Chaucer

In Antiq. XX, Josephus makes reference to a "Jesus, who is termed Christ" and a "Jesus, son of Damneus" in one and the same section. Can anyone here come up with two other Josephus examples of similar proximity in which two different descriptive catch phrases are self-evidently applied to the same person? Please?

Thanks,

Chaucer

ynquirer

Why do you think that whoever wrote “Jesus, who was called Christ” meant to imply that such a person was a high priest?

Chaucer

Frankly, I don't necessarily think so, but others have suggested that. Why? Because the later Jesus named in the same Antiq. XX section, the "Jesus son of Damneus" figure, as a High Priest, would have been anointed at some stage, and one possible meaning for "Christ" is "anointed".

Consequently, I'm asking if anyone here can come up with an answer to my question:


"In Antiq. XX, Josephus makes reference to a "Jesus, who is termed Christ" and a "Jesus, son of Damneus" in one and the same section. Can anyone here come up with two other Josephus examples of similar proximity in which two different descriptive catch phrases are self-evidently applied to the same person? Please?"


That's my question. It's time to refine it further --


"In Antiq. XX, Josephus makes reference to a "Jesus, who is termed Christ" and a "Jesus, son of Damneus" in one and the same section, but a sentence or two apart, with no clear indication that the one harks back to the other. Can anyone here come up with two other Josephus examples of similar proximity in which two different descriptive catch phrases are adopted in separate but close sentences without comment or reference to the alternate term? Please?"


Actually, Josephus here makes no clear indication, one way or the other, that he is harking back to the "Christ" figure at all when suddenly bringing in a "son of Damneus" who -- yes -- did become a High Priest. Consequently, if the answer to my question is "Yes", then the (possible) conclusion is that the "Christ" term and the Damneides term might -- might -- reference the same person. But if the answer proves to be "no", then the (more likely) conclusion is that the two terms reference two different people.

Chaucer

Toto

I'm not sure what this would prove. The people who think that the Jesus "called Christ" is the same as the Jesus son of Damneus, generally think that the phrase "called Christ" was a marginal note inserted by a Christian scribe, and not Josephus' original words. spin has a detailed argument for this.

Chaucer

True, but that does not dispose of the strange coincidence that we would still have two different James/Jesus brother pairs in assorted textual traditions of the time! Once we think that the original Josephus just states "James the brother of Jesus" with nothing more added, we're still stuck with what seem to be two different textual traditions of whatever provenance: one for a pair of brothers named James/Jesus born to a Damneus, the other for a pair of brothers of the same names born to a carpenter called Joseph! Not impossible, but awfully coincidental and not too likely.

And this interpolation argument also abuts the problem of yet another coincidence: the apparent tradition that one James just happens to be the unhappy half of this brother pair who gets executed directly by the Temple priesthood in both cases. Suddenly, with the coincidence of two brother pairs identically named matching up to another coincidental tradition that the James half of the pair just happens to be the one always executed directly by the Temple priesthood, we're confronted by a double coincidence instead of just a single one. So we go from the not-too-likely to the highly improbable.

Furthermore, if one supposes that reliable references to a James/Jesus pair born to a carpenter called Joseph seem relatively scanty, then surely any other references to a James son of Damneus seem practically nonexistent!

I reiterate my main question for this thread:

"In Antiq. XX, Josephus makes reference to a "Jesus, who is termed Christ" and a "Jesus, son of Damneus" in one and the same section, but a sentence or two apart, with no clear indication that the one harks back to the other. Can anyone here come up with two other Josephus examples of similar proximity in which two different descriptive catch phrases are adopted in separate but close sentences without comment or reference to the alternate term? Please?"

Thank you,

Chaucer

Chaucer

Thank you. I take your silence for assent to the plausible conclusion that nowhere else does Josephus do this. This means that it is more probable than not that Josephus is referring to two different Jesuses here, in which case the James who's executed here is not a son of Damneus. I'm well aware that there are other arguments against the probity of this Josephus reference to James as any clincher that Jesus of Nazareth is historic. But this eloquent silence shows plainly that at least the notion that these two Jesuses are somehow one and the same person(!) and that the executed James's father is Damneus(!) can be discarded once and for all. Good riddance.

Thank you,

Chaucer

Toto

Not so fast. If this passage was interpolated, there were not two different catch phrases used, and your argument fails.

If you think that anything from this era is that settled so that you can discard one hypothesis so definitively, you must not understand anything.

Chaucer

If it's interpolated, how come the Christ reference is the first in the paragraph and not the second? It makes very poor sense to suppose that Josephus does not get around to identifying whatever Jesus he's referencing until the second time the name is mentioned! And since James needed a precise identification anyway, we already have a problem if we suppose that "the brother of Jesus" alone was all that was written there, since that still does not take care of the coincidence of a double James/Jesus brother pair, together with the James half just happening to be the one threatened with stoning by the Temple priesthood . Clearly, James needed an identifier of some kind, and if even "the brother of Jesus" alone is discarded(!), what possible identifier is left for this James? None?!

Chaucer

dog-on

Marginal gloss referring to James, BotL.

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show_no_mercy

James the Just - Ιακωβος Χρηστος?