Goldberg presented last March at the SBL Global Virtual Meeting. He distributed a mature draft of his statistical argument, and his 1995 paper.
My personal interpretation is that the new statistical material (tests for overlapping content and sequence matching compared with other Christian descriptions of Jesus's career, selected for nearness in time, length, and cleaned of scripture quotations, etc.) establishes something concrete and objective as the basis to assert that the received TF "resembles" the pertinent part of Emmaus, more so than the received TF resembles any of a range of comparable texts.
Goldberg gave me the impression in his written materials and personal presentation of being aware that such resemblances, no matter how well established as "really being there," do not distinguish between the author of the received TF (whether Josephus or some later author or editor) paraphrasing a portion of an Emmaus narrative in being, Luke paraphrasing a TF in being as now received to compose that portion, or both authors independently paraphrasing some common source.
As I recall, Ken is of the "no original TF" party. If that's correct, then I don't see that the addition of statistics to the Goldberg argument poses any new problem for him.
FWIW, I did notice in the 1995 paper that Goldberg was a tad speculative concerning the motives of a hypothetical interpolator (from page 15):
My personal interpretation is that the new statistical material (tests for overlapping content and sequence matching compared with other Christian descriptions of Jesus's career, selected for nearness in time, length, and cleaned of scripture quotations, etc.) establishes something concrete and objective as the basis to assert that the received TF "resembles" the pertinent part of Emmaus, more so than the received TF resembles any of a range of comparable texts.
Goldberg gave me the impression in his written materials and personal presentation of being aware that such resemblances, no matter how well established as "really being there," do not distinguish between the author of the received TF (whether Josephus or some later author or editor) paraphrasing a portion of an Emmaus narrative in being, Luke paraphrasing a TF in being as now received to compose that portion, or both authors independently paraphrasing some common source.
As I recall, Ken is of the "no original TF" party. If that's correct, then I don't see that the addition of statistics to the Goldberg argument poses any new problem for him.
FWIW, I did notice in the 1995 paper that Goldberg was a tad speculative concerning the motives of a hypothetical interpolator (from page 15):
Interpolation doesn't necessarily imply forgery, to name one problem with that position and not a "statistical" issue.The coincidences may be due to a Christian interpolator who altered the Testimonium, or forged it entire, under the influence of the Emmaus narrative. This proposal has the weakness of supposing that a writer capable of imitating Josephus' style and daring enough to alter his manuscript would at the same time employ non-Josephan expressions and adhere rather closely to a New Testament text. A forger of the required skill should have been able to shake free of such influences.
Statistics: Posted by Paul the Uncertain — Sat Jan 13, 2024 10:14 am