Juststeve

Spin:

You're right. I meant manuscript and should have written manuscript.

On the other hand, I disagree with your point about the Arabic version of the TF. It does not report a resurrection after 3 days, it merely reports that followers of Jesus was claiming that he rose after three days. That Christians claim this is not really in dispute. If when they began to make such a claim is the issue, Josephus would suggest rather early. It won't do to just assume that evidence away.

Steve

aa5874

You have just SPECULATED. You have ZERO textural evidence that "Josephus originally made reference to Jesus of the NT.

Again, there would have been NO benefit to the Jesus cult for Jesus to have been known to be a mere man.

1. A mere man could NOT die for the sins of mankind.

2. A mere man could NOT resurrect.

3. Jews have ZERO history of worshiping men as Gods.

4. Jesus believers do not worship men as Gods.

5. If Jesus was known to be a mere man then people of antiquity, in Galilee and Jerusalem, would have known that the Jesus cult members were LIARS and DECEIVERS.

6. If Jesus was known to be a mere man by his own disciples then they knew that themselves were LIARS and DECEIVERS.

7. If Jesus was known to be a mere man then telling JEWS in Judea that Jesus was a God, the Creator, who could forgive sin would have been BLASPHEMY, not embellishments.


It is PATENTLY OBVIOUS that a mere man does NOT help the Jesus cult at all.

It is most OBVIOUS that Jesus was a MYTH fable of antiquity that people believed just like the MYTH fable of Marcion.

And MARCION is the ULTIMATE proof that it was NOT necessary for there to have been a human Jesus.

Marcion let it be known in advance that his SON of God was a PHANTOM.

"On the Flesh of Christ" There were NO records at all that Jesus was a mere man with a KNOWN human father.

Chaucer

Understood -- and that take on the TF in Antiq. 18 seems plausible to me too. I'm wondering if you feel that my hunch respecting the James passage in Antiq. 20, that here we have an untampered-with passage from Josephus' own pen, also makes sense.

Thanks,

Chaucer

jgreen44

Yikes. I am sorry I even mentioned "Paul" or whoever wrote the words attributed to someone named "Paul". I attributed authorship of writings to Paul, Josephus and Tacitus simply because it is easier (and lazier) than constantly qualifying remarks with, "the author of the writings attributed to...Paul, Josephus, Tacitus" etc.

My assumption is that whoever wrote the words attributed to Marcion which stated that Jesus "appeared" in the 15th year of Tiberius presumably meant that Jesus "appeared" to individual humans, large and small gatherings and the general public just as a normal human would appear to other humans. The author of words attributed to Marcion was saying that Jesus "appeared" to everyone for all intents and purposes to be a human being when he in fact was not. He "appeared" to everyone for all intents and purposes to die when he in fact did not. The author of words attributed to Marcion was saying that Jesus "appeared" by way of a mass hallucination.

Please do not misunderstand me. I want you to be right. I want the fact that Tertullian did not quote Tacitus' reference to Jesus to mean something. But it just seems to me at this moment that Tertullian may have seen no point in quoting Tacitus' Jesus account because the Marcionite response would simply be that Jesus "appeared" to everyone around him to be a flesh and blood human when he was not a flesh and blood human.

"On the Flesh of Christ" discusses the issue of Jesus' mother and brothers. According to Tertullian, the Marcionite doctrine was that Jesus had no mother or brothers and that he was simply being tempted when the gospels say that Jesus was told that his mother and brothers were waiting for him. The existence of a mother and brothers also confirms Jesus' nativity, another issue under dispute between Tertullian and the Marcionites. Tertullian, therefore, had two very good reasons to quote Josephus' remark about "James, the brother of the Lord." But he does not do this. This, of course suggests that the "James, the brother of the Lord" passage is a later interpolation.

I am still not seeing where Tertullian has similarly good reasons to quote Tacitus' account of Jesus.

show_no_mercy

Another reason to think that the TF is spurious - and added by a Christian - is that the current TF doesn't mention Christianity's relationship with Judaism. If Josephus had written it in the last 20 years of the 1st century, this was not the time period when Christians had been so thoroughly removed from their Judaic roots.

Elsewhere Josephus recounts the different philosophical sects of the Jews. When he introduces Judas the Gaulonite, he mentions that this new sect is a fourth sect of Judaism. Why wasn't Christianity mentioned as a fifth sect of Judaism if this passage was penned in the 1st century? It reads more like it was written in a time period when Christians had thoroughly divorced themselves from Judaism.

The context of early chapter 18 makes it obvious why it was inserted there by a Christian. We have Pilate doing a bunch of nasty stuff, people getting crucified, and the Jews being kicked out of Rome by the actions of some anonymous Jew who apparently had a colorful interpretation of the laws of Moses.

spin

And you think Josephus was inclined to cite such reports like that without comment? A claim of resurrection?

I discover that Pines played loose and fast with another piece of the evidence, where the original had, "he was perhaps the christ", Pines reconstructs a Syriac precursor which had "they though he was the christ", so Pines's work will remain questionable to me until I can check it out more closely.

