S.C.Carlson

The Tacitus connection (if it holds up) is important because it would be a witness two centuries before Eusebius to the presence of some form of the Testimonium in Josephus. It does not necessarily make Josephus an independent witness (e.g. Josephus could still depend on Luke), but it would remove Tacitus as an independent witness.

Stephen

S.C.Carlson

It's not really how textual critics allocate the burden of proof for glosses. As a general matter, scholars do not emend the text without any manuscript support unless the passage in question is something that the author clearly would not have written. The short reference in Ant. 20 refers back to the longer one in Ant. 18 with language than is compatible with Josephus. Thus, there is no reason to contradict the manuscript evidence.

(On the other hand, the conclusion that the Testimonium was interpolated in its entirety would support seeing the short reference as a corruption, since there was nothing that the short reference could have referred back to.)

Stephen

yalla

Thanks Stephen.
It's a tangled web isn't it?
Real detective/whodunnit stuff.

Chris Weimer

Nothing does. It should also be mentioned that Origen says that Josephus does not call Jesus the Christ, yet in both passages Josephus calls Jesus the Christ. Funny, eh?

Ben C Smith

Slight correction. Origen does not say that Josephus does not call Jesus the Christ. He says that Josephus did not accept [ου καταδεξαμενος] him as the Christ, and that he did not believe [απιστων] in him as the Christ. As for merely calling Jesus by that name, Origin in fact affirms that Josephus referred to James as brother of Jesus called Christ [αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χ�?ιστου]. (The exact wording in our extant text of Josephus is τον αδελφον Ιησου του λεγομενου Χ�?ιστου.)

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

If Origen did say call, we might have a problem, but Origen said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as Christ" (ἀπιστῶν τῷ Ἰησοῦ ὡς Χ�?ιστῷ, Contra Celsum 1.47) and that he "was not accepting our Jesus to be Christ" (τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἡμῶν ο�? καταδεξάμενος εἶναι Χ�?ιστόν, In Matt 10.17).

Stephen

Amaleq13

Like the use of "Christ"?

How is the language of the short reference "compatible" with Josephus? It is my understanding that there is no other similarly structured sentence to be found anywhere else in his works and, with the possible exception of the other questionable reference, never uses the word "Christ".

From spin's thread on the subject:

jjramsey

Wait a minute. One of the examples from spin's thread about how "the Jewish familial relationship always has some grammatical antecedent, either a) name or b) description" is

The supposedly syntactically strange short reference reads, "the brother of Jesus called Christ, whose name was James," which looks fairly similar to the reference to John of Gischala. This doesn't seem very strange, except that there is an extra clause relating to John's home town. It seems pretty clear that what "the brother of Jesus called Christ" is attached to is, well, "James."

I don't quite agree with S. C. Carlson that the reference to "Christ" in this passage is necessarily a back-reference to the TF. If it was known at the time that there was a "pernicious superstition" whose ringleader or founder was some guy called "Christ," then Josephus could easily have made reference to him.

Amaleq13

IIUC, "a man of Gischala" is an example of a grammatical antecedent of the 'b' category.

It is clearly not a grammatical antecedent which is precisely his point.

jjramsey

I see. spin's argument is that the familial attachment must always come before not after, so it supposedly should have been "James, the brother of Jesus called Christ," not "the brother of Jesus called Christ, whose name was James." I can't say that is very convincing, since "the son of Levi, whose name was John" has a similar "patter," so to speak, as "the brother of Jesus called Christ, whose name was James," and the idea that Josephus wouldn't vary himself is dubious.