Amaleq13

It is, IMO, a stretch to assume the same degree of knowledge/awareness about Christianity 30 years after Josephus.

Can you provide the specific references from the letter?

That assumes, without evidence, what you are trying to prove. We have ample evidence from Christian sources indicating that James the Just was quite well known by that title.

Also, why would Josephus feel compelled to distinguish which James it was given that Andrew has shown that it is not the identity of the victim but the illegal nature of the actions on the part of the priests that was relevant to Josephus' point?

Again, where is the evidence that Josephus' Roman audience would be more familiar with the "details" offered than James' reputation as "the Just"?

Rick Sumner

Interesting. For what it's worth, I plugged your search into my Bible software (Bibleworks 5.0), and got the same results.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

spin

As I said in a previous incarnation of this thread (do people not read any of the previous threads before repeating the same mistakes?), the word xristos is only used twice in the work of our devout Jew, Josephus. You needn't stretch your brains to wonder where these two mentions are. They are conveniently in the two passages that people have been going around in circles about.

I am surprised that people have the temerity to take these two uses of the word in obviously christianizing circumstances seriously.

God's anointed is mentioned several times in the literature Josephus was using as his sources. The LXX uses xristos at least 40 times, but none of them made it into Josephus. Yet, lo and behold, he does use it twice referring to Jesus. Hell, you have to be domb not to be suspicious.

The term mashiach (messiah) was quite laden with meaning to a Jew. Josephus doesn't use the Greek equivalent to describe any of those who were attempting to fulfill the role of God's anointed and yet we are to believe that he uses it for a figure whose traditions in no sense made him a Jewish messiah.

Oh please be reasonable.


spin

the_cave

Speaking of previous threads, I take it then that you disagree with Carlson's suggestion that some version of the TF at least pre-dates Tacitus?

spin

Umm, Josephus.

Carlson didn't invent this idea.

No, I think it is just more revisionism after numerous scholars rejected the TF we have more recent ones trying to reclaim what they can.

Look here and do a search for Josephus of this forum (BC&H) or add my name to get my previous comments on the TF and how it was viewed in the fathers.


spin

Diogenes the Cynic

Spin,

What is your view of the Arabic version of the TF? If it's a translation of an early version of a forgery, it doesn't seem Christian enough (IMO) to be Christian and I find it unlikely that the Arabic version is a redacted translation of the full TF.

What are your thoughts on how the Arabic version came to be?

(My apologies if you've answered this before. I did a search on this topic with your name and various key words ("Josephus Arabic," "testimonium Arabic") and I didn't get any hits)

JohnHud

Arwill's new book Caesar's Messiah (February 2005) shows that the passage is genuine---but that the overall context shows that it is a Roman forgery created by the Flavian Emperors

JH

spin

Sorry it's one I haven't even contemplated. We're to look at something recorded in the tenth century?? I don't think the trajectory of the form found in that text can be of much use to us as it is so late. One doesn't know what has happened to the text from the time the TF was in the original to the time of the Arabic version at least five centuries later. Is it a translation of Josephus even, or is it just a translation of a separate form of the TF in circulation within the xian community?


spin

spin

I have a few three dollar bills left if you need change.


spin

JohnHud

How then do you explain the TF in relation to the passages that immediately follow it? What type of literary composition do you suppose the writer was deploying? How do you explain the catchword linkages between the TF and the surrounding passages? Atwill's Caesars Messiah explains all this---and why the text is therefore a testimony to how the Romans created Christianity as a deliberate fraud against the Jews

JH