jjramsey

Of course, but this doesn't answer my question. If I read Kirby right, for whatever reasons, no messianic claimant besides Jesus was actually called "Christos," in spite of the literal meaning of the term. As you yourself pointed out, Josephus says that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic prophecies, but did not call him "Christos."

Chris Weimer

Yes, I said this earlier. That Josephus appears to have such an aversion to the word makes the passage even more suspect.

spin

I have pointed out that this later reference to the son of Giora, Simon, is a red herring. It is not a defining statement. Your analogy is not analogous.


spin

spin

It is possible, but I have no real interest in the source of the Josephan passage, as I can see no clear way of resolving the issue. It is sufficient to show that he is not a witness to AJ 20.9.1 as it now stands.

At the same time, you have you not evaded the contradiction of your interpretation of the passage.

While the following statement itself is correct:
it is a bad analogy, because it doesn't consider the full situation. I have pointed out that Josephus was a practising Jew. He was a member of a priestly family and professed a fairly orthodox Jewish belief. He has avoided using the term christ in his works though the term is not infrequently used in the LXX, which was one of his sources. The reason that Josephus refrained from using the term should be apparent. To say that Josephus did not accept Jesus as christ has the corollary that he would not say that Jesus was called the christ: this is not a statement of fact as you are trying to simplify it to. The Jewish messiah does not die ignominiously and no-one is called the messiah who dies ignominiously, as it is a sign of false-messiahship. For Josephus to say that Jesus was called the christ, after refraining from using the term everywhere else in his texts, would mean that he believed it. Origen says that he didn't, so he never said Jesus was called the christ.

This is no problem if you read Origen as commenting as he writes, adding his own thoughts about Josephus, what Josephus should have said, that he was partly right, etc. He doesn't seem to indicate anything about what Josephus actually said. The Josephus passage doesn't even say that James died, let alone what his death triggered, so Origen is not a good witness to what Josephus wrote.


spin

Julian

It is worth noting that monks in a monastery back in early christianity, when entering and throughout their career, were required to memorize, word for word, large amounts of scripture material (I don't remember the exact amount, Metzger/Ehrman give the numbers in The Text of the New Testament (or via: amazon.co.uk).) I am sure that a church father would not be inferior in ability in this regard. Many of the gospel harmonizations (accidental and otherwise) we see in MSS stem from this natural tendency of early christians to use exact biblical quotes. If a phrase is in the bible there a high degree of probability that it would roll easily off the tongue (or pen) of someone like Origen.
If Josephus was really a believing Jew I suspect that he would be extremely cautious in using that term, regardless of his audience since they wouldn't have profitted much from the mention, brief as it is. Why would Josephus use such a touchy term in such a frivolous manner? Especially since his audience in the 90s would quite possibly not have known what he was talking about. They would probably see 'the oily one' and wonder before they would make the connection to the rather small cult among cults, called christians.

I also want to repeat the observation that the term does not appear in Photius, a pretty decent sign that it was not in his copy, at least not in a form that included χριστου.

Julian

Edited to add: Not all that important in this discussion but nonetheless an interesting piece of information. It turns out that The Text of the New Testament is searchable on amazon. It says about the memorization that it varied from place to place. Here are some examples: 'to master the Gospel according to John and learn it by heart by the end of Pentecost' for a deacon ordination. For another deacon it was 'twenty-five Psalms, two epistles of Paul, and a portion of a Gospel by heart.' There are other examples in the book, as well.

Amaleq13

This seems to me to be a misleadingly incomplete description of the evidence.

Josephus only uses Christ in these two spots and Josephus exists essentially because Christian scribes preserved him and one of the passages containing the word has clearly been tampered with by at least one of those scribes.

When all of the context is taken into account, other single-use epithets become irrelevant.

jjramsey

It does not follow, though, that Origen would have memorized Josephus in the same way, nor does it follow that he would see Josephus' use of "legemonos" and think its connotation was similar to that of Matthew 1:16.

Considering that there had already been a couple spurts of persecution already (by Nero and Domitian, IIRC), one would expect that some information about Christianity had made its way around. Josephus' patrons, the Flavians, would have certainly heard of them.

A big problem I see here is that there is an assumption that Greek-speaking Jews, aside from those who were Christians, were in the habit of actually using "Christos" as a Greek translation of the title "Messiah." I noticed that so far, no one on this thread actually has justified this assumption. Kirby has even argued against it and the conclusions drawn from it:

Of course, this argument could be wrong, but so far, no one on this this thread has actually dealt head on with this.

Julian

I am not so sure that Origen read λεγομενου in Josephus at all. He saw the name of James and used that name to throw in a reference to Jesus using a phrase that came to mind, namely λεγομενου (from Matthew 1:16 ιακωβ δε εγεννησεν τον ιωσηφ τον ανδρα μαριας εξ ης εγεννηθη ιησους ο λεγομενος χριστος.) I think it was natural for Christians to jump to the conclusion of who James in Josephus referred to. It may even have said 'brother of the Lord,' which probably have meant something else entirely to a Jew. Josephus wouldn't have referred to Jesus as 'Lord.' Photius who summarizes in Codex 238 writes:
The Photius quote probably reflects closer what was in Josephus originally, but there is no way to know for sure. It wouldn't take much of a leap for a christian to mess a bit with that phrase, though.
Domitian I will grant you, I am not entirely convinced about Nero, though. It seems entirely far too early. Although the Flavians were Josephus' patrons, I suspect that he intended his book to be read by a wider audience. The word Christ is used only twice, both times referring to Jesus. An obscure word in a world were Christianity was hardly noticable. A word that Josephus didn't use, one would assume that it was a term of respect or important religious significance for him, one he certainly wouldn't just casually use on somebody whom clearly didn't have a claim to that appellation. Of course, I am speculating on his motives and beliefs here but it is not unlikely. If we had seen the word elsewhere ascribed to the various other prophet-like or messiah-like figures I would have had an easier time accepting the use here.
Whether it was spoken in Greek or Herbrew/Aramaic would hardly have much of an impact on the significance of the word. If the word was never used to descibe messiah-style personages then there was even less reason for Josephus to suddenly use it here. Unless you think that Josephus thought that Jesus really was the Messiah...
I'll be happy to.

Julian

jjramsey

This doesn't follow at all. If in Josephus' circles, the word "Christos" was not normally used by Greek-speaking Jews to refer to the Anointed, but was used to refer to the founder of a particular new superstition, then Josephus can easily use it to mean the latter without going into a lot of rigamarole as to why it doesn't mean the former.

Roger Pearse

I was wondering, idly, to which religious groups other than Christians it could be applied. It could hardly be used by Josephus for Jewish groups, after all. What about pagan groups -- does he discuss any, and would it make sense? And, if not -- who else is going to be so denominated?

I have a feeling that the suggestion -- Josephus does not use it for anyone except the Christians, therefore he could not have used it about the Christians -- may well turn out to implode on examination.

Just my two cents, of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse