth!") that claimed to provide undeniable, irrefutable proof that Josephus had authored the NT. The offerer was the "Abelard Reuchlin Foundation." Well, these guys are still around, and the nuts have not fallen far from the tree."
The first thing that one will note is that like many others who criticize the New Classical Scholarship, he does not call us that. Why? Because he is ignorant, and does not realize the difference between whatever he may find on the Internet regarding the Roman Piso family and who the actual authorities on the subject are. And his attitude is NOT serious, it is glib. He is pandering using humor instead of actually knowledge. Secondly, right from the start, he has resorted to name-calling. This is NOT scholarly. People who cannot make an intelligent case for something often resort to the only tactics that they can in such situations; they make fun of either the postulation or the person/s presenting them - or both.
"It would be an overstatement to say that no one takes this group -- whose overall thesis is that the NT was authored by members of an aristocratic Roman family to keep slaves under control and submissive -- seriously. In fact I can find only one writer who has even bothered to address their claims in any detail, and that ironically enough was someone on the other side of the lunatic fringe, Nazi Christ-myther Revilo P. Oliver. All Oliver did was address a couple of technical claims they made (apparently their thesis ignores that the Romans used very few of what we would call "first names"); as for the rest, he didn't
consider it worth his time."
Here is another place where the author shows his ignorance. He uses what he thinks he knows about ancient Roman times as he has been taught by the OLD Classical Scholarship and applies that to the whole NEW view of that history. This is a mistake that many people have made when trying to criticize things that apply to the New Classical Scholarship. They do not bother to even learn the OTHER way in which history actually happened; but instead ASSUME that it happened in the way in which they have been used to hearing about. What we are saying is that history happened in an entirely different way from what people are used to thinking it had - and such people as the author of this article do not bother to learn what that other way IS. How can anyone make valid judgments about anything if they do not FIRST learn about it? This is something that is basic. Yet, he and others who criticize the N.C.S. all make this same mistake.
Also, here, the author has said that "the Romans used very few of what we would call "first names." This is patently ignorant of the truth. We (the N.C.S.) have discovered so many things that the O.C.S. still is unaware of that it is not funny. The royal Romans were experts at creating facades; they had to in order to retain power and keep the common people from revolting to the point of overthrowing them. This is how ignorant those of the O.C.S. are: they still do not make the distinction between the Roman royals and the Roman common people. They think that the same 'rules' applied to both just the same! How ridiculous.
The illusion of the usage of only three names for each person was a part of what was used to achieve a number of things for the Roman royals. For one thing, with this practice in place on a superficial level, the royal Romans could easily tell who was actually Royal and who was NOT. This is because the rule did NOT apply to royals as royals could inherit name/titles from their ancestors and could amass a number of names. For what purpose? To use as alias names for the works which they may write as authors. This is because ONLY royals were able to write literary works for public consumption. Common people were not allowed to. This kept the only real means of mass communication in the hands of those who were in power. Also, when the royal Romans (and other royals) would meet at important gatherings, they needed to have ways in which they could tell that a person was actually royal - so that no common person could learn of the things that the royals were doing. One of the things that was used to tell if a person was actually royal was to require a genealogy or family tree of each person who may be admitted to these royal assemblies. And there were other precautions used as well. In addition to the genealogy, each royal was to give their FULL legal royal name. Since the royals had more than the three names and since those names were derived from their ancestors, this could be checked against the genealogy that each royal had provided. IF a person tried to get into one of these royal assemblies and had only the three names, they would know immediately that the person was NOT royal.
"What few other challenges to these ideas I have found have been to merely describe the theory in one word or less; i.e., "bunkum". I also found a message board, with a message from a member of a Classics Department at Calvin College, which said that he had not looked at the Piso site on angelfire.com, but did say: "...I often use "angelfire.com" sites to illustrate to my students the danger and indeed the absurdity of using websites indiscriminately when they write their term papers. Some of the pages there are real doozies."
Here again, the author is appealing to the Old Classical Scholarship instead of actually learning about the New Classical Scholarship. Now this is interesting. Because WHAT is this really saying? It is being adverse to those who are not spending money just to have a website. It is saying that because a person or group has not paid out money for a website that immediately we must ASSUME that their information is invalid or untrue. That is ignorant and biased towards good, dedicated people who either cannot afford to pay for a website or who cannot see paying for the same thing that they can get for free. Granted, this does mean that several of those websites using the free webpages may be younger people who do not have money to spend on their own websites; but that should not negate the fact that there are in fact very good websites with valuable information also using those free webpages.
