Layman

http://www.bede.org.uk/Josephus.htm

Toto

I don't think that "simplistic notion" is an accurate assessment of your opposition or a productive term if you want to engage in dialogue.

Steve Mason, the foremost modern scholar of Josephus, has ponted out that once you admit that there has been some interpolation, reconstructing the text becomes a matter of speculation. (He expresses no firm opinion on whether it was a compete or partial interpolation, but accepts the second reference to Jesus as authentic.)

The text could have included insults to Jesus. The text could have referred to a different Jesus who had no connection to Christianity. There is no way to know.

We have talked about your objections to Ken Olson's Eusebius theory here before, so I won't rehash the discussion.

Layman

You might read the article if you are going to attack it. I deal with these arguments.

And I agree that there may have been deletions from the TF that we cannot reconstruct. But I disagree that we cannot identify those parts of the TF that were original to the text.

And I explain why in detail.

And I would probably classify Louis H. Feldman as THE foremost modern scholar on Josephus, though I appreciated many of Mason's insights.

spin

The arbitrary nature of the stylistics argument renders fundamentally useless, for once you take away the bits you don't like you can get it to look however you want by selective omission.

As to the use of "wise man" which Josephus does in fact use for both Solomon and Daniel, first we must recognize that there is a literary heritage from which Josephus could draw his knowledge of these "wise men" and gives fairly elaborate information about each. Now while Josephus elaborates on the "wise man" Solomon and Daniel the wise man of the TF has but a walk on part. We don't get from Josephus what the term intimates.

The discussion of the phrase "for he was a doer of wonderful works" doesn't add anything to the case. Meier is plainly trying hard about the uniqueness of "poiêtês" in the Flavian vocabulary and the best he can really do is to say that it's not impossible.

I don't see that the phrase "receive the truth with pleasure" as "characteristically Josephan". In the five books I checked out I didn't find an exact match at all. The closest was "so men received what they said with pleasure" (18.1.1).

Of this

"He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles.'

you say:

This statement probably could not have been written by a Christian because it so obviously contradicts the portrait of Jesus' ministry in the Gospels. Indeed, it directly contradicts several assertions made by the Gospel about Jesus and Gentiles.

Sadly your comment is rather irrelevant. Of course a xian could have written it. It reflects a conflation of an existing gentile ministry with some ideas about the Jewish relationship with xianity.

The use of the term "tribe" (phyle) is nothing strange or unique to Josephus. Even Pliny the elder talks of the Essenes as a tribe, so the idea is not specifically Josephan.

Your summary (k) is long, but lacklustre. First you need to show how the terms you mention are used by other writers. Then, selected terms such as "wise man" which is anything but typical Josephus shouldn't be in your list. I gather by "startling" you mean 'paradoxôs', well, how else do you say the idea? [I think it would be best if you really wanted to pursue the matter seriously, you should stick to the Greek (your use of at least two different trasnlations of Josephus was a little confusing) and do a statistical comparison with other writers regarding a range of phrases which are not common.]

What we have to conclude is that the text has definitely been reworked by a christianizing interpolator. We don't know enough about the interpolator to know what his skills were. There is no means other than arbitrary ones to decide what if anything is original, given that someone who wanted a passage to seem like the original writer's could easily use bits and pieces from the original.

We are left with a text that even you can accept has been tampered with. It is only arbitrary to decide, without any outside aid, what has and what has not been written there by Josephus. Many scholars working in the serious endeavour of deciding what is and what is not Christian in interpolations in Jewish pseudepigraphic literature usually admit that they cannot decide just what has been added.


spin

Toto

I read your article, Layman. You didn't deal with my questions or objections.

Steven Carr

Is it possible to identify interpolations in Paul's letters using similar stylistic methods?

Steven Carr

Layman quotes
'He uses the designation “wise man” sparingly, but as a term of considerable praise.'

Would Josephus really heap 'considerable praise' on a crucified criminal?

Layman quotes 'Of these, Solomon and Daniel are the most obvious parallels to Jesus qua wise men. Both were celebrated as masters of wisdom.'

CARR
Who celebrated Jesus as a master of wisdom? Jews or Christians?

Layman quotes 'Finally, an often overlooked argument about the use of "wise man" is that it would have a "pejorative connotation" to Christians.'

CARR
What does Layman think Christians would have disputed? That Jesus was wise or that Jesus was fully human?

How did they celebrate Jesus as a master of wisdom while denying that he was a wise man?

Luke 2:40 'And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.'

Mark 6:3 '"Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles!

