hjalti

I just noticed that the newest issue of the Journal of Early Christian studies is out. Richard Carrier's article on the famous brother-passage in Josephus is in it. Here's the abstract:Have fun if you have access to it! :Cheeky:

Tenorikuma

How does one get access to it? They don't even have an outrageously priced option for downloading a single article or issue.

hjalti

Tenorikuma, I'll get access to this after a year through the university of Iceland :P

Toto

Comments on this article:

Mythicist publishing in a peer reviewed journal?

Carrier's blog

Why Evolution is true blog: Richard Carrier takes the Christ out of Christmas

Adam

Thanks, Toto, for that first link,
And to maryhelena for the further link to Carrier's citation of Gary Goldberg.

(I may not be the first to come up with the idea that the Walk to Emmaus was an eyewitness account. I came up with the idea well before Goldberg published in 1995, but I don't know if I put out in print in even High-IQ society journal. Here's a later time I put it out: http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Resurrection )

That eyewitness testimony in Luke 24 traces back to Cleopas and Simon has also been argued as a source for the Testimonium Flavinium in Josephus. Gary Goldberg in The Coincidences of the Emmaus Narrative of Luke and the Testimonium of Josephus, published in 1995 in The Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha, p. 59-77 showed the similarities in Greek in parallel columns. He argued against the similarity arising from later copying from one into the other. Goldberg concluded that as Bishop of Jerusalem after 62 CE Simon had passed on to Josephus the source which his father had written. Josephus took the easy road of incorporating this as his history about Jesus rather than researching other information. Antiquities 18.3.3:63-64 contains items that are clearly Josephus’s redacting or later forgery, when compared with Luke 24:18-21, 25-27. Josephus even lapses uncharacteristically into the first person with “our leaders”, like he is copying slavishly.

Other than that, Josephus is much terser than Luke, both less interested in the details or choosing to suppress the supernatural. Goldberg’s case is much enhanced by his further comparisons with the Arabic translation of Josephus which often agrees with Luke against the Greek text of Josephus. “In regard to these four points, then, the Arabic Testimonium is actually closer to Luke than it is to the Greek Testimonium.” Then Goldberg lists several others as well.

“Since Luke probably drew the Emmaus Narrative from an existing tradition, its outline suggests the possibility that Josephus, if he was indeed the author of the Testimonium, drew his narrative from a similar or even identical source.” Goldberg focuses on the strange expression , “third had day” in Luke with “third this day had” in Josephus. “The construction was originally written by a Christian, but of the first century, and it was incorporated into the Testimonium by Josephus himself.”

Goldberg’s proposed text of the Testimonium Flavinium:
“About this time there was Jesus, a wise man. He was a performer of unusual deeds and a teacher who had heard truth with pleasure and had won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to death, those of us who had first come to love him did not cease. They reported he appeared to them spending a third day alive again, and accordingly, that he was perhaps the Messiah, for the prophets of God had prophesied these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the sect of Christians, so called after him, has not disappeared to this day.”

http://www.josephus.org/GoldbergJosephusLuke1995.pdf (for all the above. I could not give page numbers because the free access runs 1 to 15 instead of 59 to 77)
Everything that seems unique to the Walk to Emmaus seems gone, but condensed into generalities. It does not provide much support for the accuracy of Luke 24, but it is strong evidence for HJ. It is also support for Josephus having copied from Acts (or its precursor source) rather than the reverse. Josephus did have access to information from Christians. On the other hand this does reduce the value of Josephus as an independent witness to Jesus.

Tenorikuma

Here is my proposed text of the TF:

"…"

Incidentally, I have a copy of Carrier's new article if anyone is curious about it. I'm about halfway through it so far.

maryhelena

Thanks, Tenorikuma!


Now that's telling them.....it will be interesting to watch any follow up from Josephan scholars or JC historicists....

Adam

As is and accessible most of the book review of Roger Pearse's
Eusebius of Caesarea, Gospel Problems and Solutions Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum (review by Claudio Zamagni )
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&typ...4.zamagni.html