Besides this there are at least two major reasons for people making use on free or web-based webpages: (1) Anonymity. Making a webpage using a local ISP service could put people in danger of being found by religious zealots or anyone else who may try to track them down in order to harm or kill them. When there are still so few people who understand this important subject fully - that is just a chance which we cannot afford to take. (2) Cost. I have heard arguments that claim that a) this is just about making money, and b) using a "free" site (somehow) makes the content illegitimate or invalid. A website that costs money to keep and maintain means that money to pay for it has to come from SOMEWHERE. In order to find out all of the information that I have about this I had to live for many years much like a monk; which means that I had to forego making anything other than a meager living. It has cost me many more things than I care to think about. Because of this, I cannot justify the expense of paying for a website currently, especially when I can do the very same thing for free. Posting information using a free website does NOT invalidate it; that is merely a bias of some people. And the truth of the matter is that they are in many instances using that as a method of expediency. A way to skip over a lot of material, as there IS a vast amount of information on the Internet. The way that I look at it is that there are valuable nuggets of information out there on the Internet and sometimes in order to FIND those, one must make the effort to do so and that means not limiting ones' self to only the sites in which people have paid to put up.
Many sites that are paid sites do not have valid or genuine information and in fact were paid for just to promote certain ideas and/or to make some things appear to be true which are not; they are made slick and glossy with all kinds of bells and whistles… but which are really only a lot of hot air. I would be suspicious of sites that are "all dressed up" and expensive looking as that could indicate that there could be some special interest backing and/or promoting that site.
"And another classics scholar from Penn said: "There's been a lively run of this on the sci.classics newsgroup. The short form of this is that the Piso family is responsible for all secular and sacred Greco-Roman-Christian history, all part of a vast goof performed by them on unsuspecting modern scholars. It reads like a huge collaborative parody of Leo Strauss composed by Borges, Nabokov, and Eco, all under the influence of something they got from Hunter Thompson."
That is simply one ignorant person quoting another. Neither of them know anything at all about the New Classical Scholarship or any area of it. They actually do not want it to exist or to be true, and that is why they do not want to admit that it IS real, genuine and will replace the idea of history as they have learned about it. They do not want it to even be possible. But the fact of the matter is that it is not only possible, it is more probable than the way in which they think and have been taught to believe.
"That's about as seriously as the scholars seem to take it. Skeptics of a more rational bent may also find this analysis by a member of Farrell Till's errancy forum interesting. Their summary: "This is one of the most obviously laughable 'theories' I have seen on the web.""
Well, of course, if you do not consider a theory or another way in which something may have happened, you are doing the same thing as putting your head in the sand. You are simply ignoring it. That does NOT mean that it is not actually true; it only means that some people do not want to admit that it is true. This will NOT go away and those people will come to discover that they are among those kind of people who in past generations did not consider any number of things which were new and different. Think of any great new discovery which has been made in the past few centuries. You will find that there were always those who were adverse to those as well - until they realized that THEY were wrong.
"Well, that's enough generality. Shall we back that up with particulars? Here are thematic statements from one favoring site: "We Jews and Church Leaders have known since the beginning of Christianity that it was synthesized by the Roman Piso family for the purpose of maintaining control over the masses and to placate slaves. And, this is why we Jews are the "Chosen People" and why we have endured so much for so many years; we are witnesses to the lie. The New Testament, the Church, and Christianity, were all the creation of the Calpurnius Piso (pronounced Peso w/ long "E") family (a), who were Roman aristocrats. The New Testament and all the characters in it--Jesus, all the Josephs, all the Marys, all the disciples, apostles, Paul, and John the Baptist--are all fictional. Judaism's ethics and morality were incompatible with the hallowed Roman institution of slavery on which the aristocracy fed, lived and ruled. They feared that Judaism would become the chief religion of the empire...Repeatedly, religious-minded Judaean zealots were staging insurrections against the Herodian rulers of Judaea who were Piso's wife's relations. Piso wished to strengthen his wife's family's control of the Judaeans. The Pisos searched for a solution to the two problems. They found it in the Jewish holy books, which were the foundation both for the rapid spread of the religion and for the zealot's refusal to be governed by Rome's puppets. The Pisos mocked, but marveled at, the Jewish belief in their holy books. Therefore, they felt a new "Jewish" book would be the ideal method to pacify the Judaeans and strengthen their in-laws' control of the country."
Yes, from what I read above, this is from a portion of Abelard Reuchlin's booklet 'The True Authorship of the New Testament'. What is the author of this anti-N.C.S. article saying? If he is saying that what is said does not make sense to him as a student of the O.C.S., then YES. I agree. But as an O.C.S. he is lacking all of the knowledge of the N.C.S. and therefore, this is WHY he does not understand this.
"That's actually enough for me to just turn the fan on and let the remnants fly off at will, but a few readers have asked about these folks over the last few years, so for satisfaction we'd like to put together a miscellany of claims from this camp and give them a good ribbing. You are advised to wear some sort of restraining device to keep your innards from losing cohesion while you laugh. The following claims are derived from various websites supporting this theory, which is so wacky that I assume even the Trilemma critic will not complain over a lack of links."
[End of Part I]
Continue to: Reply Part II
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