In Mark 6:3 , Jews praise the wisdom and mighty works of Jesus. Can we be sure that Josephus's 'wise man' and 'wonderful works' must be genuine as no Christian interpolator would have had any motive to portray Josephus the way the Gospels say Jews regarded Jesus? I doubt it.

TRIBE OF CHRISTIANS
Eusebius is the first person to say that Josephus referred to 'the tribe of Christians' . Eusebius also said Tertullian referred to the tribe of Christians. He did not. Eusebius also said Trajan referred to the tribe of Christians. He did not. Third time lucky when Eusebius refers to Josephus. Of course, Layman is silent about this in his article....





LAYMAN
'There are a number of loaded terms in this argument. Doherty offers no discussion about Christianity's supposed "strongly apocalyptic" nature. Nor does he show what that term might suggest to early Christians, much less to the Romans. While I have little doubt that first century Christians expected the return of Christ, characterizing this as the "overthrow of the empire" is misleading.'

CARR
I quote NT Wright in http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/wright.htm

'This could only be construed as deeply counter-imperial, as subversive to the whole edifice of the Roman Empire; and there is in fact plenty of evidence that Paul intended it to be so construed, and that when he ended up in prison as a result of his work he took it as a sign that he had been doing his job properly.'


'What is the immediate significance of this Jesus-and-Caesar contrast? It was of course a challenge to an alternative loyalty. Jesus is the reality, Caesar the parody. It was the legitimation of the Christian church as the true empire of the true Lord.'

Toto

To show how uncertain a reconstruction is, take the doctored veresion:and the reconstructed version:contrast Eisler's reconstruction:

But suppose it originally said:

Just remove the last sentence (which does not seem to fit the tone of the passage) and identify Jesus as the some of someone other than Cleophas or Joseph, and suddenly there is no connection to Christianity. Change a few details, and there is even less reason to think this refers to the founding figure of Christianity.

You can see how easy it would be for a Christian interpolator with the best of intentions to take some passage about someone else and add a few details or subtract some excess words to reveal what Josephus must have said about the founder of his religion.

So Meier's reconstruction is possible, but the evidentiary value of this reconstructed passage has to be very slim.

Layman

I was anything but arbitrary. I went phrase by phrase, analzing each one, and its use by Josephus and Christian writers.

I agree that Josephus' use of the term "wise man" only tells us that he thought Jesus was a "wise man." From his previous uses he seems to think this is a term of praise.

Yes, it is not not impossible. There is nothing about the term that suggests Josephus would not have used it. But more importantly, there is nothing about the term that suggestions Christian interpolation. And the ambiguous use of "wonderful works" or "startling deeds" is much more likely from Josephus than from

That sounds pretty close. Thank you for the reference.

And Josephus wrote more than five books.

Again, what is significant is that early Christian authors would have been unlikely to have used such a phrase to describe themselves. Pleasure had negative connotations.

But a Christian would have considered the Gospels Gospel. And the gospels are quite clear that Jesus had no ministry to the Gentiles. A Christian could have attributed a Gentile ministry to Peter, but more likely Paul.

Such a statement makes more sense coming from a retrojecting Josephus who did not have the gospels than it does from a Christian.

If you are going to make a case for Pliny the Elder interpolating this TF please do so. I'm not inclined to take the notion seriously.

The point is that it is a very commong term for Josephus, and an uncommon one for Christians. I know of no such reference by a Christian prior to Eusebius--who was likely influenced by Josephus in any event.

Vermes was quite clear that paradoxa is a more ambiguous term for miracle in Josephan usage. You might do well to scare up his article. Or I'd be happy to mail it to you. In any event, the more important point is that it is not a Christian term and a Christian would have not neen so ambiguous.

And I did examine the usage of these terms by Christian writers, who are the only candidates for an interpolation, don't you think? Like I said, I doubt Pliny the Elder did it.

I examine and debunked the idea of a brilliant interpolator in the article.

Most scholars who have reviewed the TF, from many perspectives, have more confidence about the reconstruction.

The prepponderance of the evidence favors the partial-authenticity theory. And that same evidence gives us good guidance as to the reconstruction. I admit that the phrase "they reported he rose from the dead" is more doubtful than the rest of the reconstruction, but given the manuscript evidence for "thought to be the Messiah" and the other linguistic evidence, the rest of the reconstruction seems also to be supported by a preponderance of the evidence.

Layman

Sure, if you had some blatant anti-Christian glosses in Paul sush as "Jesus was NOT the Christ" and "Jesus did NOT rise from the dead" and those glosses were immersed in other language that seemed Pauline.