andrewcriddle

The immediate reason why pseudo-Hegesippus emphasises that the fall of Jerusalem is God's punishment of the Jews for the death of Jesus, is probably in response to the Emperor Julian's unsuccessful attempt to have the Jewish temple in Jerusalem rebuilt.

pseudo-Hegesippus writes to emphasize that the temple and what it represents are gone for good, and that any attempt to reverse this is a fight againt God doomed to failure.

See hegesippus_book 5 particularly chapter 2.

It is an interesting question how far Julian's attempt to have the temple rebuilt is a response to the triumphalism of Eusebius et al but the direct influence on pseudo-Hegesippus is Julian not Eusebius.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Eusebius seems to have been less known in the West before the very late 4th century than one would expect.

The perception of Eusebius as an Arian may have hindered his influence among orthodox Western writers. (According to Jerome E of Vercelli carefully censored his Latin translation of E of Caesarea on the Psalms.)

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Formally speaking it is always possible that the first surviving writer to quote a passage is the author of that passage, and that all later writers and texts are dependent on him. It is not however generally a plausible position.


All I think we can say confidently about Origen's text of book 18 of Antiquities is that it did not claim that Jesus was the Christ in the way that Josephus according to Eusebius and the surviving copies of Antiquities claim that Jesus was the Christ.

It may be worth noting that pseudo-Hegesippus does not record Josephus as making any such claim. pseudo-Hegesippus is paraphrasing Josephus so this may not mean much, but it is possible that (like Origen) his copy of Josephus was lacking the reference to Jesus being Christ found from Eusebius onwards.

Andrew Criddle

spin

You will note, Andrew, that I did not talk about "Pseudo-Hegesippus". That plainly was not the problem. It seemed to me that you were returning to a position you had previously espoused here, passing from one Hegesippus to the other. You allude to that previously stated view in the following.

I may have been wrong in interpreting the statement that caused my comment, but I've given the evidence that I think shows that Hegesippus intended the connection between the death of James and the siege of Jerusalem, "the fruit of their works".

spin

A discussion about whether Pseudo-Hegesippus had read Eusebius or not is a red herring here. What is important is, assuming the theory that Eusebius was responsible for the TF, how quickly that passage was assumed into the text, for, as Andrew admits, Pseudo-Hegesippus clearly had access to Josephus somehow. Given 50-80 years there is quite sufficient time for such a development and therefore Andrew's quibble about Pseudo-Hegesippus is baseless.

andrewcriddle

Pseudo-Hegesippus clearly had access to Josephus but I see no reason to believe that his Josephus manuscript came (directly or indirectly) from early 4th century Caesarea.

Hippolytus and Porphyry give us evidence that manuscripts of Josephus were available in the 3rd century Latin west. (Josephus wrote in Rome after all).

I think it probable that all surviving Greek texts of Josephus go back to an Caesarean archtype but that would not have been true in the 4th century.

Andrew Criddle

spin

I'm sorry, Andrew, but this just seems to me like another of your personal sentiments about likelihood. It takes one person to carry a copy of the text to the west for it to be available for Pseudo-Hegesippus. Many more books were in circulation than those we know about. You seem more to be a betting man than one weighing the evidence.

noble savage

Well, that's at least headed toward the topic I'm asking about. It still doesn't explain how and why Hegesippus happened upon the works of Josephus which had been largely ignored by Christians before Eusebius and employed them in a manner so similar to Eusebius, in taking passages from the Jewish War to show how:

They indeed paid the punishments of their crimes, who after they had crucified Jesus the judge of divine matters, afterwards even persecuted his disciples.

in II, 12, which is remarkably similar to Church History III, 5:

the judgment of God might at last overtake them for all their crimes against the Christ and his apostles.

I don't see any explicit mention of Julian or an effort to rebuild the temple after 70 in V, 2. Are you referring to this passage:

Never was that city destroyed, unless when truly they fixed the temple of god to a cross with domestic hands. And about that temple, let them hear: break up this temple and in three days I will rouse it again. And indeed what was it other than sacrilege, when they extended irreverent hands against the source of salvation, when they stoned him, when they scourged him, when they seized him, when they killed him? Then truly the divine fire consumed their sacred things. For when they were burned by the Babylonians they were afterwards renewed, destroyed by Pompey they were restored again, but they were thoroughly burned, when Jesus came, broken up by the heat of the divine spirit they vanished.