And why did you say that? Did you read my analysis of the location of the TF in post #19 of this thread?


spin

spin

Here is a more extended comparison of sources regarding the TF. Jerome wrote in the 5th c. in Latin and Michael in the 12th c. in Syriac. (Pines supplied the Michael text and you can find it at Ben C. Smith's Text Excavation.) Michael is considered to reflect the Syriac tradition faithfully (despite the interpolation).

[T2]Agapius|
TF = Eus. E.H.1.11.7b-8|
Jerome (On Famous Men, 13)|
Michael Chronicle||
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus.|
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man,|
At the same time there was Jesus, a wise man,|
In these times there was a wise man named Jesus,||
-|
if indeed one ought to call him a man,|
if indeed it is proper to say that he was a man;|
if it is fitting for us to call him a man.||
His conduct was good,|
for he was a doer of wonderful works,|
for he was an accomplisher of marvelous works|
For he was a worker of glorious deeds||
and (he) was known to be virtuous.|
a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.|
and a teacher of those who freely receive true things;|
and a teacher of truth.||
And many people from the Jews and other nations became his disciples.|
He won over many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles.|
he also had very many followers, as many from the Jews as from the gentiles,|
Many from among the Jews and the nations became his disciples.||
-|
He was the Messiah;|
and he was believed to be Christ.|
He was thought to be the messiah,||
-|
-|
-|
but not according to the testimony of the principal men of our nation.||
Pilate condemned him to be crucified and die.|
When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross,|
When by the envy of our principal ones Pilate had affixed him to a cross,|
Because of this, Pilate condemned him to the cross and he died.||
But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship.|
those that loved him at the first did not forsake him,|
those who had first loved him nevertheless persevered;|
For those who had loved him did not cease to love him.||
They reported that he had appeared to them three days after the crucifixion, and that he was alive;|
for he appeared to them alive again the third day,|
for he appeared to them on the third day living;|
He appeared to them alive after three days.||
accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah|
-|
-|
-||
concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.|
as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him;|
many things, both these and other marvelous things, are in the songs of the prophets who made predictions about him.|
For the prophets of God had spoken with regard to him of such marvelous things.||
-|
and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.|
Even until today the race of Christians, having obtained the word from him, has not failed.|
And the people of the Christians, named after him, has not disappeared till this day.
[/T2]
Agapius has clearly not followed the received order of the narrative, placing the comment about the messiah much later. There is no reason to opt for the version supplied by Agapius as more reflective of the original, especially when it has jumped two languages, Greek -> Syriac -> Arabic. Things get lost in translation.

ETA: Ken Olson looks at Agapius's use of various sources and notes that he tends to remove the miraculous from his sources, citing comparisons of Agapius's usage with those of others. Olson gives two examples from works claiming to be by Abgar (a letter to Jesus and a letter to Tiberius).


spin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Chaucer,

Eusebius says:

Obviously,Since he states that James was known as the brother of the lord, for Eusebius or a forger like Eusebius, it would make perfect sense if Josephus refers to him as the brother of the lord.

Note also that Eusebius refers to others as "kinsmen" of the lord:

So, it would make perfect sense for Eusebius or another Christian forger in the Fourth Century to refer to "Brothers of the Lord" or "Kinsmen of the Lord."

Please note that Origen has three chances to quote the passage about James in Josephus. In all three, he, instead refers to a passage that does not exist in our current version of Josephus.

On Matthew: 10:17
On Celsus 1.47

Against Celsus 2.13
If there were lots of history books about Jesus from the First century, one could imagine a writer getting confused and making a mistake about them. But being that there was only one book and one mention of James, it is difficult to believe that someone of Origen's intellectual ability could get it wrong. We can be reasonably certain that he saw a passage regarding the destruction of Jerusalem being due to the death of James.

Since Origen saw a single passage that no longer exists, we can only be sure that there was forgery and/or erasure involved in the transmission of the 18th book of Josephus.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

stephan huller

And I still think that the James the brother of Jesus reference must come from the Hypomnemata ascribed to Hegesippus by Eusebius as this text is the first text to make the outlandish claim that all the original members of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem down through to the Bar Kochba war were blood relatives of Jesus. This is plainly untrue. But I think also that the Hegesippus-Josephus name connection points to problems in the transmission of Josephan material at a very early date.

The Catholic collection of Josephan material was falsified at a very early date and the forgeries were so ridiculous that later efforts to make the text seem believable were required.

The only authentic account of the Jewish War was written by Justus of Tiberias and we may suppose that the Josephan material was developed in 147 CE (the 77th anniversary of the end of the Jewish War) to counter the claims in Justus's authoritative account with Josephus (his opponent) as the pseudepigraphical for these claims.

As Shaye Cohen notes there may well have been an Aramaic hypomnema circulating in the east which became the source of an authentic core of the surviving Josephan narrative. The rest is all bullshit developed to facilitate a specific historical and theological agenda.

andrewcriddle

At least two months maybe more.

My point is that, given that the persecution is set several months after the fire and that the gardens are closed to the public less than a year after the fire, it is perfectly plausible that the emergency use of the gardens stopped before the persecution began.

Andrew Criddle