keyser_soze

Even if part of the josephus paragraph weren't a redaction(highly unlikely), you must also look at the source. Here is a historian, who obviously was very critical and honest about what he saw and heard...I mean after all, didn't he claim a heifer had given birth to a lamb (Wars of the Jews (6:5.3)) on the way to temple? Obviously a critical thinker. Sorry, but I put that up there with anabasis and it's incredible army numbers...Let's face it, honesty in editing wasn't a necessity.

Diogenes the Cynic

Actually, Rick, I should have read more carefully. You specified a Muslim redaction as opposed to just an Arabic one. Muslims I can see redacting out the resurrection and the "Christ" stuff but I'm still not sure why they wouldn't remove the whole passage (or reinterpolate it in a Muslim light).

Toto

Muslims accept Jesus as a Prophet and a major historical-religious figure. They even accept the virgin birth. But they reject the idea that Jesus was God. This redaction is pretty much in line with their thinking.

Diogenes the Cynic

They also don't believe he died on the cross, so why would they leave that part standing?

Toto

I think they believe that he appeared to die on the cross. What the Arabic Testamonium says is

Which doesn't actually say that he was crucified - only that he was condemned to be crudicfied. The most un-Muslim part is "he was perhaps the Messiah".

Diogenes the Cynic

I think that the Koran actually does refer to Jesus as an "anointed" one but that they do not attach the same significance to the title (an atempt to verify with Google led to a mountain of Christian porn masquerading as Muslim FAQ sites, though, so I am willing to be corrected on that).

It's really a moot point, though. Whether or not Muslims would have rejected the title, Josephus never would have written it.

I'm starting to come around on the total fabrication side.

the_cave

Why not? He may never have written "He was the Christ", but he could have written "He was called the Christ" or something like that which later got edited. Or he might merely have referred to the "tribe of Christians", without ever referring to Jesus as the Christ (in fact, he may never have even mentioned Jesus! Merely a "wise man", or even just "a teacher of them" whom the Romans crucified.)

Diogenes the Cynic

He might have said Jesus "who was called Ho Christos" but he never would have said, "perhaps he was the Messiah..." because Jesus had not fulfilled any of the Jewish expectations of the Messiah.

Vivisector

Cheers, Andrew. I agree that Josephus most likely would not have attributed the fall of Jerusalem to James's death. However, in at least one of Origen's accounts, "... he [Josephus] says that the people thought that they had suffered these things because of James." On The Gospel Of Matthew, 1:15

I don't doubt that Origen was capable of this type of exegesis, but the simpler answer - to my thinking - is that Josephus simply reported what at least some people thought, that this was in the version available to Origen, and that Christian scribes later excised the passage.

spin

As I have already pointed out, there were 40 instances of xristos in the LXX, though Josephus used not one of them. In fact, tyhe only two instances of xristos are in the two passages that you and other apologists wish to save, namely those two passages referring to Jesus. Is it mere coincidence that Josephus who remained a Jew all his life, finds himself compelled to only talk about Jesus as the christ? Let's face the farcical nature of the apologist's position here.

But which is it the_cave? Did your Josephus mention Jesus or did he judt mention the tribe of Christians? You are not arguing cases here; you are not debating on evidence; you are clutching at what you can.

Or, more likely, merely nothing there, because the whole passage, lock, stock and barrel, is an interpolation. You need to make a case based on textual evidence, not just put up a series of competing unsupported conjectures.

The section after the TF starts as follows:
1) What does "same time" refer to exactly? Same time as what?
2) "Another" implies an earlier instance; what is the other sad calamity "which put the Jews in disorder" which is referred to here?

In order to answer these questions, you'll have to go back to Josephus and look to the paragraph prior to the TF and in so doing you find that the TF interrupts Josephus's discourse arrangement. He ties the beginning of section 4 closely to the events in section 2, whereas section 3 doesn't actually fit the discourse at all, which has a standard generic introduction "Now it was about this time..."

You might try to make the TF work in the position we now find it, explaining why it can precede section 4 with its discourse linkage back to section 2.

We have the highly suspicious fact that the only times Josephus seems to use xristos is when the text deals with Jesus, notwithstanding the fact that Josephus had several occasions to do so from the LXX, though he apparently chose not to do so, yet proponents of saving the TF want us to believe that he miraculously did for Jesus, even though he, being a devout Jew, would have known the exact collocations of the term, while he also would have known that his Greek reading Roman audience, at least on average, didn't know.

Then we get those who say, oh well, we can't save the reference to xristos, but let's try to save xristianoi. This is clutching at straws, for to save the reference to xristianoi you have to neglect that they were "so named from him", which wouldn't make sense without the earlier reference to xristos.

This attempt to partially resuscitate the TF is blatantly arbitrary and a particularly vain exercise in apologetics.


spin