I notice earlier in V, 2, though, Hegesippus uses a paraphrase of Acts 3:14-15 to explain how

You have what you sought, you have snatched away from yourself the patron of peace, you sought for the arbiter of life to be killed, for Barabbas to be released to you, who on account of rebellion done in the city and murder had been sent to prison. Thus salvation departed from you, peace went away, calm left off, rebellion was given to you, [p. 297] destruction was given.

which is again remarkably similar to how Eusebius employs the same passage in Church History 3, 7

There is no necessity to add to the narratives of what has happened to the whole nation after the passion of the Saviour and those words in which the multitude of the Jews begged off from death the robber and murderer and besought that the author of Life should be taken from them.

How can you be so confident that Hegesippus was not influenced by Eusebius in his historiography and his rhetoric? He deploys so many of the same passages for the same purposes. And in the case of Josephus, the passages were not used that way by Christians before Eusebius.

NS

JoeWallack

JW:
I assert again that regarding likelihood Pseudo-Hegesippus is after Eusebius. I need nothing more than this assertion, oh wait a minute (pretending to listen into fake ear mic allah John Stewart). What's that, the rules of this Forum do require specifics to back up assertions. Mother@#$%^&*()_+!. Thanks spin.

Okay, let's look at Ambrose. Real Ambrose, not fake Ambrose:

Ambrose

Eusebius Of Caesarea Gospel Problems and Solutions

P. 259

So Eusebius was well known in Latin by the end of the 4th century.

Getting back to the more familiar assertion, combining the lure of some, any Josephus, that tested positive for Jesus with the notoriety of Eusebius, it is likely that even Western Latin Christianity would have been aware of the TF, if Eusebius was the first to champion it, by Pseudo-Hegesippus' time. You seem to confess that Latin Fathers were at least aware of Eusebius by Pseudo-Hegesippus' time. If they felt they needed to censor or at least not repeat some/most things Eusebian, they would still need to read it wouldn't they. [strawman] Or maybe you would like to argue that Latin Christianity refused to read anything Greek until after Pseudo-Hegesippus [/strawman].



Joseph

"I don't always write the TF into my writings but when I do, I prefer Demoekstratis." Eusebius -The most interesting theologian in the world. Stay spiritually thirsty my friends.

ErrancyWiki

PhilosopherJay

Hi Noble Savage,

Here is another case of pseudo-Hegesippus using rhetoric directly from Eusebius that proves his dependence on Eusebius for the TF. The TF says nothing about condemning Jews for not believing in Christ based on Josephus' writing. However both pseudo-Hegesippus and Eusebius links the TF to the concept of condemning the unbelieving Jews.

This is from pseudo-Hegesippus:


Eusebius in Church History 1.9 writes:

Both pseudo-Hegesippus and Eusebius link the TF to the concept of a condemnation of the Jews for not believing Josephus and for not believing in Jesus as the Christ. There is nothing natural about linking the TF to a condemnation of the Jews for their skepticism about Josephus and Jesus. The TF could be linked to a thousand other concepts.

We are dealing with three possibilities for the linking of the TF with a condemnation-of-disbelieving-Jews showing up in the two writings.

1. Eusebius read the passage in pseudo-Hegessipus and copied the connection between the two independent concepts.
2. Pseudo-Hegessipus read the passage in Eusebius' "Church History." and copied it.
3. They both got the linking of the two from some third earlier linking.

We can eliminate the first possibility because Eusebius lived a half century before pseudo-Hegesippus.
We can eliminate the third possibility by Occam's Razor because we must postulate the existence of a mysterious third document that Eusebius and pseudo-Hegessipus just happened to read and they both copied the concepts in it without mentioning the document.

This leaves us with only the second possibility: pseudo-Hegessipus got the linking from Eusebius.

There is no reason not to believe that pseudo-Hegessipus got both the TF and the idea that Josephus writing the TF should lead to the condemnation of Jews who did not believe Josephus and do not believe in Jesus as the Christ.

We can say with virtual certainly that pseudo-Hegessipus got his TF from Eusebius.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin