rlogan

Spin, et al. -

So I have a stupid question now. Eusebius in one theory is the nefarious interpolator of the TF.

Now, this requires a little more than the literary evidence we looked at early in the thread and the explaining of the differences in various renditions (I'm satisfied with that issue).

Presumably there are multiple copies of the History of the Jews. One has to commadeer these copies. I don't know enough of the literary situation of the time to know how extensive this would be, and exactly how Eusebius and the church would pull this off. Josephus would have been commissioned for his work, right? So by who and where would the copies be that would need to be snatched to accomplish this? Are these loose-leaf pages one can just swap easily or is it a more difficult task?

Anybody care to advance an argument on this?

Bernard Muller

rlogan:
Our earliest manuscript of Josephus' antiquities dates from the 9th/10th century. That's a lot of time for the Christian copyists, along many generations, to make sure the reproduced work was "complete", with nothing missing, more so the very important TF (from a Christian point of view).
As for the Jews, they probably did not care about Josephus' works, because they considered him as a traitor. Another good case in point is the disappearance of the works of Justus of Tiberias, a Jewish historian of the same time and opposing Josephus. The Jews were not able to preserve copies of his works, even if they would have no reason to reject him.

Best regards, Bernard